Chess engine in ruby?

Ruby
1

I’m a beginning chess player and a beginning Ruby developer :slight_smile: I was
wondering if there’s a Ruby chess engine somewhere.

I thought it might be interested to read the code and see if I get
better at Ruby, or chess, or both.

I’m also interested to see if the Ruby code is more understandable - in
the past I tried to understand C and Java engines without much luck.

If you’ve heard of some kind of chess engine written in Ruby, could you
let me know?

Thanks!
Jeff

2

Jeff C. wrote:

let me know?
I don’t know of one, but the idea is interesting.

It might not be practical because of speed. Most chess algorithms
are very search-intensive.

Now, one thing I’ve thought about but will never have the time to
implement – make it a distributed application (with drb) so that
the work can be split among different machines.

Now that would be interesting. And if you throw enough boxes
at it, you eliminate the speed issue. You could in theory produce
a distributed chess app in Ruby that was “as fast” as a non-
distributed one in C.

Just a thought.

Cheers,
Hal

3

Hey Jeff,

There have been two rubyquizzes (is that really the plural?) on that:
http://rubyquiz.com/quiz35.html
http://rubyquiz.com/quiz36.html

You should also check RAA and rubyforge for that.
http://raa.ruby-lang.org/search.rhtml?search=chess
http://rubyforge.org/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=chess&Search=Search

Hope that helps you a bit :slight_smile:

4

calculations per second(speed) is a major factor in creating a powerful
chess program.

however, scripting languages are not excluded from creating something
that works.

if python can do it, why can’t ruby?

python:
http://www.kolumbus.fi/jyrki.alakuijala/pychess.html

5

Michael F. wrote:

Hey Jeff,

There have been two rubyquizzes (is that really the plural?) on that:
Ruby Quiz - Chess Variants (I) (#35)
Ruby Quiz - Chess Variants (II) (#36)

You should also check RAA and rubyforge for that.
http://raa.ruby-lang.org/search.rhtml?search=chess
http://rubyforge.org/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=chess&Search=Search

Hope that helps you a bit :slight_smile:

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the links. Unfortunately the ruby quizzes were for
two-player chess, but I’m hoping to find some code that would let me
play against the computer. Being new to chess I’m not looking for Deep
Blue quality, just something that works reasonably well (maybe up to a
900 chess rating, not 2500).

Uh oh… I’m getting the feeling as I write this that I might have
ventured into the waters of “he who suggested it should do it.” :slight_smile:

It would also be a good way to compare the speed of 1.8.2 vs. 2.0
(whenever 2.0 comes out).

Jeff

6

On Mar 16, 2006, at 10:52 AM, Jeff C. wrote:

Uh oh… I’m getting the feeling as I write this that I might have
ventured into the waters of “he who suggested it should do it.” :slight_smile:

I for one would be very interested to see what you could come up with.

James Edward G. II