27-3-2020
* the analyses window can be optionally placed next to, or below the board
* when setting up a position, there is an indicator if the board is reversed
12-8-2019
* new, responsive website
25-9-2017 version 4.6.1
27-3-2014 version 4.4.0
interface:
* open .pdn files automatically
* importing games: filter on winner
* importing games: quicker import if same file is opened as before
* easier configuration of endgame databases
* changing the endgame database configuration no longer requires a restart of the program
engine:
* dynamically determen hashtable size. Using too much or to little hashtables can affect performance of dragon. Dragon now determens the optimal hashtable size each move, based on the current position and hardware it is running on, without exceeding the maximum amount you set
* 10-20% speed improvement in 'search all moves'
* finetuning of evaluation weights
damexchange:
Some effort has been done to make damexchange more efficient and reproducable at short games (1 minute/game):
* New time measurement: Dragon now measures the game time by solely looking at the time spend in the engine. (previous versions timekeeping included graphical user interface time and contained some inaccuracies) This for more accurate and reproducability (time spend in gui may depend on screen size, font size, graphics cards and many other window settings). If you still want to match with gui-time included, you need to give dragon a few seconds less (e.g. You can set dragons time to .95 minutes/game)
* damexchange: option to wait for 250 ms before starting to think. This should help prevent different programs on the same computer from interfering with eachother.
* when starting damexchange, you can now choose to run with a minimal interface. This should help prevent different programs on the same computer from interfering with eachother, and prevents time being spend on updating windows
* bugfix: damechange in some database positions dragon did not claim a win at move 75
bugs/other:
* bugfix in loading breakthrough table
* bugfix: ambigious moves in damexchange, pdn import
* analyse position/game: not reporting speed correctly
11-1-2014 version 4.3.1
* fixed bug in game analyses
* fixed bug in draw by repetition detection
* made it easier to add new languages
13-12-2013 version 4.3.0
* various improvements. Dragon should now be the world strongest draughts program
* bug-fixes for multi core machines (occasionally dragon played a random move)
* improved database caching
* enhanced time control
* damexchange improvements: ability to pause match, limit endgame databases, play with both white and black, play game series. Some issues are still unresolved. Pondering is not available in damexchange.
* new layout for the status bar, showing the current score and depth
* layout bugs fixed for when windows font size is set to large
* various bugfixes
29-8-2013 version 4.2.2
* Single-clicking on a target field or single clicking on a piece with only one option to move will now play that move.
* Dragon draughts is now available in the Russian language. You can change the language in the settings.
* fixed bug in endgame
* Improved readability of the field numbers
24-7-2013 version 4.2.1
* fixed bug in opening book
16-7-2013 version 4.2.0
This release improves playing strength, improves the interface and addresses several bugs.
program improvements:
* new board graphics
* dragon now automatically saves and reloads the game when you restart
* new way to edit its options
* open game now has a preview option
* button to toggle between table and text view of the game
* some bugfixes for saving and opening pdn files
engine improvements:
* increased performance: dragon is now (finally) fully bitboard based. This gives about 18% more evaluations per second. Also uses popcount instruction when available (+5% speed)
* dragon has a new opening book of about 150.000 positions (up from 26.000). The book has been automatically generated.
* more effective transposition tables
20-2-2013 version 4.1.7
* fixed crash on 32 bit systems in combination with 7 piece endgames
* print game option
* updated french translation (hirel)
27-1-2013 version 4.1.6
* slightly less memory use
* several bugfixes
11-1-2013 version 4.1.3
This release addresses several bugs and improves playing strength
Interface changes:
* improved pdn import for files generated by Turbo dambase
* damexchange: minor bugfixes
* damexchange: dragon now limits the amount of hash tables it uses if it thinks the setting is too high (using too large tables will hurt performance)
* cleaned up some of the extended statistics
Engine changes: (resulting in about 30-50 elo points strength improvement)
* increased performance: about 50% more evaluations per second
* improvements in evaluation function
* fixed a bug that caused dragon to occasionaly play a random (bad) move
Notes:
- Please note that Dragon performs best on multicore-64 bit systems
8-10-2012 version 4.1
Main change in this version is the inclusion of a more advanced evalution function, which plays a lot better. This function is used when dragon plays tournaments and is now available in this version. Because it uses large tables, dragon 4.1 starts a bit slower than the older versions.
