This project is something I picked up from Codecrafters' Build Your Own X repository. It's something I want to use to understand low-level and systems programming in C, build my consistency muscle, and just get better at the things I do as a techie.
The project instructions is based a 107-video Youtube playlist, totalling at approximately 15 hours(At the end of this, I'll add the total time I've spent on the project too 😅). I started this project in the early hours of Easter Sunday, 2026, and so far this is what I've learnt from it:
UCI Protocol: UCI stands for Universal Chess Interface and this is a open, text-based communication protocol that enables chess engines
to communicate with GUIs.Files and Ranks: Files are columns that go up and down the chessboard, and each board has eight of them, labelled from a to h while ranks are rows that go from side to side across the chessboard and are referred to by numbers 1 to 8. Together, they can be used to identify squares on the chessboard and track movements of pieces too. A popular naming convention used in the game of chess is the file-first method, where a square is identified by it's file, then it's rank. For example, the lower right-hand square is h1, which means, 'h-file, first rank'.
Niche Rules
In the second video, there are three niche moves that we have to consider while making the chess engine. They are:
a. Fifty Moves: The fifty-move rule in chess states that a player can claim a draw if no capture has been made and no pawn has been moved in the last fifty moves.
b. Threefold Repetition: The threefold repetition rule states that if a game reaches the same position three times, a draw can be claimed.
c. En Passant: En passant ("in passing") is a special chess pawn capture that occurs when a pawn moves two squares forward from its starting position and lands immediately adjacent to an opponent’s pawn.
So yeah. That's it for now! As always, if you want to see the Github repo, you can click here.
Until the next commit....bye 👋
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