Changes from TooThought! release 3.2 to release 3.3 =================================================== 1. Faster neural network evaluation function 2. New evaluation parameters estimation algorithm 3. Bugs fixed: a. bug in neural network evaluation function causing to use a wrong Bias factor Changes from TooThought! release 3.1 to release 3.2 =================================================== 1. New evaluation parameters, patterns type and pattern values estimation 2. New Neural Network topology. Each board is now evaluated by a family of neural networks. See my homepage for further details. 3. New opening books 4. Bugs fixed: a. wrong "Mistake" management for Black player b. wrong visualization of auto-generated TooThought! games database c. wrong message was displayed in case of game draw or TooThought! defeat d. minor bugs and optimization in Games Database dialog WARNING: after installation, remove the file TT_GAMEP.BIN contained in the "Data" subdirectory Due a new games database format, the old games database are not compatible with the new TooThought! version Changes from TooThought! release 3.0 to release 3.1 =================================================== 1. New evaluation parameters and new Neural Network evaluation strategy 2. Some new vocal commands 3. Some make-up for icons, pointers and bitmaps 4. The "Past Experience" has been removed according to the "learnable" openings book features introduced with version 3.0. In fact, openings book learning is equivalent and more powerfull to the past experience management. 5. Bugs fixed: a. a bug in "Players" dialog causing wrong visualization of Player when swapping them b. a bug in dialogs management prevents, in some circumstance, to update an edit field WARNING: previous files "Data\TT_EXPER.BIN" is no more needed neither created by TooThought! Changes from TooThought! release 2.8 to release 3.0 =================================================== 1. TooThought! now has Text-to-Speech and Voice Recognition capabilities. You can use the voice to control TooThought! and TooThought! is able to "talk". Both functionalities uses the Microsoft Speech Engine and the Microsfot SAPI interface. You can control this functionalty through the Global Settings dialog 2. New evaluation parameters and new Neural Network evaluation strategy 3. New openings book, with more information to guide the analysis 4. The opening book is now "learnable", that is it can be dynamically updated using the played games information. You can control the learning using the Openings Book dialog 5. A new "Wizard" dialog has been introduced, let You to quickly setup the TooThought! player strength and user interface layout 6. Help system has ben enhanced and extended 7. Bugs fixed: a. Nasty bug in "Players" dialog causing wrong visualization of Player type and profile b. Bug in parallel engine causing, in some circumstances, to exit the search while a search slave is still running c. Global code inspection to remove minor bugs and inconsistences WARNING: previous Data files, Openings Book and Experience Files are not compatible with the new version. Please delete the following files before starting TooThought! - Data\TT_EXPER.BIN - Data\TT_OPTIO.BIN - Data\TT_LAYOU.BIN - Openbook\Openbook_large.bin - Openbook\Openbook_large_tree.bin - Openbook\Openbook_medium.bin - Openbook\Openbook_medium_tree.bin - Openbook\Openbook_small.bin - Openbook\Openbook_small_tree.bin Changes from TooThought! release 2.7 to release 2.8 =================================================== 1. Help system updated 2. New evaluation parameters and new Neural Networks 3. New search option to adjust the value assigned to each move on the basis of the "trend" of its values computed during the iterative deepening process. This option can be controlled through the "Search Parameters" dialog 4. Bugs fixed: a. An incorrect behaviour in "Swap Players" from Players dialog, occurring when the dialog is opened and the swap is made before opening any of the available sub-dialogs b. Change in players name as recorded as they are entered, so when swap players the names are correctly preserved c. In some circumstances, TooThought! analyse less moves than those available d. Possible TooThought! error and exit during endgame search in a forced move situation Changes from TooThought! release 2.6 to release 2.7 =================================================== 1. New help system, now in english language (well, OK, my english...) and totally HTML based 2. New "Mistake" function, to allow TooThought! to play in a more human-like fashion. More details on how this function has been implemented can be found on my site 3. Bugs fixed: a. An error during Multi-ProbCut initialization cause a too aggressive pruning b. Stable discs are shown incorrectly in Drawing Mode c. Is possible to play or solve a game having a board configuration where neither black and white players can move d. Sporadic TooThought! error and shutdown during "Drawing mode" operations