Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 11:30:57 07/09/04
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On July 09, 2004 at 05:52:30, Tord Romstad wrote: >On July 08, 2004 at 20:43:57, Dann Corbit wrote: > >>34 7 SlowChess 2.89b 2467 57 136 (this version is not open >>source and is bitboard) > >I thought SlowChess was a non-bitboarder? > >>Phalanx is definitely the strongest from these lists. But the code... >>Not a pretty sight. > >Could you please explain why? I have never seen any open source chess >engine which is more readable and easy to understand than Phalanx (with >the possible exception of toy engines like MSCP, TSCP and Faile). > >I suppose this has a lot to do with experience. Phalanx might be ugly >in the eyes of experienced C programmers, but to C newbies like me the >clear and straightforward code is a pleasure to read. I think I could >learn a lot by knowing why experts like you consider Phalanx to be badly >written. I think it may be because C++ is easier for me to read than C in some cases, since the classes become very natural to me. But there are C programs that are easy for me to read. Pepito is a pleasure to read. Despite having spanish part names (I am used to them now) it is still clear to me what is going on. Amy is in C, and is quite easy to understand. Beowulf is easy to understand. Maybe my problem is with 0x88, since bitboard programs seem simpler to me. But Monsoon seems clear to me. Hmmm.. I just went and had another go at the code. It had been a very long time since I last reviewed it and now that I look again, it's really not so bad. So I take it back. I think it was confusing to me because when I did the port of Phalanx from Unix to Windows, I was still pretty new at chess programming. The move generation is still a bit weird to me, but the search and eval are obvious to me now (and I remember being puzzled by them long ago.) >>I would look at (in this order): >>1. TCSP (but don't use this -- just to get an overview) >>2. Fruit (strongest, and beautifully written) >>3. ExChess (nicely written) >>4. Scidlet (nicely written) > >My suggestion: > >1. Faile >2. Phalanx >3. Fruit >4. GnuChess 4 > >Tord YOu are right, of course, about slowchess. I saw that much of the move generation stuff was in assembly, and so I did not bother with it and just studied the search. So whether it is fruit or slowchess that is the strongest open source non-bitboard program is the question. Since the source is old, it is probably fruit.
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