Thjalfi is/will be a C++ chess engine using bitboards. I decided to create this project because I have been wanting to create a chess engine for a long time, and I think making a whole project will improve my programming skills better than any studying can.
- Make a board representation
- Add ability to parse FEN
- Add ability to print board to console
- Implement rules/search legal moves
- Implement evaluation
- Implement UCI
- Streamline code
- Make a cmake or make file?
- Separate board class from position representation
- Make a mailbox board representation for future calculations
- Make enums for each square and piece type?
- Implement make/unmake functions
- Generate sliding piece attack masks at startup
- Generate magic numbers for hashing
- Cry because it won't compile
Every step of the way I'm learning something new on a deep level. It's great to stand on the shoulders of giants. Bitboards are fascinating and I'm positive can be applied outside of the world of chess engines. Abstracting away is great, but it's also really nice to be programming at the level of bits.