Speed problem in my engine..

[pimidrez]

hi guys...
I've been working on my engine, adding an extra-ply to the search, now looks 4 plies maximun...

here is a link where can be download de executable file..

is writing in VISUAL BASIC 6.0...if someone wants the source please tell, because I need help...

this version has the next features:
* the engine can only play with black pieces..
* can't castle...
* when you move, you need to click the button "search black move", so the engine will start to search
* theres also a bottom "view search"...that will show you the search tree and the scores in process inside of a LISTBOX controls...
* its plays too bad...
* only eval: material,develops of pieces, center control...but not too good jeje

http://rapidshare.de/files/39673115/Deep4.rar.html (43kb)

test it please and let me know what you think...and how fast move in yours computers..


byeebyee

[Dann Corbit]

Are you doing an alpha beta search, or only mini-max?

[pimidrez]

Im doing both things...
that give me more speed but still needing moree...

[Sven Schüle]

Hi,

I downloaded and tested your program. The visualization of the search progress is a very nice idea, and I think you have implemented it quite well!

Regarding your engine's search efficiency, you must implement some basic move ordering first to get your search time down to something reasonable. Obviously you are searching by far too many nodes.

I would expect a 4-ply search without quiescence search (I guess you didn't implement that yet?) but with standard alpha-beta plus simple MVV/LVA move ordering plus killer moves plus history heuristic to require less than 1000 nodes, thus taking much less than one second even with a very slow implementation of board and other data structures.

So I would suggest to:
- implement node counting if not yet present (to allow any measurements),
- implement simple move ordering,
- implement quiescence search.

This will probably be the minimum effort required to see your engine play medium-level chess.

Then, perhaps you want to make it compatible to the WinBoard protocol (if it isn't yet), this might give you even more testers in the world ...

Sven

[pimidrez]

thank sven!!

I have a simple move ordering, if you see in the LISTBOX controls the moves has a number before mostly "2" or "1"..the number "1" means that the move is a capture and the "2" that is a simple move...thats all..

Now I have a question...the nodes counting is only, means: count every finaly node that is evaluated??

[Edmund]

another issue are the listboxes. they are pretty slow. You could probably gain some time by turning the visibility off for the ones that change the most. Still Arrays are much faster.