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.