My new engine - KhepriChess (Typescript/Javascript)

[KhepriChess]

Hello everyone! Slightly daunting to post on here...

Thanks to the massive help from Maksim Korzh and his Youtube series about creating a bitboard chess engine in C, I wrote an engine in Javascript (technically in Typescript, which transpiles to Javascript) following his tutorial series.

I think of particular note is that the engine uses the relatively new 'bigint' primitive in JS for native 64-bit integer support. So instead of having to break bitboards, hashes, etc. up into two separate 32-bit integers it just has the single 64-bit ones. It has it's own drawbacks (notably that it's slower than 32-bit operations) but my goal here was to try something new (and learn) and not to make a super-fast engine (otherwise I wouldn't have used JS ).

Now that it's stable, I hope to look into improving the evaluation with a few things like mobility and some basic king safety knowledge (I have a general list of things I want to look into here: https://github.com/kurt1288/KhepriChess ... provements)

And since I'm unsure, how can I go about having my engine added/tested as part of the CCRL to get a rating?

Github: https://github.com/kurt1288/KhepriChess
Browser play: https://kurt1288.github.io/KhepriChess/ ... hepri.html

Thanks everyone!

[Carlos777]

Hello everyone! Slightly daunting to post on here...

Thanks to the massive help from Maksim Korzh and his Youtube series about creating a bitboard chess engine in C, I wrote an engine in Javascript (technically in Typescript, which transpiles to Javascript) following his tutorial series.

I think of particular note is that the engine uses the relatively new 'bigint' primitive in JS for native 64-bit integer support. So instead of having to break bitboards, hashes, etc. up into two separate 32-bit integers it just has the single 64-bit ones. It has it's own drawbacks (notably that it's slower than 32-bit operations) but my goal here was to try something new (and learn) and not to make a super-fast engine (otherwise I wouldn't have used JS ).

Now that it's stable, I hope to look into improving the evaluation with a few things like mobility and some basic king safety knowledge (I have a general list of things I want to look into here: https://github.com/kurt1288/KhepriChess ... provements)

And since I'm unsure, how can I go about having my engine added/tested as part of the CCRL to get a rating?

Github: https://github.com/kurt1288/KhepriChess
Browser play: https://kurt1288.github.io/KhepriChess/ ... hepri.html

Thanks everyone!

Hi,

I have other javascript engines (Lozza, Tomitank, P4wnChess, RapChess and Roller) installed on my PC, but yours does not work.

This is my command line on Winboard:

"KhepriChess" -fcp "node.exe C:\WinBoard-4.6.2\Engines\Kheprichess\kheprichess.js" -fd "C:\Program Files\nodejs" -fn "KhepriChess" -fNoOwnBookUCI -fUCI

Or is it maybe because my PC is very old (AMD Phenom II x6)?

I also tried Cute chess and does not work either.

Regards,
Carlos

[KhepriChess]

"KhepriChess" -fcp "node.exe C:\WinBoard-4.6.2\Engines\Kheprichess\kheprichess.js" -fd "C:\Program Files\nodejs" -fn "KhepriChess" -fNoOwnBookUCI -fUCI

It looks like you're using the non-node version. For use in UCI apps, you'll want to use the "kheprichessuci.js" file.

I know other JS engines have a single file, but because I use Typescript and Webpack (to transpile and bundle), it was difficult to conditionally import the node-specific library to read the GUI commands. Rather than trying to figure out how to get webpack to play nice with that, it was easier to have a separate UCI file.

Thanks for giving it a try!

[amanjpro]

Congrats for your first version. What's your estimate for the strength? If you want, you can register your engine to participate in ZaTour tournament (broadcasted live), given that:

The engine is rated below 2800 as per CCRL
The engine is opensource
The engine is original
It runs on Ubuntu


The link of the tournament use in my signature

[KhepriChess]

No, it hasn't gotten a CCRL rating yet (not sure how to go about getting my engine added for testing there). I'd estimate it around 1600-ish, but that's a pretty large guess.

[amanjpro]

You don't need to do much, if they notice your engine, chances are your engine will be tested

For better visibility, you probably can announce your engine here: http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=76209

Btw, you don't need a CCRL rating to participate in ZaTour, as long as we are certain it won't cross 2800

[Carlos777]

"KhepriChess" -fcp "node.exe C:\WinBoard-4.6.2\Engines\Kheprichess\kheprichess.js" -fd "C:\Program Files\nodejs" -fn "KhepriChess" -fNoOwnBookUCI -fUCI

It looks like you're using the non-node version. For use in UCI apps, you'll want to use the "kheprichessuci.js" file.

I know other JS engines have a single file, but because I use Typescript and Webpack (to transpile and bundle), it was difficult to conditionally import the node-specific library to read the GUI commands. Rather than trying to figure out how to get webpack to play nice with that, it was easier to have a separate UCI file.

Thanks for giving it a try!

I tried with the uci file first, but without success, then I used the other file without the -fUCI command, same thing. Maybe, it needs the last node version, I'll check it out.

[Gabor Szots]

You don't need to do much, if they notice your engine, chances are your engine will be testedross 2800

They have noticed it.

[Gabor Szots]

Hello everyone! Slightly daunting to post on here...

Thanks to the massive help from Maksim Korzh and his Youtube series about creating a bitboard chess engine in C, I wrote an engine in Javascript (technically in Typescript, which transpiles to Javascript) following his tutorial series.

A laic's question: Does it mean it is BBC translated to JavaScript or that it has BBC backbone with original evaluation and search?

[Gabor Szots]

Kurt, will you please tell your country?

And a suggestion in case this is not the last version: somehow indicate in the filename which version it is. I could see it was 0.5.0 only after running it from the command line but e.g. under Arena it does not introduce itself.