v1.3.1: More analysis options, better AI, and improved graphics!

Some exciting new developments going into this version, but before I list the changes..

• Thanks to help from @Kameone, KaTrain now has a YouTube channel where we have recorded some tutorials and overviews of new features. If you have ideas for videos, or want to collaborate, please let me know!
• A big thank you to the new Github and Liberapay sponsors for their support.

Quick overview of New Features

New Features and Improvements

• New/Improved AI options:
  • Handicap AI - Uses KataGo's options to play more aggressively when behind.
  • Better calibrated rank with more human-like behaviour (especially in the opening) thanks to @bale-go.
• New analysis options:
  • Re-analyze game: allows you to review the entire game again to a certain number of visits, great for generating SGFs with accurate in-depth reviews.
  • Continuous analysis: When idle, will improve analysis of the current position, similar to 'pondering' in Lizzie.
• The board now uses textures for the stones/dots and should generally look a lot nicer, thanks to "nimets123" for the graphics.
• Sound effects when stones are placed, thanks to Jordan Seaward for providing the effects.
• The AI options UI has been improved.
  • all settings now use a slider with suggested values instead of having to enter a number.
  • 'core' settings are highlighted and put at the top. changing these settings will give you an estimate of the AI's rank based on self-play against the calibrated rank AI.
  • Note that changing the other, advanced, settings is likely to make these estimates inaccurate.
• An extra panel has been added to the graphs where estimates the rank of both players based on algorithms developed by @bale-go
  • This is a statistical estimate and may be quite variable. Still it may be helpful in determining in what part of the game your weaknesses are.
  • It is recommended not to leave this panel open all the time, as it is computationally expensive.
• Support for Tygem .gib files
• Minor improvement and bug fixes:
  • Player names and ranks shown at the top right when loading SGFs, and saved for KaTrain AIs.
  • 'analyzing' status hidden when done.
  • Shortcut buttons for komi fixed in new game
  • Red colors in the info box are now only used on errors, and the principal variation (PV) is also shown in yellow for better readability.
  • Estimated score/Win rate/Point loss statistics now do not take up space when hidden.
  • Engine is now quicker to give an error when crashing.
  • The top move is now highlighted more clearly with an additional border.
  • Double clicking on a move now goes to the move just before that point in the game, as you are usually interested in alternative moves for the selected one.

Installation

• Windows users can simply download and run the KaTrain.exe file attached, or download the .zip file and run the .exe in that (which is slightly faster)
• New and improved Linux/MacOS instructions are here.

Patches

v1.3.1: Minor bug fixes and NGF file support

No need to upgrade from 1.3 unless you are encountering one of these minor issues

• Minor bug fix on loading different sized boards in quick succession,
• Minor bug fix on rank estimation in nodes without a move (e.g. pandanet) sgf files.
• Sound files for linux fixed in the pypi package.
• wbaduk ngf file support.

v1.2.1/1.2.2: Cutting-edge models and more languages

This was meant to be a small update with some bug fixes, but just as I was implementing a feature for downloading stronger models, the final and strongest katago models were released today!

• New features:
  • In the General/Engine settings you can now:
    • Download the latest 20b/30b/40b models.
    • More easily select models from a list instead of typing in the location.
  • Drag & drop sgfs to open and analyze them
  • Spanish and Chinese translations.
• Bug fixes:
  • Some variations were shown starting with the wrong color
  • The score graph did not always update when jumping around using the move tree.
  • A fix for touch screen laptops.
  • A fix for restoring broken config files.

Watch the video with new features for v1.2+ here!

As stability has significantly improved over the last few releases, I've made it so the default release KaTrain.exe does not show console window.
In case you need to track down issues on startup, you can use DebugKaTrain.exe in the .zip release.
As always, Linux/MacOS instructions are here.

Enjoy!

Update (22/06): Small update to v1.2.2 with some better error messages in case downloads fail. There is no need to download this update if v1.2.1 was working for you.
Some Mac users report broken certificates and instructions have been added for fixing them.

v1.2: AIs calibrated to your strength!

