On Sun, Feb 22, 2026 at 02:37:18PM +0100, Øystein Schønning-Johansen wrote:
> So, has anyone else worked with these two systems, FIBS server and external > player. Guido? Did you work with these two? Ingo? Tom? Has anyone else seen > these inconsistencies and can shed some light on the issue. In 2021 I was contacted by the author of https://github.com/marekful/MatchDog who had noticed issues with the external interface, including cases when the scores were inverted compared to what he expected. After we found what was wrong in the scores issue I added the comment starting with "When sending positions..." in external.h to try to clarify how this interface works and he made some changes that are part of https://github.com/marekful/MatchDog/commit/1ff1b4339df49c985ab6c54a14fbbd669bca297d Maybe the problem you have is similar. Moreover, he sent me the message below regarding the comment in external.h, giving some additional explanations on how it applies to a FIBS client. ===== Well, it's not obviously straightforward, but a very good starting point, definitely yes. Below line 76, I would need more time to visualize it, but what it says above line 76 is very helpful. "anFIBSBoard is from player 1 point of view in all cases": This adds up, since at the point when I have a fibsboard to submit to gnubg, it is from my (player0) point of view. Therefore, swapping the scores makes it be from player1's point of view. and "except in the take case": This also adds up. In contrast to what I wrote in my previous email ("the scores are swapped in the board string every time before it's submitted"), shortly after I wrote that I realised that only in case when I am doubled, the swapped scores results in incorrect response, but the not swapped gives the correct one. So the bot now always swaps scores, unless it's doubled. This also makes sense because in the case when I'm doubled it's the opp's turn but in every other case it's my turn. (gnubg has additional flags to change turns during a double, but from FIBS' perspective turn doesn't change during a double.) ---I'll spend more time to fully understand what is meant by this comment. Thank you!
