gtp August 2007

gtp@lists.lysator.liu.se

5 participants
4 discussions

gtp v2 shortsighted ?
by Rodrigue ASSARD 23 Aug '07

23 Aug '07

Dear list, first of all, my intention is by any means to hurt anyone's feeling nor to start any flame war. This said, IMHO i think this spec is a little shortsighted ... Here are at least three reasons why : 1- the BOARD command should accept to create rectangular gobans... the question is why restrict it to square only ? I understand gtp is designed to enable testing on software programs ? then please let the possibility to foster some diversity... It would be good to see gnugo on a 4x7 board for instance :-) 2- "Boards larger than 25x25 are not supported by the protocol." Why ? Is it so complex to use another coordinate systems as 1,1 instead of A1 ? I know SGF has the same limitations, but why imposing such limitations ? is that another heresy to think about a 51x53 board ? played by two softwares for instance ? OK i'm definitely an heretic... for now :-) 3- the last but not the least concerns the time_settings. And here it's a special request : why not offer the possibility to set different time settings for each player ? again i think it would be fun to afford more time for gnugo than for myself. That would put more pressure on me... ok i talk a lot about gnugo but i understand that the spec is tightly bound to gnugo or the opposite ... Hope that i'm not off topic. Best regards. Rodrigue.

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Re: [gtp] gtp v2 shortsighted ?
by A van Kessel 23 Aug '07

23 Aug '07

I'm afraid, we basically mean the same thing. I have always commented on GTP that it is not designed for angines to 'play a game' it is intended (and designed) to send commands to engines, and expect them to reply with the appropiate responses. The engine has no notion of a game; it is supposed to respond to isolated requests. One of Gunnar's design principles was to keep the amount of shared state (between engine and controller) as small as possible. Basically there is only initialised+size+komi+board-contents. The timing is more or less optional, and is communicated on a per-move basis. This leaves most of the timekeeping to the controller (arbiter or bridge). This will cause al lot of business-logic to be forced into the bridge (or arbiter) program, but it wil keep the protocol itself relatively small. (and: yes, most engines will have more flags to tweak than the protocol has defined, but there are always private extensions, caommandline-arguments and config-files. AvK

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Re: [gtp] gtp v2 shortsighted ?
by A van Kessel 23 Aug '07

23 Aug '07

[Re=reply: the listserver does noet seem to set the Reply-to: header correctly ... ] > a special request : why not offer the possibility to set > different time settings for each player ? again i think it would be fun Te protocol is asymmetric. There is the engine at one side, and the controller at the other. For a game between two computer players, you need two GTP-"sessions", and one (or two) controllers driving them. There is no restriction on the (time-)settings for both players (the engines don't need to know the other's settings). So it is possible to create an uneven match. This is not a protocol-thing. (and it does not need to be) This is a controller-thing. AvK

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Blank line except for Id
by Salvador Girbau 13 Aug '07

13 Aug '07

Gents, thanks for your work on the GTP. I have a [silly] question, IMO not clear in the protocol draft. Blank lines are specified to be ignored. But what should an engine do with a line containing an Id, and nothing else? If this counts too as a blank line, then the sender gets no acknowledge for some Id number. If, on the other hand, a response =Id should be issued, then this is inconsistent with the treatment of blank lines, which get no response. Thanks, Salvador

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gtp August 2007