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Copyright ©

Madeleine 0.2

Author: Luigi Ripamonti, Italy
Status: Beta


1. DESCRIPTION
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Medeleine is my second chess engine for Windows (the first one was Tamerlane which died after a C:\ formatting! :().
It is a console application so it requires a GUI supporting the UCI or the Winboard protocol (both 1 and 2).
I recommend to use the UCI protocol even if the support for Winboard should be quite stable (at least I hope so!).
Madeleine is freeware and as such it can be freely used and distributed bu ONLY without charge and changes!
You can contact the author at the following e-mail address: lripamon@tiscalinet.it


2. PACKAGE AND INSTALLATION
---------------------------

Madeleine is distributed with the following files:
- Madeleine.exe (the engine)
- ReadMe.txt (the document you are reading just now!!)
- Madeleine.ini (Winboard configuration file, it is not needed if the engine is used as an UCI engine)

To use Madeleine under Winboard:
- Put the files in a folder(say c:\winboard\Madeleine)
- Add the following line to the firstChessProgramNames list: Madeleine /fd="c:\winboard\Madeleine"
- Add the following line to the secondChessProgramNames list: Madeleine /sd="c:\winboard\Madeleine"

That is all, you are ready to use the engine.

To use Madeleine under an UCI GUI (for example Shredder or Arena):
- Simply open the engine installation dialog, choose to install a new UCI engine and select the executable (Madeleine.exe).


3. FEATURES
-----------

Madeleine uses a series of quite common techniques in chess programming:
- Negamax alpha-beta search algorithm
- Null moves and Killer moves Heuristic
- Quiescence search
- History Heuristic
- Hash tables and Pawn Hash tables
- Endgame tablebases both Nalimov and GAFS by Guido Antonelli (http://users.libero.it/rigel_g/)
- Bitboard based (not using rotated bitboards).
- Support UCI, Winboard 1 and Winboard 2 protocols.


4. UCI UNSUPPORTED COMMANDS
---------------------------

Madeleine doesnt't fully implement the UCI protocol, here is a list of commands it doesn't implement:
- searchmoves
- ponder (thinking on opponent time).
- nodes
- mate
- ponderhit
- multipv (Madeleine is not able to compute multiple PV lines).


5. WINBOARD UNSUPPORTED COMMANDS
--------------------------------

Madeleine was born as an UCI engine. I ported it to Winboard but there is still lot of work to do!!!
It doesn't support the following Winboard commands:
- [WB 2] accepted (Madeleine simply doesn't care about this).
- [WB 2] rejected (Madeleine simply doesn't care about this).
- variant
- [WB 2] playother
- edit (If you use Madeleine with Winboard protocol 1 you will not be able to set up a position using the
        edit command. If you use it with Winboard protocol 2, it will accept the new setboard command).
- hint
- bk
- hard
- easy
- analyze
- name
- rating
- ics
- computer
- pause
- resume


6. KNOWN BUGS / OTHER
---------------------
- Madeleine doesn't check the position when the setboard command is sent from Winboard so, please, ensure
  the position you are sending is valid!
- Sometimes, after a game it doesn't respond. In this case create a new game and it should work correctly.


7. FUTURE PLANS
---------------
- Add support for opening books.
- Add pondering.
- Full implementation of Winboard & UCI protocols
- Completly new evaluation functions (at the moment it is very, very simple).
- Completly new search routines with new move ordering and move generation.
- Some code optimisation.
- Add book learing features.
- Add position learning features.
- And more and more, ...
- Add endgame knowledge


8. AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
------------------

Many thanks to Guido Antonelli (author of GAFS) who gave me the permission to add support for GAFS in my program.
I would like to thanks also all members of G6 group (http://www.gsei.org) for their technical help!
A special thanks to Leo Dijksman and Frank Quisinsky for their tests and helps in delivering Madeleine!!!.


9. HISTORY
----------

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beta 0.2		13/12/2002

- Just some changes to the evaluation function.
- Corrected a bug causing Madeleine to hang when
  playing black.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beta 0.1d		27/11/2002

- Fixed a bug related to the input thread causing Madeleine
  to crash or loose on time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beta 0.1c		22/11/2002

- Fixed a bug causing Maddleine to refuse valid O-O-O
  opponent moves
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beta 0.1b		18/11/2002

- Fixed a bug during TB probing
- Added draw claiming in Winboard
- Some minor changes to the evaluation function
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beta 0.1a		12/11/2002

- Just some fixes, no new features
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beta 0.1		11/10/2002

- First release of Madeleine!
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