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Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Dec 13, 2022 06:50 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 06:30 PM:

I think that there is no escaping to accept that it will always be possible to construct pieces with such complex moves that a move diagram, no matter how advanced, will be more confusing than helpful.

I completely agree with this.  And I think that 99% of the time the digram tells the story.  And exceptions to this are usually called out prominently in the rules.  (Perhaps we should bold the statements that are especially important to supplementing the diagram.)

The Diagram treats cases llike the Elk as two pieces. There is an 'Elk (light)' and an 'Elk (dark)', which are treated as different piece types, which morph/promote to each other. So  you can summon a move diagram for each of those, without the need to move them around. Likewise, in Xiangqi you would have a 'Soldier (crossed)' and a 'Soldier (own half)'.

Yes, I knew this but called it out anyway because this is an important distinction.  ChessV also considers the Elks two types that change as they move, but I'm not sure how I'd handle the Xiangqi Soldier.  I think I'd view that more as how a pawn can move two spaces if on the starting rank.  But I think, in the context of this conversation, it's important to keep this dichotomy in mind.  We can go one of two ways and the choice we make dramatically affects how the diagram will operate.  In the case of Elk Chess, the author of the page did not describe them as two separate piece types.  If we diagram them as different types because it's easier, we have already deviated from the written description of the game.  (That said, for implementation purposes, that may well be the best way to go.  In the Elk Chess case, by making them different types, the icon of the piece changes when it moves so the player can see how it moves on the given square without having to think about it, so I think this was the correct decision.)

If one rally wants to have separate move diagrams for a 5th-rank King, the ID can provide that: you just have to define 'King (5th rank)' as a separate piece type from 'King', and make King oromote to 'King (5th rank)' when it reaches 5th rank, and the other way around when it reaches 4th rank. I don't think that would be particularly illuminating, though. Writing a sentence "the King is confined to the 3x3 Palace" right under the clickable list would be much clearer. I would prefer such a warning for every case where the normal move diagram would not tell the whole story.

I agree with this 100%. I've been working on this exact solution for ChessV -- identifying all the situations where the diagram doesn't tell the whole story and providing a simple explanation.


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