H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Nov 17, 2019 11:05 AM UTC:
The description of the Bishop conversion rule says this:
" for one of the bishops of the player, the first move made with this bishop must be of this special type. "
I take this sentence to mean that if one of the Bishops gets captured before it moves, the other cannot start with a normal move. This doesn't seem very sensible, though, so I am not sure whether my interpretation is correct.
Just to contribute my two cents: when you would keep one flag per Bishop to indicate whether it had been moved (or per square whether the original occupant is still there), which really should be considered a standard feature automatically kept track of in any chess variant, (considering how many variants endow pieces with virgin-only moves), the game state can be ancoded with only a single other flag per player, indicating whether a conversion has already taken place. The rule for a virgin Bishop is then merely that he cannot convert when a conversion was already done, and otherwise must convert when the other Bishops is not virgin (or, since the rule is only applied on a virgin Bishop, when not both Bishops are virgin). Note that the type of move (W or B) can be easily tested from the color of the square ((x ^ y) & 1 if you have separate x and y coordinates, nr*9 & 8 for 0-63 square numbering on an 8x8 board, nr & 1 on 0-71 square numbering on 9x8).
The description of the Bishop conversion rule says this:
" for one of the bishops of the player, the first move made with this bishop must be of this special type. "
I take this sentence to mean that if one of the Bishops gets captured before it moves, the other cannot start with a normal move. This doesn't seem very sensible, though, so I am not sure whether my interpretation is correct.
Just to contribute my two cents: when you would keep one flag per Bishop to indicate whether it had been moved (or per square whether the original occupant is still there), which really should be considered a standard feature automatically kept track of in any chess variant, (considering how many variants endow pieces with virgin-only moves), the game state can be ancoded with only a single other flag per player, indicating whether a conversion has already taken place. The rule for a virgin Bishop is then merely that he cannot convert when a conversion was already done, and otherwise must convert when the other Bishops is not virgin (or, since the rule is only applied on a virgin Bishop, when not both Bishops are virgin). Note that the type of move (W or B) can be easily tested from the color of the square ((x ^ y) & 1 if you have separate x and y coordinates, nr*9 & 8 for 0-63 square numbering on an 8x8 board, nr & 1 on 0-71 square numbering on 9x8).