29 lines
1.3 KiB
Text
29 lines
1.3 KiB
Text
KnightCap is a chess program written for the Fujitsu AP1000+ parallel
|
|
computer (running AP/Linux). It will also run on most unixes, although
|
|
you may need to tweak the includes.h file and Makefile.
|
|
|
|
The principal differences between KnightCap and other chess programs
|
|
are:
|
|
|
|
- KnightCap has an optional fully rendered 3D interface, giving a feel much
|
|
more like an "over the board" game.
|
|
|
|
- KnightCap was developed to run on a parallel distributed memory
|
|
machine, although it also runs on normal unix boxes.
|
|
|
|
- KnightCap does not have an opening book---instead it keeps a file
|
|
(brain.dat) of losing moves and inserts them in the hash table at the
|
|
start of each search. At present it has about 1500 entries, and
|
|
this makes it a pretty competitive opening player.
|
|
|
|
- KnightCap learns the parameters of its evaluation function as it
|
|
plays. The most dramatic example of how this helps is an experiment
|
|
we conducted on FICS in which KnightCap learnt from a 1650 player
|
|
to a 2100 player in just 300 games. See
|
|
http://keating.anu.edu.au/~jon/papers/knigtcap.ps.gz for more info on
|
|
its learning algorithm.
|
|
|
|
KnightCap now beats gnuchess consistently and is within "coo-ee" of
|
|
crafty, although I think it needs deeper search or some more dramatic
|
|
selective search to be truly competitive with the best micro
|
|
programs.
|