Simple UCI chess engine written by self learner from scratch.
Chenglite is not aimed to be a competetive engine, so please observe it as a beginner's attempt to write a chess program and please don't ask me why it doesn't support tons of features. It aimed to beat the only one program - tiny chess by Oscar Toledo and it did it, nothing more for now. The UCI protocol is very raw, so it might crash somewhere. Please keep it all in mind while testing.
Chenglite v1.0 for linux x64 is relaesed! https://github.com/maksimKorzh/Chenglite/releases
Chenglite v1.0 for windows x64 is relaesed! https://github.com/maksimKorzh/Chenglite/releases
Chenglite's development is now stopped due to I've reached the point of satisfaction. The next step is to heavily reduce the code size while keeping the speed, strength and features.
At this moment I leave Chenglite for the community in hope it would be useful and instructive for beginners just like me. I'd be really happy if you fork the project for your own purposes or start contributing to make it become whatever you want. I've create the "community branch" for your pool request(if any).
- 0x88 board representation
- move generation via calculations
- copy-make make move approach
- material and piece placement evaluation
- triangular PV table
- nega max search algorithm
- quiescence search
- alpha beta pruning
- move ordering(follow PV, MVV_LVA for captures, search history, killerMoves)
- UCI protocol with depth search only
- no 3 fold repetition detection
- no 50 move rule detection
- doesn't find the closest mating line
Chenglite is the successor of Chengine - my very first chess
engine available at https://github.com/maksimKorzh/chengine.
The code has been heavily rewritten. Many functions turned
into macros. I got rid of seperate files to improve the
performance and make most functions declared static as well
as inline. The game performance has been improved a lot by
adding a quiescence search to reduce the horizon effect and
stop engine giving pieces away.
Chenglite is intended to be a source of inspiration for the
beginners and hobby programmers dreaming to write their own
bug free chess programs. The problem with my previous very
first successful attempt to write a chess engine - Chengine -
was that I couldn't make myself keep maintaining it any more due
to how the code was orginized. Now when all the code has been
cleaned up and slightly encapsulated via macros I feel the
great desire to keep the developing going on and on. At first
it wasn't that easy to take the idea that your engine is going
to be pretty weak and slow due to the original design reasons,
but diving straight into the developing process made me understand
the true reason why am I doing this - the idea is very simple -
trying to get the most out of the given design.
- try each time to do the same thing you've done before,
but in less code
- don't hurry, chess engine development requires more accuracy
rather than high speed coding skills
- enjoy the process, this is the most principle thing to
consider
Compile it with GCC via "gcc -Ofast Chenglite -o Chenglite" to get
the most performance. Or use the Makefile.
On linux:
- git clone https://github.com/maksimKorzh/Chenglite.git
- cd into src folder
- type "make"
The output file would be "Chenglite" with no extension. Enjoy!
Tested with Arena for linux.
Use fixed depth search to determine playing strength
On any other but fixed depth search mode Chenglite
will play with fixed depth search of 5 plies.
I want to thank the great chess engine development community
for providing reasonable resources, espacially to:
- Bluefever Software's VICE video tutorial series
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ1QII7yudbc-Ky058TEaOstZHVbT-2hg
- Bruce Moreland for his 0x88 board representaion explanations
https://web.archive.org/web/20071026130204/http://www.seanet.com/~brucemo/topics/0x88.htm
- Chess Programming Wiki
https://www.chessprogramming.org/Main_Page
- H.G.Muller and Marco Belli for their kind explanations of numerous
points related to alpha beta search and PV storing
Any feedbacks are appreciated at freesoft.for.people@gmail.com