writing a chess engine in xx steps

[wing]

I started a website on writing a bitboard engine, step-by-step.
Think of a bitboard version of TCSP Wink, with Winboard support.
Having a busy full-time dayjob, and more hobbies, this is going to be a long-term project (months, maybe years?).
http://www.sluijten.com/winglet/

[karlb1]

This tutorial looks very promising.
I wrote a chess engine in VB a few years ago, and only got so far due to my limited programming knowledge, it worked, and you could play against it, but it wasn't that good.
Now, after a few months at university on a computer science course, my programming knowledge has greatly increased, and I have been interested in improving my engine. I have made alot of changes to it, and it now plays alot better, but the main problems I still have are that VB is slow compared to C++, and I have no way of playing it against other engines, other than manually entering the moves, which is obviously not a very good method.
So I have been looking around for a tutorial on how to allow your engine to communicate with win board. And this tutorial looks like it will be one of the best ones out there, once more material has been added to it.
So, just posting to tell you that your tutorial is appreciated, and to motivate you to develop it further.
I understand you have a busy life, and maybe not much time to update the tutorial, but I look forward to it's future development.
Once the tutorial gets to the point where it gives at least a playable engine, I can apply the evaluation techniques to it from my old engine, and maybe we can share evaluation techniques and other features of our engines

[Dann Corbit]

You might look at LarsenVB source code to see how a VB engine can be programmed with Xboard protocol.

[karlb1]

I have already looked at LarsenVB. However, I think it is much better to follow a tutorial rather than look at source code with no guidance. I also think that VB is outdated and slow, so not a good language to build a chess engine in.

[EdCollins]

karlb1,

I'm not about to ask you to change BASIC compilers, but are you familiar with PowerBASIC?

http://www.powerbasic.com/
http://www.powerbasic.com/products/

Note: It's VERY fast.

[wing]

winglet has a board, can display it on the console window, you can set up a position manually,
or read a FEN string from a file.
Some real chess stuff is about to start: move generation.

[wing]

Current functionality of winglet is:
read a FEN string from a file & setting up the board manually
bitboard move generator
evaluation function
alpha-beta pvs search
mate, draw and repetition detection (using hash keys)
iterative deepening and move ordering

Next on the list will be:
quiescence and SEE
Null move pruning
Time control and running test suites
Connecting to Winboard

[velmarin]

Thanks Wing,
very interesting.
Very, very good.

[vbce]

An excellent tutorial !!! Thank you so much !!!