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Hello,

is there a list of open source engines available? There are plenty of rating lists, but all of them are missing a column saying if the engine is open source or not. I would like to download some more open source engines.

So far, I have taken a look on the sources of
- Fruit/Toga
- Crafty
- Strelka
- Glaurung

Gnu Chess and Scorpio are scheduled for looking at. Which else should I know of?

Onno

Onno Garms wrote:Hello,

is there a list of open source engines available? There are plenty of rating lists, but all of them are missing a column saying if the engine is open source or not. I would like to download some more open source engines.

So far, I have taken a look on the sources of
- Fruit/Toga
- Crafty
- Strelka
- Glaurung

Gnu Chess and Scorpio are scheduled for looking at. Which else should I know of?

Onno

Hello Onno Garms,

I cannot recommend too highly the excellent detail pages of WBEC.

There you will find - under detailpages - whether the source of a particular engine is available. It might be a good starting point.

I hope this helps.

Later.

Onno Garms wrote:There are plenty of rating lists, but all of them are missing a column saying if the engine is open source or not.

CCRL

Onno Garms wrote:So far, I have taken a look on the sources of
- Fruit/Toga
- Crafty
- Strelka
- Glaurung

Gnu Chess and Scorpio are scheduled for looking at. Which else should I know of?

Micro-Max!

H.G.Muller wrote:
Micro-Max!

Hello H.G. Muller,

Have you no shame man? Such shameless self-promotion!



Later.

Looks like WBEC has fallen asleep lately.

Vegan wrote:Looks like WBEC has fallen asleep lately.

It still looks 1000 times more awake than your advertisements here.

On WBED Ridderick, no new engines posted since March 8th, 2008. I go all the engines from there back then. Now I had to hunt down some new ones. I am putting together a small list of engine lists, and have used it mostly for my own project of testing engines for tablebase use, before I try a more formal tournament.

On my chess page, the archived site for Bruce Moreland's Gerbil is available, its open source, and one of the classic ones that spawned so many new engines.

That and Crafty are the two I have, I compile crafty as it comes out, and gerbil I just have the link as its compiled already.

Vegan wrote:On WBED Ridderick, no new engines posted since March 8th, 2008. [snip] .

Hello Vegan,

May I request that you exercise restraint? Your posting is not accurate and a casual look would have resolved the issue.

The dating style is not mm/dd/yy. It is dd/mm/yy. You would therefore realise that the WBEC newspage is extremely current.

Exuberance is one thing. Please be careful in the future.

Later.

I am sure I left out a lot of them (I have several hundred source codes, though many of them are not publicly available), but all of these are good learning tools:

Code: Select all

amundsen
amy
amyan (I am not sure if source is still available)
arasan
beowulf
booot (Pascal derivative)
crafty
delfi (Pascal derivative)
diablo
elephant (source by request)
faile {simple}
fruit
gerbil {simple -- interesting callback idea that nobody else does}
glaurung
gnuchess 4.x
gnuchess 5.x {tragically, too many cooks now spoiling the broth}
greko
gullydeckel {simple}
hoichess
lime
micromax {almost IOCCC entry but hours of fun}
monsoon
mscp {simple}
Natwarlal
olithink {simple}
pepito {spanish speakers start here}
Phalanx {nice search ideas}
SamChess {simple}
scorpio
Sjeng
slowchess
strelka
thorshammer
vanillachess {simple}
viper {SMP learning sample}


If you could only look at 5 of them, I would choose {in no particular order}:
1. Fruit
2. Scorpio
3. Olithink {simple bitboard learning tool}
4. SamChess {simple non-bitboard learning tool -- read this one 1st}
5. Glaurung

I would recommend against TSCP. It has too many bad habits for a modern chess engine if someday you hope to make a SMP engine from your outline. If you want to learn how to write a start-up chess engine, use an outline like SamChess or Olithink. Bruce Moreland's engine is nice but it seems a lot of people get confused by the callbacks. The hungarian notation is a bit grating to some people who have an aversion to it (I like it fine, but I have heard complaints from some who don't)

Elephant is really interesting. Lots and lots of different bitboard techniques. Thorshammer is overlooked for some reason. Quite an interesting read and not a pushover.

Crafty is the "War and Peace" of C chess engines and Arasan is the C++ version of your epic novel. (The doxygen documentation for these will be too big for the stapler).

If I left someone's ultra cool engine out of this list, it's just an oversight. I did this off the top of my head.