user interface:
- game analyses now shows variants directly
- damexchange: dragon can now accept the time control suggestion from the client (option is configurable)
- added option to create error report in case of a engine crash
- various bugfixes: languages, scroll, copy&paste, opening some pdn files, game color in saved positions, playout game, permanent brain
engine:
- inclusion of breakthrough and other tables that increase dragon's playing strength (about 140 elo points)
- better move ordering (+20%), faster evaluation (+%2), large page support (+3%-6%) (about 15 elo points)
- bugfixes: endgame generation, minor fixes in eval function
21-9-2011 version 4.0 SetupDragon v4.0.msi
- completely new user interface
- engine search speed is increased by a factor between 2 and 3, due to improved multithreading algorithms and switch to bitboards.
- endgame database generation is fully multithreaded and can generate up to 8 piece endgames (given sufficient ram)
12-1-2008 version 3.0 (still available as setup dragon-3.0beta.exe)
#Massively improved game analyses:
Dragon spends more time on interresting positions, less on obvious moves
Analyses is created as game variant
Continuation is done on full search depth
Evaluation at end of game
Quick game analyses option: checks for blunders and gives quickly produces score graph
Automatic threshold: lower the comment threshold at longer thinking times
#General changes:
Fixed bug when windows went into screensaver
Form to quickly enter a new game, or copy & paste a game from a website or other document
Game moves are now implemented as a tree, allowing for variants, and variants of variants, ad infinitum
Graph displaying score during the game
Option form split in 3 seperate tabs
Options to change some of dragon's colors.
#Engine improvements
Dragon can now utilise multi-core processors. Speedup is still modest though. Measured as time to reach a certain level of play, dragon is 1.55 times faster on dual core, and 1.99 times on a quad-core. Set up the number of processors you want dragon to use in the options.
Endgame databases are now accessed directly from disk if there are not available in memory
Improved database compression. All 6 piece endings now fit on a single CD
About 10% speed improvement
Improved move ordering
Improved identication of drawn endgames
#Bugfixes:
Lastgame.pdn can't be overwritten anymore by an empty game
Save as applet problem fixed
Infinite analyses did not work when still in opening book
Position analyses sometimes produced invalid continuations on lower depths
06-07-2005 Version 2.4 (still available as dragonDraughts for windows v2.4.1)
- Beta version of 64 bit engine (requires 64 bit capable windows version) This allows up to 8 GB hashtables, and endgame databases are limited by available ram only
- Dragon now plays immidiately if it recognizes that all moves lead the same result (this happens for instance when there are two ways of capturing the same piece)
- Switched on anisotropic filtering for better graphics (Set anti-aliasing to 4x or 6x)
- Improved performance of the 3d-board, now using hardware T&L
- Automatic reboot if the engine should crash
- new game variant: killer draughts (demotie dammen). This variant doesn't suffer from the very high draw percentage in international draughts. To active, open the options window and select the 'killer/demotie' engine. rules here (online link)
- Loading a different engine can now be done without restarting the entire program
- Several small bugfixes
- Fixed lastgame.pdn problem when dragon quits while editing a position
- Update for french language, by Yves Hirel
- New engine option: 'dragon + extra memory usage'. When selected, dragon runs about 12% faster, but uses 64 MB extra memory
- New quiescence searcher: --> 15% speed improvement, and some score improvement (51.5% wins)
- Fixed bug in analyses of entire game
- Saving the game as pdn file: now saves without the engine search information comments. (unless you turn them specifically on)
- Tutor mode: dragon tells you if make a mistake or miss a good move
- Added option to toggle sound on/off
- Added search option in import pdn file
- General:
- Dragon now has a TCP based connection between the user interface and the engine, making the user interface respond much faster.
- Analyse position now shows the first few moves of the principle variation
- New analyses option: infinite analyses (shift-F3). When using this option dragon does not move after the anayses is stopped.
- Incoming damexchange connections are now turned of by default for security reasons.
- 3D-board improvements:
-
Added 6x anti-aliasing option
- Added graphics benchmark option in the view menu.
