64 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
64 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
# Zeal
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**Zeal** is a UCI-compliant chess engine written in Rust. I began writing Zeal as a side project while learning Rust. Beating a top engine like Stockfish felt like a long journey, so it seemed fitting to pair that challenge with learning Rust. Zeal is now nearing its first release, though it's still far from its ultimate goal.
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## Running and building Zeal
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### Play on Lichess
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[lichess]() - TODO
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### Run locally
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```
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git clone https://github.com/stefiosif/zeal.git
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cargo run -- --mode uci
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```
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### Run on Cutechess GUI (Windows)
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```
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git clone https://github.com/stefiosif/zeal.git
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cd scripts
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./build_windows_bat.sh
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```
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After building, find the executable in target/x86_64-pc-windows-gnu/release. Use zeal.bat to add Zeal to the Cutechess GUI.
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## Core
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### Board Representation
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- Bitboards
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- Redundant Mailbox for piece-square look ups
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### Move Generation
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- Pseudo-legal move generation
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- Magic bitboards for sliding pieces
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- Make/Unmake instead of Copy/Make
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### Communication Protocol
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- UCI
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### Search
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- Negamax
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- Alpha Beta
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- Quiescence
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- Move ordering (MVV LVA)
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### Evaluation
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- Material evaluation
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- Piece-Square table evaluation
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## Next features
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- [ ] Iterative deepening
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- [ ] Principal Variation
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- [ ] Zorbist hashing
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- [ ] Transposition tables
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- [ ] ...
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## Rating
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There's no ratings yet for Zeal.
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## Acknowledgements
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Huge thanks to CodeMonkeyKing and his chess programming videos. His simplistic approach helped me understand the components that constitute a chess engine. Rustic's [roadmap](https://rustic-chess.org/introduction/roadmap.html) guided me in identifying which part of the engine to build next, while the book is an excellent resource for understanding various chess programming concepts. The [Chess Programming Wiki](https://www.chessprogramming.org/Main_Page) provides detailed information about all chess programming topics. Last but not least, I have been reading the code of various chess engines to take ideas, some of them are [bbc](https://github.com/maksimKorzh/bbc), [rustic](https://github.com/mvanthoor/rustic), [tcheran](https://github.com/jgilchrist/tcheran), [purple](https://github.com/JLErvin/purple) and [rush](https://github.com/lefebvreb/rush).
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Amazing tools:
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- [Bitboard Calculator](https://gekomad.github.io/Cinnamon/BitboardCalculator/)
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- [Lichess Editor](https://lichess.org/editor)
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- [cutechess](https://github.com/cutechess/cutechess)
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- [perftree](https://github.com/agausmann/perftree)
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Other resources:
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- [The Fascinating Programming of a Chess Engine](https://youtu.be/w4FFX_otR-4?si=_Rt4wcJZsS2duMQM)
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- [Coding Adventures: Making a Better Chess Bot](https://youtu.be/_vqlIPDR2TU?si=PKWe_Qu_CPGwIAwE)
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- Writing a Chess Engine [Move Generation](https://www.josherv.in/2021/03/19/chess-1/) and [Move Selection](https://www.josherv.in/2022/12/17/chess-2/)
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