Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[Krux02]

I did not try Vulkan yet, but I read a lot about it. More control and so on. 
And a unified API for both mobile and desktop. Even more things that you can do 
wrong and get a black screen without feedback is not really somethign I am 
looking forward to. My library is trying to get exactly this part away from 
OpenGL. Maybe because of this, my approach would be especially helpful for 
Vulkan developers, but I cannot tell without actually trying it out. Also I 
read articles on how to get Vulkan like performance with modern OpenGL 
techniques. Eventually I think Vulkan is very important for GPU developers, 
because implementing Vulkan might be much easier than implementing OpenGL (but 
they already did implement OpenGL so that factor doesn't not really count at 
this moment). And Vulkan might be very important for the big engiens like 
Unreal Unity and Source. Simply an environment where money and time to develop 
does not matter that much if it provides more performance.

So my answer to that is, let the dust settle. Don't be the first one who jumps 
on Vulkan and regret it later.

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[Stefan_Salewski]

Yes, I already saw your nice OpenGl work (and also that of other Nim 
developers) and it would be some fun doing some OpenGl coding. But I have no 
experience with OpenGl yet, and playing chess with a 3D view is harder than 
plain 2D.

What do you think about the new Vulkan API? There was a Nim wrapper some time 
ago already, and there seems to be a fine tutorial at 
[https://vulkan-tutorial.com](https://vulkan-tutorial.com)/

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[Krux02]

 You could write a nice 3D renderer for the game 
state, with this library: 
[https://github.com/krux02/opengl-sandbox](https://github.com/krux02/opengl-sandbox)
 

But be aware I did not define a fixed mesh format nor an _.obj_ loader because 
of it. So the initial renderer would use cones and spheres etc. But it would 
definitively a useful project for my library that would not be too much effort 
to implement.

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[Stefan_Salewski]

Version 3 is now available!

[https://github.com/StefanSalewski/nim-chess3](https://github.com/StefanSalewski/nim-chess3)

Ram usage is reduced to about 340 MB, and I tried some other improvements.

Not much tested yet.

Nimble install is still not possible, but for Linux a copy and past of the 
provided instruction followed by a "bash thisScript" works.

The old versions are still available at 
[https://github.com/ngtk3](https://github.com/ngtk3). 

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[Stefan_Salewski]

Nim chess 2 is now available in version 0.3.

[https://github.com/ngtk3/nim-chess2](https://github.com/ngtk3/nim-chess2)

Memory usage is reduced by a factor of two, so that playing on a laptop with 
only 2 GB is really no problem. And endgame is improved, even king vs 
king/bishop/knight should work fine and fast now.

We need at least latest Nim v 0.15.2 because proc clear of module tables is 
used now.

Not much tested yet.

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[Stefan_Salewski]

As Flyx reported in IRC, unfortunately this chess game does not work on mac OSX 
currently, lib gobject can not be loaded. For windows it may work, but 
installing GTK3 developer files on windows seems to be hard for some people 
still.

@RPG

Nimble install for GTK3 related package does not work currently due to name 
conflicts with legacy gtk2 packages. For Linux you may copy and paste above 
script and execute it in a shell, or you may try the make script from flyx 
above.

@Variount

Of course default gcc with -O3 gives very large executables. GCC with lto 
enabled can reduce size drastically, in most cases clang with lto enabled give 
smallest executable, which may be a bit slower. There where postings in this 
forum how to enable lto. 

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[Varriount]

Don't forget link-time-optimizations. Turning those on tends to make code quite 
a bit smaller.

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[RPG]

> Good job, but why are you inlining every single procedure?
>
>> My observation was some time ago, that inline pragma gave advantages.

This is definitely because Nim still doesn't know about static keyword and 
compiler generates less effective code. This is why inline helps much.

I hope C backend will be improved in future. This is not issue, but using 
static for not exported procs could increase performance and produce smaller 
binaries.

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[Stefan_Salewski]

Thank you all for testing.

I have just fixed position values for knight vs bishop, so total value of these 
two is really equal in average. And I scaled the total position values, so 
computer may in very rare cases give away a pawn for a very good position.

@dom

So what is your advice concerning inline. And no, not all, the 3 biggest procs 
are not marked inline. My observation was some time ago, that inline pragma 
gave advantages. But I guess that was still with gcc 4.7. Do you think gcc 5.4 
is smart enough, so it does not need inline hint?

@flyx

2.0 is OK indeed. For GTK3 we have indeed glib2 and even plain cairo and pango. 
So unfortunately it is difficult to install all my GTK3 related wrappers with 
nimble due to name conflicts. I am still hoping that gtk2 will die finally. But 
there seems some aporia users left. Appending a "3" to all my wrappers would 
generate more confusion, so I had to append "salewski", but that is ugly.


$ head -30 gobject.nim

{.deadCodeElim: on.}

when defined(windows):
  const LIB_GOBJ* = "libgobject-2.0-0.dll"
elif defined(macosx):
  const LIB_GOBJ* = "libgobject-2.0.dylib"
else:
  const LIB_GOBJ* = "libgobject-2.0.so(|.0)"



So name "libgobject-2.0.dylib" is wrong for your box. But the "2" should be 
corret I guess. Sorry can not help yet.

Thanks for your makefile, will consider adding that to the package.

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[flyx]

Your compilation instructions would probably be nicer if, instead of depending 
on absolute paths and symlinks, there would be a Makefile like this:


board: board.nim engine.nim
nim c -p:../nim-gio/src -p:../nim-atk/src -p:../nim-glib/src 
-p:../nim-gdk3/src -p:../nim-gtk3/src \
  -p:../nim-gtksourceview/src -p:../nim-gobject/src 
-p:../nim-cairo/src -p:../nim-cairo/src \
  -p:../nim-pango/src -p:../nim-pango/src -p:../nim-gdk_pixbuf/src 
board.nim


So that people can simply type


make board


I can compile it on OSX, but it fails to start with


could not load: libgobject-2.0.dylib


Not sure why it tries to load that since it is GTK3. Any advice?

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[dom96]

Good job, but why are you inlining _every_ **single** procedure?

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[alfrednewman]

Yeap, I agree. Very nice job !

Re: Nim Chess 2 with transposition table support is available

[Libman]

Random observation: the exe size of this chess game is **35,828 bytes** (with 
nim --d:release --opt:size and then upx -9qqq --ultra-brute) (not counting the 
UI dynamic libraries).

This of course is [no 
record](https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-world-s-smallest-chess-engines), but 
still pretty impressive, given the relative code readability, UX quality, and 
play strength.