Anyone interested in helping test a Draughts/Checkers playing program?

[ad1mt]

I ran my program in test games against two of the best Checkers programs, Kingsrow & Cake.

It did well until the late middle game (around move 20), and then lost. It does not surprise me that it lost towards the end game, because its end-game play is poor.

What I thought interesting is that Kingsrow & Cake use a large opening databases, whereas my engine has no opening database and just uses search algorithms. This suggests that my algorithms are good.

Once I get my end-game algorithms improved, it will be interesting to see how it does against the computer checkers champions.

[ad1mt]

Version 7.2D has more bug fixes in moving backwards and forwards.

[CM630]

I run it... I am pretty sure that the colour of your board are reversed, the pawns should be on the black quadrangles, not on the white.

Ad1mt, I am posting another Draughts game. I am posting it to (hopefully) give you some ideas about the UI.
...

Red pawns... 
MS had checkers in their pre Win95 windows, it was not playable on monochreome monitors, because the pawns were black and red, but both colours were displayed as black.

[speter]

I run it... I am pretty sure that the colour of your board are reversed, the pawns should be on the black quadrangles, not on the white.

Ad1mt, I am posting another Draughts game. I am posting it to (hopefully) give you some ideas about the UI.
...

Red pawns... 
MS had checkers in their pre Win95 windows, it was not playable on monochreome monitors, because the pawns were black and red, but both colours were displayed as black.

ad1mt's draughts game would do much better than mine on a monochrome screen. But, I do agree that he should have the pieces on dark squares (and that the bottom-left square should be dark).

cheers
S.

[ad1mt]

I am pretty sure that the colour of your board are reversed, the pawns should be on the black quadrangles, not on the white.

I have the playing squares light coloured for two reasons...

  1. The dark pieces would not be easily visible if the playing squares were dark.

  2. I'm trying to replicate the appearance of illustrations in classic books like "Win At Checkers" by Millard Hopper. In these ilustrations they have the playing squares white.

I am also trying to get the appearance of a having a real draughts board on the table in front of you. I dislike the UI/appearance of most checkers programs.

[ad1mt]

Version 7.3A
This has...
- the learning database enabled.
- keyboard piece movement removed (this was always temporary).
- many bug fixes.

Unfortunately, there is still an intermittent bug when using the ctrl-left and ctrl-right keys to go backwards and forwards through the history of a game. I will catch it!

[ad1mt]

Unfortunately, there is still an intermittent bug when using the ctrl-left and ctrl-right keys to go backwards and forwards through the history of a game. I will catch it!

Version 7.3B fixes the above bug... at last!

[Josh]

hi

quick fiddle, red/black board change

[ad1mt]

quick fiddle, red/black board change

That's pretty, but...  I can't see the black pieces, and the red pieces would give me a headache after an hour of playing. I don't like the menu along the bottom... when thinking deeply during a game, I want as few distractions as possible.

If you really would like to help with the coding, then here is a list of things that would help...

  1. detecting an [esc] keypress while the engine is running (in the engine.check_quit_or_timesup procedure) so that the user can interrupt the engine

  2. debug the intermittent glitch where a mouse click move goes wrong and incorrectly generates an "invalid move" error.

  3. put a 1-pixel border around the entire form/window to separate it from the Windows desktop, while keeping the mouse x/y co-ordinates correct.

  4. create a set of piece images (in a similar size, shape, design and colour), but with nicer 3d-shading.

[CM630]

quick fiddle, red/black board change

That's pretty, but...  I can't see the black pieces...

You would, if they were white 

[Josh]

3d pieces, thinking flashing when thinking, user can abort thinking...
changing square order
or green

[ad1mt]

Version 7.3D
Lots of bug fixes.
Unfortunately, Database mode, Learning mode and Autoplay mode are still not working 100% correctly. These will be fixed soon.

[ad1mt]

Version 7.3E
Bug fixes.

[ad1mt]

3d pieces, thinking flashing when thinking, user can abort thinking...
changing square order
or green

Are you going to help me by posting your code?
Thanks.

[Roland57]

Interesting project!

Made a quick test under Linux. 1° I had to remove (unused) reference to Windows unit. 2° CThreads must be the first unit called,

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. // draughts.lpr
2. uses
3.   {$IFDEF UNIX}
4.   cthreads,
5.   {$ENDIF}
6.   sysutils

otherwise:

$ ./Draughts
Threading has been used before cthreads was initialized.
Make cthreads one of the first units in your uses clause.
Runtime error 211 at $000000000047635D
  $000000000047635D
  $0000000000440FBC

After that I can compile and start the program. Maybe I will come back later in the discussion.

Good luck with this project.