Re: BGBlitz supports GnuBG-AI

[Murat K]

    I don't quite understand what are you offering
      the readers of this forum?
      
      GnuBG is free. Your software is not. So, you are taking something
      for free
      and incorporating it into your paid software as an added value for
      your
      existing or prospective paying customers, trying to make an extra
      buck.
      Good for you.
      
      In advertising it here, you must be hoping that some GnuBG users
      who
      are happy with its playing strength, which is superior to your
      bot's, but
      who would like your UI better enough to pay money for it?
      Good luck.
      
      How about offering us something similar for free in return? Like a
      full
      CLI interface to your AI so that we can write our own scripts to
      access
      it for free or even incorporate it into our own software with
      better and
      still free UI's than yours.
      
      MK
      
      PS: Just out of plain curiosity, I tried your beta bot to see if
      it allows
      full access to GnuBG CLI functions, etc. but I couldn't get it to
      make
      a move past the opening roll. It just sat there using 12 cores at
      15%.

On 10/25/2024 3:40 PM, Frank Berger wrote:

> 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
>