dragon 4.5

[MichelG]

Amidst other stuff i am working on, there is a new version available for dragon draughts. Version 4.5 can be downloaded from:

http://mdgsoft.home.xs4all.nl/draughts/ ... v4.5.0.msi

Improvements include
- minor strength gain
- better support for 4k monitors
- various bugfixes, including a draw-by-repetion bug.
- dragon 4.5 now allows you to install the tournament evaluation function with 50M parameters. This plays a bit stronger, a typical tournament between the
two versions ends in about 20-10 and loads of draws.

I keep 2 seperate versions of Dragon; a "normal" version with a smaller evaluation function (13 fields, 3m parameters) and a tournament version with a bigger evaluation version. (18 fields, 50m parameters)

With bigger tables, dragon will start slower though, and needs a 64 bits cpu and 8 gb of ram. This is the reason i don't include the files in the normal version.

To instal the big evaluation table:

1) Download from http://mdgsoft.home.xs4all.nl/draughts/ ... 20v4.5.zip (200 mb)
2) Place the extracted rf files in "C:\Program Files (x86)\MDG Software\Dragon Dammen\tables\eval\set5b" (if you used a default installation path)

To confirm that is it installed:
1) Start dragon, and click 'options' from the menu. Click 'engine options' on the left.
2) At 'current memory usage', the number after 'fixed' should read about 1230 for the tournament tables, and about 237 for the normal tables

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Thank you very much Michel.

Krzysztof.

[Catherine]

Hi Michel,
Thank again for this new version of Dragon. It seem that a new challenger came. I am very glad to see that Ed, Bert, Letouzy, Harm, Rein and you are working to improve the level of draughts by programing softwares strongest than ever. In this way, i downloaded this morning Dragon 4.5, installed it and when i tried to play, a message appeared" unable to find Dragon32r.exe c:\ programfiles\MDG Software \Dragon Dammen " Can you help me to solve this problem. Thank again.

Catherine.

[Birdy]

Hello!

It's nice to see a new Dragon Draughts version.

Thank you!

[MichelG]

Hi Michel,
Thank again for this new version of Dragon. It seem that a new challenger came. I am very glad to see that Ed, Bert, Letouzy, Harm, Rein and you are working to improve the level of draughts by programing softwares strongest than ever. In this way, i downloaded this morning Dragon 4.5, installed it and when i tried to play, a message appeared" unable to find Dragon32r.exe c:\ programfiles\MDG Software \Dragon Dammen " Can you help me to solve this problem. Thank again.

Catherine.

I will look into that and fix that in the new release. For now, 4.5 will not be released to the general public. While investigating the strength of Scan, i found a bug in the dragon search engine. I will fix that first.

Michel

[Catherine]

Hi Michel
Thank for your disponibility, improving yours draughts programs, you and the others, will help considerally the community of 10x10 draughts players. God bless you all.
Catherine.

[MichelG]

Hi Michel,
Thank again for this new version of Dragon. It seem that a new challenger came. I am very glad to see that Ed, Bert, Letouzy, Harm, Rein and you are working to improve the level of draughts by programing softwares strongest than ever. In this way, i downloaded this morning Dragon 4.5, installed it and when i tried to play, a message appeared" unable to find Dragon32r.exe c:\ programfiles\MDG Software \Dragon Dammen " Can you help me to solve this problem. Thank again.

Catherine.

I have found one potential problem on 32 bits systems; the program may use too much memory. I am not sure if this solves your problem though. Can you check the dragon32r.exe file exists in the dragon dammen directory?

The memory issue is solved in 4.5.2. It should now be able to run on systems with 512 MB ram.

http://mdgsoft.home.xs4all.nl/draughts/ ... v4.5.2.msi

Also in this version
* some enhancements to damexchange:
Dragon allows game times down to 30 seconds per game.
Dragon preloads all endgame databases before starting a dxp match
More statistics
* bugfix in dragon's lmr code, giving a small strength improvement.

With large eval tables, dragon should be able to win a match against most other programs. Scan is the only exception i know of, but other match results are welcome.

Scan beats dragon 4.5.2 by about 25-30 elo points at 1 minute/game.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Thank you Michel, dragon32r.exe file is installed when you install Dragon. One thing I would change in the program. In dxp changed me End game after this many moves. I'd do it the same way as in the program Kingsrow. That if the program passes fixed number of moves is a program playing on, and the program does not interrupt the game.

Krzysztof.

[Catherine]

Hi Michel,
Thank again for this new version that doing our happiness. And the memory probleme fixed is a great job that you done. God bless you.
Michel and others programmers,
It seem that LMR evaluation algorithm is so powerful than traditionnal alpha beta's. Please can you explain in simples words to us how it work.
In anothers words, how can we apply it to improve our game.
The personnal experience i done, is that since i on this wonderful forum animated by you, my game became more stable by the only reason that i trying to play now like a program. For those who followed the games of Georgiev since 1988 to 2012, they will see without any doubt that his playing style changed, he play now also like a program.
Thank again for yours advices and the great job that you are doing for the 10x10 Draughts community.

[MichelG]

Dragon 4.6 is now available as beta-test from:

https://mdgsoft.home.xs4all.nl/draughts ... v4.6.0.msi

- bugfixes and improvements in the engine everywhere
- engine equal to 2017 tournament minus some big tables
- experimental feature: dragon can now import/copy&paste jpg or png images of positions. For example most fmjd diagrams.

Michel

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Thank you Michel

Krzysztof.

[Fabien Letouzey]

Hi Michel,

Dragon 4.6 is now available as beta-test from:
...

What are the results against Scan 3.0? Nobody has published anything.

Fabien.

[Luzimar]

Hi Michel,

Dragon 4.6 is now available as beta-test from:
...

What are the results against Scan 3.0? Nobody has published anything.

Fabien.

Hi Fabien the result was 17 victories for scan 3.0

[MichelG]

What are the results against Scan 3.0? Nobody has published anything.

Fabien.

I did a test last night and I am getting results similar to Krzysztof (39-3-186 for scan 3.0)

I believe there is a problem with memory management somewhere; i can see dragon swapping to disk like crazy, and nodes per second dropping to about 1000 at some points. I don't have much time for it at the moment, but i will try to investigate.

Michel

[Luzimar]

What are the results against Scan 3.0? Nobody has published anything.

Fabien.

I did a test last night and I am getting results similar to Krzysztof (39-3-186 for scan 3.0)

I believe there is a problem with memory management somewhere; i can see dragon swapping to disk like crazy, and nodes per second dropping to about 1000 at some points. I don't have much time for it at the moment, but i will try to investigate.

Michel

hi Michel Dragon is already very strong and if you will still improve I say that will be a show