a couple of months ago I started developing a new chess engine from scratch.
Initially it was just a Web Application where you could play against the engine in a Web Browser.
When I learned more about the world of computer chess, I decided to add support for the UCI protocol.
Today I released the first public version of the standalone UCI engine.
The engine is implemented in AssemblyScript, which compiles to WebAssembly byte code.
Currently the engine onlys runs single-threaded and does not support pondering.
I added the .cmd file to make it easier to add the engine to chess GUIs like Arena.
It is just a batch file which contains a single command to run the engine.wasm file using the WAVM runtime.
Arena supports to add engines as ".exe", ".bat" or ".cmd" files.
The engine runs as part of the 64-bit WAVM process.
If you prefer to run the wavm.exe directly, you need to set the absolute path to the engine.wasm file.
For example, if you downloaded and unpacked the archive to C:\Chess\wasabi-windows, you
can set the command line in Arena to: run C:\Chess\wasabi-windows\engine.wasm
mhonert wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2020 1:31 pm
Hello Gabor,
I added the .cmd file to make it easier to add the engine to chess GUIs like Arena.
It is just a batch file which contains a single command to run the engine.wasm file using the WAVM runtime.
Arena supports to add engines as ".exe", ".bat" or ".cmd" files.
The engine runs as part of the 64-bit WAVM process.
If you prefer to run the wavm.exe directly, you need to set the absolute path to the engine.wasm file.
For example, if you downloaded and unpacked the archive to C:\Chess\wasabi-windows, you
can set the command line in Arena to: run C:\Chess\wasabi-windows\engine.wasm
Best regards,
Martin
Thanks Martin.
If in the future I would like to keep and run various versions at the same time how do I set about it? Shall I rename various engine.wasm files (e.g. engine1.2.1.wasm, engine1.2.2.wasm etc.) so that they have unique names?
Yes, that would work. Another way would be to rename the whole folder (e.g. wasabi1.2.1, etc.).
If it helps, I can add the engine.wasm file as an additional download option to future releases, besides the archives which bundle the WAVM runtime.
mhonert wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2020 1:31 pm
If you prefer to run the wavm.exe directly, you need to set the absolute path to the engine.wasm file.
For example, if you downloaded and unpacked the archive to C:\Chess\wasabi-windows, you
can set the command line in Arena to: run C:\Chess\wasabi-windows\engine.wasm
Hello Martin,
I have no problem running the engine under Arena using the cmd file. However, running wavm.exe directly doe not work.
I have this command for running the engine: e:\Sakk\UCI-engines\Wasabi\wavm\bin\wavm.exe
And the command line parameters are: run e:\Sakk\UCI-engines\Wasabi\engine.wasm
What I see is as follows: the engine seems to start but when I start a new game it plays very slowly although it should move instantly because of the Arena opening book.
This is a problem because I would like to use Shredder and Fritz GUI's as well and they cannot install cmd files.
I have no problem running the engine under Arena using the cmd file. However, running wavm.exe directly doe not work.
I have this command for running the engine: e:\Sakk\UCI-engines\Wasabi\wavm\bin\wavm.exe
And the command line parameters are: run e:\Sakk\UCI-engines\Wasabi\engine.wasm
What I see is as follows: the engine seems to start but when I start a new game it plays very slowly although it should move instantly because of the Arena opening book.
This is a problem because I would like to use Shredder and Fritz GUI's as well and they cannot install cmd files.
Hello Gabor,
I am having difficulties reproducing the issue. I configured the engine like above and started a new tournament with an opening book.
Arena randomly selected an opening line and played the initial opening moves and then the engines took over and continued the game without any issues.
I saw that there is also an option to configure an opening book for an engine. Did you perhaps use this option instead of the one where Arena plays the opening moves? The Wasabi engine currently does not support loading external opening books in Polyglot format.
mhonert wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 6:38 pm
I saw that there is also an option to configure an opening book for an engine. Did you perhaps use this option instead of the one where Arena plays the opening moves? The Wasabi engine currently does not support loading external opening books in Polyglot format.
No, complying with CCRL policy I never use an engine book, only a common GUI book.
Interestingly, I have a similar issue with the Eubos java engine where cmd corresponds to java while run corresponds to jar.
Yes, this is indeed similar to a Java application.
I downloaded the latest Eubos release from GitHub, added it to Arena and ran a complete tournament match against Wasabi without any issues. Could you perhaps upload the debug output for a tournament?
mhonert wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 7:26 pm
Yes, this is indeed similar to a Java application.
I downloaded the latest Eubos release from GitHub, added it to Arena and ran a complete tournament match against Wasabi without any issues. Could you perhaps upload the debug output for a tournament?
Hmm, I reinstalled Wasabi using the exe and the absolute path (as before) and now it works OK. Too late for now to find the reason, I'll try to discover it tomorrow.
