CHESS ENGINE

Alpha-Beta Pruning & PV splitting

This project implements both serial Alpha-Beta Pruning and PV Splitting and then tries to compare the performance against each other.

Run make clean and then make to compile. It uses GLib and if the make command generates errors related to GLib, make sure you have GLib. You can get it by running brew install glib.

NOTE: More on GLib: https://docs.gtk.org/glib/struct.ThreadPool.html

To start the game:

./Chess.exe [AI Type]  [depth]  [thread num]
[USAGE]
        [AI Type]:      The method chosen: Serial(1) or parallel(2).
                        Default: 1
        [maxDepth]:     The depth of the search.
                        Default: 5
        [nThreads]:     The number of the thread created.
                        Default: 5

Example: ./Chess.exe 2 4 6
    The above command runs the chess with pv-splitting with 4 depth
    and 6 threads. 

Once the game starts, a chess board with be displayed on the terminal and will ask for user input. User input is of the format initial piece location and then the final piece location. For example:

MacBook-Pro src % ./Chess.exe 2 4 6 
Starting Game

    a b c d e f g h 
    - - - - - - - - 
1  |r|k|b|q|*|b|k|r|  1
2  |p|p|p|p|p|p|p|p|  2
3  | | | | | | | | |  3
4  | | | | | | | | |  4
5  | | | | | | | | |  5
6  | | | | | | | | |  6
7  |P|P|P|P|P|P|P|P|  7
8  |R|K|B|Q|+|B|K|R|  8
    - - - - - - - - 
    a b c d e f g h 

PLAYER INPUT FORMAT IS: INITIAL DESTINATION

Your Turn: 
a7 a5

User will always play as the white player and the computer will always play as the black player. Inputting a valid move will change the state of the board after which the computer will play its move recording the time it took to play in a .txt file with the name convention: time_$AI_Type$.txt. For example the above execution will generate a time file named time_2.txt. After the move a7 a5 the new board state will be printed out.

Your Turn: 
a7 a5
    a b c d e f g h 
    - - - - - - - - 
1  |r|k|b|q|*|b|k|r|  1
2  |p|p|p|p|p|p|p|p|  2
3  | | | | | | | | |  3
4  | | | | | | | | |  4
5  |P| | | | | | | |  5
6  | | | | | | | | |  6
7  | |P|P|P|P|P|P|P|  7
8  |R|K|B|Q|+|B|K|R|  8
    - - - - - - - - 
    a b c d e f g h 

Computer's Turn: 

Now the computer will proceed with its turn and this will continue till one player wins the game.

NOTE: Pawn promotion and castling has not been implemented yet.

Graphs showing the comparison of the two methods based on the time they take is shown in the folder named graph_files.