Markus wrote:
The organizers of the Gifu Challenge have announced that they will use a new server-based protocol named SBCP instead of the Modem Protocol in future tournaments. A description of the protocol can be found here: http://igo.bz/cgf/CGF2004-Protocol.txt
I am not happy that they did not choose GTP, it would have been a good choice for all the requirements listed in the their specification.
Features (d), (e), and (l) in the list wouldn't be directly supported by using GTP, but it shouldn't be very difficult to write a tournament program which mirrors the games to a go server. Features (j) and (k) have very little to do with computer go tournaments. Otherwise I agree that GTP fits the bill perfectly.
Programmers that already use GTP for regression testing and interfacing the engine to a user interface will have to support another protocol
That protocol looks nice as go server protocols go and is clearly superior to the IGS/NNGS protocol for use by programs. Still it doesn't look very attractive to implement in an engine compared to GTP.
or use a program translating the protocols.
This is certainly the approach GNU Go would take. We already have a NNGS-GTP bridge (gnugoclient) and this would be similar (but cleaner due to the nicer protocol). Absolutely doable but preferrable if it wasn't needed (i.e. if the tournament software talked GTP directly with the go programs).
[quoted from a later message:]
when using GTP the referee program would connect to the 2 Go programs (actually you would have to call the programs server).
It doesn't really matter whether the referee connects to the engines or the other way round. Both variants can be used.
/Gunnar