An XBoard/WinBoard chess engine written in Java.
Ronja is a chess engine. It provides only a simple, character based user interface. It is highly recommended that you run it from a chess GUI like XBoard/WinBoard or Arena. You will also need a Java runtime installed to run Ronja.
- Ronja versions 0.7.0 and earlier require Java 8.
- Ronja versions 0.8.x require Java 11.
- Ronja versions 0.9.0 and later require Java 17+.
Download the latest release from the GitHub
releases page,
and unzip it into a directory of your choice. Let's call this directory
<ronja_home>
.
Find the XBoard resource file .xboardrc
in your home directory.
Now find the option -firstChessProgramNames
in this file. Add a
line like the following in the list of chess programs:
"Ronja" -fcp ./ronja -fd <ronja_home>
Find your WinBoard .ini file. It will be located somewhere in
your home directory in AppData/Roaming. Now find the option
/firstChessProgramNames
in this file. Add a line like the
following in the list of chess programs:
"Ronja" -fcp ronja.bat -fd <ronja_home>
In Arena, you should go to Engines | Install New Engine... In the
dialog that appears, navigate to <ronja_home>
and select ronja.bat
.
In the next dialog, set the type of the engine to Winboard. That's it!
Ronja is written entirely in Java, and has its own opening book. It implements a few of the commonly seen features of chess engines:
- Iterative deepening
- Alpha-beta pruning
- Move ordering
Ronja is designed in an object-oriented way, with classes representing positions, and other entities. This makes the engine rather slow, and so may be changed in the future.