As you can see from the above screenshot, one of the engines possible moves is e8g8, which is for the black king to castle on the king’s side. This is great news. Previously, I had given the engine the ability to accept the input for castling, but it could not choose to do so on it’s own. But not anymore! Now it can decide to castle if it thinks that is the best thing to do!
Of course, you can read through the entire commit on my GitLab, but here is the focal point:
if (theBoard[60] == ‘k’) {
cout << “The king is on square 60” << endl;
if (theBoard[59] == ‘-‘ && theBoard[58] == ‘-‘ &&
theBoard[57] == ‘-‘ && theBoard[56] == ‘r’ && m_qcastle == true) {
cout << “Path is clear to castle queenside.” << endl;
if (isKingSafe(theBoard, turn)) {
//The king is not in check, so…
theBoard[59] = ‘k’;
theBoard[60] = ‘-‘;
if (isKingSafe(theBoard, turn)) {
//The king is safe in between, so…
theseMoves.push_back(58);
//Then the move will get checked if king is safe at destination.
}
theBoard[60] = ‘k’;
theBoard[59] = ‘-‘;}
} //queenside
This portion covers the black king’s queen’s side castle options. It is more or less a convoluted set of if/then statements. If the king is on the normal king starting square, and the “hallway” is empty between it and the rook, and the rook and king have never moved (m_qcastle == true) THEN check if the king is in check, and if he will be safe every step of the way. If he is safe, then suggest that as a move to consider.
While it is not the cleanest code, and will cause problems for “non-classical” variants of chess, such as chess960, this gets the job done for traditional chess use.
Linux – keep it simple.