Lynx chess engine

Discussion of anything and everything relating to chess playing software and machines.

Moderators: hgm, Rebel, chrisw

eduherminio
Posts: 63
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:00 am
Full name: Eduardo Caceres

Lynx chess engine

Post by eduherminio »

Hey everyone,

I've been working intermittently on my very first chess engine for the last few months :oops:
Here it is: Lynx.

It's written in C# (currently .NET 6 preview), under MIT License.
I have to say it's 'inspired' by 'Bitboard Chess Engine in C' YouTube series, so I have to thank Code Monkey King for those videos.

I was waiting to develop a stronger version of it before presenting to this forum, but since it's probably going to become a never-ending process, I've decided it to share it with you all right now while I continue developing and improving it.
:!: Disclaimer: it's still weak, doesn't support opening books or all UCI options yet and a long etc. for now.

Binaries can be downloaded from GitHub (feel free to test it as much as you want!).
Since I don't have that much time to play games locally and fully evaluate future performance improvements of code changes, I also created a Lichess BOT which runs Lynx's latest version, is available 24/7, challenges other bots, and that anyone (with a lichess.org account) can play.

At some point in the near future it'd make me incredibly happy to see Lynx in CCRL or similar lists (even if it's at the rock bottom :P), so I'd be grateful if someone could provide me with some guidance about how CCRL and other chess engine lists work, whether I need to do anything special to 'register' my engine there for the first time so that people are aware of it and can start using it in their tests/matches, etc.

Cheers :D

PD: Apologies for the redundancy, I originally posted this announcement in the wrong forum and was suggested to re-post it here as well. If an admin reads this, feel free to remove the other topic
Author of Lynx chess engine (GitHub, Lichess)
User avatar
lithander
Posts: 881
Joined: Sun Dec 27, 2020 2:40 am
Location: Bremen, Germany
Full name: Thomas Jahn

Re: Lynx chess engine

Post by lithander »

Yay, another C# engine! 8-) Congratz on creating a working engine and welcome to the forum!

Mine is using just a simple 8x8 mailbox board representation. How was your experience with working with bitboards in C#?
Minimal Chess (simple, open source, C#) - Youtube & Github
Leorik (competitive, in active development, C#) - Github & Lichess
eduherminio
Posts: 63
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:00 am
Full name: Eduardo Caceres

Re: Lynx chess engine

Post by eduherminio »

Thanks Thomas, Minimal Chess is among the engines I plan to study some day, when Lynx reaches some kind of v1.
I haven't looked at its source code to avoid any early bias but it's in my TODO list together with Cosette and a few other non C# ones. So nice to see you here!

I'm finding working with bitboards very interesting (and challenging at the beginning), but can't really compare it to mailbox representation since I haven't tried that one properly yet.
Author of Lynx chess engine (GitHub, Lichess)
User avatar
maksimKorzh
Posts: 771
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2018 5:37 pm
Location: Ukraine
Full name: Maksim Korzh

Re: Lynx chess engine

Post by maksimKorzh »

Congrats!
The name is cool - similar to command line browser under linux!
And thanks for reference to my series!