Introducing myself and my chess program

[Fguy64]

Greetings. I'm new to this forum. I have a strong interest in chess programming as a hobby, and I'm here to talk turkey and learn as much as I can. I would describe myself as an intermediate java programmer with a solid grounding in the fundamentals, but rather weak when it comes to advanced chess algorithms, data structures, and associated terminology. I tend to try to justify or explain the reasons for the work I've done, so occasionally I come across as being someone who asks questions then argues about the answers I get. Hopefully that won't happen here. Some of you may know me from rec.games.chess groups, I want to start fresh here.

A couple of years ago I started writing, off and on, a chess program as a means to improve my java skills. I've finally got it working well, but it has no chess skills to speak of, basically it's a GUI with a few controls, a pastefen button, a legal move generator and a very simplistic move selection algorithm. It's a java applet available at

http://fchess.x10hosting.com

I've also bookmarked http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/ Plenty of food for thought here.

I guess the next step is to decide how much of my program is worth keeping as I move to the next level. I have a pretty good write up of the program, but with the Talk chess editor I lost all the formatting for my pseudo code when I pasted from Notepad, so I am not sure of the best way to present my writeup.

regards,
Fred.

[Fguy64]

OK, I have added a document called technical overview to the site. It's purpose is to give people an idea about the nuts and bolts of the program, to help in offering suggestions.

Thanks.

[Volker Pittlik]

Greetings. I'm new to this forum. ...

Maybe its a good idea to post in the "General Topics" or "Programming" forum. There is a better chance you find your intended audience.

regards

vp

[Steve B]

Greetings. I'm new to this forum. ...

Maybe its a good idea to post in the "General Topics" or "Programming" forum. There is a better chance you find your intended audience.

regards

vp

yes good point Volker
alrthough i see he has already made a similar post in General

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... highlight=

why not move this thread to Programming and leave a shadow here in the Help forum

Best
Steve

[Volker Pittlik]

...
why not move this thread...

done

[jdart]

It's not clear to me what your search algorithm is - it is not clear for example that you've implemented a quiescence search. Without this it will not play at more than a very low level. I tried the program I guess at its default level (couldn't figure out how to change levels, actually) and it lost two pieces in fairly short order.

The UI also needs a little work. The setup dialog appears in the upper left part of the screen even if the browser window is somewhere else. Also the controls like Setup should probably be buttons rather than checkboxes.

If you don't mind making the source available you mgiht get more constructive comments.

[Fguy64]

Sure Jon, I can deal with the source, I'll have to polish up the documentation a bit first. No there is no quiescense. When you click the think checkbox, it does a 3-play minimax type material eval, which is naturally kind of weak without quiescense. But it shouldn't just hang pieces, and should take advantage if you hang yours.

In my technical overview, I have tried to describe the move generation process. There is no real search to speak of, there is no recursion formula. The 3-ply thing it does is brute force. it will not be kept. I'm more interested in whether I can go far with my char[8][8] position representation.

p.s. the server I am on has some availability issues. I guess I can't complain, since it is free

[jdart]

Without a quiescence search you will drop material. It's a necessity to have reasonable play.

[Fguy64]

Duly noted, It will drop material without Quiescence. What I am saying is that when it in think mode, it shouldn't just place a piece en prise without any kind of exchange happening, and it shouldn't capture a protected pawn with its Queen, unless it can capture your queen on the next move.

[Fguy64]

So far people here have been helpful with their remarks and generous with their time. Thanks.

I have prepared a zip file with documented source code and everybody's favorite, a ReadMe file, which contains a brief description of each source file.

If anyone is interested in commenting about my code, that would be great. You can let me know by PM, and I'll send you the link.

Regards,
Fred.