Files
cc65-Chess/tests/driveterm.py
T
Stefan WesselsandClaude Opus 5 d9d49f7f8e Replace the engine: 0x88 board, make/unmake, alpha-beta search
The old engine was weak for one structural reason. cpu_ScorePieceSubTree
looked like minimax but had a branching factor of one: at each level it
followed only the single reply a static heuristic ranked first, so it
evaluated one predicted line per root move and never saw a refutation the
heuristic missed. Two things compounded it - the root considered only one
move per piece, and the scoring functions returned move desirability rather
than position value, which is not a quantity minimax can validly accumulate
across plies.

What replaces it:

  engine.c  0x88 board, make/unmake against a per-ply state stack, legal
            move generation, and attack queries by ray-cast.  The stored
            attack database is gone - eng_IsAttacked walks outwards from a
            square instead of rebuilding 64 squares' worth of state after
            every trial move.
  eval.c    material and piece-square tables as a pure position value,
            kept as a running total updated incrementally by make/unmake.
  search.c  iterative-deepening negamax with alpha-beta, MVV-LVA and killer
            ordering, and a quiescence search over captures.

board.c becomes the adapter between engine and display; plat.h and the 0-63
tile numbering are untouched, so no platform file needed editing - including
the three that cannot be built here.

Verified: perft exact on all five reference positions to depth 5, and to
depth 6 on the two that publish one. Against the engine it replaces, at that
engine's strongest setting: 6 wins, 0 losses.

Smaller than what it replaces despite doing far more - 31129 bytes total on
the c64 at optspeed against 31543 for the two engines' worth of machinery it
supersedes, and 514 bytes less RAM. All five buildable targets fit.

tests/ carries the harness this was developed against: perft, a game fuzzer,
castling scenarios, an internal match runner, on-target C64 benchmarks, and
a UCI adapter for playing external engines. It stops being gitignored here -
the exclusion was scaffolding added during the rework to keep git status
quiet, and the harness is the evidence for everything above.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-07 12:36:05 -07:00

134 lines
4.3 KiB
Python
Executable File

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""
driveterm.py - drive the curses build through a pty and read the screen back.
The unit tests cover the engine; this covers the bit they cannot, which is that
the game is actually playable - menus, cursor, the visualizer toggles, undo.
Build the target first:
cc -Isrc -lcurses -funsigned-char src/globals.c src/engine.c src/eval.c \\
src/search.c src/board.c src/undo.c src/cpu.c src/human.c \\
src/frontend.c src/main.c src/term/platTerm.c -o /tmp/chessterm
Then, for example:
python3 driveterm.py # start up and show the first screen
python3 driveterm.py aivsai # let the AI play itself for a bit
python3 driveterm.py humanmove # play e2-e4 as white, then undo
The ANSI model below is deliberately minimal - just enough to read a frame.
Partial redraws (plat_DrawSquare touches one square) can leave stale glyphs in
the model that a real terminal would not show, so read it as evidence that
things are being drawn, not as a pixel-accurate reference.
"""
import os, pty, time, sys, select, re, fcntl, termios, struct
GAME = os.environ.get("CHESSTERM", "/tmp/chessterm")
ROWS, COLS = 25, 80
CR, UP, DOWN = b'\r', b'\x1bOA', b'\x1bOB'
LEFT, RIGHT = b'\x1bOD', b'\x1bOC'
def run(script, settle=0.35):
"""script is a list of (keys, seconds-to-wait) pairs."""
pid, fd = pty.fork()
if pid == 0:
os.environ.update(TERM='xterm', LINES=str(ROWS), COLUMNS=str(COLS))
os.execv(GAME, [GAME])
os._exit(1)
fcntl.ioctl(fd, termios.TIOCSWINSZ, struct.pack('HHHH', ROWS, COLS, 0, 0))
buf = b''
def pump(seconds):
nonlocal buf
end = time.time() + seconds
while time.time() < end:
r, _, _ = select.select([fd], [], [], 0.05)
if r:
try:
buf += os.read(fd, 65536)
except OSError:
break
pump(0.8)
for keys, wait in script:
os.write(fd, keys)
pump(wait)
try:
os.write(fd, b'\x03')
except OSError:
pass
time.sleep(0.2)
os.kill(pid, 9)
os.waitpid(pid, 0)
return buf
def render(buf):
scr = [[' '] * COLS for _ in range(ROWS)]
r = c = i = 0
data = buf.decode('utf8', 'replace')
while i < len(data):
ch = data[i]
if ch == '\x1b':
m = re.match(r'\x1b\[([0-9;]*)([A-Za-z])', data[i:])
if m:
p = [int(x) for x in m.group(1).split(';') if x]
cmd = m.group(2)
if cmd == 'H':
r = (p[0] - 1) if p else 0
c = (p[1] - 1) if len(p) > 1 else 0
elif cmd == 'J' and (not p or p[0] == 2):
scr = [[' '] * COLS for _ in range(ROWS)]
elif cmd == 'K':
for x in range(c, COLS):
scr[r][x] = ' '
elif cmd in 'ABCD':
n = p[0] if p else 1
r += {'A': -n, 'B': n}.get(cmd, 0)
c += {'D': -n, 'C': n}.get(cmd, 0)
i += m.end()
continue
i += 1
continue
if ch == '\n':
r += 1
elif ch == '\r':
c = 0
elif ch == '\b':
c = max(0, c - 1)
elif ord(ch) >= 32:
if 0 <= r < ROWS and 0 <= c < COLS:
scr[r][c] = ch
c += 1
i += 1
return '\n'.join(''.join(row).rstrip() for row in scr)
# Menu layout: main menu item 1 is "1 Human player", 3 is "Both players AI".
# Choosing a mode leads to the colour menu (1 player only) and then the skill
# menu, both of which take RETURN for the first entry.
SCRIPTS = {
'startup': [(CR, 0.5)],
'aivsai': [(DOWN, 0.2), (DOWN, 0.2), (CR, 0.4), (CR, 4.0)],
'attackview': [(CR, 0.3), (CR, 0.3), (CR, 0.6), (b'b', 0.6)],
# cursor starts on e1; up to e2, select, up twice to e4, select, then undo
'humanmove': [(CR, 0.3), (CR, 0.3), (CR, 0.6),
(UP, 0.3), (CR, 0.3), (UP, 0.2), (UP, 0.3), (CR, 1.5),
(b'u', 1.0)],
}
if __name__ == '__main__':
name = sys.argv[1] if len(sys.argv) > 1 else 'startup'
if name not in SCRIPTS:
sys.exit("scripts: " + ", ".join(SCRIPTS))
print(render(run(SCRIPTS[name])))