Re: Chess engines for circular chess boards
Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:52 am
It's a dangerously addictive topic. Beware.RichV wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2019 10:36 pm Thanks for correcting me on the name of the piece that moves one space diagonally and then one space orthogonally. In its footnote, Wikipedia gave two examples of alternate move descriptions for the Knight, the first being diagonally then orthogonally and the second being orthogonally then diagonally. It only named the latter as being for the Xiangqi. When writing my last post, I missed the word “latter” and assigned the Xiangqi to the wrong move. Wikipedia did not mention the Ferz, which led to my confusion on the moves. I have never played the other ancient chess-like games, so I am unfamiliar with their pieces and moves. So I should have said….Harm’s Ferz move – one space diagonally and then one space orthogonally.
I would say that trying to run past an enemy soldier comes with the risk that said soldier takes a swing at you as you pass.I never have liked en-passant because it seems like a rule that goes against what would happen in medieval battle – if a warrior runs past an enemy warrior on the battlefield, the one being passed would not yell out an order “Hey, you did not give me a chance to kill you, so come back here and let me behead you with my sword.” He would surely only get a medieval gesture similar to the ‘bird’. I want to keep my games as true to a medieval war as I can.
As I said: your game, your rules. If you think en-passant is "in", it's "in". If you say it's out, it's out.However, I know that many chess purists feel that en-passant has a place in chess. That is why in my rules for Castle Siege Chess, I say that the players must agree at the beginning of the game whether or not they are going to use the en-passant rule. In the electronic version, I will make it a definite part of the game. The main audience for Castle Siege Chess is chess players, so I don’t want to create any friction with any of them by completely ignoring the en-passant rule.
Ah, I see. Yes, this is another case (beside the Knight move) where being very explicit about the rules and your own assumptions is important. To me, "castling as normal" is "the King moves two squares in the direction of the Rook, and then the Rook teleports to the other side of the King." Chess960 messes that up as "the King moves to g1/c1, and then the relevant Rook teleports to f1/d1" (not that it could do much better). Where other pieces are at the beginning of the game is irrelevant to what happens with the King and Rook.Your comment about my rule for castling is also good. I was trying to indicate that castling in Castle Siege Chess works as normal because for a King-side castle, the King move toward the Rook to the starting position of the Knight and then the Rook is moved over the King to the starting position of the Bishop, which are the same things that happen in traditional chess. And for the Queen-side castle, the King moves toward the Rook and is placed on the starting position of the Bishop and then the Rook is moved over the King to the starting position of the Queen, which also are the same ending positions in traditional chess. So I will take your advice and edit my rules castling description to hopefully be more clear.
Have you looked at http://www.chessvariants.org? It's a great place for inspiration and checking out how to concisely write down the rules as clearly as possible. As a suggestion for your website: I think examples of how pieces move on or near the triangular squares are important.
You're welcome. The board is interesting.So thanks Evert. I feel like you are helping a lot and I definitely appreciate it.
As Daniel said, the board is topologically equivalent to a cube with the corners sanded off (these are the triangular squares) and the direction of moves changes when passing from one patch to another (for instance, a pawn starting on c1 in your notation moves "forward", meaning along the great circle labelled 1, while a pawn starting on d4 in your notation moves "forward", meaning radially). Whether pawns move radially or along the circles depends on where they are in relation to the triangular squares. These are topological defects in the board, that add a sense of curvature. In a sense, they are similar to black holes that curve space (so if you wanted to re-theme your game in a sci-fi setting, you could).
Well, personally, I might be interested in writing an engine that can play this (I have one more week of easter break left, after that things will get intense until July or so, so no promises). That is to say, a program where you type the moves and it spits out a reply back at you. Not something that would work on-line or on a mobile device.For the past 4 years, I have been heavily play-testing my games at many chess clubs. The reception has been very good. Without any advertising, other than having an Etsy.com site, I have sold 54 games (including both online sales and in person sales). I starting to have a lot of confidence about eventually having a Kickstarter. But I think it is very important that I first have Castle Siege Chess playable online (or as a compter app that can also be played online). So there is still a lot of work to be done.