https://github.com/znxftw/rudim

UCI-compliant chess engine written in Rust
https://github.com/znxftw/rudim

chess chessengine rust rust-lang

Last synced: 11 days ago
JSON representation

UCI-compliant chess engine written in Rust

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/znxftw/rudim
• Owner: znxftw
• License: gpl-3.0
• Created: 2021-07-15T21:45:43.000Z (almost 5 years ago)
• Default Branch: main
• Last Pushed: 2026-06-04T05:43:58.000Z (13 days ago)
• Last Synced: 2026-06-04T07:20:10.828Z (13 days ago)
• Topics: chess, chessengine, rust, rust-lang
• Language: Rust
• Homepage: https://lichess.org/@/rudim-bot
• Size: 656 KB
• Stars: 12
• Watchers: 4
• Forks: 4
• Open Issues: 13
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • License: LICENSE

Awesome Lists containing this project

README

          
# Rudim

[![Pipeline](https://github.com/znxftw/rudim/actions/workflows/pipeline.yml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/znxftw/rudim/actions/workflows/pipeline.yml)

Rudim is a chess engine written in Rust.

You can play against Rudim on lichess: [rudim-bot](https://lichess.org/@/rudim-bot). (Hosted version: v2.2.1)

Series of blog posts on how I wrote rudim : [vishnubhagyanath.dev](https://vishnubhagyanath.dev/tags/rudim/) (these reference the older C# implementation, rudim was rewritten in rust)

## Architecture Overview

Rudim currently implements these core engine capabilities:

Board Representation

- Bitboards, Magic Bitboards

- Phased Pseudo-Legal Move Generation

- Zobrist Hashing

Search

- Iterative Deepening with Aspiration Windows

- Negamax + Alpha-Beta Pruning

- Principal Variation Search

- Quiescence Search

- Two-tiered Transposition Table

- Move Ordering (SEE, MVV-LVA, Killer, History, Hash, PV)

- Null Move Pruning

- Late Move Reductions

- Futility Pruning

- Reverse Futility Pruning

Evaluation

- [NNUE](https://github.com/znxftw/rudim-networks) Architecture: (768 -> 32) x 2 -> 1

Other

- UCI Protocol support

## Prerequisites

- Rust stable toolchain (`rustup` + `cargo`)

## Build and Run

- Build: `cargo build`

- Release build: `cargo build --release`

- Run engine (UCI loop): `cargo run`

- Run perft suite: `cargo run -- --perft`

- Generate magic numbers: `cargo run -- --generate-magics`

## Quality Checks

- Tests: `cargo test`

- Lint (Clippy): `cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features`

- Format: `cargo fmt --all`

## Benchmarks

Rudim uses Criterion benchmarks to validate how some sample position searches are performing

- Run all benches: `cargo bench`

- Main benchmark suite (`find_best_move` at depth 6-7 on standard positions) lives in `benches/search_benchmark.rs`.

## Acknowledgements

- [maksimKorzh](https://github.com/maksimKorzh) for his YouTube series on on bitboard chess engines

- [bullet](https://github.com/jw1912/bullet) - used for training the NNUE

- [Reckless](https://github.com/codedeliveryservice/Reckless), [Viridithas](https://github.com/cosmobobak/viridithas), [Hobbes](https://github.com/kelseyde/hobbes-chess-engine) - took some references for Rust optimizations they did

- ChessProgramming wiki, TalkChess, Engine Programming Discord Server

## Contributing

PRs are welcome.

Before opening a PR, please run:

- `cargo fmt --all -- --check`

- `cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features`

- `cargo test`

If your change affects search strength, run a tournament/regression check as well.