This is nice, I just compiled it, but how do I play it? I can't seem to find any instructions on the website...
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Micro-Max, a 133-line Chess Source
11–20 of 25 posts
Re: Micro-Max, a 133-line Chess Source
#12A reminder that in 1982 you could buy "1K ZX Chess" for the Sinclair ZX81.
It ran in 672 bytes of Z80 machine code, including graphics.
(Unfortunately a few features had to be left out. But still.)
Re: Micro-Max, a 133-line Chess Source
#13> Except for under-promotions ... since the program is unlikely to ever find itself in a situation where it would be useful to play one.
Not my proudest moment but I did cheese out a tie in an otherwise lost game in jr. high by moving into what would be a stalemate if opp naively queened his pawn. It was extra ugly because he moved, picked up his previously captured queen from the side of the board, put it down, but didn't take his hand off of the queen before realizing the mistake (literally any other piece would have given him a clear win). Had to get a ruling on whether he was committed, judge decided it was too late because he'd taken his hand off the pawn (I have no idea what the official rule is in this scenario). I still regret not just resigning, but 12 year old me could be a jerk sometimes.
Re: Micro-Max, a 133-line Chess Source
#14> Except for under-promotions ... since the program is unlikely to ever find itself in a situation where it would be useful to play one. Not my proudest moment but I did cheese out a tie in an otherwise lost game in jr. high by moving into what would be a stalemate if opp naively queened his pawn. It was extra ugly because he moved, picked up his previously captured queen from the side of the board, put it down, but…
The judge is right for the wrong reason:
https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/32495/is-there-a-t...
The promotion is committed as soon as the new piece touches the promotion square.
Re: Micro-Max, a 133-line Chess Source
#15There's also The Kilobyte's Gambit [1], which is a chess engine written in 1024 bytes of JavaScript.
Re: Micro-Max, a 133-line Chess Source
#16A reminder that in 1982 you could buy "1K ZX Chess" for the Sinclair ZX81. It ran in 672 bytes of Z80 machine code, including graphics. (Unfortunately a few features had to be left out. But still.)
6502 MicroChess says hi.
Re: Micro-Max, a 133-line Chess Source
#17Re: Micro-Max, a 133-line Chess Source
#18> Except for under-promotions ... since the program is unlikely to ever find itself in a situation where it would be useful to play one. Not my proudest moment but I did cheese out a tie in an otherwise lost game in jr. high by moving into what would be a stalemate if opp naively queened his pawn. It was extra ugly because he moved, picked up his previously captured queen from the side of the board, put it down, but…
Don’t feel too bad. Learning how to watch for stalemate tricks when you’re winning is a very important chess lesson. Look up Eric Rosen stalemate traps on YouTube. This is an IM who regularly tricks GMs into stalemate. The GMs are not mad at him, only themselves for falling for it.
Re: Micro-Max, a 133-line Chess Source
#19This is nice, I just compiled it, but how do I play it? I can't seem to find any instructions on the website...
The instructions say you must enter "algebraic notation," but I couldn't figure it out until I took a peek at the source code to see how it was trying to parse input.
You always just enter source square to destination square. So to play an opening move 1. d4, you would type `d2d4` (move piece on d2 to d4) and press enter. Then if you want micromax to play the next move for black, just press enter again. It'll think for quite a while and draw the board with the new position. To play 2. Bf4, you'd then type 'c1f4', and so on.
(This appears to be "long algebraic notation" and is apparently common in chess engines, now that I look it up on Wikipedia.)
Re: Micro-Max, a 133-line Chess Source
#20Why bother implementing rules at all? Just create an interface to move pieces around on a board wherever you want. If you play chess you should know the rules and how to move pieces.