rodent-iv
trying to start a community effort based on Rodent IV
rodent-iv
trying to start a community effort based on Rodent IV
If You add something to Rodent IV, keep in mind the following:
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It's easier to work with small patches. They are more readable and cause less problems in case of an error.
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Starting with bugfixes reduces headache. Fixing things before adding some great idea might accidentally do something good to implementation of Your idea as well. Going the other way round causes bugs to breed.
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If fixing a bug required writing some diagnostic code, then diagnostic code stays (perhaps under an #ifdef) because it might help with yet another bug.
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With a non-functional patch, please test that it is non-functional: run bench command and compare node counts before and after the patch.
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With an Elo-gaining patch, please run a test of at least 1000 games, preferably more.
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With a feature-adding patch it gets more difficult. Strength is not the main goal of Rodent project, but creating personalities requires some Elo to be thrown to the burner, sometimes in hundreds. And I would like most personalities to be able to beat Fruit 2.1 to ensure they are of decent GM strength. Default Rodent should at least keep 2900-3000 CCRL rating. Improvement is nice, but optional.
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Treat Rodent like legacy software. A lot of things in there require refactoring, code quality is worse than chess quality, so tread carefully. I had no training in IT when I started this project. It taught me enough to get a job - and to notice that some of my code sucks.
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Don't overdo automatic tuning. Rodent III lost a lot of style because of that, and I had to revert many changes.
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Please don't remove quirks and features. They make Rodent what it is.
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Enjoy. Rodent is meant to be fun.