Release V1.30
V1.30 was released on 2018-May-08. You can download the release ZIP file (5 MB):
Changes from V1.20
- The configuration format has changed. After the software update, the CT800 will erase any existing configuration and saved game.
- Better king safety: avoid opening the kingside when not yet castled.
- Improved the defence against pawn and wrong bishop if the defending side still has one or two pawns left: the defending king must take the corner.
- The pre-search has been reduced from three plies depth to one ply. In complicated middlegame positions, the old pre-search could take 10 seconds on the CT800 target hardware.
- More efficient iterative deepening with aspiration window.
- Added a dedicated reply cache for the moves at depth 2.
- Removed the threat move detection at root level.
- The time allocation keeps only a 100 ms as final safeguard buffer instead of 1500 ms.
- Fixed a bug where manually saving and loading a game in game-in or tournament mode added Fischer delay and player bonus to the player’s clock.
- The bitbase access for KP:K is faster.
- Modified the evaluation noise as setting from 0% (full strength) to 100% (random mover), requiring the change of the configuration format mentioned above.
- Increased the amount of pseudo-legal moves that entered positions can have from 190 to 200.
- More opening book knowledge.
- Some cleanup for the opening book code.
UCI versions
- Update advised: fixed a buffer overrun that happened with “debug on” and long input lines.
- Added support for the UCI standard options that set the engine strength in Elo.
- Added the UCI option “Eval Noise [%]”.
- Removed the UCI option “Eval Blur [cps]”.
- The default move overhead for GUI delays has been reduced from a 100 ms to 50 ms.
- Improved the time management with extremely short time controls, like one second per game.
- Optimised the move list parser.
- Removed checking the transferred position and move list for draw by 50 moves or threefold repetition or insufficient material, which the engine used to answer with a null move. The removal increases the compatibility with GUI quirks in Arena and Droidfish.
- Added the non-standard UCI command “perft” for testing correctness and performance of the move generator.
Windows
- Changed the formatted output to Windows functions or replaced them at all. This reduces the binary size by about 50 kB and gives a little more speed.
Android
- The Android build chain has been updated from NDK r15c to r16b.
Raspberry Pi
- The binary is linked dynamically, reducing the size.
Known issues
All versions
- The search in drawn KQ:KP positions is unstable because the draw recognition in quiescence was removed with V1.20.
Embedded target
- When entering a new position after undoing or redoing moves, the move list in the main screen is not cleared.
- Building the firmware with GCC 7.0 or higher fails because of false positive warnings that are treated as errors.
UCI versions
- The “en passant” square given via FEN position string is discarded erroneously.
Android
- A Clang issue with the compiler requires a small workaround for 64 bit. As to keep the versions in line, the impacted feature has been disabled for all Android builds.
Note: issues are fixed with new releases only – there are no backports. However, if an issue is found, it will be listed for the previous releases where applicable.