Flash chess engine + source

[jacquesmc]

Hello all,

It's still in a very early stage, and could be greatly improved. Graphics are temporary & ugly.

But here it is:
http://www.jacquesmalchance.com/chess

Note:
There's no detection for check or mate yet, but the computer will never leave itself in check (unless it is mate). Castling is supported, 'en passant' isn't. It's slow and not really strong and most people should win from it.

For those who know something about computer chess (I knew nothing when I wrote it):
Apparently it uses some kind of improvised alpha-beta optimization, with very primitive move sorting. It has a fixed PLY of 4 (PLY can be changed in the source code).

In the meanwhile I've read a bit about computer chess, and would like to rewrite the whole thing using 'bitboards' (but I don't know if bitwise calculations in AS are fast enough), variable PLY, better evaluation and better move sorting. Does anyone have experience with this?

All suggestions welcome, and thanks for checking!

- Bram

[sunlis]

Looks like the basics of the system are there, but it's a bit slow.
At least it's easy to beat!

EDIT: After playing another game, the opponent seemed to take about 3 turns during 1 turn. They got my King because of it, but the game kept going.

[Flash Gordon]

Nice job!

btw, when the computer is "thinking" it maxes out my CPU the entire time.

[actionone]

I love this chess game. I was still playing after I lost my king. What is that called if your king is taken off the board and you are still playing chess? I am not that good at chess?

[sunlis]

Originally Posted by actionone

I love this chess game. I was still playing after I lost my king. What is that called if your king is taken off the board and you are still playing chess? I am not that good at chess?

That's what you call a coding error. When you lose your king, you're supposed to lose.

[Assertnfailure]

aren't bitwise calculations always supposed to be the fastest level of computation or something? I believe bitwise operations are the lowest level of data manipulation

[jacquesmc]

Thanks for your reactions!

actionone: jup, it's a bug: there's no check detection yet.

Assertnfailure: this is true for lower-level languages, but I'm not so sure about AS. AS doesnt seem to have a binary data type.

[actionone]

I really like this game just how it is because you can play with no king. I bet other people would like it too.

[pixelwit]

Wow!

I've considered making a board to display a chess game using other people's non-Flash engines but never even considered making the WHOLE thing in Flash. That's quite an accomplishment for both you and Flash. Nice.

-PiXELWiT
http://www.pixelwit.com

[Assertnfailure]

Someone posted one a while back where, whenever it was the computers turn, it would go through the whole recursive process of analyzing movements, and would draw lines on the screen to show its thought process. It was neat to see high concentrations of lines in areas of particular significance.