Debugging a Chess Move Generator

Perft is a fantastic way to debug your chess engine’s move generator (as well as the make and un-make routines).  Here are some tips which you may find helpful:

• Find a set of test positions with known perft scores and which cover all the weird and obscure chess moves.  See my previous post Perfect Perft for some good examples.
• Use an engine such as Sharper to split out the perft of each sub move for a position (for Sharper this is the divide command).  This way you can see which move gives you a problem.
• Write a “flip_board” routine which (as the name suggests), flips the board.  This means you can test each perft position from white and black’s perspective.  The ensures you’re writing Color Blind Code!  Here’s my perft code which automatically flips the board:

//--Position 1
for(i = 0; i <= 1; i++){ set_fen(position, "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"); ok &= (perft(position, 6) == 119060324); flip_board(position); }

• Use "asserts" liberally in conjunction with a "board_integrity" routine.  The "board_integrity" routine is key.  It simply ensures that everything makes sense in the chess board object / record - returning "true" if everything is OK and "false" if it find something wrong.  For example does the "all_pieces' bitboard agree with each individual color's occupancy bitboards?  Does the pawn has which has been created incrementally agree with a hash value created from scratch?  I add asserts at the beginning and end of almost every routine.  Here's my board integrity code:

BOOL integrity(struct t_board *board){
int i;
t_chess_color c;
t_bitboard b;

//-- Link between squares and bitboards
for(i = 0; i < 64; i++){ if (board->square[i] != BLANK)
if ((board->piecelist[board->square[i]] & SQUARE64(i)) == 0)
return FALSE;
}

//-- Color bitboards match up
for(c = WHITE; c <= BLACK; c++){ b = 0; for(i = KNIGHT; i <= KING; i++){ b |= board->pieces[c][i];
}
if (b != board->occupied[c])
return FALSE;
if (board->square[board->king_square[c]] != PIECEINDEX(c, KING))
return FALSE;
if (SQUARE64(board->king_square[c]) != board->pieces[c][KING])
return FALSE;
if (popcount(board->pieces[c][KING]) != 1)
return FALSE;
}

//-- All pieces match up with occupancy
if ((board->occupied[WHITE] | board->occupied[BLACK]) != board->all_pieces)
return FALSE;

//-- Castling rights
for (i = 0; i < 4; i++){ if (board->castling & ((uchar)1 << i)){ if (board->square[castle[i].king_from] != PIECEINDEX((i >> 1), KING))
return FALSE;
if (board->square[castle[i].rook_from] != PIECEINDEX((i >> 1), ROOK))
return FALSE;
}
}

//-- Hashing
if (board->pawn_hash != calc_pawn_hash(board))
return FALSE;
if (board->hash != calc_board_hash(board))
return FALSE;

return TRUE;
}


If you follow these tips and your engine agrees with the perft scores of the suggested positions (in debug mode), then I'm 99% sure you'll have a bug free move generator and make / unmake move routine.  Writing test routines never sounds appealing, but having code which you know is (almost) bug free is a GREAT feeling!!