Author: Mark Rawlings
Date: 08:37:51 02/20/04
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Hi Steve- Here's my story... I had always dreamed of writing a chess program, but never started because I thought it would be too difficult. A number of years ago I decided to start with a simpler game and chose mancala. It was a lot of fun programming it and took quite awhile to do. I still work on it from time to time and it's extremely strong now. I used the book "Kasparov vs Deep Blue" as my main source of information to get the search working, etc. It was just right for a "non-programmer." (I've also been reading ccc daily since it started, which helped, too.) Anyway, my 12-year old son started learning TrueBasic in school this year and a month or so ago announced that he was going to write a chess program. (He had previously written a tic-tac-toe program.) Well, after about two weeks he had a program that could generate legal moves and had a simple evaluation with no search. You could still play a game against it, though. Just yesterday, I helped him work out the last few bugs in the search and now he has a complete program! It's very slow right now because of the complicated "check" routine and we don't have a TruBasic compiler either. He may be able to use the schools compiler, which would help. I was pretty amazed at his efforts and it gave me the push I needed to start my own chess program. (I'm using QuickBasic.) To make a long story short, I now have a chess program that's not too bad! (I'm working my way up the "trainer levels" in Chess Tiger for Palm as a sparing partner for it.) I'm still trying to figure out how to test for check and checkmate so it still makes some illegal moves, and I haven't incorporated en passant yet. What it does now is to keep on playing even after a king is captured! I'm looking forward to years of tinkering with it! (Working on it right now...) Good luck with your program! Mark On February 19, 2004 at 09:51:41, S J J wrote: > > After reading posts for three years, I'm ready to make a first >feeble attempt at a program. Odss are that checkers would be >the best place to cut my teeth. > > Can anyone recommend any books or web pages that would give a >novice programer a start to writing checkers and chess programs? > >Best Regards, >Steve "No Moore's Law" J
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