Starting Dragon engine on a server

[Walter Thoen]

Hi Michel,

I am working on a test project in which I am connecting a web user interface to a draughts engine running on the server. The aim is to be able to play against Dragon and Kingsrow (in fact any draughts engine that supports DamExchangeProtocol) using the browser on my iPad or mobile phone instead of playing against a weak app.

I have a working prototype (still lots to improve) that uses the SignalR library (based on websockets) for the real time communication between the browser and the server and then the server connects to the engine using the DamExchangeProtocol.

I have two issues with my prototype.

1) On the server I have to start Dragon and then use the menu to get Dragon to wait for a DXP connection
(same for Kingsrow, Dam 2.2. is worth as it requires the user to manually accept a new game)

2) Currently I can only support one simultaneous browser client as I cannot start up multiple engine instances listening on a different port for DXP messages.

Is there a command line option to start Dragon (engine only) in such a way that it either starts immediately waiting for a DamExchangeProtocol connection or immediately establishes a connection to an IP address and Port specified with command line parameters?

Regards,
Walter

[BertTuyt]

Walter, the Damage Engine has extensive command line options.
Basically I run all the DXP matches between Kingsrow and Damage directly without GUI (so without the Damage GUI interface).
With the command line I can set all options needed to run a DXP match ( whether client or slave).

On the Internet I posted a Damage version with an older search routine and based on the Horizon evaluation (I still want to update this after all matches im doing now).
Maybe this might work for you, if not I most likely can help you .
The only requirement is that you need a Windows 64bit environment, and a recent PC which support some new processor instructions, and sufficient memory...

Bert

[Walter Thoen]

Bert,

I have a version called "Damage2000 Beta 4" on my laptop (64bit Windows 7). Is that the version you talk about?

If so, can you give me the relevant command line parameters?

Thanks,
Walter

[BertTuyt]

Walter, the version I was referring to can be found on link : http://members.chello.nl/h.tuyt/downloadbeta.htm
If you drop me an email on h.tuyt AT chello.nl, then I can further support you.

Bert

[Krzychumag]

Walter, the version I was referring to can be found on link : http://members.chello.nl/h.tuyt/downloadbeta.htm
If you drop me an email on h.tuyt AT chello.nl, then I can further support you.

Bert

Bert this program doesn't work under Windows 7 64 bit.

[Walter Thoen]

Walter, the version I was referring to can be found on link : http://members.chello.nl/h.tuyt/downloadbeta.htm
If you drop me an email on h.tuyt AT chello.nl, then I can further support you.

Bert

Bert this program doesn't work under Windows 7 64 bit.

The program works fine on my Windows 7 64 bit laptop (Dell Precision M6600, Intel Core i7-2720QM, 8GB).

Walter

[Krzychumag]

Hi Walter.

Please download the program and write whether for you is acting. I have 3 laptop computers and one stationary computer and on no computer this program works.

--Krzysztof.

[BertTuyt]

Walter,

if you want to run a DXP match against Kingsrow (assume you have this program), the next steps are required:
Start KingsRow in a mode Wait for DXP connection....

* Only start the Engine, so without GUI
* And now you need to type the next GUIDE (and non-documented) commands:

opponents engine-engine
levelsfixeddepth XX ( XX whatever you want, XX = Ply), for a fixeddepth mode or
levelsfixedtime XX (for a fixed time mode XX = sec ), I did not implement in this download other options

And then the non GUIDE commands
$dxp client
$dxp match
$dxp go

I'm not sure what the DXP string is sent by the program (think it is something like 10 Min/Game and 65 Moves), in this version you cant change/modify it.

Hope this works, I'm not ale to test as I'm running now 10 Min/Game Matches, and my Windows64Bit PC is occupied till this weekend...

If it doesn't work, please let me know.

Bert

[BertTuyt]

Krzysztof,

can you explain what doesn't work?

Does the GUI not start ?
The GUI should also activate the Engine in a separate window.

You can also try to only start the Engine. Does this work?

Do you see error messages like some DLL's missing (like MFC, .... )

Bert

[Krzychumag]

Krzysztof,

can you explain what doesn't work?

Does the GUI not start ?
The GUI should also activate the Engine in a separate window.

You can also try to only start the Engine. Does this work?

Do you see error messages like some DLL's missing (like MFC, .... )

Bert

Hi Bert.

While starting the file DAMAGE 2011 one window appears with the board of it games, program Engine isn't loading. Unfortunately the second window doesn't appear. When I want to start engine with the option " LOAD ENGINE" an announcement appears " the parameter is incorrect".

[BertTuyt]

Ok, and what error message (if any) do you get when you directly load the Engine (so start the Engine Application .exe ).

Bert

[Krzychumag]

Such a window appears and it isn't possible to do nothing.



--Krzysztof.

[MichelG]

Is there a command line option to start Dragon (engine only) in such a way that it either starts immediately waiting for a DamExchangeProtocol connection or immediately establishes a connection to an IP address and Port specified with command line parameters?

Regards,
Walter

Hi Walter,

There is currently no way to start dragon automatically in DXP mode.

Do you plan to use this method for personal use, or would you want to make something like this generally available?

Michel

[Walter Thoen]

Hi Michel,

An important goal of my project is that the server engine you play against is stronger than an engine app running on your phone or tablet. That is easy to achieve if you have one engine running on a big server (say 16 cores XEON E5, 128GB with 8pcs egdb) but what if you have to start 20 engine on that server to support twenty simultaneous users? Would these 20 engines still be stronger than an app on your phone or tablet?

Therefore, the main reason for asking about starting multiple engines on different ports was to demonstrate the concept and than do some scalability testing. (I do not need it personally as I have enough problems to win against one engine at a time )

I will certainly not make anything publicly available without approval of the engine owners!

However, the ultimate goal is to make the system available to the general public (as part of the Killerdraughts.org initiative), but there is still a long way to go before that might become feasible.

1) I only have a prototype that passes DXP message between a web page and a draught engine and vice versa. The Web User Interface is being worked on.

2) To create a fully functional web user interface I also intend to implement the GUIDE protocol. This is important to allow the user to see search info and to do analysis.

3) I would like to have a feature to query the 8 or higher endgame databases (similar to http://www.shredderchess.com/online-che ... abase.html)

4) I want to support the Killer-rule (no engines currently support this apart from your old Dragon version).

5) And finally a big, costly server is needed to support simultaneous users

I believe that both Bert on yourself have implemented your own enhancements to GUIDE. To get some of the above working properly I would also require some enhancements to the GUIDE protocol (and the DXP protocol e.g. for Fisher time as I proposed in another thread). Would you be interested to standardise these enhancements again and to support a new updated GUIDE protocol version?

Everything I develop for this project will be made available as open source. Because of the costs of the server capacity and possible license fees for engines I cannot guarantee at the moment that more than casual usage of the final solution would be free.

Regards,
Walter

[Krzychumag]

Hi Bert.

All your older versions are working perfectly.