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Comments by FergusDuniho
Yáng Qí. Yankee ingenuity adds new power to Chinese Chess. (9x10, Cells: 90) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]In Shogi, there are three Generals. There is the Silver General, the Gold General, and the Jeweled General, which we normally call a King. So I think the Shogi name refers to the presence of Generals rather than to one specific General piece. But Sheng Qí is still a suitable name for name for Yáng Qí. I might have thought to use it if I hadn't already named the game before deciding on a Chinese name for the Bishop.
Shogi. The Japanese form of Chess, in which players get to keep and replay captured pieces. (9x9, Cells: 81) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Does anyone know what the relative piece values are for the pieces in Shogi? I am currently working on updating my Shogi ZRF, and I would like to tweak the piece values to approximate what they should be.
As the script stands right now, piece values are falling into approximately what Michael Howe suggests. Two Gold Generals have a value between the value of a Bishop and the value of a Rook. A Lance plus a Knight is worth around the same as a General, though Zillions values a Lance more than twice as much as a Knight. In a previous script, Zillions valued the Gold General almost as much as the Bishop, and the new script was able to beat it. But since the old script inflated its value with redundant code, it could have lost from having to use more processor time, rather than from valuing the Gold General too much. But in observing the game while mediating between two runs of Zillions, its overvaluing of the Gold General did seem to be a liability.
King Battler. King usually moves as a queen.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The advantage is that the game is less drawish than it would be with royal Kingriders. It's a prisoner's dilemma kind of advantage. There is no advantage to the player to have a King Battler rather than a Kingrider. But there is an advantage for both players when the game uses royal King Battlers instead of royal Kingriders.
Shogi 
. Optimized ZRFs for Japanese Chess and some recent variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I have just uploaded the beta version of a major new update to my Shogi ZRF. It includes more optimizations. It requires Zillions of Games 2.0. And most importantly, it can now use different tunings of piece values. I have discovered a technique for adjusting piece values, and I have used it to create settings with different piece values. This is a beta release, because I have not yet settled on which set of piece values is the best. This requires lots of testing, and I thought some of you may be interested enough to help find out. If you have ever wondered what the most accurate piece values are for Shogi pieces, this ZRF now gives you the opportunity to run experiments on different hypotheses. Please use this comment area as a forum to discuss the results of your experiments and tests with this ZRF.
I just updated the Shogi ZRF again. I added a new tuning. This is tuning #7, which currently stands at second place. The first place tuning is currently #1, and #5 is coming in third. My ZRF avoids bogus moves as much as possible. To raise the value of pieces that can be dropped, it merely splits drops between the King and the piece. Giving drops to the piece increases its value, but having the King handle its drops does not. To increase the value of other pieces, I give them a measured amount of drops. These drops could be used if they showed up in-hand, but they never do. For optimization, I use directions instead of zones to check whether a piece is in-hand. I use up and down for in-hand areas, but I avoid using these directions on the main board.
Who nominated Double Chess? All you have provided here is a quotation from its inventor, and there is a rule in place against inventors nominating their own games.
While I prefer Hostage Chess to Chessgi, it may still be appropriate to include Chessgi as a recognized variant at some time. What I wonder about is whether Chessgi or Crazyhouse is more popular. I know that some PBM sites include Crazyhouse play, and this game is very similar to Chessgi but slightly different.
Shogi. The Japanese form of Chess, in which players get to keep and replay captured pieces. (9x9, Cells: 81) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]My computer and I may be setting the record for the longest Shogi game ever. Actually, it might be a never-ending game. It began with a game my Shogi ZRF was playing against Shocky 2.05. Zillions thought it foresaw a loss in two moves, then proceeded to lose against Shocky. But I thought it was wrong in its judgement. So after the game ended, I went back a couple moves, switched sides, then played against Zillions the side Zillions had been playing against Shocky. I continued the game several more moves, until I saw that the game was very drawish. I had moved my King to the opposite side of the board, where I kept it well protected. Zillions had more pieces and had moved its King beyond my reach. So I turned both sides over to the computer and let it run all night. When I looked at the game in the morning, over 1400 turns had passed, and it was as drawish as ever. Both Kings were on opposite sides of board, all promotable pieces were promoted, and both Kings were very well guarded. I let the game continue while I went to work. Over 2200 turns had passed, and it was still very drawish. I then shut it off and saved the ZSG. I may continue the game later to see if it ever has a resolution.
