Release Notes DDS 1.0.1 ----------------------- Includes support for reuse of the transposition table contents for a subsequent search. (This idea was brought forward independently by Alex Martelli and Flip Cronje.) When setting the SolveBoard solutions to 2, the transposition table contents will be reused when searching for alternative cards, giving a slightly decreased search time in most cases, in a few cases the decrease is substantial. Earlier the contents of the transposition table was always emptied between searches. The way to control whether or not to empty the transposition table is to properly set the parameter mtd in the InitSearch function: mtd=FALSE means that the transposition table is emptied, mtd=TRUE that it is not emptied. Release Notes DDS 1.0.2 ----------------------- Includes a bug fix for the case when the SolveBoard parameter "solutions" is set to 3. SolveBoard did not handle correctly the case when the scores of the alternative cards were a mix of zero and non-zero. This is now fixed in 1.0.2. Release Notes DDS 1.0.3 ----------------------- Includes: a) An improvement of the move ordering algorithm. When LHO ruffs, this is now given a low weight if the highest rank of RHO beats both the rank of the leading card and the highest rank of the leading suit at the partner of the leading hand, assuming that the partner of the leading hand is not void in the suit of the leading card. If these conditions do not hold, the weight for the LHO ruffing card is high. b) For the SolveBoard parameter solutions=3, reuse of the transposition table contents between card searches have been added. a) and b) together give on the average an improvement performance. Release Notes DDS 1.0.4 ----------------------- When introducing the possibility of reusing the transposition table between subsequent searches in 1.0.1, unfortunately a bug was introduced as well. It occassionally gives wrong scores when evaluating the last hand of the trick using solutions=2 or 3. This bug is fixed in 1.0.4. Release Notes DDS 1.0.5 -------------------------- 1) About 25% speed improvement due to a search algorithm improvement: For moves generated in the search tree, only one "small" card move per hand and suit is generated. By "small" card is meant a card with a rank that is not winning due to its rank value. Earlier all "small" cards generated their own moves. This improvement comes from a tip by Hans Kuijf. 2) The size of the transposition table has been increased by 25%. This was done after realizing that for some extreme deals, rarely occuring, when solutions=2 and 3 the transposition table could get completely filled up, making the search time extremely long for those cases. The increased transposition table size should still fit well inside a 256 MB machine. 3) Parameter mode=2 indicates that the transposition table is reused from an earlier SolveBoard call. It is restricted to the case where the same conditions apply for the 2 calls, except that the leading hand in the second call is the partner to the leading hand in the first call. I.e. same deal incl same trump suit, same target (not equal to -1), solutions=1. Release Notes DDS 1.0.6 -------------------------- 1) A bug has been fixed in the DDS start up code. The bug did not affect the accuracy of the solver. Thanks to Fabien Bradmetz for spotting this! 2) About 10% increased speed due to improvements in Quick Tricks. 3) An error code has been added for checking the input of of cards earlier played in the trick. 4) A document (mode2.txt) describes source code examples how to call SolveBoard using the parameter mode set to 2. Release Notes DDS 1.1.0 --------------------------- 1) Performance improvement giving a speed of about twice that of 1.0.6. 2) Redesign of the transposition table solution, see algorithm description. 3) Improvements in the Quicktricks algorithm, see algorithm description. 4) Dump in text file of SolveBoard parameters if SolveBoard returns with error code. Release Notes DDS 1.1.1 --------------------------- 1) For target=-1 and solutions=1/2/3, the transposition table contents is now reused also when SolveBoard is called with a new target value. 2) Slight improvement of the QuickTricks algorithm. 3) Moderate speed improvement compared to 1.1.1. Release Notes DDS 1.1.2 --------------------------- 1) Increased performance (about 15%) due to improved algorithm for move ordering. For more information, look in the algorithm description. Release Notes DDS 1.1.3 --------------------------- 1) Compiles with Visual C++ 2005 Express edition 2) Some improvements in move ordering, quick tricks and the new later tricks algorithms. 3) Total improvement about 20% including the faster code generated by Visual C++ and the algorithm improvements. Release Notes DDS 1.1.4 --------------------------- Improvements at usage of the SolveBoard parameter mode set to 2. The mode parameter can now be set to 2 for SolveBoard calls with parameter target set to -1 or a value 0-13, and solutions set to 1, 2 or 3. Following the first SolveBoard call with mode=1, mode can be set to 2 for any further SolveBoard call for the same deal, also when an opponent hand leads the trick. If scores are to be calculated for all 4 possible leading hands of the deal, 1 SolveBoard call can be made with mode=1, and the other 3 SolveBoard calls for the other 3 leading hands can be made with mode=2. Compared to dds 1.1.3, the better support of mode=2 means improved calculation speed. Compared to using only mode=1 at calling Solveboard 4 times, each time for each alternative leading hand, the calculation time is roughly halfed using mode=2 as described above. Release Notes DDS 1.1.5 --------------------------- A correction has been made removing a risk of DD value miscalculation. The fault has not however yet showed up as far as I know. A survival mechanism has been added to handle the situation if the transposition table gets full: The transposition table is emptied. Before this, a full transposition table would in practise lock up the program. Therefore the present size of the transposition table is quite large (393 MB) to handle the most difficult deals. This could lead to extensive memory swapping with the hard drive if the PC RAM size is 256 MB or less, slowing down the program. With the new survival mechanism, the program will not lockup at a full transposition table. The calculation time will increase because of the extra time to build up stored positions in the table, but the increase will be reasonable. This means that DDS should be possible to run with such small PC RAM sizes as 64 MB (this has not been tested though).