Bill wrote:
Command: play_mode This is the bridge's attempt to find out whether the go engine is looking for games, or if it intends to play a particular game vs. a particular opponent.
In the gnugoclient paradigm, this is something that would be handled by the connecting program (i.e. a localized version of gnugoclient) rather than the engine. But I can see why you would want to have it.
Engine Responses: If the engine is in general looking for games: any If the engine is looking to play a particular opponent, with particular settings: <color> <user> <handicap> <handicap fixed?> <ko setting> <suicide> <scoring system> <time system>
It's not clear to me exactly how this would look. Can you give some example?
Time system format: <style>[,<main_time>[,<byo-yomi time>,(<stones>|<# of periods>)]]
<style> is one of "none", "absolute", "canadian", "byoyomi"
Is "absolute" needed or can it be replaced by "canadian" with 0 byo-yomi time?
Command: query_dead The game is over. The brige is asking the engine what stones it thinks are dead. If the engine does not know, then it answering with a not implemented error is OK...in this case, it will be up to the opponent to decide which stones are dead.
responses: List all locations on the board that contain dead stones.
I think the existing GNU Go command final_status_list is more flexible for this purpose. It has the following specification:
/* Function: Report vertices with a specific final status in a finished game. * Arguments: Status in the form of one of the strings "alive", "dead", * "seki", "white_territory", "black_territory", or "dame". * Fails: missing or invalid status string * Returns: Vertices having the specified status. These are split with * one string on each line if the vertices are nonempty (i.e. * for "alive", "dead", and "seki"). */
Command: time_left <color> <seconds left in period> [<stones left>] The server is telling the engine how much time is left on the clocks for the color specified. The time reported should be the server's idea of how much time is left, so if there is netlag the engine's clock will not drift from the server's.
Command: comment The server is telling you that somebody is trying to talk to the engine. Any text in the response will be sent back to the user who was talking.
Both of those are handled internally in gnugoclient currently, but if the engine implements those commands, the connector may as well pass the information on.
/Gunnar