Ricefish

Stockfish's distant Chinese cousin

This is a "UCI" Chinese checkers engine. UCI is normally the Universal Chess Interface. This interface is implemented exactly the same as for regular chess, with some notable exception(s):

• Moves are encoded as AaBb, with no spaces, indicating a move from row A column a to row B column b.

The current version is based heavily on bsamseth/goldfish.

This is meant as a project to work on just for the fun of it. Contributions are welcome if you feel like it.

Build

The project is built using CMake, which hopefully makes this as portable as possible. Recommend building in a separate directory:

$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
$ make

After the compiling is done you should have two executables in the build directory: ricefish and unit_tests.x. The former is the interface to the engine it self.

Run

A simple playing script is available to make this easier, see/run play-match.py.

usage: play-match.py [-h] --engine ENGINE (--human | --self-play)

optional arguments:
  -h, --help       show this help message and exit
  --engine ENGINE  Path to engine executable, i.e. `build/ricefish.x`
  --human          Specify to play as a human against the computer.
  --self-play      Specify to play the computer against it self.

You can play using the UCI interface directly, although this is a bit tedious. Here's a short example of how to play with the engine (lines starting with > are the commands entered):

terminal $ build/ricefish.x
> uci
id name Ricefish v0.1
id author Bendik Samseth
uciok
> isready
readyok
> position startpos
> print
 A|
 B|                          x
 C|                        x x
 D|                      x x x
 E|                    x x x x
 F|          . . . . . . . . . . . . .
 G|          . . . . . . . . . . . .
 H|          . . . . . . . . . . .
 I|          . . . . . . . . . .
 J|          . . . . . . . . .
 K|        . . . . . . . . . .
 L|      . . . . . . . . . . .
 M|    . . . . . . . . . . . .
 N|  . . . . . . . . . . . . .
 O|          + + + +
 P|          + + +
 Q|          + +
 R|          +
 S|
   --------------------------------------
   a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s
> go movetime 100
info depth 1 seldepth 0 nodes 0 time 1539122989870 nps 0
info depth 1 seldepth 1 nodes 2 time 0 nps 0 score cp 2 pv DlFl
info depth 2 seldepth 2 nodes 31 time 1 nps 0 score cp 0 pv DlFl PfNf
info depth 3 seldepth 3 nodes 113 time 3 nps 0 score cp 4 pv DlFl PfNf BnFj
info depth 4 seldepth 4 nodes 898 time 10 nps 0 score cp 0 pv DlFl PfNf BnFj RfNh
info depth 5 seldepth 5 nodes 6305 time 76 nps 0 score cp 3 pv DlFl PfNf FlGl RfNh BnHl
info depth 5 seldepth 5 nodes 10541 time 101 nps 0 currmove DnFn currmovenumber 5
bestmove DlFl ponder PfNf
> position startpos moves DlFl PfNf
> print
 A|
 B|                          x
 C|                        x x
 D|                      . x x
 E|                    x x x x
 F|          . . . . . . x . . . . . .
 G|          . . . . . . . . . . . .
 H|          . . . . . . . . . . .
 I|          . . . . . . . . . .
 J|          . . . . . . . . .
 K|        . . . . . . . . . .
 L|      . . . . . . . . . . .
 M|    . . . . . . . . . . . .
 N|  . . . . + . . . . . . . .
 O|          + + + +
 P|          . + +
 Q|          + +
 R|          +
 S|
   --------------------------------------
   a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s
> string
1110111111000000100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002000000002222022222 x
> position fen 1110111111000000100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002000000002222022222 x
> print
 A|
 B|                          x
 C|                        x x
 D|                      . x x
 E|                    x x x x
 F|          . . . . . . x . . . . . .
 G|          . . . . . . . . . . . .
 H|          . . . . . . . . . . .
 I|          . . . . . . . . . .
 J|          . . . . . . . . .
 K|        . . . . . . . . . .
 L|      . . . . . . . . . . .
 M|    . . . . . . . . . . . .
 N|  . . . . + . . . . . . . .
 O|          + + + +
 P|          . + +
 Q|          + +
 R|          +
 S|
   --------------------------------------
   a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s
> go depth 5  # Depth limited search.
info depth 1 seldepth 0 nodes 0 time 25566 nps 0
info depth 1 seldepth 1 nodes 2 time 0 nps 0 score cp 4 pv BnFj
info depth 2 seldepth 2 nodes 58 time 0 nps 0 score cp 0 pv BnFj RfNh
info depth 3 seldepth 3 nodes 240 time 4 nps 0 score cp 2 pv BnFj RfNh DmFi
info depth 3 seldepth 3 nodes 1524 time 14 nps 0 score cp 3 pv FlGl RfNh BnHl
info depth 4 seldepth 4 nodes 2782 time 25 nps 0 score cp 0 pv FlGl NfMf BnHl RfLf
info depth 5 seldepth 5 nodes 13490 time 133 nps 0 score cp 4 pv FlGl NfMf BnHl RfLf DmHk
info depth 5 seldepth 5 nodes 84306 time 543 nps 0 currmove FlGk currmovenumber 27
bestmove FlGl ponder NfMf
> go infinite  # Search until stopped.