Shocky suomeksi. Updated 20.3.2000
Shocky
by Pauli Misikangas

Contents of this page

What is Shocky?

Shocky is my game programming project. Everything started a long time ago, in the year 1993 when I was a first-year student in the Computer Science department of the University of Helsinki. I was interested in shogi but didn't have anyone to play with. As a computer scientist, the only solution I could think of to solve this problem was to start writing a computer program that could play shogi with me. The very first Shocky program - Shocky I - was a small and simple DOS-program, but it played quite well. I almost forgot this program, but in the year 1997 I made it available on the web and surprisingly people got very interested in it. At that time, there was not many freeware shogi programs, and my Shocky seemed to be the strongest of them.

That gave me boost to start designing and implementing the second generation of Shocky - the Shocky II. And now I have it ready. Unlike his older brother, Shocky II is not a complete program. It is a group of C++ class libraries that can be used to build board game applications. You can use these libraries in your own applications through the Shocky API. Besides Shogi, Shocky II supports also Tori Shogi, Micro Shogi, Mini Shogi, and Judkin's Shogi. And it plays pretty strongly too. Shocky II participated in the 9th Computer Shogi Championship that were held in Tokyo 18.-19.1999. Shocky gained 3 victories out of 5 games, was the first program that did not qualify from the lower division contest, and ended up in the 24th place out of total 40 programs. That was a very promising result since Shocky was running in a 4-6 times slower computer than most of the opponents!

Older versions of the Shocky II are available as freeware (with limited playing strength). There is a very nice Win95 user interface to Shocky II made by Pieter Moerman. Visit his PM²Shocky/95 page to download it. Linux users may use ShockyX written by Jarl Ove Staurnes. You can also playtest Shocky II with my simple text-based demo application which is available for Win95 and Linux.

Shocky links

Download links

Shocky news

This is the place where you can find out quickly if something new has happened in the Shocky-world.

20.3.2000 [new]
ShockyX link updated.
20.3.2000 [new]
Hey, check out Jeff Rollason's excellent report about the 10th Computer Shogi Championship!
13.3.2000
Shocky did extremely well in the 10th Computer Shogi Championship! It qualified without problems from the lower division contest by winning 5 out of 7 games. The second day started very badly since Shocky lost the first two games, and I thought that my changes for getting to the final were gone. However, Shocky won 5 of the next 6 games and before the last game there still was a theoretical change to qualify if Shocky would win the last game and 4 other games would end in a certain way. And all these 5 games ended as I hoped, and the dream of getting into the final became true!
In the final, Shocky was able to cause big problems to most of the programs, but gained only two wins and the final ranking was 8th. The biggest weakness of Shocky was clearly the lack of tsume-shogi solver. For example, Shocky could have won a game against IS-Shogi, the current champion, if it had seen the 27 moves mating sequence in that game. IS-Shogi saw it and started sacrificing pieces by dropping a lance in front of Shocky's king. Shocky took it with a wrong piece that caused a 'hole' through which IS-Shogi's king could escape. Also, Shocky needs a little bit more shogi knowledge so that it can prevent opponent's entering king, take slow tokin attacks more seriously, and so on.
I'll put the tournaments games into the Shocky game gallery soon.
11.2.2000
Here we go again. I will participate the 10th Computer Shogi Championship that are held in Tokyo 8.3.-10.3.2000 with Shocky 3. I believe that this year Shocky will make it to the upper division contest (last year Shocky was the first one not to qualify from the lower division contest). Getting into the final would be a too optimistic goal, but I'm expecting Shocky to the place in top 15 or so. After all, I am doing this all by myself as a hobby while many others have bigger teams with shogi experts and financial support. And I guess my opponents will be using 3-4 times faster machines than my laptop... Thus, to win I must have 5 times better algorithms. :-)
I am very sorry that I haven't been able to fulfill promises of new releases of Shocky (freeware/commercial). The versions available are very old and they give a totally wrong impression about Shocky's strength. If I only had 36 hours in a day... However, I just discussed with my commerical partners (MultiSell), and they said that the commercial version of Shocky ("Univeral Shogi") will be released in a month. Yes I know, they said that a year ago too, but I believe that this time it will be true. The software itself is ready so now it is only a matter of producting and marketing issues. I cannot do anything to speed up the process so it is all up to them. I you want to know more about Universal Shogi, send e-mail to MultiSell.
For last months I have been forced to use all available time to prepare Shocky 3 for the CSA championships and to test the commercial release. When those projects are over, I will start building the promised Linux release, and will have more time to update these web pages, etc. You have my word for it.
27.9.1999
Sorry, I have been very busy lately and therefore the promised Linux version of Shocky 2.7 is already late and will be delayed even more. The program itself is ready but license things etc. take their time. Anyway, Shocky 2.7 should be worth of waiting, because it will be a full-strength version! You will need a special license file to run this version, but those license files can be ordered for free (until I decide otherwise) with a web form. The license will expire after some period of time (a month or so), but then you can order a new license.
Bad news for Windows users. Very likely there will not be a free demo of Shocky 2.7 for Windows. My commercial partners were not too happy about that idea so we decided to wait until the commercial release is ready and then reconsider if it is a good idea to make any demo versions of it. So, if you want to use the latest versions of Shocky for free, you should start installing Linux. ;-)
23.8.1999
Hello folks! It has been a loooong time since the previous update, but now my summer holiday is over and I'm back in action! I think that soon it is time to let you feel the strength of Shocky 2.7. I will try to release a free demo version within a month, at least for Linux. Releasing public Windows versions is a little bit more compilicated due to forthcoming commercial Shocky release for Windows. Naturally I do not want to decrease sales of this product by giving a too strong demo version for free. Anyway, I will think of some solution so that also Windows users could try Shocky.
I you can not wait for the demo release, you can become an official Shocky test player. I need persons that would test Shocky (especially those smaller shogi variants) and give me some detailed feedback. So, if you are a fairly strong player (a little bit stronger than a beginner) and willing to test Shocky, send e-mail to me. I will make you a private test version of Shocky which uses the full playing strength until some expiration date.
23.8.1999
The documentation of Shocky API version 1.0 is now available. I will release also the necessary API header files and a new version of the Shocky Core Library soon. Since all classes related to different variants have been moved to the Shocky Variants Library, there is no more "secret parts" in the Core Library and I can make also the source code for it available. Right now I am designing an interface for the Variants Library that would allow you to define and add your own variants to the Shocky system!
26.10.1997-12.5.1999
Old news

Shogi software links

If you know other shogi software links, please let me know.

Other shogi links

Game programming links

Feedback

I would be grateful to have any kind of feedback about Shocky or Shocky's web-pages. If you have any comments, bug reports, suggestions or questions, please send e-mail to me (misikangas@iki.fi). Also remember to sign the guestbook below.

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This page was made by Pauli Misikangas.