Quantum Chess News

Just a quick update. Progress is being made on the C++ version of the engine. We've settled on a significantly different representation for a board superposition that gives us more control over exactly what data needs to be accessed and manipulated throughout the game. We also have access to some pretty cool optimization techniques. Some of the core functionality is already running up to 30 times faster than before.

There is still a good amount to be done though. The representation and basic move functionality are there. Quantum move path calculation and execution is in the works. Next step will be measurement, and then we have to tie the engine into the existing interface, among other things.

Thank you again for the continued support.
-QC Team

Just a quick update. Progress is being made on the C++ version of the engine. We've settled on a significantly different representation for a board superposition that gives us more control over exactly what data needs to be accessed and manipulated throughout the game. We also have access to some pretty cool optimization techniques. Some of the core functionality is already running up to 30 times faster than before.

There is still a good amount to be done though. The representation and basic move functionality are there. Quantum move path calculation and execution is in the works. Next step will be measurement, and then we have to tie the engine into the existing interface, among other things.

Thank you again for the continued support.
-QC Team

Hey everyone!

First off, I'm extremely sorry for the lack of communication here. We're decently active in the discord channel with updates, but I sometimes forget that not everyone is there. So here is an update.

A while back we posted an update that the AI was able to make quantum moves and that it would be seen in the next patch. This is still true. The AI has been able to make quantum moves for a while now in internal test versions, but it is incredibly slow. At the time it was thought that just some performance optimizations would fix this and we would be able to release the update after a couple of weeks of profiling.

Profiling and optimization did help, but not nearly enough (think 30 seconds to 1 minute per move for complex positions). After a few months of going round and round with optimizing and rethinking and rewriting large parts of the engine structure it has come to a critical point. What the engine really needs is ground up overhaul. Everything from how the board state is represented internally to how move outcomes are calculated needs to be redone and optimized.

To that end I've started a ground up rewrite of the engine side of things in C++. This will give us access to some of the language's innate better performance, and allow us to use a lot of the optimization techniques already developed for other fast Chess engines written in C++. As a nice side effect this will also open the door for running the engine as a standalone which could make a future mobile version easier to implement.

Going forward I'll try to be more diligent about posting updates here.

Thank you everyone for your continued support,
-Chris

Hey everyone!

First off, I'm extremely sorry for the lack of communication here. We're decently active in the discord channel with updates, but I sometimes forget that not everyone is there. So here is an update.

A while back we posted an update that the AI was able to make quantum moves and that it would be seen in the next patch. This is still true. The AI has been able to make quantum moves for a while now in internal test versions, but it is incredibly slow. At the time it was thought that just some performance optimizations would fix this and we would be able to release the update after a couple of weeks of profiling.

Profiling and optimization did help, but not nearly enough (think 30 seconds to 1 minute per move for complex positions). After a few months of going round and round with optimizing and rethinking and rewriting large parts of the engine structure it has come to a critical point. What the engine really needs is ground up overhaul. Everything from how the board state is represented internally to how move outcomes are calculated needs to be redone and optimized.

To that end I've started a ground up rewrite of the engine side of things in C++. This will give us access to some of the language's innate better performance, and allow us to use a lot of the optimization techniques already developed for other fast Chess engines written in C++. As a nice side effect this will also open the door for running the engine as a standalone which could make a future mobile version easier to implement.

Going forward I'll try to be more diligent about posting updates here.

Thank you everyone for your continued support,
-Chris

We have noticed an increase in disconnect reports. We think we have nailed down the problem to bandwidth and are working on a solution. Thank you for your patience.