Cool, thanks. And right, that's what I noticed in how you implemented it, which also worked quite well for me.mvanthoor wrote: ↑Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:25 pm Nah. Don't bother. It's a very common way to implement MVV-LVA. I've read tutorials that do it in a similar way, MaksimKorzh mentioned it in his video's, BlueFever uses a similar version in VICE; I just adapted it to make the MVV-LVA values smaller, and took care that capturing the king or landing on an empty square would be 0 adjustment; that way, you don't have to check for the king or the empty square, which makes the MVV-LVA routine a tiny bit faster.
Yeah I knowmvanthoor wrote: ↑Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:25 pm Your transposition table looks a lot like mine, minus the generics (so I can use it for perft, and pawn hash data as well). It's inevitable that some code looks like existing code, especially if authors communicate with one another; and there are only so many ways to implement something in a correct and readable way.
"Don't port Rustic to Go" was more of a tongue-in-cheek comment than anything else. I wouldn't mind if someone actually did that.
And I agree. I remember I finished writing the transposition table, and then checked around to make sure I wasn't doing something dumb, and there are only so many ways sometimes to write good code. Particularly I made sure the way I adjusted mate scores made sense, and when I saw the missing minus sign in your code, I decided your implementation was probably just a little different from mine, and so I didn't chalk it up to a bug. Although I'm glad it's been fixed now.
Thanks. I noticed that myself when developing Blunder 1.0.0. Your engine and MinimalChess were the two I found the most reliable, especially at the lower Elo ratings. Many of the other engines I couldn't even get running, or they'd crash halfway thru testing and cause many headaches. So I'm also quite excited to see a new generation of engines.mvanthoor wrote: ↑Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:25 pm PS: I actually installed Go for the first time in my life. Maybe it'll come in handy somewhere in the future. I actually like Blunder and MinimalChess, and some of the other newer engines as well, in which I had a bit of influence in the development such as Loki and Zahak. The newer engines are often easier to compile and use than older engines of the same rating; many of the weaker engines in the CCRL list are old and no longer in development.
The problem is that many of the older engines have low ratings due to bugs, not due to a lack of features. (And indeed, many of the sub-2000 engines are just unstable.) I have thought about disabling MVV-LVA for an Alpha 0.5 version, and maybe even removing PST's and QSearch and such for Alpha 0.4, 0.3, etc... to create engines in the range below 1600. In the end I decided against it, because I deem MVV-LVA, QSearch and PST's to be essential elements to a chess engine. And, to be honest, I didn't want to bother the CCRL testers with it.