Re: [Bug-gnubg] Database names

[Michael Petch]

On 22/02/2012 10:48 PM, Jim Curtis wrote:
> I have downloaded various databases but unsure as how to name them.  I 
> think the download names are descriptive but are not recognized by 
> gnubg.  Looked in documentation but couldn't find naming info there.  
> Thank you in advance.
> 

What databases did you download? (A URL would help). GNUBG comes with
smaller Bearoff databases on most distros, and are automatically
generated if you build from source. If I knew where you got your files
(and what they were) I could probably help further.

This info is available in the manual:

GNU Backgammon reads several different files at startup. It will first
try to read a file called gnubg.wd. This is a file which contains all
the neural net weights and is necessary for the program to evaluate
positions. If this file is not found, or found corrupted or with an
incompatible version, GNU Backgammon will search for a weights file
called gnubg.weights. This file also contains the neural net weights,
but is stored in ASCII format. If none of these files are found, GNU
Backgammon will start, but it will give you a warning about these
missing files, and it will play very poorly.

GNU Backgammon will also read the bearoff databases at startup. There
are usually two bearoff databases. The first is called gnubg_os0.bd, and
has stored data about the bearoff probabilities of all position where
both players have 15 or fewer chequers left on their six home board
points. If this file is not found, GNU Backgammon will create a
heuristic bearoff database for these positions. This database is a also
called the ‘One Sided Database’, since it evaluates each player
separately. The other bearoff database is called gnubg_ts0.bd. This
bearoff database contains win probabilities for all bearoff positions
with six or less chequers. It also contains cubeful equities (Money
Game) for all the positions. If this file is not found at startup, GNU
Backgammon will evaluate late bearoff positions with the one sided
bearoff database.

-- 
Michael Petch
CApp::Sysware Consulting Ltd.
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