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H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Jan 16, 2024 04:05 PM EST in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 02:29 PM:

When I compare what I get for my variants with what I had coded before, it is unbelievable.

Well, that is basically cheating. Most of the program is in an 'include file', and the first line you paste into the Pre-Game section instructs Game Courier to prefix the entire program in that file to the GAME code. The one-liners in the Post-Move and Post-Game sections merely tell Game Courier which part of that included program to run, (and which player should be considered on move).

The secret is that you can always run the same program, no matter what pieces you have on the board. This is because of what the program does is controlled by tables, which for each piece type tell it how it can move (i.e. with which steps, and how many steps, and what must be in the destination square for the move to be valid). These are the tables you paste in the Pre-Game section; in the big table every line describes a range, and x- and y-step, and the move modalities (capture, move, hop, initial etc., all the XBetza stuff). The universal program just looks to the board for finding a the next piece, and then looks in the table what that piece can do, and then tries that all (e.g. for highlighting), or just checks whether one of those is equal to the input move (for rule enforcement)..


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