Move Generation

The first and most important step of the game of chess is moving pieces. How else would you be able to even play a game of chess if not for being able to move pieces?

I'm sure you know about chess (why else would you be reading this?) and the rules on the board. Rules like:

• do not lob the board with its pieces at your opponent (at any time).
• pawns may not be flicked across the board at your opponent's eyes.
• taking the opponent's queen off the board and blowing a rasperry at them is not permitted.

Apologies. Wrong rule list. Just found the right one now:

• you cannot castle into check.
• bishops cannot move orthogonally.
• pawns cannot promote to a king.

So how do we code movement?

Well, consider all the six different types of pieces in the game of Chess:

• pawns
• knights
• bishops
• rooks
• queens
• kings

We can categorise them into two types: static and sliding.

These are explained in doc/move gen [static pieces] and doc/move gen [sliding pieces] respectively. The docs on static pieces should be read first before sliding pieces.