Roger Brown wrote:

Vegan wrote:On WBED Ridderick, no new engines posted since March 8th, 2008. [snip] .

Hello Vegan,

May I request that you exercise restraint? Your posting is not accurate and a casual look would have resolved the issue.

The dating style is not mm/dd/yy. It is dd/mm/yy. You would therefore realise that the WBEC newspage is extremely current.

Exuberance is one thing. Please be careful in the future.

Later.

Sorry, forgot they use the date backwards. Nobody is perfect, except maybe Jesus

Roger Brown wrote:The dating style is not mm/dd/yy. It is dd/mm/yy. You would therefore realise that the WBEC newspage is extremely current.

However, one certain open source engine has been missing there since its release over three months ago.

Anyways, it could be argued that ZCT is the most "open" engine (if that makes any sense), as my personal source repository and all my testing tools are exposed to the world. I don't know of any other engine author that has exposed their work to such a degree. Not that it brings much benefit...

Zach Wegner wrote:

Roger Brown wrote:The dating style is not mm/dd/yy. It is dd/mm/yy. You would therefore realise that the WBEC newspage is extremely current.

However, one certain open source engine has been missing there since its release over three months ago.

Anyways, it could be argued that ZCT is the most "open" engine (if that makes any sense), as my personal source repository and all my testing tools are exposed to the world. I don't know of any other engine author that has exposed their work to such a degree. Not that it brings much benefit...

What about typhoon? I saw many releases of ZCT announced at the newspage. It is true however that ZCT doesnt have a page of its own at WBEC. I am sure that with enough time Leo will add it..

Many thanks Dann for this list. Let's add Buzz, that was even cloned recently.

Vegan may improve the way he posts (he got a PM from my side) but he still gave us an interesting discussion topic.

Olivier

Olivier Deville wrote:Many thanks Dann for this list. Let's add Buzz, that was even cloned recently.

Vegan may improve the way he posts (he got a PM from my side) but he still gave us an interesting discussion topic.

Olivier

He made it all the way to the top of the food chain, just to eat veggies. I am pretty sure there are many engines we are forgetting..Here is a list of additional engines that I compiled just by glancing at Jimbo's page.

Xpdnt
MFchess
Kace
Dabbaba
Obender/Chessone
Cyrano
Philemon
Freyr
GK
Hoichess
Scidlet
Resp
Romichess
Sloppy
Exchess
Prophet
St andersen
Sunsetter
Kiwi
Slowchess (early versions)
Knightcap
Chesterfield
Braincrack
Drunkenmaster

Tony Thomas wrote:

Olivier Deville wrote:Many thanks Dann for this list. Let's add Buzz, that was even cloned recently.

Vegan may improve the way he posts (he got a PM from my side) but he still gave us an interesting discussion topic.

Olivier

He made it all the way to the top of the food chain, just to eat veggies. I am pretty sure there are many engines we are forgetting..Here is a list of additional engines that I compiled just by glancing at Jimbo's page.

Xpdnt
MFchess
Kace
Dabbaba
Obender/Chessone
Cyrano
Philemon
Freyr
GK
Hoichess
Scidlet
Resp
Romichess
Sloppy
Exchess
Prophet
St andersen
Sunsetter
Kiwi
Slowchess (early versions)
Knightcap
Chesterfield
Braincrack
Drunkenmaster

I have source to 1558 engines or variants of engines.

Dann Corbit wrote:Crafty is the "War and Peace" of C chess engines

Agree
Anyway, mega-comment in Crafty's main.c is definitely worth reading, even if one doesn't like classiсal literature.

Zach Wegner wrote:

Roger Brown wrote:The dating style is not mm/dd/yy. It is dd/mm/yy. You would therefore realise that the WBEC newspage is extremely current.

However, one certain open source engine has been missing there since its release over three months ago.

Hi Zach, I have no idea what you mean, because ZCT is listed 3 times
since its release(in the news pages part)?
Or do you mean the details pages? Those aren't updated anymore since
quite a while, because it is a lot of work...

Regards,
Guenther

Hi Guenther,

Yes, I was referring to the detail pages. I didn't realize they were no longer being updated. I think it is relevant though, as Roger's original post said the detail pages say for each engine whether the source is available.

It is a shame that the detail pages aren't updated anymore, as they are quite useful. It would be nice to wikify or somehow make it open for volunteers to edit it as engines are updated and released.

Someone could also make a new page. Again.