[Bug-gnubg] gnubg Win 32

[Frank Haselein]

address@hidden
--------------------------

hi,

first of all: I know about gnubg for Windows since version 0.11, which I
used under Win95 (sorry for that). Although a strong player, the performance
was not that good, and it crashed very often. Now I use 0.13, build 030130,
under Win 98 and Win 2000 (sorry for that, too) and I like it very much:
very strong player, a lot of functions, nice GUI, good performance even on
higher playing strength, excellent analysis features and import/export
options, congratulations! So, who is talking about this swiss
program -actually I can´t remember the name- any longer?
As you where asking for suggestions,bugs and comments, here we are.

I tried to submit you some suggestions about gnubg earlier, but always when
I checked the new build, I realized that many of the features I was missing
are already implemented. So the problems  while importing .mat files seem to
be fixed. You guys are too fast for a poor user like me.

Another problem is the correct time of resining. The human player is able to
resign at any time, gnu  not. Sometimes gnu should resign immediately after
the roll and the analysis reflects this, while the evaluation shows 1.6%
winning chance (Position ID: DQAA0B0AAAAAAA; Match ID: sAFgAaAAMAAA), what
is true before the roll, as JellyFish confirms. As a result, gnu moves
wrong. The evaluation, analysis and playing settings are identical!

Another problem is the analysis output, especially the MWCs. As you see
below, there are some examples from matches between gnu and me. By the way,
the abs. rating seems to reflect a negative correlation to the number of
beers I had during the matches ;-). What´s the "MWC against current
opponent" about and how is it computed? (Your comments on checker play, cube
handling and luck are very funny).


                                                              gnubg
Frank

Overall rating                                     Supernatural
Beginner
MWC against current opponent            75.14%               24.86%
Guestimated abs. rating                           2200.00
1406.91

Overall rating                                     Supernatural
Casual player
MWC against current opponent            74.62%               25.38%
Guestimated abs. rating                          2200.00
1518.96

Overall rating                                     Supernatural
Intermediate
MWC against current opponent           100.00%                0.00%
Guestimated abs. rating                      2200.00              1723.16

Overall rating                                     Supernatural
Intermediate
MWC against current opponent            86.28%               13.72%
Guestimated abs. rating                       2200.00              1727.16

Overall rating                                     Supernatural
Expert
MWC against current opponent            51.58%               48.42%
Guestimated abs. rating                       2200.00              1940.79

Overall rating                                     Supernatural
World class
MWC against current opponent            55.39%               44.61%
Guestimated abs. rating                      2200.00              2038.53

And here are some suggestions:

1. I use gnubg not only for playing, but for analysis. Meanwhile I don´t
care about winning or losing, but for correct checker play and cube
handling. I try to improve my game by studying the positions, where I played
bad. Using gnubg it´s quite easy to find this mistakes. Unfortunately there
is no possibility to print or export a single position including analysis to
get a good hardcopy for studying on the train, or something like that. The
text-export-option with x and o is not really that, what I´m looking for. Is
there any possibility for the future to get positions incl. analysis as
single .pdf  .tex or .eps? The implemented .eps-export doesn´t include
analyis so far. If you export a whole match to .pdf, you will get a lot of
pages (around 400 A4-pages from a 11 to 10 match; my printer is going to
crash and my creditcard too). Is there any chance to make .pdf-export
customizable or even smaller diagrams? At the moment I export whole matches
to .pdf /.tex /.eps and extract the desired positions manually.

2. Analysis of matches takes a while. It would be nice, if there is any
option to analyse only one (human) player.Using same settings for playing
and analysis, gnu´s error rate is usualy +0.000 and the rating, of course,
"Supernatural" so I don´t need annotations for gnu´s play. Only the luck
rate maybe interesting. I guess, analysis would be somewhat faster in that
case.

3. Is there any way of analysing multiple matches via batch-process? This
would be a very nice feature, analysing a bulk of matches while sleeping or
watching tv or even working? Meanwhile it would be very helpful (especially
when gnubg works in the background), if an acustic signal or a msgbox, that
marks the analysis is done, could be implemented?

4. What´s the "copy"-button in the Edit-menue about? Does it do anything so
far? (If  "copy" is typed in the command line, the position is copied to the
clipboard)

5. After installation of setup030105.exe and newest snapshop, the sound
didn´t work, although it was enabled. I had to change it manually in the
.gnubgautorc.

6. What do You think about a multilanguage-version of gnubg? I think, I
could manage a translation of the menues to German.

7. Could a "Position"-dialog be implemented in the "File-New"-menue?

8. Gnubg-GUI becomes somewhat slowly after playing 1 hour or so. After
closing the programm and restarting, all works fine. Is this a problem with
caching and/or recording the games? I allways save the matches when
finished.

9. I really miss the two arrows for navigation through the game
(next/previous roll, known from JellyFish) in the symbol bar.

10. Could you implement a "Restore counter on takeback" and  "Read from
file" option, also known from JellyFish, in the "Options-Dice" dialog? I
miss that too.

I think, that´s enough for today.
Hope, I didn´t bore you too much. I like gnubg anyway.
Allways good dice,

Frank.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
Dipl.-Geogr. Frank Haselein
Geographisches Institut der Universität  Goettingen
Goldschmidtstr. 5
37077 Goettingen
Tel:  0551/39-14120
Fax: 0551/398006
Email: address@hidden