Android UCI engine update: Critter 1.6a for Android 5.0+

We owe tons of thanks to Gran Virt for suggesting a very simple trick which consists of altering just one dedicated byte directly in the binary of the old Critter, in order to make it compatible with Android versions which require PIE (Position Independent Executable). A truly smart catch by Gran!

Reminder:

Android up to 4.0.4 (API level up to 15) require NOPIE builds and don't accept PIE.

Android 4.1 to 4.4.4 (API level 16 to 19) can run both NOPIE and PIE.

Android 5.0 and up (API level 21 and up) require PIE and don't accept NOPIE.

Thus, the trick should be a tasty surprise for people with Android 5.0 and newer, who could not run Critter arm5 NOPIE until today. Now, they are provided with a legendary 3000+ ELO engine.

GET Critter 1.6a arm5 pie

Let's all remember that before the arrival of Chiron 4, the old Critter build, made in 2012 (!!!) used to be the #3 engine for Android for a very long time. It deserved this trick indeed.

One would dream of arm7 and arm8 builds of Critter as well but let's not get into unrealistic phantasys. Richard Vida stopped developing Critter after R.Houdart's threats long ago and there's no hope for a comeback.

Richard Vida, the author of Critter

Android UCI engine update: Ethereal 8.85.ACH

After yesterday's post which included several Ethereal versions, Alexei has kindly provided his compile of v8.85. including the 64-bit arm8 alternative as a much faster bonus.

As expected, ACH build performed way faster than Andy's on my MTK6752 using 4 out of 8 cores. 763 knps vs 569 knps means 1.34x speedup, thanks to LTO and PGO optimizations of the build. The increase is equivalent to +17 ELO over the original if we assume that each doubling adds +40 ELO.

GET Ethereal 8.85.AG for arm7 (was posted yesterday)
GET Ethereal 8.85.ACH for arm7 and arm8

In case of trouble downloading from PC, use your mobile or refer to THIS POST.

Android UCI engine update: Pedone 1.7

Please report about your experience on your devices with this new version of Pedone. I was unlucky with 1.6 because arm7 build had worked on arm8 but not arm7 devices i have. I hope this time there's no more compatibility issues.

Pedone is a UCI compliant chess engine by Fabio Gobbato from Italy written in C. The download from its site includes Windows 32/64-bit, Linux 32/64-bit and Android executables.

During its early development stages, Pedone had its over the board tournament debut at the IGT 2013 with 1½/4. It progressed rapidly, and already won the IGT 2014 with 6/7, and the IGT 2015 with 7/6!

Pedone has a compact quad-bitboard board representation, suited for a copy-make approach and further applies magic bitboards for sliding piece attacks and move generation. Its search is PVS with transposition table, IID and quiescence search inside an iterative deepening framework. The evaluation function was tuned with a similar approach to the Texel's Tuning Method until version 1.0.

Some evaluation bonuses of versions 1.3 and 1.4 were tuned with TD Learning. Since 1.0, released in December 2014, Pedone performs a parallel search using multiple threads, with 1.4 in April 2016, dubbed Lazy SMP.

GET Pedone 1.7 for arm7 and arm8

In case of trouble downloading from PC, use your mobile or refer to THIS POST.

Cerebellum Light 2018.01.15 for Brainfish

This update to Cerebellum book is a little bit bigger in size. Please report problems if you encounter any.

You can download the book from Chesstroid repository:

GET Cerebellum Light 2018.01.15 (48 MB compressed)

How to setup Cerebellum book:

"To use the book Cerebellum_Light_Poly.bin (download the latest version of this book from the official site in polyglot format), create a book folder in the phone's memory and put a book in it. The path should look like this: /sdcard/book/Cerebellum_Light_Poly.bin, when the engine starts the book connects automatically."

In case of trouble downloading from PC, use your mobile or refer to THIS POST.

Android UCI engine update: Ethereal 8.76 to 8.85

Andy Grant is unstoppable since December-2017. Thanks to continous updates Ethereal is probably above 3000 ELO barrier now. The big boost came first with 8.76 which introduced SMP feature.

Please note also that ACH builds should be significantly faster than Andrew's according to v8.80 experience.

GET Ethereal 8.76.ACH for arm7 and arm8
GET Ethereal 8.77.AG for arm7
GET Ethereal 8.80.AG for arm7
GET Ethereal 8.80.ACH for arm7 and arm8
GET Ethereal 8.82.AG for arm7
GET Ethereal 8.83.AG for arm7
GET Ethereal 8.84.AG for arm7
GET Ethereal 8.85.AG for arm7

In case of trouble downloading from PC, use your mobile or refer to THIS POST.

Android UCI engine update: Laser 1.6b.ACH

Alexei's port of Laser 1.6 beta looks way better than 1.3 beta currently playing in Rapidroid. One can easily expect 2900+ ELO according to first blitz tests.

GET Laser 1.6b.ACH for arm7 and arm8

In case of trouble downloading from PC, use your mobile or refer to THIS POST.

Chess for Android 5.3 to 5.5

Aart Bik has finally come back with a nice new year gift for engine tournament freaks, adding the long awaited win and draw adjudications based on engine evals, in a similar way to the one used in TCEC. With this feature, CfA remains the most effective GUI for engine testing in Android, at least for me.

Glitches? Yes, there are still some...

1) Horrible buttons & unreadable values in dialog boxes: Corrected in v5.5.

2) Screen rotation loses the engine: The rotation must be disabled.

3) No GUI adjudication for resign when if the black engine sends eval for white (ie: Crafty)

4) No GUI adjudication for resign when the evals are not sent in centipawns but in Mate in X or Mxx format.

5) Changes in Tour.xlm are ignored unless CfA is uninstalled & reinstalled: Loss of flexibility for custom tournament setups. 

Chess for Android is a real freeware with no ads. It can be downloaded from GOOGLE PLAY.

Mirror copies of previous versions in Chesstroid repository:

Chess for Android v5.4.1 HERE

Chess for Android v5.4 HERE

Chess for Android v5.3 HERE

In case of trouble downloading from your PC, use your mobile device or refer to THIS POST.