gull chess

[User923005]

These are the atomic operations:
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.4.3 ... c-Builtins

[lucasart]

To me, this project is far more interesting than Ivanhoe and friends.

Well Gull is impressive by its concision. It maximizes the ration elo / lines of code (among top engines). So in that sense it's more interesting than IvanHoe. But both codes have the same problem: they are illegible and full of hacks (macros, incomprehensible variable names etc.) and almost not commented at all. So it's unlikely to attract other people to work on the code, unfortunately.

My Little Prophecy:
If there is going to be an engine that de-thrones Houdini, it will come from this tree and not the other.

Would be nice, but I would bet on Stockfish instead. The point is that Stockfish is actively developped and more and more people are joining the github page of SF, contributing ideas and testing patches etc. This evolutionary developpement model has long proven its superiority. And what makes SF attractive for people to learn and contribute, is that the code is simply beautiful, self-documenting and well commented. Also it is written with portability in mind, and a lot of the most competent open source developpers use Linux rather than Windows. I did a poll one on the programming forum of Talkchess, and it came out that amongst the population of engine developpers 50% use Windows, 40% use Linux, 10% MacOSX. This is completely different from the percentages you get out of the population of end users (Windows 90% Mac 8% Linux 2% ?)

Nonetheless, Vladimir's work on Gull is impressive!

[ThinkingALot]

they are illegible and full of hacks (macros, incomprehensible variable names etc.)

Try using Visual Studio GUI (VS2008 or later). It has some very nice features which make the code much easier to read & navigate:
1) Right click on the text field->Outlining->Collapse to Definitions.
2) Right click on an identifier->Go To Definition/Declaration.
3) Put the mouse pointer over a macros and you'll see it's definition (present in VS2010 for sure, don't know about VS2008).

[lucasart]

they are illegible and full of hacks (macros, incomprehensible variable names etc.)

Try using Visual Studio GUI (VS2008 or later). It has some very nice features which make the code much easier to read & navigate:
1) Right click on the text field->Outlining->Collapse to Definitions.
2) Right click on an identifier->Go To Definition/Declaration.
3) Put the mouse pointer over a macros and you'll see it's definition (present in VS2010 for sure, don't know about VS2008).

That's not really the point: I do not have problems navigating in a text file. Actually, I do not use Windows, nor even have it installed somewhere on another partition. I'm using a GNU/Linux system (Lubuntu 12.10), and a superb, free and open source IDE called CodeLite, by Eran Ifrah.
But that's hardly relevant, we all have our own tastes as to what tools we use. It's the code itself that's illegible, regardless of the tools you use to view it.
But don't get me wrong: illegible is not an insult, it doesn't mean buggy or inefficient, it just means that it will be very hard for someone other than you to understand it (let alone port it).

PS: Have you ever tried VIM or GNU Emacs ?

[ThinkingALot]

PS: Have you ever tried VIM or GNU Emacs ?

No. I don't even have a Linux installed.

[Prima]

PS: Have you ever tried VIM or GNU Emacs ?

No. I don't even have a Linux installed.

Just as a request; would it be possible to increase the maximum Hash size of Gull than its current Maximum Hash of 1024MB? I hope you consider this. Thanks and all the best on the Gull project.

[ThinkingALot]

would it be possible to increase the maximum Hash size of Gull than its current Maximum Hash of 1024MB?

OK, the next x64 version will be able to allocate Hash of any size.

[Prima]

would it be possible to increase the maximum Hash size of Gull than its current Maximum Hash of 1024MB?

OK, the next x64 version will be able to allocate Hash of any size.

My apology for the late response. Thanks for the consideration. I think engines could benefit more from larger Maximum Hash size.

[ThinkingALot]

Gull II beta and later versions are incompatible with ChessGUI (at least 0.240k). When running under ChessGUI Gull is 1.5-2.0 times slower than it should be. Can't understand how this is possible
To testers: please remove the games played under ChessGUI from rating lists.

[Alexander Schmidt]

Gull II beta and later versions are incompatible with ChessGUI (at least 0.240k). When running under ChessGUI Gull is 1.5-2.0 times slower than it should be. Can't understand how this is possible
To testers: please remove the games played under ChessGUI from rating lists.

Without taking a closer look, try to reduce the early engine output, some GUI's can't handle too much output. It is not just ChessGUI, I observed this also under Arena and Fritz with several engines.