ambit's projects

SDL2 example Android

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

These instructions will focus on Linux / CMake but it can be easily adopted when using Android Studio on other platforms like Windows and OSX. I have used [Allegro] for many years but recently I decided to switch to SDL2 because it’s a somewhat lower level library and has more cross platform support for some applications such as bluetooth & USB name a few. I usually develop under Linux whenever I can and I needed to port my old graphics engine to the Android platform. Since my engine already was developed for cross platform - and has been ported to Windows and OSX - I thought Android should be fairly simple. Well as it turns out I was in for a surprise. I like difficult challanges as much as any other C++ developer but Android Studio + SDL2 was more like being in the passenger seat of destruction derby. I admit I tried doing things the hard way (the right way in my view): use only command line tools and the cross compiler. But not knowing about the pitfalls of Android build system I had to resort to for now using Android Studio, sigh. So this guide describes how to build a simple SDL2 project with the latest Android Studio 2020.3.2. I will focus on the pitfalls I ran into as the SDL2 android docs are missing some details.

BitOChess

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

UI Version 0.6.5

Introduction

I’ve been a life-long chess fan and intrigued by chess engines and artifical-intelligence. Recently I began implementing a console based simple chess engine based on some ideas to let a program evaluate positions with no or minimal human pre-sets. Traditional chess-engines are programmed for certain positions with different set of values and evaluation functions. These have been fine tuned over many years with trial and error and testing against humans and other engines. Recently came along Alpha-Zero a new type of neural-networks based engine that took a different approach based on modern AI. I’d like to see what kind of game my engine would play based on my ideas of learning and evaluation of a position. I’m not expecting that it would beat any modern chess-engine but I’d like to see if it can play more human-like or more intelligent way then traditional chess-engines. The basic idea of my engine is that it should learn from the most basic set of rules and also eventually retain memory of the learned information. So it’s similar to the A.I. approach but without neural networks.

Installing latest Hugo

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

More often than not you need the latest version of sofware package for development. Here I cover how to install the latest version of hugo, a great website builder that’s written in the GO language. When you install golang(GO) from the command line via apt or yum it will be a version from your Linux software repo, but this version may not suffice for building the latest version of hugo and other cutting edge features. So…

Releases

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Here are the BitOChess pre-alpha release links below. This alpha release let’s you try the UI and play a few basic engine levels and test the speech synthesis. Don’t expect grand-master chess strength :)…

If you are having trouble with downloading any of these when you click on the links, try to right click the link and then select “Save link as…”. On MacOS with mac mouse hold mac or ctrl key when clicking link.

About

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hello visitor,

I’m Attila Mark and these pages are dedicated to my personal projects and posts. I’m a professional developer and currently work as an Applications Software Engineer in Los Angeles, CA. In my sparetime I’m working on these software projects or dive or play guitar or roller-blade or grow giant watermelons in my garden.

Chess-engine with dynamic position evalution
A simple, secure, private, point to point data sharing application