This is version 2.2 of KnightCap.

General info
------------

KnightCap is a chess program written for the Fujitsu AP1000+ parallel
computer (running AP/Linux). It will also run on most unixes, although
you may need to tweak the includes.h file and Makefile.

The principal differences between KnightCap and other chess programs
are:

 - KnightCap has an optional fully rendered 3D interface, giving a feel much
   more like an "over the board" game.

 - KnightCap was developed to run on a parallel distributed memory
   machine, although it also runs on normal unix boxes.

KnightCap is now starting to get reasonably competitive with some of
the better known free chess programs. It beats gnuchess a reasonable
percentage of the time (although I still think gnuchess is a bit
better) and has even been known to beat crafty. In fact, its has
scored about 50% against crafty recently.

If you have comments/suggestions etc then send them to
[email protected]. I get tons of email about some other bits
of software I've written so please be patient of I am very slow in
replying.

KnightCap is available under the GNU public license. 

All the code was written by Andrew Tridgell except for the
trackball.[ch] modules which come unmodified from the Mesa graphics
demos.

KnightCap plays on FICS at ics.onenet.net/5000. It currently has a
rating of around 2200.


Building KnightCap
------------------

If you want the fancy graphics display then you will need an OpenGL
graphics library and the SGI Glut toolkit. The free Mesa library is
fine.

Edit the Makefile, following the comments.

Then type "make". When it doesn't work fix the problems or call on
a local C programming guru.

The code currently assumes you have a 32 bit machine and that "long
long" is a 64 bit quantity. I'll probably fix this sometime.


Running KnightCap
-----------------

After you start it up use the right button to access the main
menu. Its obvious from there.

You can rotate the board by dragging with the left mouse button. Move
pieces by dragging on the piece, also with the left mouse button.

If you don't compile with the fancy graphics then your get a simple
color ascii display. If you have a mono terminal then you don't get
color and it will be tricky to tell who's white!

You should also try the "help" command once you start it up, and the
-h switch on the command line when you run it. There are lots of
options you can set.

For "normal" play I recommend at least the -A switch (so that it
thinks on opponents time) and the -H switch, which is used to specify
how much memory to use for the hash tables.

KnightCap needs heaps of memory for hash tables. It uses a memory
intensive varient of alpha-beta so it will be much more affected by
lack of memory than other programs. Try to give it at least 16MB,
preferably more, but don't specify so much that it begins to swap!


Using with XBoard
-----------------

Yes, KnightCap can be used with XBoard. Start KnightCap with the -n
and -X options on the command line. For example 

	  xboard -fcp 'KnightCap -n -X -A'

then play as usual. KnightCap doesn't not yet support editing
positions (except when connected to FICS). It does understand time
controls etc and most other stuff that XBoard throws at it.


Playing on ICS
--------------

Yes, KnightCap can be used as an interface to ICS. Its a bit
rudimentary at the moment, and is not really intended for general
consumption but it does work.

To start it up use the -c option like this:

	KnightCap -c 'telnet ics.onenet.net 5000'

Make sure you use board style 12 (use "set style 12" once logged in).

The ICS interface was designed to let KnightCap play unattended, not
as a general ICS interface, so you may find bugs.


Mesa and Glut
-------------

To build KnightCap with the 3D display you need a OpenGL complient
graphics library and the Glut toolkit from SGI. Both of these are
avaiable freely on the net. To help make things a bit easier for some
people I have included pre-compiled versions of these libraries on the
KnightCap ftp site for Linux-intel and Solaris2-sparc systems. Use
these pre-compiled packages only if you are lazy and short on time.

You may also need to set your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to
point at the Mesa-2.1/lib directory so that the dynamic loader can
find the libraries when KnightCap starts up.



Source code
-----------

The source code for KnightCap is available from
http://samba.anu.edu.au/KnightCap or
ftp://samba.anu.edu.au/pub/KnightCap

Feedback and patches are welcome, although I may not respond very
quickly.