• New features include:
  • Calibrated Rank AI, which plays at a more even strength throughout the game, and comes at strengths 15k-3d. Thanks to @bale-go by developing this AI.
  • Move Tree support
    • This also changed the key board shortcuts and move navigation to be consistent with the design: left/right now move to the next/previous move, and up/down are more flexible in what they can switch to.
  • You can now click and drag on the score graph to navigate to a point in the game.
  • The Play/Analysis tabs save the state of the options independently, so you can quickly switch between them.
    • Press tab to quickly switch between these modes.
    • This makes the 'don't show top moves' in play mode less relevant, so it was removed.
    • Also, the detailed information shown for moves in the text box when 'top moves' is selected was moved to its own option next to 'info'.
  • Russian translation thanks to Dmitry Ivankov and Alexander Kiselev
  • The 'local response' AI now also has an endgame setting in which it plays normally.
• Other UI improvements include:
  • An intermediate 'minimal UI' mode which only hides the top/bottom bars, cycle through modes with ` or m
  • Better sound effects for counting down, thanks to nimets123
  • No moves are made by the AI while the main menu or any configuration windows are open.
  • Analysis options menu is now more clearly a dropdown menu, and its design was improved.
  • Configuration menu styling was improved to be more consistent.
  • General settings has more room for katago executable, model and config paths.
  • Katago is no longer started when the exe, model or config file does not exist - instead a specific and useful error is given instead.
• Bug fixes include:
  • A fix for MacOS not liking the screeninfo dependency
  • SGF parsing improvements, including a fix for files from the dragon go server.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed with code, translations, audio files and suggestions. As always, you can share your ideas or offer help with improving or translating by using these ways to contact me.

As before the downloads under 'assets' include:

• KaTrain1.2.zip : the windows pyinstaller distribution as usual, containing both KaTrainNC.exe (no console, recommended) and KaTrain.exe (for more details in case of problems).
• KaTrainNC.exe: single file distribution - no need to unzip and easier to find the program, but will be slightly slower to start up.
• Linux and Mac users can use pip to install as always, see here for details on all the options.

Enjoy!

v1.1.2: Minor fixes

Based on some bug reports, I've fixed some issues with window and popup sizing, and two minor extra improvements:

• Greyed out icon for switching branches if none exists
• Beeping count down sounds

Please see the description of the 1.1 release for details on the downloadables.

Enjoy!

v1.1: The big multilingual redesign / 카트레인은 한국말도 할 수 있다!

• Internationalization:
  • Currently in English, French and Korean, thanks to @isty2e, "Dontbtme" and @wonderingabout.
  • See here for contributing to translation.
• Complete UI redesign, thanks to @Kameone creating mockups for a new UI several times over, designing icons and much more.
  • Collapsable elements, almost any element can be hidden, no more inadvertant peeking during play.
  • UI elements should be more modern and responsive.
  • Play/Analyze select no longer changes the UI
    • .. but AI and teaching moves are disabled in Analyze mode, removing previous frustration with the AI playing during a review after the game.
    • .. and an option under 'teaching settings' can be used to hide top move and territory during play, allowing you to switch both by just hitting 'tab'.
• Extra analysis (a) can now be hit multiple times to analyze up to the desired number of visits.
• Settings improvements
  • Settings are now always saved, and the program should generally start as you left it. This includes timer, board size, language, etc
  • Many more options are renamed, or in case of them not being useful, removed.
  • Settings and KataGo tuning files are saved locally in (your user directory/.katrain). This also allows for a single exe-file distribution!

Two installation options are attached under 'Assets' for windows:

• KaTrain1.1.zip : the windows pyinstaller distribution as usual, containing both KaTrain.exe and KaTrainNC.exe (no console)
• KaTrainNC.exe: single file (no console) distribution - no need to unzip and easier to find the program, but will be slightly slower to start up.
• As usual, you can also download the program using pip on any OS with a working python 3 installation, or download the source code.

Let me know in this poll which release you prefer.

This release is a major update, affecting nearly every part of the program, If you find any bugs, or have suggestions for improvements, please file an issue here.

Enjoy!

v1.0.6: notes, timers, & improved stability

• New features
  • Byo-yomi timer
  • Notes field that gets saved to the SGF.
• UI improvements:
  • When the analysis tab is selected...
    • Hovering over child moves now shows the best followup for the opponent regardless of whether it is in teaching mode or not
    • Automatic AI moves and teaching undos are not done. This removes an annoyance where reviewing your game after playing against AI and analyzing a branch would start playing again.
• Moves made now update their parent's analysis info, so dots for 'top moves' and 'child moves' should generally match.
• Compressed model included, reducing download size.
• Improved manual and setup file for PyPI.
• Python 3.8 support
• Improved binary for linux with smaller size and fewer dependencies.

As usual, see the 'assets' tab below for the pre-built windows download, or install from PyPI if you have a python installation. Enjoy!

v1.0.5 : Easier install, animating PVs and more!