The game finally ended yesterday. In the hope that it might cause one side to make enough mistakes to lose, I let Zillions continue the game with only one second thinking time for each side. White checkmated Black on the 10,065th move.
Voidrider Chess. A 43 square variant with movable spaces. (7x9, Cells: 43) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Thanks for your praise of my game. I agree that being unoriginal isn't necessarily a bad thing, though I don't agree that it is unoriginal. One of my design goals for this game was to avoid repeating what I had already done. Compare Voidrider Chess to my previous games, and you will find that I have never made another game like it. When you speak of the other games that use the ideas of this game, what you say is misleading. Although Voidrider Chess draws inspiration from several other games, it is a novel synthesis of different ideas that, to my knowledge, have not all been united in one game before.
As I mentioned in the introduction, Amoeba is one of the games that inspired this game. The idea that you would accuse me of using ideas I did not originate myself is silly. What I mean is that it is silly to make an accusation out of it, as though it is a bad thing. Although I consider originality to be an important design goal, I do not consider originality so precious that I would pass up on the good ideas of others just to make sure my game was completely original. Indeed, my art has frequently been the art of synthesis.
Fusion Chess. Variant in which pieces may merge together or split apart. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Fusion Chess was preceded by Sentai Chess, a Power Rangers inspired variant in which every type of piece could combine into one mega-piece. Even though the most basic Sentai pieces were weaker than Chess pieces, the mega-piece was capable of checkmating a King on its own. Overall, Sentai Chess was not that good a game. Based on similar ideas, Fusion Chess was a considerable improvement over Sentai Chess. One of the main improvements came from limiting fusions to two basic pieces. Besides this, I have regularly found that the Amazon is too powerful of a piece. It hurts gameplay, and I normally avoid using it in any of my games. If Fusion Chess allowed fusion to an Amazon, it would be a worse game. Likewise, a Multi-fused King would be too difficult to checkmate. British Chess sat on the shelf for a couple years until I figured out how to make the royal Queen more checkmatable. Nevertheless, multiple fusions might not hurt the gameplay of something like Metamorphin' Fusion Chess, Thunder Chess, or Bedlam. For in these games, the Metamorph Chess rules would turn any multiply-fused piece that makes a capture into the piece it just moved as. This would limit the destructive capability of such pieces. But even so, the Amazons would be more menacing, and the mutiply-fused Kings would be harder to checkmate. Actually, a Thunder Chess variant might not work, for the Metamorph capturing rules and the Assimilation capturing rules would conflict. One compromise between them would be for a compound piece to convert to the simple piece it moved as whenever it could not assimilate the piece it was capturing. I may try to implement all-out fusion versions of these during the summer.
Outer Space Chess. Space-themed game with hyperspace and regular space boards. (2x(5x8), Cells: 43) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Zillions of Games is not cheesy software. It is an invaluable tool for designing, testing, and sharing Chess variants.
You can't design a game with Zillions of Games without doing computer programming. So I presume you are misinformed about how this program is used. I'm curious about your claim that one can use math to develop Chess variants. Perhaps you would be kind enough to explain how this is done. In the meantime, let me explain how Zillions of Games is used for developing games. The first step is to describe the rules in a Zillions Rules File using a special macro language for describing rules. The next step is to provide graphics. One may use the graphics that come with Zillions, graphics created by oneself, or graphics created by others. It enables playtesting in three ways. You may play against the computer, you may have the computer play against itself, or you may play against a human opponent online. Having the computer play both sides is useful for testing for defects that are most apparent between equally strong opponents, such as testing whether a game is drawish or unbalanced. Zillions is also good for getting nice diagrams to illustrate a web page on the rules.
