New engine releases & news 2021

[niel5946]

I have just released my new engine, Loki v1.0.2. It has support for 1 to 8 threads (Lazy SMP) and 1MB to 1000MB hash table and is probably rated around 1600-1800.
It has only been tested on windows and has not shown any bugs on both 32-bit(x86) and 64-bit(x64).
Download: https://github.com/BimmerBass/Loki/releases/tag/v1.0.2

It uses the UCI-protocol.

[Gabor Szots]

I have just released my new engine, Loki v1.0.2. It has support for 1 to 8 threads (Lazy SMP) and 1MB to 1000MB hash table and is probably rated around 1600-1800.
It has only been tested on windows and has not shown any bugs on both 32-bit(x86) and 64-bit(x64).
Download: https://github.com/BimmerBass/Loki/releases/tag/v1.0.2

It uses the UCI-protocol.

Hi Niels,

I managed to compile the sources with two issues:
1. I had to put #include <strings> in position.cpp and uci.cpp.
2. I got several warnings like this:

In file included from position.h:5,
from movegen.h:3,
from search.h:3,
from bench.h:3,
from bench.cpp:1:
bitboard.h:28:3: warning: integer constant is so large that it is unsigned
28 | 18374686479671623680

PS. Many abandon their engines after finishing school. I hope you won't join them.

[niel5946]

I have just released my new engine, Loki v1.0.2. It has support for 1 to 8 threads (Lazy SMP) and 1MB to 1000MB hash table and is probably rated around 1600-1800.
It has only been tested on windows and has not shown any bugs on both 32-bit(x86) and 64-bit(x64).
Download: https://github.com/BimmerBass/Loki/releases/tag/v1.0.2

It uses the UCI-protocol.

Hi Niels,

I managed to compile the sources with two issues:
1. I had to put #include <strings> in position.cpp and uci.cpp.
2. I got several warnings like this:

In file included from position.h:5,
from movegen.h:3,
from search.h:3,
from bench.h:3,
from bench.cpp:1:
bitboard.h:28:3: warning: integer constant is so large that it is unsigned
28 | 18374686479671623680

PS. Many abandon their engines after finishing school. I hope you won't join them.

Hi. I didn't know there were include issues... It compiles just fine in visual studio 2019, but I will fix it.
I ran a test today and encountered an issue where Loki gave illegal moves and I am not 100% sure if it also does that in the release i posted here (it didn't when i tested), or if it was just my change that caused it. I will fix it and the warnings as soon as possible.
It will be more thoroughly tested next time i announce a release since i can imagine that it is quite annoying to deal with for you as a tester, and i apologize for that.

PS. I do not intend to join them. Writing chess engines is by far the most interesting projects I've worked on.

[Guenther]

I have just released my new engine, Loki v1.0.2. It has support for 1 to 8 threads (Lazy SMP) and 1MB to 1000MB hash table and is probably rated around 1600-1800.
It has only been tested on windows and has not shown any bugs on both 32-bit(x86) and 64-bit(x64).
Download: https://github.com/BimmerBass/Loki/releases/tag/v1.0.2

It uses the UCI-protocol.

Hi Niels,

I managed to compile the sources with two issues:
1. I had to put #include <strings> in position.cpp and uci.cpp.
2. I got several warnings like this:

In file included from position.h:5,
from movegen.h:3,
from search.h:3,
from bench.h:3,
from bench.cpp:1:
bitboard.h:28:3: warning: integer constant is so large that it is unsigned
28 | 18374686479671623680

PS. Many abandon their engines after finishing school. I hope you won't join them.

Hi. I didn't know there were include issues... It compiles just fine in visual studio 2019, but I will fix it.
I ran a test today and encountered an issue where Loki gave illegal moves and I am not 100% sure if it also does that in the release i posted here (it didn't when i tested), or if it was just my change that caused it. I will fix it and the warnings as soon as possible.
It will be more thoroughly tested next time i announce a release since i can imagine that it is quite annoying to deal with for you as a tester, and i apologize for that.

PS. I do not intend to join them. Writing chess engines is by far the most interesting projects I've worked on.

