🚀 go-pugleaf

"Richard Hollenbeck" <rghollenbeck@earthlink.net> wrote:

>No, I'm less than a newbie at chess programming.  I've had one college class
>in C/C++ and one college class in Java (with Swing). I've done a little of
>this and a little of that.  I want to improve my skills so I decided to take
>on Chess (since it's been my hobby since childhood) as a programming
>challenge.  So I downloaded the source code for a few different chess
>engines and have become very lost.
>
>Where is the best place to begin?  Should I start by studying the custom
>header files? 

http://www.xs4all.nl/~verhelst/chess/programming.html  is a good place
to start.  You must first understand the search algorithm used, and I
would strongly recommend you start out by making simpler games such as
tic-tac-toe, conenct-4, checkers (in that order) so you can experiment
with the various search algorithms and undertstand how and why they
work. They require far less 'ground-work' (work you need to do before
you get to the interesting parts) and problems/faults with your code
is easier to spot.

> Do any of the free source chess engines out there come with
>flowchart(s) to facilitate its reading?  

Not that I know of.

>Which chess engine is easiest for
>the newbie to learn with while still being worth while learning?

TSCP -> http://socsci.colorado.edu/~tarrb/kerrigat/
MSCP -> ftp://ftp.freechess.org/pub/chess/Unix/mscp-1.1.tar.gz

Still, if you really want to undertand it, start from the bottom and
work your way up.

-Henrik Gram