Asteryx Chess. Hexagonal chess played on an asterisk-shaped board. (Cells: 43) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I've created a preset for Asteryx Chess, so that it may be played by email. But the preset does not use the same set of coordinates as shown in the diagram for this game. Instead, it uses the standard coordinate system that is built into the PBM for hexagonal boards. To find out what coordinate a space is, let the mouse hover over the middle of the space. The coordinate should show up in the ALT text that appears next to the mouse cursor.
Thanks for pointing that out. I have now corrected the positions of the Bishop and Pawn.
Hexagonal chess - names of squares. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The coordinates used for Glinski's Hexagonal Chess are not standard for other games using the same board. I'm sure these coordinates were chosen without any thought given to what kind of standard should be used for hexagonal boards in general. In Game Courier, I provide one standard that people might choose to use. It treats a hexagonal board as a cut-out from a parallelogram-shaped hex board with 60 and 120 degree corners, and standard coordinates are given to each hex in the parallelogram. Game Courier's Developer's Guide gives details.
Message edited 06/18/2010 to refer to Game Courier instead of the PBM.
Contest to design a chess variant on 43 squares. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I'm hoping to see ZRFs for more of these games. Some of them can't be handled by the PBM, and many have not been implemented for Zillions. Without the ability to play them with or over the computer, I may not have the opportunity to play some of these games. I might then have to rely on evaluating games without playing them. I expect to do most of my evaluation of games during the last week of May, since I will be grading until then, and I will be teaching a summer course during June.
Alfil. Jumps two diagonally. Arabic for the elephant.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]If the King is on a corner space of a regular Chess board, it will take four Alfils to checkmate a King. Three will cover the spaces surrounding the King, and the fourth will check the King. Since the King cannot reach it, it will not need protection. If the King helps in the checkmate of an enemy King, only two Alfils will be required for checkmate. For example, with no other pieces on the board, Black is checkmated with the Black King at a1, the White King at a3, and White Alfils at c3 and d3. The c3 Alfil checks the King, and the d3 Alfil prevents escape to b1.
Fusion Chess. Variant in which pieces may merge together or split apart. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Mao. Moves as knight but cannot jump.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]T. R. Dawson was using the name Mao before the communist revolution in China that made Chairman Mao known to the world. Dawson was not using Pinyin, and for all I know, the Mao spelling was correct in the system of transliteration he was using. But when I put 'ma' in a Chinese Romanization Converter on the web, I did not find the 'mao' spelling for it in any system. Odds are that Dawson was very careless about using Chinese names. He made up the name Vao to rhyme with Pao, and he may have wanted to carry on the rhyming gimmick with Mao. To a westerner who doesn't know any better, the Mao spelling would suggest a closer relation with the name Pao for the Cannon. It would also distinguish it from the English word 'Ma,' which means mother.
King Battler. King usually moves as a queen.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Your comments on the Queen in British Chess, what you call a royal Kingrider, are inaccurate. A Queen may never check the other Queen. The restrictions on the Queen's movement do not hold when one Queen could attack the other. If two Queens ever did oppose each other across an empty line, which is an impossible situation in British Chess, either one could freely capture the other no matter what pieces guarded spaces in between.
I spotted another inaccuracy regarding the British Chess Queen. You said 'it can capture pieces checking it only if adjacent.' This does not hold for checks from the Dragon, which leaps every other space. When a Dragon checks the Queen from its closest checking position, which is two squares away, the Queen may capture it when the intervening space and the Dragon's own space are undefended.
Hans Bodlaender resigns as editor-in-chief. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I fully understand the need to step down. Like Hans, I'm also a professor, and it is a very demanding job. Hans did a terrific job in getting this website going, and I'm sure it's in very capable hands with David and Peter.
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