Author: scott farrell
Date: 04:08:23 01/14/03
Go up one level in this thread
On January 14, 2003 at 00:52:56, Luis Smith wrote: If you are a smart kid, a month is fine, dont let a few older blokes tell you otherwise. My suggestion would be to exclude anything complex. It is easy to write chess stuff, and hard to debug. Write simple code, and prove it. Then worry about making it more complex and stronger. I would sugest plain alpha-beta, full-move generation, some piece square eval, and a quiescent search. Just use half a dozen lines in a text file as a book to start with, and tell it just to chose them at random. Unless you are a good player yourself, it will probably whip you in a week or so. learn how to debug and profile your code. Learn perft to test your program. Concentrate on 100% accuracy, and not on the beating people. Winning will come if you have no bugs. Take the time early on as to exactly what alpha and beta mean in a chess position. Find what a fail low and a fail high looks like on a chess board. Dont worry about null move, hash tables, zobrist keys, pruning, extensions, et al. just yet, they will only make bugs. Scott chompster >On January 13, 2003 at 23:57:51, Russell Reagan wrote: > >>On January 13, 2003 at 23:49:21, Peter Kappler wrote: >> >>>Don't get discouraged if it takes you a long time. Writing a complete chess >>>program is not an easy task. >> >>I will second that! I've spent years just learning about chess programming, and >>learning how to program. I first wanted to write a chess program in high school, >>and that was 4-5 years ago. Only recently have I really written anything that >>actually plays. >> >>If you really have a desire to write a chess program, just think of it as your >>life hobby, and just take the time to learn how to program and learn about chess >>programming, and you'll have lots of fun doing it. I sure have. > >I REALLY wanted to write one within a month...but seeing as how you 2 have put >it into a timeframe of "A few years" at best it seems a bit discouraging. I >feel I am missing out on all the fun. I feel that by the time I write a chess >engine, Amateurs will already be just as good if not better than the top players >in the world, and commercial engines will be beating them on a routine basis and >losing to a program will no longer be looked down upon. > >Hopefully though I can speed up the process...considering I'm taking Java at my >High School, and doing C++ at home on the side. I'm really trying to learn C++ >so I can get a head start when I go to DeVry University. The MAIN reason I am >interested in Computer Programming is simply because I want to write a chess >engine. I mean writing other kinds of software sounds fun, but writing a chess >engine is the reason I most want to get into Programming and definitly start a >career. > >Sounds crazy, yes I know...but I really wanted to dive head first into it...I >mean learning about networks was easy, but this really didn't seem like much of >a challenge, until I learned it was like learning a whole new language...oh well > >Reguards >Luis
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