The Engine Debug Window

You get to this window with Engines arrow Debug window or keyboard shortcut F4.

If you would like to investigate problems with an engine or if it won't run correctly: This window can help you finding problems, e.g. in configuring engines. You see directly if the engine "says" something at all. This window is of course of great importance to the engine programmers, too.

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In this window all input to and output from the engines is displayed. You can also send inputs directly to the engines.

In/output Area:

The first number in every line is the time in milliseconds since Arena has started or alternatively the current date and time (see options below). The following two columns show from whom the information comes:

  • <--1: = Output from the first engine to Arena
  • <--2: = Output from the second engine to Arena
  • --arrow1: = GUI to first engine
  • --arrow2: = GUI to second engine
  • ** = Comments
  • 1* = Comments on the first engine
  • 2* = Comments on the second engine

Buttons between In/output area and options area:

  • "Clear": deletes the input/output area.
  • "- > Clipboard": copies the content of the in/output area to the Clipboard
  • "Help": leads to this help page.

[_] Tab Sheet "Settings":

"Save to Arena.debug": Sets whether commands sent to the engines and the output from the engines are saved in the file Arena.debug in the Arena folder. This is the protocol file for all engine communication. Using it might slow down engines.

"Logging": Sets the log level and thereby amout of information, Arena displays and saves. UCI engines are sending a lot of information sometimes and you might not wat to display them all.

"Winboard style": Switches display style to "Winboard-like".

"TLCV compatible": Sets a few output options the program TLCV needs.

[_] Tab Sheet "Commands"

You can send commands directly from the input/output area from Arena to the engine(s)

  • Send! : Sends the command in the input line to the engine
  • ?: Sends the command '?' to the engine.
  • go: Sends the command 'go' to the engine.
  • .: Sends the command ' .' to the engine.
  • New game: Sends the commands for a new game to the engine.
  • Engine: Sets the engine receiving the commands

[_] Tab Sheet "Options":

"Save file every lines": Sets the number of lines after which output is written to Arena.debug. If greater than one, not every line is written separately to disk, but only e.g. 20. This may increase performance as fewer disk write operations anecessary.

"Save exact date/time": If set, the current date and time instead of the number of milliseconds since Arena has started is displayed in the beginning of each line.

"Wordwrap": If set, longer lines are wraped around. If not, the lines get longer and eventually you have to scroll to the right.