MetaEngine

This program is designed to take the input of multiple UCI engines and to use that information to act as a UCI engine. For example, it can be used to combine a neural-network and/or Monte Carlo based engine with a traditional alpha-beta search engine.

Overview

MetaEngine is configured to run UCI engines as child processes. Some of these are marked EVALUATOR, and some of them are marked GENERATOR (see example_config.toml for details on how to do this). The GENERATORs generate moves and the EVALUATORs determine which moves lead to the best outcomes. The hope of this project is that by combining neural network-based chess engines with traditional ones, we can combine (for example) the positional insight of the neural-network engines with the tactical sharpness of traditional engines.

Running the pre-built distribution

All you need to run the distribution is a Java Runtime Environment version 1.8 or greater.

To run the pre-built distribution, (made with ant dist) first, download it from the most recenct release page along with example_config.toml; then, extract the .zip file and run with java -jar <path_to_MetaEngine_jar> <path_to_config_file>). You must edit the configuration file to suit your own installed chess engines (see "Configuration" section below).

Build instructions

To build and run this application, you should have at least version 1.8 of of the Java Development Kit and a reasonably new version of Apache Ant with Ivy.

Preparing to build on Debian Stretch

Install a JDK, Ant, and Ivy:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk ant ivy

In a perfect world, the above would be enough, but as of the time of this writing, you must also create a link to the Ivy jar in a place that Ant can find it:

mkdir -p "$HOME/.ant/lib/"
ln -s /usr/share/java/ivy.jar "$HOME/.ant/lib/"

assuming ivy.jar is in /usr/share/java/

Building

Build with the command ant. This should create an executable jar in the target directory.

Building the distribution

Build the distribution with ant dist. This will create a .zip file in the target directory with an executable jar and all its runtime dependencies.

Usage

MetaEngine can be run with java -jar <path_to_MetaEngine_jar> <path_to_config_file> where the library dependencies of MetaEngine are laid out as follows:

MetaEngine-$VERSION.jar
lib/
    main/
        MetaEngine-Dependncy1.jar
        MetaEngine-Dependncy2.jar
        ...

This is the layout which ant jar will create in target/. On POSIX systems, after ant jar, MetaEngine can be run with the ./MetaEngine shell script.

Configuration

For an example configuration file, and information on how to configure MetaEngine, see example_config.toml

Ideas for configuration

The way that I imagine MetaEngine being used (although this certainly isn't the only way), is to have one GENERATOR which is a traditional alpha-beta search engine, and an other which is a neural network-based engine. Also, the evaluators would be identical copies of an alpha-beta engine. The neural network engine would be given a small bias to prevent the alpha-beta engine from always choosing its own move. These ideas are reflected in example_config.toml.

Contributing

There are two main ways to contribute to this project. One is to submit patches, and the other is to test configurations.

Testing

If you have powerful GPU hardware, your testing of MetaEngine configurations against top chess engines would be greatly appreciated. The program cutechess can be used for running engine-engine matches for the purpose of determining the strength of a given MetaEngine configuration.

Contributing code

Contribute code by making a pull request on this repository. By contributing code, you agree to license your contribution under the Apache 2.0 license.

To do

• Improve performance so engines get more of the time
• Implement a reasonable go infinite
• Tweak time settings to increase strength (possibly expose these settings in the configuration file)
• Print useful info messages
• Other improvements for UCI support
• Improve test coverage
• Improve code documentation
• Other things you might think need to be done...