New Engine: Rodin v1.14

[Fermin Serrano]

'Rodin' Chess Engine by Fermin Serrano. Madrid, Spain
------------------------------------------------------
Engine version: 1.14
Release date : 19-08-2008
Homepage: http://rodin.chess.googlepages.com

Table of Contents:
---------------------------------------
1) Introduction and history.
2) General description.
3) Future plans
4) Running Rodin. System requeriments.
5) Known problems
6) License.
7) Credits.
8) Versions history


1) INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY
---------------------------------------

I am a chess fun since I was 5 years old. Also I am a computer science
engineer who likes programming, so a few years ago I decided to write
a chess engine. This was around 4 or 5 years ago, and that engine was based on
the fantastic TSCP engine. It was a very didactic experience. Now I have
wrote a new version from scratch. I hope this engine could be interesenting to you.

Rodin is written in C. I have used CodeBlocks with MinGW, as it is free and very good compiler.

At the moment, Rodin is not very strong tactically, but it has a sound
evaluation function. It play a decent and funny game. I estimate it has around 2200/2300 ELO in accordance with WBEC Ridderkerk rating list (based on my own tests).

If you want to stay tunned about the release of new versions of the engine,
please send me and email to clonfsp<at>hotmail.com and let me know.


2) GENERAL DESCRIPTION
---------------------------------------

Rodin has the following features:

- Magic moves bitboard generator. Thanks to Pradu Kannan
- Alpha-Beta search, IID and PVS
- Null Move Prunning
- MVV/LVA move ordering, combined with a (slow) SEE move ordering
- Hash Table
- History and killers heuristics for move ordering.
- Extensions and reductions (need a lot of improvement here)
- Special eval functions for opening, middle-game and endings.
- Evals function takes into account mobility, king security, pawns
formations, piece placements and other minor considerations ....
- Support for winboard protocol.
- Only Windows OS.
- Tested with Winboard and Arena.
- Algebric (Nf3) and coordinate (g1f3) notation support.
- Native EPD Suites support

3) FUTURE PLANS
---------------------------------------

These are the features I would like to develop in the future (roadmap),
in no special order:

- Correct bugs
- UCI support for use in Chessbase products.
- Lay eval
- Futility prunning
- Quality book
- Book learning
- Pondering.
- Pawn hash tables
- Draw offers
- Material imbalance tables
- Improve opening book
- Detection of draws by perpetual check.
- Improve the eval function (chess knowledge).
- Improve optimization and code speed.
- Improve the time management module.
- ICS support
......


4) RUNNING Rodin. SYSTEM REQUERIMENTS
---------------------------------------

The Rodin "package" cames with the following files:

- Rodin.exe -> This is the engine.
- Rodin.cfg -> Configuration file
- readme.txt -> This file

Rodin is a winboard engine. I have test it with Winboard 4.2.7 and
Arena 1.99 beta 5. At the moment, I have only developed Rodin for
Windows OS.

You can download winboard from Tim Mann web pages
at http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html.

To play against the program, under winboard, the command line is:
winboard /cp /fcp Rodin.exe

There is a configuration "cfg" file that cames with Rodin. The
content of the file has comments that explain different features
to configure the engine.


5) KNOWN PROBLEMS
---------------------------------------

None at the moment, but sure there are a few hidden...
Bug reports are always welcome.


6) LICENSE
---------------------------------------

Rodin is provided "as is". No warranty provided, althought I will
do as I can if you have issues running the engine.

You may redistribute unmodified executables freely as long as this
readme file remains with the executables.


7) CREDITS
---------------------------------------

I am very grateful to the following people (among others!):

- My family. They are always there....
- My girlfriend Susana for his love and support.
- Pradu Kannan for his code for Magic Moves Generator.
- Programmers of the CC Forum (http://www.talkchess.com), special to Robert Hyatt, H.G.Muller, Dann Corbit, William H.Rogers, and many others who answer
me all kind of technical questions.
- Tom Kerrigan for his didactic TCSP engine.
- Bruce Moreland and his excellent guide: http://web.archive.org/web/200707070125 ... /index.htm
- Andres Valverde, Pedro Castro and Sergio Martínez, for his support.
- My chess club colleages.
- Users of the http://www.cprogramming.com forum.


8) VERSIONS HISTORY
---------------------------------------

*** Aug 2008

1.14 : This is the first version of the engine. It has no many features but it can play a decent game.

I hope you enjoy using Rodin as much as I enjoy writing it!
Thanks

Fermin Serrano
clonfsp<at>gmail.com or clonfsp<at>hotmail.com
http://rodin.chess.engine.googlepages.com
My blog: http://clonfsp.wordpress.com

[Olivier Deville]

Congratulations Fermin

Rodin will be tested here very soon and will enter ChessWar XIII that starts in September.

Olivier