Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: Re: Important announcement Re:Waster geschrieben von:/posted by: Marcus Prewarski at 24 March 2004 00:08:55:
I see a problem in that there is no clear definition of a clone.Hello
Thanks guys for the kind words and support.
To answer Heinz's point.
Yes it would be very easy to change the evaluation function. What would be impossible though would be to define at what point it is considered different and unique? Do I change 1 lines, 10 lines, 50 lines? If I changed every line but used the same algorithm, is that acceptable or not ? Who knows ?
Tom hasn't seen the source code for Waster, so is hardly commenting from a point of definite knowledge. However, I didnt want to get into any
pointless arguments with him, this is meant to be an enjoyable hobby not a
source of irritation.
Sorry Heinz, I don't any longer have motivation or enthusiasm to resolve this.
Thanks very much for your efforts with the Pyramid and Nunnn Tournaments, it was fun following it.
regards Geoff
TSCP is only 2000 lines of code and that is counting spaces and comments. If your program is so different it should be quite easy to start from scratch. DanChess was removed from tournaments because it had 30% of its code similar (not copied just too similar) to Crafty. Apparently to call your program not a clone you need less than this. Again I'm not against you or Waster, we just disagree about what a clone is. Your main point is that it plays much better so it is not a clone but I don't think that is valid.
I searched for your post describing the differences in CCC and I can't find it anymore so I guess somehow it got removed or maybe I'm just bad at searching. But from what I recall you took TSCP added Null Move Pruning + modified move ordering by adding killer moves + added a Hash Table + made the board 0x88. And I believe you commented on how few changes it took on top of TSCP to make it much much better.
Personally I think this is a fine way to start chess programming but I can also understand why someone like Tom doesn't want this competing under a different name, after all he could easily make these changes himself. If you are just in it for the fun of trying to improve TSCP then I don't think it matters if it participates in tournaments or what others think. If you have started to enjoy the competition and most of your work in Waster is original it shouldn't be much work to recreate the rest. You will also get to share in our joy of fixing bugs in things that seem so simple on paperSo get to work.
In any case, this result shows the danger of starting with someone else's program. I have heard the argument in CCC that "Eventually the program becomes completely your own." but I don't think so. For all time, it is really a derivative work. The only way to proceed if you plan to borrow someone else's code to get started is to ask permission first, and get it very clear what the permission allows and denys.
From Leo's tournament, it is clear that Waster will clean TSCP's clock. To do this will take significant work.
I think in the long run, writing a chess program from scratch will be the best way to do it. But I see nothing inherently evil in using someone else's work too. Let's face it, none of us invented most of the algorithms that we are using. So we are already standing on someone else's shoulders. The degree to which we use someone else's work and the degree to which we innovate with our own ideas will always be grey and not black and white.
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