Author: David Dahlem
Date: 10:56:25 09/18/02
Go up one level in this thread
Hi Stan Has the name of your engine changed from Stan's Chess to S-chess? Regards Dave On September 18, 2002 at 13:14:03, Stan Arts wrote: >Hello! > >I have finished my third version of S-chess, and it has many new features, >and it is a little bit stronger again. >I describe the new things in my new readme.txt, so I paste it in! : > >-------------------------------------------------------------------- > >This is the README.TXT file with extra info about my chess-program. > >S-chess is my own attempt at writing a computer-chessplaying program, And I am >a 21 year old hobbyist-programmer from holland. After doing some first computer- >chess experiments in february and onwards, I started on S-chess the 7th of May >2002. And since then I work on it almost every day and I think I have put a bit >too much time into it.. :-) >My program is freeware, and can be distributed freely, as long as all the files >are unmodified. > >Version 1.2 is the third release of my program, the main improvements (over >version 1.1) are: > >It's stronger, and I estimate it 100 to 200 ELO stronger than version 1.1 . >Implemented 16MB of Hashtables, that mainly improve move-ordening on great >depths to make alpha-beta slightly more efficient. >I now use and tweaked a different Alpha-beta technique, and it makes my program >nearly twice as efficient. (In some positions that's nearly an extra ply) >Especially under longer timecontrols the difference is huge. >Check-detections everywhere in the searchtree now (instead of just on the 1st >ply) so illegal positions in the searchtree are avoided, and mates are always >correctly scored that way. >Shows a PV (=principle variation/expected best line) but because of the new >alpha-beta technique it's sometimes difficult to determine. Also I retrieve this >PV from the hashtable instead of directly out of the searchtree which causes it >to be shorter than it could of been sometimes, (values in the hashtable get over >written a lot) and also some of the "best" moves might be noncense. But overal >it still gives a good impression of the expected best line, or any great >threats. >New chessknowledge that improves play. Centreplay is different now, and also it >now knows how to solve a king/king+queen or king/king+rook endgame.. And some >other small tweaks, overal it doesn't play so bad positionally, as it knows a >lot of things about pawnstructure and general piece-play etc. >I implemented a small randomfactor. > >New features under winboard: >Edit position! So it is now possible to set up a position and continue play >from this position. Best way to do this is to skip edit-game mode, as this >sometimes confuses my program. So it would be best to create the position, then >set my program (whichever colour you want it to be) on move, and then click >directly "machine white" or "machine black" so edit-game mode is skipped. >Edit-game mode is implemented too though, and generally won't give problems. >Retract move command is now implemented, and will make my program take back >2 halfmoves, so the move my program played after your move and your move get >retracted with you set on move again. (It's possible to keep taking back as >far as you want) Please always use the retract move command directly in play >mode instead of going into edit-game mode and using the undo command to take >back moves with S-chess. > > >Some general features of my program are: > >I estimate my programs strength to atleast 1600-1700 ELO (on an average >computer) against human players under tournament controls, (should be more in >quick games) but I am not sure about these figures though, I don't have much >testing against human players and I am the human most testing has been done >against..:-) >Knows all rules of chess, including en-passant, underpromotions, and all >special moves, also it knows draws by 3x repetition, stalemate and by the 50 >move rule. >Technicaly it does a minimaxing search, and has alpha-beta pruning to make >this efficient. Null-move isn't used yet, and I think this will be the last >version without this technique :-) >My program relies mostly on it's full-width searching, and doesn't do too >much extending, (So it might miss some very deep combinations, but will find >shallower quiet combinations more quickly.) but it does however extend a lot >of capture-lines deeper than the full-width depth. >My program is also a good problem solver, because I am still not using null- >move pruning or any other agressive pruning that might make a program >sometimes miss a tactical line, and therefore my programs search is very >accurate, and it will always find a (tactical) combination upto the depth >that's seen on screen, and it might even find a deeper one than the full-width >depth. By the way, the maximum full-width depth for my program is 30 ply, but >I doubt it'll ever reach that.. >There is a very small opening-book implemented in my program, it has just >about 50 moves.. :-) But this way my program knows most common openings and >it will randomize it's openingplay a bit. >S-chess is written in Pascal, and compiled with the 32-bit Free Pascal for >win32 aplications. S-chess requires an MMX processor to run. If you encounter >a problem with this though, just email me and I send you a version that'll >run on any processor. Same goes when you encounter a problem with the 16MB >hashtables, I will send you one with them switched off or made smaller. > >There is also a stand alone version that has a fully 3D chessboard and pieces >and chessclock and room and and..well everything is 3D and you can move/fly >around in it freely, and it gives a very neat experience for a chessprogram. I >wanted to "include" this version with the winboard-version, but I wasn´t >able to complete the 3D version along with the new winboard version. :-( >So I am currently still developing this version, but it's already possible to >play against a beta version, (with the chesscode of S-chess version 1.1, will >have the 1.2 code soon) and email me if you would like to receave it! >(The 3D code I already developed years ago for some other experimenting and >games and mainly for my flight simulator I wrote back in 1997, and now I >thought it would be a good idea to use this code for my chessprogram.. ) >Please take a look at the screenshots!! > >Enjoy! >-------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Stan
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.