[cglouch]

Using bit manipulation to calculate chess piece movements is really quite satisfying. If magic bitboards are too confusing, the precursor - "kindergarten bitboards" - are a bit easier to understand. I have a description here if anyone is curious: https://github.com/cglouch/snakefish#sliding-pieces

I think once you understand the principle behind kindergarten bitboards, magic bitboards start to make more sense. It's basically a more clever way of indexing into a precomputed move table, that takes advantage of the redundancy in occupancy states, and requires even fewer instructions to determine the index. Although it does still feel kinda magic!