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  Contents

 Games of Perfect
 Information

 What We Need
 Board
 Representations

 Move Generation
 Search Techniques
 Evaluation

 Printable version

 


  The Series

 Getting Started
 Data Structures
 Move Generation
 Basic Search
 Advanced Search
 Evaluation
 Functions


 

What We Need

In order to play chess, a computer needs a certain number of software components.  At the very least, these include:

  • Some way to represent a chess board in memory, so that it knows what the state of the game is.
  • Rules to determine how to generate legal moves, so that it can play without cheating (and verify that its human opponent is not trying to pull a fast one on it!)
  • A technique to choose the move to make amongst all legal possibilities, so that it can choose a move instead of being forced to pick one at random.
  • A way to compare moves and positions, so that it makes intelligent choices.
  • Some sort of user interface.

This series will cover all of the above, except the user interface, which is essentially a 2D game like any other.  The rest of this article describes the major issues related to each component and introduces some of the concepts to be explored in the series.


Next : Board Representations