- Pieces now have shadows (enable/disable in the options)
- Dragon can now run in fullscreen mode (use alt-tab to switch on/off)
- Highlighted fields still show background (enable/disable transparancy in the options)
- Last move by dragon is now highlighted
- 3D-board now loads 8 times faster
-
Added 6x anti-aliasing option
- Engine improvements:
- Improvements and bugfixes in search engine --> 52% speed improvement.
- In memory compression of endgame databases: this allows to use between 4 and 8 times as many endgame positions in
a given amount of memory.
To compress your existing databases, start the database generator and use the command 'compall'. When this is done, you can increase the number of databases that dragon uses. - Improved move ordering --> 20% speed improvement.
- Incremental computation of hashes --> 8% speed improvement.
- Major bug fix: sometimes the internal board became corrupted, leading to illegal positions
- Detection of draw by repetition
- Help text has been translated to french
- More and improved lithuanian and french translations
- If the engine should crash, you can recover the current game by selecting menu-->lastGame.pdn
- New endgame database module:
[help]
- Database generation requires a lot less computer memory (RAM). 6 pieces win/draw/lose database now only require 128
Mb RAM (256 MB recommended for faster computation)
- Option to generate 'Distance to win' databases, for flawless moves in the endgame. With these databases, dragon wins
all endgames in the shortest possible time.
- Generation of 7 piece databases is now feasable if you have 1 GB of RAM. However this does take 3 months.
- The endgame databases can be loaded on demand now rather than at the start of the program. This makes dragon start
up faster.
- New and better interface to generate and select the loading of databases.
- You can now run the generator and dragon simultaneously.
- Verification process can now be stopped and continued
- Database generation requires a lot less computer memory (RAM). 6 pieces win/draw/lose database now only require 128
Mb RAM (256 MB recommended for faster computation)
- If a game is in progress when closing dragon, it is now automatically saved as 'lastgame.pdn'
- Bugfix: analyse all moves sometimes didn't show all possible moves
- Changed the license of the endgame generator from the GPL to the LGPL. This makes it easier for other programs to access dragon's endgame databases.
- Added a system to choose between multiple moves with the same begin- and end-fields.
- Bugfix: solved crash when taking back moves
- Bugfix: reading PDN files: solved bug for files with multiple FEN-positions
- Bugfix: solved bug in move generator when king could capture 4 or more pieces
- Smaller font for low-resolution displays
- Damexchange: dragon can now initiate connections to other programs
- Bugfix: node count now shows correctly after more than 2 billion nodes searched
- Dragon now remembers to show 2D-board on startup
- Lithuanian (Lietuviu) language option included. Thanks to Gintaras Magelinskas for the translation
- Bugfix: player vs player mode did not work correctly with forced moves
- More dutch and French translations (thanks Yves!)
- Dragon nows tells you when you win or lose
- Installation issue for windows 98 solved
- Switching between 2d and 3d view now works correctly
- Changed piece dragging from mouse position to center of piece position
- Single mouseclick automatically plays forced move
- Solved some issues with window position and size on startup
- Removed expiration date
- some minor fixes and changes
- french language option included. Thanks to Yves Hirel for the translation
- bugfix: solved sluggish checker movement on slow computers for 2d-board
- new: option to save board as image file
- bugfix: player vs player mode did not work correctly
- change: small improvements in engine
- change: improved responsiveness of the windows interface
- bugfix: problem with ambigious moves solved
- new: multiple stone textures included
- new: endgame database generator included
- bugfix: Rotating the board or using the board-reverse option did not reverse player names
- bugfix: Draging a piece outside the 2d-board gave problems
- bugfix: Some installation issues solved
- change: Added some error trapping
- bugfix: Option 'Two ply increments' did not function
- First release of dragon for windows
- Nieuw mechanisme voor herkenning tactische patronen
- Verbeterde evaluatie functie
- Beter gebruik van de beschikbare bedenktijd
- Ondersteuning voor 6 en 7 stukken databases. Voor het genereren van de 7 stukken database is wel 16 GB ram nodig.
- Extensie voor slagzetten met 2 mogelijkheden
Grafische interface voor linux
1996 Versie 0.1
1996 Versie 0.0 DragonDraughts-0.0.tgz
Eerste release