Filed an issue already some hours ago ;-) (please don't consider VC only user)

[carldaman]

Maybe I've missed it elsewhere, but Lc0 0.27 has been released (https://github.com/LeelaChessZero/lc0/releases).

[Guenther]

Bagatur 2.2a released yesterday
https://github.com/bagaturchess/Bagatur

[Guenther]

Maybe I've missed it elsewhere, but Lc0 0.27 has been released (https://github.com/LeelaChessZero/lc0/releases).

not mentioned here, but was up to date at the chronology ;-)
(I don't always mention here anymore, only surprising ones, or if more were released at once)

[Guenther]

I missed the rewrite of Raven and its new repo
https://github.com/sgriffin53/raven-rewrite

There was already a new version released in the bin folder in November.

[Gabor Szots]

Hi. I didn't know there were include issues... It compiles just fine in visual studio 2019, but I will fix it.
I ran a test today and encountered an issue where Loki gave illegal moves and I am not 100% sure if it also does that in the release i posted here (it didn't when i tested), or if it was just my change that caused it. I will fix it and the warnings as soon as possible.
It will be more thoroughly tested next time i announce a release since i can imagine that it is quite annoying to deal with for you as a tester, and i apologize for that.

I am running a test gauntlet right now and I haven's seen any issues.

[mvanthoor]

I have just released my new engine, Loki v1.0.2. It has support for 1 to 8 threads (Lazy SMP) and 1MB to 1000MB hash table and is probably rated around 1600-1800.
It has only been tested on windows and has not shown any bugs on both 32-bit(x86) and 64-bit(x64).
Download: https://github.com/BimmerBass/Loki/releases/tag/v1.0.2

It uses the UCI-protocol.

Congratulations It's an interesting engine. I have some observations that may be of help to you. I ran a short 100 game test against my own engine Rustic, with the following results:

Score of Rustic 2021-02-15 vs Loki 1.0.2: 27 - 57 - 16 [0.350]
... Rustic 2021-02-15 playing White: 11 - 34 - 5 [0.270] 50
... Rustic 2021-02-15 playing Black: 16 - 23 - 11 [0.430] 50
... White vs Black: 34 - 50 - 16 [0.420] 100
Elo difference: -107.5 +/- 65.7, LOS: 0.1 %, DrawRatio: 16.0 %
100 of 100 games finished.

Rustic Alpha 1 (current first version of my engine) sits at +/- 1680 in CCRL Blitz. Your engine is roughly 100 Elo points stronger (but take the large error bars into account, because it's just 100 games against one engine.) Tentatively, you can rate your engine at 1800.

Observations:
- The engine seems stable. 100 games without problems at least.
- It announces its UCI stuff before the gui asks "UCI". The gui (cute chess at least) ends up with double uci controls like 2 settings for the hash table.
- Using the default of a 16 MB hash table, Loki can out-calculate Rustic in the middle game by 5-7 ply. Middle game depth sits around 12 ply. In the end-game, the difference becomes bigger, where Loki has an advantage of up to 10 ply. This is not surprising, as Rustic Alpha 1 has no transposition table yet.
- Rustic is more aggressive; caused by its (probably) more aggressive PST values.
- It seems Loki has bugs in it's QSearch. Sometimes it grabs pieces it shouldn't, because there's a sequence of moves that makes your engine lose material.
- Sometimes, the engine does strange things, like walk straight into a pin. As in: it puts it's king in such a position that a piece can be pinned and attacked without the possibility of saving it.
- Sometimes, the engine seems to suffer from some sort of depression. It gets a good position, suddenly seems lost / doesn't know what to do, and basically does nothing interesting. Rustic keeps advancing (because it is more aggressive already), and at some point launches a massive tactical assault, while Loki's pieces sit on the wrong side of the board.
- I've seen Loki run into a mating net as if on a suicide mission.
- Rustic is about 60% faster in nodes/second; 4000 kNodes/s vs 2500 kNodes/s. I don't know how complex Loki's search is, but Rustic has nothing but material and PST's.

The last three points could be because of one or more bugs in the alpha/beta search. If you can improve this, your engine will probably gain a few hundred Elo points. Good luck. The search depth your engine reaches is a good motivation to finally get that transposition table into my own engine.