Wednesday 10 April 2013

Why Orion?

Well, Orion is the first chess engine that I have created which plays a reasonable game of chess.  I came up with its name from the constellation Orion.  This constellation's two brightest stars are Alpha and Beta which is very appropriate for my engine due to its use of the alpha-beta algorithm.  It is also a very bright constellation despite being one of the furthest away from us.

Orion uses bitboards (64 bit, signed integers) (U64).  It is written in C++, and has its own user interface.  I hope to someday add uci support for it as well.  This engine is still in the early stages of development which prohibits me from commenting on its playing style.  Currently, I would say that it plays very theoretically, but this could change.

Orion uses iterative deepening, hash maps, and quiescence searching.  I would like to add null-moves as well when my engine is more developed.  Currently, I am working on the rating system.  I am constantly trying new ideas and weighing the time that those methods take with the improvement that they provide.  It is a constant struggle of balance.

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