Feature Request: Multipv analysis

[MikeAtBookup]

There's a difference between "show me the top K legal moves regardless of whether they are boneheaded" and "show me the two most likely continuations even if they start with the same move." COW does the latter.

Programming it to do it the engine's way would be easier and I may add that as an option.

[sagisag]

There's a difference between "show me the top K legal moves regardless of whether they are boneheaded" and "show me the two most likely continuations even if they start with the same move." COW does the latter.

COW does not show it supports multipv even the latter. I already tried it and it only displayed single variation.

It is not about the bad moves, it about showing the top best move of a given position. If it happens that the 2nd and 3rd or 4th best are bad then so be it, the user will get informed about the position.

[MikeAtBookup]

Have you considered why it only shows a single variation in the positions where it does this?

Without multipv from the engine, the analysis is only made up of principal variations. If(!) COW shows a second variation, it's because it was a principle variation before the engine calculated a better principal variation. That's almost always important to know.

The long and short of it is that COW is displaying recommended lines of play. So many times, forcing the engine to display more lines (with multipv) ends up showing moves that are horrible. That's the opposite of what COW is up to.

[sagisag]

Have you considered why it only shows a single variation in the positions where it does this?

Here.

Without multipv from the engine, the analysis is only made up of principal variations.

True.

If(!) COW shows a second variation, it's because it was a principle variation before the engine calculated a better principal variation. That's almost always important to know.

That is not multipv.

The long and short of it is that COW is displaying recommended lines of play

It should, after all it is the engine that is doing the real analysis, COW only displays what the engine was analyzing.

So many times, forcing the engine to display more lines (with multipv) ends up showing moves that are horrible.

First of all COW does not support multipv. In multipv the engine will display the best k moves or pv's from a given position. All COW has to do is to display it on the GUI so that the user will see it. I wonder why this is difficult for you to understand? Do you understand multipv? or you don't want to implement it in COW?

[MikeAtBookup]

Okay, we're back to wondering whether I understand what an engine does if it supports multipv and that feature is activated. I'm pretty sure we both know what multipv does.

COW does not currently support the multipv engine feature. I programmed COW to do something more useful which works, even when an engine does not support multipv, for the reasons I gave earlier. Optional support for multipv could be added to COW in the future.