What's new in pChess 2.0
Oct 30, 2014
- Speed Optimization: 30% FASTER than pChess 1.9.2.
- PGN File Support: You can now load and save standard (single game) .pgn files.
- Fischer Castling: Castle in a Fischer game by capturing your Rook with your King.
- UCI Engine now supports the 'UCI_Chess960' option, and plays Fischer games.
- Fixed a bug: peaBrain was not responding to isready after a position command, causing the engine to stall in cutechess.
- Fixed a bug: peaBrain was not sending a promotion string: =Q, causing some UCI interfaces to not register a queen promotion, when in fact there was one.
- Cleaned up ECO Opening Book Names
- Fancy schmancy new icon.
New in pChess 1.9.2 (Nov 24, 2011)
- UCI Engine Support (peaBrain is the engine inside pChess).
- Fixed a bug which caused peaBrain to crash after 99 moves (new max = 512).
- Added UCI Time Controls: Supported commands are: wtime, btime, movestogo, movetime,
- depth, and infinite.
- UCI Opening Book: Include pBook.txt in the engine folder, and enable UCI option
- Book = true to enable book openings for the engine.
- Better UCI Info: Hash Percent and Move Score are now scaled more reasonably, and
- Nodes Per Second is now sent to the GUI.
- Smaller Memory: Default Hash Table has been reduced from 256Mb down to 64Mb. This
- substantially reduces memory usage (from 280Mb > 80Mb) without incurring
- significant loss in speed.
- Added Ghosted (i.e. uncaptured) pieces to the captured pieces display in the GUI.
New in pChess 1.8 (Oct 5, 2011)
- Added Hash Tables and Iterative Deepening. This should speed searches significantly.
- The Opening Book is now bundled and auto-loaded at startup.
- Captured pieces are now displayed in the info area.
- The evaluation is now more subtle, with many improved evaluation features:
- Adjusted the default weights of the knight and bishop, such that the following conditions will occur: i) B > N > 3P; ii) B + N = R + 1.5P; iii) Q + P = 2R. Thus, _bishopWt = 330; _knightWt = 320, as per: Tomasz Michniewski (ChessWiki)
- Improved the pawn tropism, added knight tropism, and a bonus for a bishop pair.
- It would previously castle into open (bad!) positions. Now it should only castle into a position behind a protecting pawn.
- Positional scores have been normalized so as not to exceed material scores. This should help prevent bad trades.
- A bug in quiescenceSearch() which was lowering recapture scores was fixed.
- You can now load and save FEN with enPassant information.
- Clicking a square now shows only legal moves for the piece. Previously, it would show all moves for a piece whether they were legal or not.
New in pChess 1.7 (May 17, 2011)
- Quartz replaces Quickdraw for better graphics.
- Opening Book updated from 737 moves to 10,000 openings from the ECO (Encyclopedia
- of Chess Openings).
New in pChess 1.5 (Mar 1, 2011)
- Widescreen edition - bigger clearer board.
- AudioBrain - hear the computer as it evaluates moves.
- Standard Notation (SAN) supported for input and display.
- Game History with unlimited Undo/Redo and scrolling display.
- Load and Save games; use History to replay moves.
- Built-in tournament mode for testing of internal eval paramaters.
New in pChess 1.1.0 (Dec 9, 2010)
- embedded cheq font (no more need to install)
- quadruple speed
- move generator uses a generic vector mask-board approach
- About menu & millisecond timer
- Game History now lines up neatly in columns
- Old school ASCII mode (type 'ascii' in console)
- experimental 0.1a 'audiobrain' > eval move scores played as pitch
New in pChess 1.0.5 (Nov 16, 2010)
- Rewrote the move generator (from 2362 lines down to 1245 lines), adds a perft() diagnostic function. Plays at around 1300-1400 ELO (USCF Class D player).
New in pChess 1.0.4 (Oct 29, 2010)
- This version includes Sound, Hint, History, King Tropism, and saving Preferences. It also supports copy/paste of FEN positions, a 'Visual Brain' feature, and a small (700 move) opening book. Comes complete with FutureBasic 5 source code.
New in pChess 1.0 (Oct 21, 2010)
- Uses a classic Shannon type MiniMax search with Quiescence extensions and Alpha-Beta pruning.
- Adds Sound, a Hint feature, and includes King Tropism in the Eval.
- Also supports copy/paste of FEN positions, a 'Visual Brain' feature, and a small (700 move) opening book.
- Comes complete with FutureBasic 5 source code.
New in pChess 0.9.18 (Oct 18, 2010)
- Uses a classic Shannon type MiniMax search with Quiescence extensions and Alpha-Beta pruning. This version adds Sound, a Hint feature, and includes King Tropism in the Eval. It also supports copy/paste of FEN positions, a 'Visual Brain' feature, and a small (700 move) opening book. Comes complete with FutureBasic 5 source code.