A few weeks ago I asked your opinion on features considered to be essential for even the most bare-bones of chess engines.
I got a lot of great feedback (which was very motivating) and compiled a list of requirements for version 0.2:
stable
win with huge material plus
correct move generator
play from arbitrary positions (fen and 'moves')
support time controls
know repetition rules
implement alpha beta pruning
implement iterative deepening
send "uci info" to the GUI
support "uci stop"
I'm proud to announce that I think MinimalChess now meets all the above requirements! Please give it a try in you favorite GUI on your favorite OS with your favorite time controls and let me know of any(!) issues you experience. It shouldn't lose on time or otherwise crash, hang or burst into flames. A review of it's playing style by a more experienced chess player would also be of interest!
Finally, if a contributor to rating lists such as CEGT or CCRL would include it in some of their next tournaments that would be super cool to! I'd really love to get an "official" strength rating for MinimalChess!
Minimal Chess (simple, open source, C#) - Youtube & Github Leorik (competitive, in active development, C#) - Github & Lichess
Ferdy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 12, 2021 1:32 pm
Looks just fine, fun to play with.
I love how it offered you the rook in the end secretly hoping for a stale-mate!
That is right I completely failed to see it, what I have in mind without calculation is that its king is not on the edge of the board and my pieces are low so I just took it quickly besides my king is also under attacked.
CMCanavessi wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 10:05 pm
970 elo in my rating list, between Tikov and Frank
Thanks for playing with MinimalChess! Is your rating list published somewhere? Seems like Tikov is rated 1244 on CCRL and Frank at 1074. Do they have lower ELO ratings in your list? What time controls do you use? And did you experience any issues that need to be addressed in a future version?
Scally wrote: ↑Sun Feb 14, 2021 12:12 pm
I don’t see a Raspberry Pi compile nor a Makefile, how can I compile this?
I've been using .Net Core because it supports many different target platforms. Visual Studio allows me to publish the engine for other platforms from the comfort of my Windows PC and produces a compatible binary. That's how I managed to provide builds for Linux and Mac.
Apparently the Pi is having an ARM-compatible CPU and running an OS derived from Linux. So I have just built another binary targeting the "linux-arm" platform and added it to the 0.2 Release. According to this link https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/mas ... uctions.md the Linux ARM build should run on your Raspi. Let me know if it works! The big file size is due to the fact that I bundle all dependencies with the executable so it should just run out of the box without installing the .NET framework, first.
If you'd rather compile it yourself and manage to do so (again the above link should help) please let me know how and I'll gladly add that Makefile and/or install instructions to the repository! Of course this is true for everyone else reading this! If you want to help me to provide instructions how to compile it on your favorite OS just give me a tell!
Thanks for the interest, everyone. This community is the greatest! <3
Minimal Chess (simple, open source, C#) - Youtube & Github Leorik (competitive, in active development, C#) - Github & Lichess