Example Prolog Chess Program

This is unrelated to Brain Aid Prolog, but is a chess implementation for standard prolog compilers. It has been tested on SWI-Prolog, BinProlog and was reported to run on Sictus, as well as on Quintus with a minor change in the source. You'll find more details as well as the archive below.

The program uses a tree-search algorithm with so called Alpha-Beta cutting. The basic Idea is to generate all moves up to a certain depth, then to estimate the value of that position (position-rating) for the white player. Alpha-Beta cutting reduces the number of positions to be evaluated by about a half, by logically eliminating the need to examine all positions. You should be able to find easily literature on that topic.

The overall performance of the program is rather poor. If I had to recode a chess program nowadays in prolog, I would now try to reduce the number of database usage.

If you are just interested in playing chess, you'll rather want to look at GNU Chess.

Prolog Chess Version 1.2, 25.7.95
---------------------------------

Ported by Martin Ostermann to 'standard' Prolog on a 
Quick+Dirty base. Changes made:

	=	to	is
	=	to	=:=
	"	to	'
	<=	to	=<
	div	to	//

	INCLUDE to	:- [..]

Also the GUI Interface has been replaced by a tty version, 
with no display of the board, just moves. 

It has been tested on SWI-Prolog-2.1.0 and BinProlog-3.30.
Also with a small edit in chess_12.pl (described there) it
was reported to run on Quintus Prolog 3.1.4. Load with
'[chess_12].' and start with 'run.'

NOTE: Casteling has not jet been implemented. More detailed notes 
offered at 'http://www.cs.tu-berlin.de/~fraber/chess/chess.html'.

This archive (*.tar.gz / ZIP) contains the following files:

chess_12.pl  globals.pl   pos_val.pl   read.me      
stack.pl     zug_gen.pl   license

The read.me file of the original is appended:



Prolog Chess Version 1.1, 3.8.89
--------------------------------

Version for Turbo Prolog

The program comes with two different graphic
drivers that either support text graphics
or the BGI interface.

For this purpose, two versions of the "graphics" 
file exist, one for text graphics ("graphics.std") 
and one for the BGI interface ("graphics.ega").
Please copy the relevant file to "graphics.pro" and 
compile the file "chess_11.pro" which contains 
the main predicates.

Comments and suggestions are highly 
appreciated. If you should port this program 
to other platforms, please drop me a note, 
so that I can put a link to your site onto my page.

Frank Bergmann 

http://www.cs.tu-berlin.de/~fraber




This is the listing of the directory
where we compiled the program:

bgi.lib         60416   1.01.89   2:00	The BGI Library from Borland
egavga.bgi       5363   1.01.89   2:00  The BGI driver
figb_w.fig      72556  17.12.89  20:07  The images of Helmut Kohl and Maggy Thatcher
globals.pro      1884   3.08.92  16:10 	Global predicates
goth.chr         8560   1.01.89   2:00  BGI font
graphics.ega     4398   3.08.92  15:03  EGA output driver
graphics.std     4472   3.08.92  15:10  Text-mode output driver
litt.chr         2138   1.01.89   2:00  BGI font
pos_val.pro      2347   3.08.92  16:20  Position evaluation
sans.chr         5438   1.01.89   2:00  BGI font
chess_11.pro    14654   3.08.92  16:31  The main program
stack.pro         785   3.08.92  16:19  Stack management
trip.chr         7241   1.01.89   2:00  BGI font
zug_gen.pro      4968   3.08.92  16:39  Move-generator