Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Chess Programmers: Please Share Your Experience!!!

Author: Severi Salminen

Date: 04:10:45 09/05/00

Go up one level in this thread


>1. How much is important the design of such application (do we need a design at
>all)?

I didn't design so much at start. I knew what functions I had to program but
that's all.

>2. When you wrote your first chess program, have you started from a scratch, or
>used another source code as a guidance?

I started from scratch. I programmed with Assembler, so I thought there was no
source codes available (well, now I know there is at least one, don't know what
it is though...)

>3. According to your experience, how much time does it take for an average
>programmer (say, 3rd year com. science student) to develop a very simple chess
>program with Win32 GUI interface in Visual C++?

I used maybe a couple of weeks to make Alfa-Beta working. Hard to say what is an
average programmer.

>4. Can anybody recommend me the good programming chess books?

I read David Levy's Computer Chess Handbook. There is no code in that book, but
basic ideas are well presented.

>5. What is the most important\difficult aspect of chess application?

Finding the best move ;) Actually, I think all the parts of a chess program are
quite complicated. It mostly depends what algorithms you are using.

>6. What is the recommended algorithm (full depth search or alpha-beta prunning)?

I started first with plain Mini-max and then Alpha-Beta.

Now I'm moving to C or C++ so I'm starting from scratch again, like you. BTW I
recommend you to start from scratch. Don't even think to copy-paste functions
from other programs. You won't learn a bit, developement is hard and your
program won't ever be good. Good luck to you!

Severi



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.