From Graviton:
I'm pleased to announce that a new competitive engine will be available very soon. (Website link will follow in a few days)
Sharpie 1.0 will be the first complete version of the first 64-bit engine my team has ever managed to bring to a competitive level of strength based heavily on genetic algorithms. The engine is unique in that not only does it adjust the weights used in the evaluation function, but it comes up with new parameters to include in the weight matrices on its own. (each engine profile will have multiple matrices that are affected at different stages of the game (opening, opening-middle transition, middle, middle-end transition, end, and defusing and complicating transitions). The determination of the appropriate point for the matrix shift (which is dynamic in search as well as in evaluation) is determined again genetically by the specific engine profile.
Some examples of parameters it "evolved" into the matrix without any hint/coding on our part:
Doubled rooks
Mobility
Some quirky parameters that can best be described as a type of 'initiative' factor
Options (how many legal moves in the given position) <- this was a really interesting one. Since this is genetically generated, it's a factor that correlates strongly (but not perfectly) with this attribute of a position. And since it fell into the local maxima it clearly has an impact on the performance.
The engine will be open source.
Unfortunately it is not UCI compatible, but we will distribute our own open source GUI.
You can modify and extend (add new parameters) to the evaluation matrix.
You can run your own genetic simulations to test new ideas (and set your own heritability and mutation levels)
Though it's not distributed as a UCI engine, when you are ready to solidify the evaluation parameters (and some other aspects of its search method) you can simply click the 'compile to UCI' button in the GUI and it will compile the current state to a fully UCI compatible engine.
Naturally we will distribute the engine with several options for default settings ranging from tactical styles to positional styles and what we've found so far to be optimal. We haven't done too much testing in this department so we fully expect users to find better settings over time. We hope better or simply interesting matrices will be shared on the forums.
Website will be launched on the same day as the engine.
Rough strength (based on 250 games at 40/4) is +32 elo vs. Zappa Mexico 2 64-bit on a quad, -212 elo vs rybka 4.
based on 100 games @ 40/20, +65 elo vs Zappa, -111 elo vs rybka 4
based on 50 games @ 40/120, +112 elo vs Zappa, -36 vs rybka 4
Sample sizes are small and we're running similar tests with Naum 4 and possibly Stockfish if we can get another tester with decent hardware.
These were completed with the current 'optimal' profile and so far it seems that our engine benefits from longer time controls.
The evaluation isn't the only genetically derived aspect. Some critical aspects of the search (move ordering, pruning, extensions etc.) are also genetically weighted.
-These will 'evolve' as you run your simulations, along with the evaluation matrix, but unfortunately the first GUI we release won't have support for manual adjustment of these parameters. It will display the search parameters and highlight changes per generation, but won't allow manual editing as most arbitrary settings here will cause a crash on any multi-core cpu.
This is a totally free and open source project that has been worked on privately for six years since we decided purely non-genetic approaches were too static.
We don't claim to offer you a new strongest engine but hopefully a new way of looking at computer chess and hopefully an interesting playing partner as well.
Release date:June 18th. Along with website with fully functional forum and integrated engine-profile-sharing and distributing.