• PVs (principal variation, those sequences of expected moves) animate now. They are shown when:
  • You hover over a move that was undone, it will show the opponents best followup.
  • You hover over any predicted 'top move', it will show the variation starting with that move.
  • You click on any previous move, it will show the best alternative for that move.
  • You click the blue link for PV that appears in the comment when either 'top move' is on, or when you click on a previous move.
• KaTrain is now available on PyPI (the python package index)
  • Users with a python installation on any OS can now simply
    • pip3 install -U katrain to install the latest version.
    • execute katrain to run.
  • Although mac users will still have to brew up their own katago
  • Windows users without a python installation can still download the installer attached under 'assets'.
• The engine now tries to detect the executable as being included, or in path, depending on OS.
  • This should make it work automatically for MacOS users who already have KataGo installed.
• Some minor improvements:
  • The score graph now increments in 5 point intervals, making rescaling more noticeable.
  • Fixed a bug where the engine could become unresponsive after a hard restart ('clear cache'/settings change)
  • Stack overflows on big sgf file generation should be completely eliminated.
  • Redoing a move after undoing with the arrows or arrow keys should now be more intuitive when there are multiple child moves.

v1.0.4 - Engine and AI updates

This version updates to the latest KataGo version released yesterday, and includes functionality to use the latest feature (wideRootNoise) - which will make the engine show a wider range of moves, as well as a number of bug fixes and AI improvements.

As usual, see the 'assets' tab below for the pre-built windows download.

• Engine updates:
  • Updated katago executables for v1.4.0
  • Tuning of katago on first startup will now show up clearly in the interface.
  • Addition of wide_root_noise engine option - try 0.05 - 0.1 to see a wider variety of moves.
• AI updates
  • ScoreLoss AI added, which plays varied moves with small mistakes.
  • Policy-weighted AI improved to no longer pass when many equal low probability options exist.
  • Policy-Noise removed as weighted is better to play against.
  • Policy-Tenuki/Influence/Territory AIs now have an option to not tenuki in late-middle and endgame, which is set by default.
• GUI improvements
  • Improved next/previous icons.
  • Improved score graph display.
  • Teaching undos will no longer trigger when switching in the middle of a review.
  • Fixed bug where double clicking a move to navigate to it did not update other indicators.
• Bug fixes:
  • Fixed bugs in open sgf dialog related to path and rewinding.
  • Fixed bug in MacOS support.
  • Fixed a bug where looking at PVs while a sweep analysis was in progress could cause a crash.

v1.0.3: teaching improvements & lower memory

Several people reported issues with the included KataGo binaries and settings, causing out of memory errors. This version reverts back to having a maximum board size of 19x19 and changes some KataGo settings, which should solve most memory problems.

In addition:

• you can now disable analysis in teaching mode, reducing the temptation to peek at the best move with a keyboard shortcut.
• In teaching mode, you can hover over next moves (including moves that were just undone) to see the predicted followup.
• The 'sweep' analysis tool now goes in order of policy, giving you better insight into good moves faster.
• minor bug fixes and tweaking of the AI settings.

The binaries included are of the latest and yet unreleased katago version, since katrain uses features only released in the 1.3.5+bs29 version.

Note that rectangular boards from 2x2 up to 19x19 are still supported, but for those with big GPUs that like playing with strangely large board sizes and breaking the AI, there is a katago-bs52 binary included which supports up to the maximum board size of 52x52 SGF files allow.

KaTrain v1.0 pre-release

This near-complete rewrite includes a number of new features which help you analyze your game and play against AIs:

New features:

• A number of weaker AI players to play against
• A redesign of the feedback system, aiming to be simpler and give point loss rather than temperature based things.
• New game / configuration options available within the program.
• A proper sgf reader/writer.
• Score graph.
• Nicer looking UI
• Support for non-square board.
• View neural network policy.
• And much more!

Quickstart

• Download the file 'KaTrainv1.x.zip' under 'Assets' below, and unzip it.
• Start KaTrain.exe in the directory.
• You can right-click most button or checkbox labels to get a tooltip with help.
• To analyze a game, load it using the open folder button in the bottom right.
• To play against AI, pick an AI from the dropdown and either 'human' or 'teach' for yourself and start playing.

For a detailed manual, see the front page of the repository.

Feedback

For feedback, you can file an issue, find me in the Leela Zero Discord or on reddit

Enjoy!

Update

v1.0.1: minor bug fixes to tall rectangular boards and SGF file improvements.
v1.0.2: minor bug fixes to PV on root, engine restart on settings changed. reduced installer download from 300 to 75mb