e. Bad text formatting in "Print game" printing information regarding the first move of the game when the first mover is TooThought! f. TooThought! error and shutdown in "Print game" when "Print board on each move" is chosen Changes from TooThought! release 2.5 to release 2.6 =================================================== 1. When showing training advices, the value of the moves are now displayed as they are computed instead of waiting for all values before display them. This will increase the usability of the training information as the analysis of the moves is going deepest 2. The Resolve dialog has been enhanced and redisegned to be better integrated with information given by the "Show training advices"" function 3. New search option, called "Quiet search", has been introduced. When this option is enabled (through the Search Parameters dialog) with a quiet factor of X, then the iterative deeping process is stopped if the difference between the value assigned to a move, respectively, at depth N and N-1 is less than X This option, enabled by default for depths greater than 10, allows TooThought! to use the available time is more efficent way. 4. Bugs fixed: a. Some features are computed in the wrong way in the evaluation function. This error occurs only if non-default evaluation function is chosen b. An error occurs when exit TooThought! if the Resolve dialog is opened c. When automatically load players profile, time indicators are not initialized d. Minor dialogs and user interface inconsistences Changes from TooThought! release 2.4 to release 2.5 =================================================== 1. Further information has been added to the "Show training advices" function: 1a. The displayed values are in different colors depending if they are less, equal or greater than zero (where 0 is for a Draw game) 2a. For each value its "trend" is also displayed. The trend is computed as difference of a value with respect of the depth of the analysis process: if a move value found at depth Y is greater than the same value found at depth Y-1, then a sequence of "+" is showed, where the length of such sequence is proportional to the difference between values; the same but with a sequence of "-" if the values at depth Y is less than the value at depth Y-1 ("=" is shown when the two values are equals) When the move value is computed by the endgame engine, so that it represents the potential result of the game (if the best line is played), the string "solved" is shown Finally, the best among all the moves is shown with a different color 2. History dialog has been modified by adding more information for each played move 3. Bugs fixed: a. The "Show moves effect" using "ctrl" key doesn't work b. When load a previous saved game, incorect board evaluation values are shown in the Status window c. When "Think in the opponent time" is activated, sporadic TooThought! errors and shutdown will be possible. This is due to a bad memory sizing and a possibile division by zero condition d. When a game is played between two "human" players, the last move played causes a TooThought! error and shutdown e. In some situations, time is formatted in a wrong way f. Due to a wrong DLLs version, sporadic TooThought! error and shutdown when opening dialogs Changes from TooThought! release 2.3 to release 2.4 =================================================== 1. Status window has been redesigned to show more useful information 2. To be consistend with other functionality and also with Othello habits, Evaluation window now show current board evaluation from black player point of view 3. Openbooks has been changed to allow a better openings selection when "Choose at random" is selected. WARNING: the new books are not compatible with the old ones. 4. A new "Training function" is available. When activated, for each available move its value is displayed according the current analisys settings of TooThought! The function can be activated/deactivated using Global Settings dialog or Pop-up menu. Due to this new functions, also the function "Suggest move" has been re-implemented. 5. The function "Show moves effect", introduced in version 2.0, has the new option "automatic", allowing, when activated, to view the effect of a move simply by moving the mouse pointer over the move position. Use the Global Parameters dialog or the pop-up menu to activate/deactivate this option 6. New evaluation function as conseguence of bug "a." removal (see after) 7. Bugs fixed: a. During evaluation patterns learning, discs simmetries are taken into account in the wrong way, resulting in an evaluation function giving different values for boards that are simmetric theirself b. Due to a memory sizing error, sporadic TooThought! error and shutdown could be possible while the user interface is used c. When "Show stable discs" option is disabled, in some circumstances stable discs are showed all the same d. In some circumstances, with "Show stable discs" option enabled, empty positions are showed as "stable" e. Time used by TooThought! during games is now computed with higher precision Post installation tasks ----------------------- Before launch TooThought! 