Ghost was also used as a subject
for an important school work (german: "Facharbeit")
The name Ghost was taken from the
name of Wolf Larsen's ship in the novel
"The Seawolf" by Jack London.
Also, "ghost pieces" is a widely used term in chess-programming for
pieces that appear or disappear suddenly in some positions, because
the engine has made some errors during search.
News:
2004-09-22:
Finally, some minor updates on the engine. You can download the
new version 0.14 of Ghost1 in the
download-section. There is also a
new linux binary for version 0.14. Most changes are related to
some bugs in the search function which should be fixed now. Ghost1 will not be developed any
further except for bugfixes. All efforts will be concentrated on
the completely new Ghost2-version.
2004-09-21:
Still stressed out by study (both Phil and me). But somehow Phil still found
some time to have a look at some old
Ghost1-code
and found some minor things to keep up-to-date to modern compilers.
Also, he is currently debugging some issues in
Ghost2 which seem to have harmed
move ordering quite a bit. Still one of the top items on the todo-list is
prabably completing the evaluation function (especially endgame knowledge).
Anyway, there will be a brand new pre-version of
Ghost2 within the next days.
Just don't expect very much improvement, remember, this is only
an one-man amateur project... ;-)
2004-08-20:
Heavy study work for Phil, so new Ghost
versions will be delayed for a while.
For the time being, you could encourage him by
donating some "research funds"... :-)
2003-01-28:
Finally, there is a running version of
Ghost 2. Althoug, I am afraid,
it still is not very much other than a alpha-version and
so it is not yet concerned good enough for official release.
But IMHO, first impression is very promising...
2002-05-13:
Still no Ghost 2, but at least
there is a working Ghost 1 version
for Linux!
2002-02-27:
Finally, I am happy to announce some progress
on Ghost 2. Soon there
will be a preview version. But right now, the search and
evaluation functions have not been implemented completely.
2001-05-19: sorry there will be no multithreading in the
new version of
Ghost. Not yet! Phil wants to keep
the code as compatible for later use of multiple threads as
possible. Currently he is very busy writing his final exam
(ger.: Abitur).
2001-04-11: as some of you might have noticed, there
seems to be a problem with Ghost
running in Chessbase/Fritz environment. This has something to
do with the differences in the xboard- and the fritz-protocol.
But anyway, my Phil is currently working on a complete new
version of Ghost, this time adding
multithreading and an improved search function. It should also
be designed very strict and clean object oriented (even more...)
:-).
So, hang on for further news...
2001-02-26: version 0.13 released and ready for
download, removing following bugs:
problems after editing a game position
some problems about taking back moves in general
a very nasty bug causing Ghost
to crash after 50 move repetition!
2001-02-19: news section added, containing
news about this site and naturally about
Ghost
2001-02-19:
new version 0.12 of Ghost ready for
download,
containing all later improvements
2001-02-18: new commandline parameters:
"hash xxx" (size of transposition table)
"pawnhash xxx" (size of pawn hashtable)
(xxx = size in MByte, 0 for minimum size,
e.g. "ghost hash 16 pawnhash 8")
2001-02-??: enhanced endgame knowledge:
queen against rook
mate by knight + bishop
About the author of Ghost:
Philipp Claßen
He made his final exam at the "Gymnasium Landau a.d.
Isar", Germany...
...then performed his social service (ger.: Zivildienst).
Currently, he is a student of computer science at the
University of Passau, Germany.
sorry, at the moment the source code is still to be cleaned up,
so Phil won't show it to anyone now, I hope you understand ;-)
Donate:
Although this is only an amateur project without the intent
of making a big pile of money, you could support us poor students by
donating some "research funds" using PayPal:
Links:
Frank's Chess Page: perhaps the most important computer
chess page in the web...