AI

AI - Computer Players

As of v0.3, ChessCraft includes support for AI (Computer) chess players. This is using the GPL'd jChecs AI engine.

Playing against the AI

The simplest way to do this is to create a game and start it without inviting a human opponent. If you do this, a random AI will automatically be chosen for you. This AI opponent could be very weak, or very challenging (for a casual player - none of the built-in AI's should seriously challenge a strong player).

Choosing an AI opponent

To see what AI's are available:

/chess list ai

By default, there are 17 possibilities using a combination of search engines and search depths. In general, the higher the search depth, the more dangerous the opponent. The engines supported are:

• AlphaBeta (depths 3-6)
• MiniMax (depths 1-4)
• MiniMax++ (depths 2-5)
• NegaScout (depths 3-6)
• Random (depth 1)

(Random is really dumb)

To invite a specific AI, you can use the /chess invite command, just as if you were inviting a human opponent:

/chess invite ai01

And then start the game as normal.

###Customising the AI definitions

You can edit the file AI_settings.yml in the plugins/ChessCraft folder. The file is well commented, and the layout should be pretty clear.

• You can define user-friendly aliases for an engine definition by changing the "funName" field. This can be a list of names, separated by commas.
• You can enable or disable particular engine definitions by changing the "enabled" field
• You can add comments that will be shown to users when they run /chess list ai in the "comment" field
• You can adjust the payout for beating an AI (only applies if Economy support is active) in the "payout_multiplier" field. This is a floating-point number which multiples the payout given to winning players (default 1.0)

Once you've finished editing this file, use /chess reload ai to reload it (or reload/restart the server).