Chess Engine and GUI

Chess application developed as a bonus project for Advanced Programming subject at TUM. GUI was implemented using SFML library.

Engine Search:

• NEGAMAX (minimax variant) with Alpha-Beta pruning.
• Bit board approach.
• Iterative Deepening.
• Transposition Table (Zobrist Hashing).
• Move Ordering.
• MVV/LVA.
• Piece-Square Tables.
• Mop-up Evaluation.
• Quiescence Search.
• Pawn Shield.
• Opening Book (currently uses 4469 GM games parsed from PGNs: https://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html#openings).

Move Generation Correctness:

• PERFT tests done on 132 different positions, evaluated to depth 5.

Requirements

• CMake (minimum required VERSION 3.22) with Ninja generator.
• Compiler:
  • MSVC with C++ 17 (Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 (MSVC 14.38.33130)),
  • g++ with C++ 17 (gcc 11.4.0).
• SFML and spdlog are automatically fetched with this CMake configuration.

Build Instructions

Setting Up the MSVC Environment for CMD Build (Windows):

1. Open a terminal and run:

call <path to vcvarsall.bat> x64 && cmd

• For example run: call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat" x64 && cmd.

2. Alternatively, set up the environment using the Visual Studio Developer Command Prompt:

• Open the x64 Native Tools Command Prompt.
• Ensure the environment is initialized for x64. If not, run vcvarsall.bat x64.

3. Verify that the environment is set up by calling cl. (This checks if the MSVC compiler is available.)

Building with Visual Studio:

• Open the CMake project directly with Visual Studio.

Installing SFML Dependencies on Linux:

Run the following commands in your terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install \
    libxrandr-dev \
    libxcursor-dev \
    libudev-dev \
    libfreetype-dev \
    libopenal-dev \
    libflac-dev \
    libvorbis-dev \
    libgl1-mesa-dev \
    libegl1-mesa-dev

• If there is an issue with ft2build.h, add the following directories to your $PATH:
  • /usr/include/freetype
  • /usr/include/freetype2

Building the Project with CMake:

1. Configure the project:

cmake --preset <Release/Debug>

2. Build the project:

cmake --build --preset <Release/Debug> --parallel

Notes:

• These instructions apply to all build configurations (Debug, Release).
• Warnings are treated as errors.
• Warning levels are increased (check CMakeLists.txt for compile flags).

How to Run

1. Navigate to the Build Directory:

cd build/<Release/Debug>

2. Run the Executable:
   • On Linux:

   ./chess_ai

   • On Windows:

   chess_ai.exe

3. Logging

• The logger file is created in the build directory.

Testing

Run tests with the following command:

cd build/<Release/Debug>
ctest -R ^<unit_tests/performance_tests>$

Contributing

• Use camel case.
• Use .clang-format to format code.
• Set auto format on.
• clang-format minimum required version 14.0.0.

Literature

• General: https://www.chessprogramming.org/Main_Page
• Overview of the minimax engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4FFX_otR-4&list=LL&index=2&t=313s
• Bit Boards: https://ameye.dev/notes/chess-engine/