Richard Vida wrote:bla bla bla bla .....
"After your and Jury Osipov's reverse engineering of Houdini 1.5 and the production of Strelka 5, there is a strong feeling of "déja vu".
Oddly you failed to mention in your Q&A that for over 18 months you've had access to the RE Houdini 1.5 sources provided by Jury Osipov, and that this most certainly is 100 times more relevant for RE'ing Houdini 3 than your quoting some unknown Robbolito sources...
Based on past experience, let me predict the near future:
1) In a couple of weeks or months you'll release Critter 1.8 or Critter 2.
2) It will feature a nice Elo jump of, say, 40 Elo. You will feign indignation at any suggestion that the Elo jump would be in any way related to the RE of Houdini.
3) In the similarity diagram the new Critter will be very close to Houdini 3, just like Critter 1.4 and 1.6 are indistinguishable from Houdini 1.5 (and Strelka 5). Again you will feign outrage at mentioning this simple fact, claiming that the 99% similarity with Houdini is the result of using identical PST (LOL).
4) Afterwards Critter progress will once again stall... probably until the release of Houdini 4 and subsequent RE.
That's my bet... let's see in a couple of months whether I win it
.While RE'ing Houdini seems to you a fun thing to do and has given you some nice forum exposure over the last 18 months, all the evidence suggests that it has killed any originality in chess engine development you previously had. Critter 0.9 was a great engine, unfortunately afterwards you've turned it into a weak Houdini clone.
Robert"
