Zarkov - DOS




Game info:

box cover Game title: Zarkov Platform: MS-DOS Author (released): Chess Laboratories (1993) Genre: Puzzle Mode: Multiplayer Design: John Stanback, Fort Collins Music: Game manual: not available Download: Zarkov3.zip Game size: 179 kB Recommended emulator: DOSBox From Chess Programming Wiki:    Zarkov is a commercial chess program by John Stanback written in C. He began writing Zarkov in 1988 after finishing version 2.0 of Gnu Chess. The first version was similar to Gnu Chess in search and evaluation, but he changed the data structures to make move generation and attack table generation more efficient. He also spent a lot of time playing it against his Fidelity Excellence and trying to fix the search or evaluation function when he encountered strange behavior or got into tactical trouble.     Zarkov 3.0 (DOS) He said: 'Playing lots of games by hand is a really valuable method for finding and fixing problems. I don't do much of that anymore, but I should. I considered the hardware I was using at the time to be pretty state-of-the-art: an 8 Mhz 286 PC with two 1.2M floppies and no hard drive. The A drive contained the most useful MSDOS commands, a simple editor that I wrote, and the Borland C compiler. The B drive contained the source and executables for Zarkov. I don't think compiles took any longer than they do now on a computer that's about 200 times faster! In between making changes to the chess engine I created a graphical interface for Zarkov. I had to learn sort of esoteric stuff like using mouse interrupts and writing to DOS video memory.'    In 1991, version 2.5 was released. John Stanback discovered how to prune the tree with a reasonably effective selective search technique which relied on a combination of evaluation function heuristics and reduced depth search. This change alone improved the engine by about 100 rating points. He also added more evaluation function heuristics, improved the search extensions, and improved transposition table operation. He tuned the evaluation function by running hundreds of self-play blitz games where the weights for each heuristic were randomly assigned one of two weights (slightly lower or higher than 'normal' value for that heuristic). Based on the results, the 'normal' values of the weights were modified and the process repeated. The net result was a big improvement in playing strength.    This version of Zarkov is 3.0. It was released in December 1993. For this version, John Stanback completely rewrote the interface, using some of the code he developed for Grandmaster Chess. He also went back to the selective search technique that he used for version 2.5, but with some improvements. He did a lot of work on search extensions, but it's not clear how much this improved the program. He set up the capability to play automatically at night against the Saitek Leonardo modules and against the Novag Forte C. Matches against these programs indicated a significant increase in program strength. More details about this game can be found on ChessProgramming.org. For fans and collectors: Find this game on video server YouTube.com or Vimeo.com. Buy original version of this game on Amazon.com or eBay.com. Find digital download of this game on GOG or Steam.   Platform: This ver­sion of Zarkov was de­sig­ned for per­so­nal com­pu­ters with o­pe­ra­ting sys­tem MS-DOS (Mi­cro­soft Disk O­pe­ra­ting Sys­tem), which was o­pe­ra­ting sys­tem de­ve­lo­ped by Mi­cro­soft in 1981. It was the most wi­de­ly-used o­pe­ra­ting sys­tem in the first half of the 1990s. MS-DOS was sup­plied with most of the IBM com­pu­ters that pur­cha­sed a li­cen­se from Mi­cro­soft. Af­ter 1995, it was pu­s­hed out by a gra­phi­cal­ly mo­re ad­van­ced sys­tem - Win­dows and its de­ve­lop­ment was ce­a­sed in 2000. At the ti­me of its grea­test fa­me, se­ve­ral thou­sand ga­mes de­sig­ned spe­ci­fi­cal­ly for com­pu­ters with this sys­tem we­re cre­a­ted. To­day, its de­ve­lop­ment is no lon­ger con­ti­nue and for e­mu­la­tion the free DOSBox e­mu­la­tor is most of­ten used. Mo­re in­for­ma­ti­on about MS-DOS operating system can be found here.   Available online emulators: 5 different online emulators are available for Zarkov. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in support of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic features of each emulator available for this game Zarkov are summarized in the following table:   Emulator Technology Multiplayer Fullscreen Touchscreen Speed Archive.org JavaScript YES NO NO fast js-dos JavaScript YES YES NO fast js-dos 6.22 JavaScript YES YES NO fast jsDosBox JavaScript YES NO NO slow jDosBox Java applet YES YES NO fast



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