Vault

Vault is a UCI-compliant chess engine derivating from Stash, using a neural network for evaluating positions. Preferably used with a GUI like Arena, CuteChess, Fritz, etc.

Note that the current project version is not "stable", as I'm still working on a better Makefile configuration for faster builds.

Files

The repository consists of the following files:

• Readme.md, the file you are currently reading.
• LICENSE, a text file containing the GNU General Public License version 3.
• src, the directory containing all the source code + a Makefile that can be used to compile Vault on Unix-like systems (or Windows if you installed MinGW). Note that Git LFS is needed for downloading the network from CLI.
• utils/build.sh, a script that facilitates compilation and network updates. This is the easiest way to get fast PGO builds for now.

UCI Parameters

Vault supports for now all these UCI options:

• EvalFile

  Indicates the path of the neural network to use (defaults to <empty>, which falls back on using the HCE).

• Threads

  Sets the number of cores used for searching a position (defaults to 1).

• Hash

  Sets the hash table size in MB (defaults to 16).

• Clear Hash

  Clears the hash table.

• MultiPV

  Output the best N lines (principal variations) when searching. Leave at 1 for best performance.

• Move Overhead

  Assumes a time delay of x milliseconds due to network and GUI overheads. Increase it if the engine often loses games on time. The default value of 100 ms should be sufficient for all chess GUIs.