Okay, thanks! I'll check ChessV out. I studied Turbo C but have no idea how C# looks like, I'm still glad someone is working in an AI that can play already any variant implemented.Greg Strong wrote:That's where I started too, and its short-comings are what inspired me to make ChessV. ChessV does have a scripting language but it's in very early stages of development so it is pretty limited (you can make new pieces and combine pieces and existing rules, but you cannot use it to create new rules.) If you can work in C#, though, you can add your own variants fairly easily and you'll have a strong AI opponent - much stronger than ZoG ever was. If you download the source code, the zip contains a fairly detailed document describing how ChessV is put together, and how variants are programmed with several examples.
What I always have dreamed of is a GUI that allows you to connect to some server, set up a variant (say, a variant you just invented), and allow some other player to join you on the game (like chess servers, you post a Seek with your variant) and play real time. I had limited success implementing such variants when I was a TD at FICS, but they were only regular chess with different starting positions (say, one that looks like shogi, but it's just each side with 4 Knights.) Still, back then the best way to get people into chess variants was to create tournaments for them and advertize them.
Nowadays we have lichess, that allows seeking for variants and get real time opponents quickly, and users can create their own tournaments (recently, some crazy rich person created Lichess Variant Revolutions, and is creating tournaments with prize money, getting thousands of people to play them just for the prize money. That got me playing Three Check chess for the first time.)
Unfortunately, the variants they support are limited to the 8 they have, and I don't think they have implemented more for years.
Game Courier time controls aren't just the same as real time.
I wonder if something like this would enter the scope of ChessV, so that people can create their own chess variants, seek, play them, and create tournaments in real time in a chess server.