DXP Scan

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

I have a question. How to play a dxp game consisting of 158 games using the Scan 2.0 and Scan 3.0. I thank you in advance for all the information.

[Fabien Letouzey]

I have a question. How to play a dxp game consisting of 158 games using the Scan 2.0 and Scan 3.0. I thank you in advance for all the information.

Hi Krzysztof,

As far as I know, you can't. But it's important to know why, and I explain it below. What you can do, however, is to use random book moves to avoid repeating the same games. That means using larger "book-ply" and "book-margin" than you usually do.

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Scan and Moby Dam, which by coincidence both appeared in 2015, are "engines". That means they only include the brain part, and are supposed to be used in a separate program (the interface or "GUI") that handles all the rest (graphics, analysis, game matches, ...). That's how programs work in other games like chess and Go (in Go they are called "bots").

Going back to Scan and Moby Dam; since they are engines, their DXP functionality lacks some features provided by full programs (although for Moby Dam I am only guessing):
- starting the games from specific positions provided by the user (your question)
- graphics
- saving the games as PDN

Normally, this shouldn't matter. One would use an interface, say Dam 2.2, and obtain those features (and many more). Unfortunately, I am guessing that draughts GUIs were only designed to support one main program. You can make it play another program using DXP, but you cannot use it to make two other programs play (which is available in chess, Go, ...).

So in the very special case where you want games between Scan versions, or Scan vs. Moby Dam (both engines), you are stuck and lose those features. I recall that a program to connect two DXP engines is provided with Moby Dam, but you should expect very limited functionality.

Fabien.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Thank you for your answer Fabien. I have such an important question. Please write whether Scan 2.0 and 3.0 have a book 2move ballots and 3move ballots. I'm going to think about this question. Like you, Fabian, you tested both versions with each other.

[Fabien Letouzey]

Thank you for your answer Fabien. I have such an important question. Please write whether Scan 2.0 and 3.0 have a book 2move ballots and 3move ballots. I'm going to think about this question. Like you, Fabian, you tested both versions with each other.

Scan does not support move ballots. You can organise a match with random book moves instead (which is what I did just before releasing Scan 3), but there is no guarantee that all the games will be different.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Thank you for your answer Fabien. And can I ask you to write a program in which Scan using dxp will play among yourself. And also to use 2move ballots and 3move ballots.