UCI2WB(6)

📦

version 4.1+git200714 · 3 versions

4.1+git200714 · debian bookworm, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble (latest)
4.1+git200714 · ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking
4.1+git200714 · debian trixie, ubuntu questing

, in debian bookworm, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble

💖 UCI2WB(6) 💖

okay bestie, so this is a User Contributed Perl Documentation page, and it's about a little program called uci2wb 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

uci2wb — protocol adapter for UCI dialects to XBoard 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

uci2wb [debug] [-var <variant>] [-nice <priority>] [-kill <delay>]
[-c|-s|-x] <engine> [<directory>]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so uci2wb is a protocol adapter, which is a fancy way of saying it's the translator friend in the group chat 💬 It lets you run AI plugins (aka 'engines') that speak one protocol inside a GUI that speaks a totally different one. And in this case, uci2wb can make the engine you name in its argument — which has to use a protocol similar to UCI ('Universal Chess Interface') — show up to the GUI as an engine that's using the XBoard protocol ('Chess Engine Communication Protocol', aka CECP). Matchmaker behavior, honestly 💖

The protocols it can mediate for are:

UCI — both the official standard, AND the 'Cyclone dialect' that Chinese-Chess engines commonly use, AND the 'Arena960 dialect' that pre-standard Chess960 engines use 🌈
USI — 'Universal Shogi Interface', used by some Shogi engines ✨
UCCI — 'Universal Chinese-Chess Interface' 👑

And when it's set to UCI through an explicit -c argument, it uses Cyclone dialect when playing xiangqi games. Slay 🎀

⭐ OPTIONS ⭐

-c -s -x -f — the flag arguments -c (which is the default), -s or -x set uci2wb to use UCI, USI or UCCI, respectively. If there's more than one character in the flag argument, all characters but the first get ignored, no cap 🙈 This means you can pass uci2wb the full variant name ('shogi' or 'xiangqi') as a flag, and it'll automatically pick the right protocol for you (USI or UCCI). Other values also select UCI, but the value -f additionally implies uci2wb should announce it supports Chess960 even for UCI engines that don't have the standard UCI_Chess960 option — and in that case it causes castlings to be sent to them as O-O or O-O-O instead of the standard KxR notation. iconic 💅
-var <variant> — forces uci2wb to announce to the GUI that it supports (only) the specified variant. Now, a UCI_Variant option has been proposed as a way for UxI engines to announce what they can play, and uci2wb does support that, but ngl not many engines actually implement it 😭 So if these aren't the standard variants implied by the protocol choice — like, say, seirawan or 6x6+6_shogi — you have to configure it on the uci2wb command line through this option. periodt.
-nice <priority> — runs the engine processes at the requested priority; positive values lower the priority 🌸
-kill <delay> — increases the time between receiving a 'quit' command and killing an engine process that somehow could not be made to exit through the normal handling of this (that's 50 ms by default) by the specified delay 💀
debug — makes uci2wb report to the GUI everything it receives from the engine, as a CECP engine comment (so prefixed with '#'). That makes it show up in the GUI's log of the engine communication 📝 Some critical commands it sends to the engine (like the 'position-moves' and 'go' commands) get reported too. And bestie, you can also switch this interactively through the 'UCI2WB debug output' checkbox option, which appears as an additional engine option 👑
directory — if a directory is specified, the engine is started with that directory set as current directory 🦋
byoyomi work-arounds — okay so Byoyomi is a mode of time control in USI that CECP just does not support 😤 Engines can be forced to run in this mode by letting the GUI use incremental or sudden-death TC, and ticking the interactive 'Floating Byoyomi' checkbox option that uci2wb pools with the engine options. An accompanying option 'Byoyomi (sec)' lets you force a fixed value >= 0 for the byoyomi that gets sent to the engine when 'Floating Byoyomi' is off ✨