BGBlitz supports GnuBG-AI

[Frank Berger]

Hi all,

FYI, i just published a beta of BGBlitz 3.2. One of the features is that I 
support GnuBG as AI. This will surely raise questions. 

Why did I include GnuBG? If you look at the situation at chess or Go you have a 
flourishing scene of AIs. Why not the same for Backgammon? The smaller 
community is surely one reason, but imagine you write a top backgammon AI .... 
and now? You have to invest another 5-10 years to get a complete program. 

Backgammon lacks a plugin mechanism. In chess you can plugin Stockfish in Fritz 
or Shredder, but we don't have such a thing. BGBlitz was intended to support 
plugins from the very start (that is the reason why the AI of BGBlitz has it's 
own name TachiAI), but because no one wanted it (and the AIs I had access to 
were either weak or I can't use them for legal reasons) I removed it some years 
ago. 
But recently I thought, come on try to include GnuBG 
* first as a PoC and 
* second BGBlitz then supports already 2 of the 3 current relevant AIs.

BTW GnuBG can be used in BGBlitz on Windows, Linux and MacOS (you have to 
install it with macports on MacOS. I tried only the cli)

If someone applies I'll provide an API for general use. 

BTW because I don't include GnuBG in any way but use only the cli version, I 
don't see any license issues. 

Your thoughts are highly appreciated.

enjoy
Frank 

Windows:             https://bgblitz.com/download/beta/BGBlitz_3_1_0_setup.exe 
Mac Apple Silicon:   https://bgblitz.com/download/beta/bgb_distr_3.1_ARM.dmg 
Mac X86:             https://bgblitz.com/download/beta/bgb_distr_3.1_x86.dmg 
Linux:               https://bgblitz.com/download/beta/bgblitz_installer_310.jar