2.4 the first time, please remove the following file: - TT_LAYOU.BIN - TT_GAMEP.BIN from "Data" subdirectory, located in the directory where TooThought! has been installed. If the file TT_LAYOU.BIN is not removed, some of the windows will be sized at the wrong dimension and; if the file TT_LAYOU.BIN is not removed the evaluation function will use old parameters. Due to the new structure, the previous Openings Books must be updated with the new ones. If You have downloaded the book from www.andreazinno.it, please download the new versions Changes from TooThought! release 2.2 to release 2.3 =================================================== 1. Now every game played with TooThought! is saved into a database having the same structure of those distributed with TooThought! Those games can be examined using the Database dialog 2. Added the possibility to view stable discs. This option can be activated/deactivated using the Global Parameters dialog or the pop-up menu showed by right-clicking with the mouse when the cursor is over the board 3. Bugs fixed: a. Sporadic TooThought! error and shutdown during endgame search b. Fail to save settings and windows layout when the autosave option is deactivated c. On exit the wrong windows layout was saved d. Wrong determination of stable discs e. On fast computers the game animation functionality, in the History dialog, could be hang f. When print game with "Print boards on each move" enabled, wrong boards are printed if the game has not been stated yet. Changes from TooThought! release 2.1 to release 2.2 =================================================== 1. New patterns and evaluation parameters, making TooThought! a bit stronger. Those patterns and parameters affects also the endgame engine performances 2. Is now possible to have different Openings Books. Use the Openings Books dialog to choose which openings book has to be used during games play 3. The current players profile is now automatically saved when exit TooThought! In this way, the next time the program is started, the last profiles are restored. 4. Bugs fixed: a. TooThought! error and shutdown during transposition table re-allocation. This occurs, for example, if a computer-player profile is changed, using the Player dialog, while the game is running b. Some user interface corruption, when "Show Analysis" option is selected, if a node is pruned during moves analysis c. Unable to play sounds when TooThought! is installed in a directory with a name containing blank characters d. TooThought! error on exit when sounds cannot be played due the reasons of bug 'c.' 5. New installation procedure based on Inno Tool (www.innosetup.com) Changes from TooThought! release 2.0 to release 2.1 =================================================== 1. TooThought! has a better time control when a game is played with constraint on total game time 2. Optimize move time option is now less aggressive, allowing a better usage of the total available time 3. Minor changes to endgame engine, now a little bit smarter 4. In the Openings Book dialog is now possibile to generate random openings choosing from those lines contained in the openings book (the "pure" random generation is still available) 5. It is now possible to allow TooThought! to switch automatically to endgame search when current search is deep enough to be near to the end of the game. This option can be activated using Time Constraints dialog 6. Some bugs fixed Changes from TooThought! release 1.7 to release 2.0 =================================================== 1. Added the possibility to use a Neural Network to evaluate board during TooThought! analysis. To enable this features, opne the "Player" dialog, then open the "Evaluation function..." dialog and, finally, select the appropriate check-box. 2. Added the possibility to see how the board will be if a legal move is played. To do this, when is Your turn to move, move the mouse over a legal board position (indicated by a green cross mouse pointer) and then press and hold down the "Ctrl" key to see how the board will be transformed. Release the "Ctrl" to go back to current board configuration. 3. The Transposition Table is now allocated with a size depending on players profile. In this way, the probability of a table overflow during moves analysis is reduced. 4. Added the possibility to explore different games databases. In the dialog "Games Database" there is now a new combo-box to choose which database must be explored. Due to this new functionality, the games database distributed with TooThought! as be renamed as follows: - THOR Database : from TT_DATAB.BIN to "Games database - Thor.bin" - IOS and GGS Database : from TT_DATAB.BIN to "Games database - IOS.bin" All this files (and the new eventually released) are now in the "Database" directory 5. Some bugs fixed. Enjoy TooThought!