The new server will do much better reporting and one of my planned improvements is to send information about the opponent to the client prior to the beginning of the game. Once the opponent is announced the game has officially begun, so you can't pick and choose your opponents by logging out. (Not that I think this is likely to happen, but one of the reasons I made CGOS was that this is a common practice in computer chess servers.)
It will have several little enhancements, the main goal is to support the development of go programs so the enhancements will be for the benefit of program authors. So such things as better reporting of time used for each move and total game time, etc. Some of information the client gets will be trasnmitted to the program via extended GTP commands. For instance you may want to put who the opponent is and what his rating is in your log file (along with the game number or even the SGF record itself.) Of course you are not required to support the extended commands but they will be there if you want them. I also want much quicker rating feedback. You should be able to play just a few games and get a rough sense of the programs rating, so there will be some sort of quick provisional rating calculation that will estimate the stength crudely. There will also be a way to view games as they are being played via a separate viewing client, but the initial server won't have that yet. The support will be there but someone will have to actually build the viewing client. I may provide a quick and dirty reference implementation to start with that is text based. The viewing client will show some basic stuff like how many are logged on, what the current pairings are, etc. If a program disconnects, it can reconnect and finish its game, but it is still on the clock. At least you won't have to lose a game because you accidently broke your internet connection. I want there also to be a better way to fetch games from the archive. - Don On Mon, 2007-03-12 at 15:25 +0100, Heikki Levanto wrote: > On Mon, Mar 12, 2007 at 10:09:03AM -0400, Don Dailey wrote: > > If anyone suspects their program tickled a bug in CGOS, please > > let me know, so I can strengthen CGOS and know what to look for in > > the future. > > Not me, I haven't changed anything for a week or two. > > > Meanwhile, I'm working on a better server - cleaner code, more robust > > less of an ugly hack. > > When you make the new one, would it be possible to add a bit of > information in the gameover message. It would be nice to see something > like > -> gameover Halgo lost to xxxxbot (1888) Rating 1333 -> 1331 > > Not that I could use the data for anything, but it would be nice to see > who the oppoent was, after looking through an interesting game. Also, > the changes in rating would be nice to follow. I know none of these are > important in any way, but I must admit to some curiosity when I have had > a new version of the program on line... > > -Heikki > > _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list [email protected] http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
