Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Jun 19, 2008 03:31 PM UTC:
'If the effort isn't too big' is a big if. Normal chess, Capablanca, FRC and CRC are similar enough not to cause too much trouble. Although I consider it already a nasty trait that some of the rules have to be implied by the board size, such as to which pieces a Pawn may promote. If a board width of 10 is taken to imply Chancellor and Archbishop are allowed, the problems with Janus Chess or Chancellor Chess I would consider already pretty bad. To unify those with Capablanca/CRC would require different letters for their Pawns. In Janus Chess you would have to indicate the deviating castling mode amongst the rights.

In the O-i-h system you would always be able to deduce if the K-side or Q-side rook is to be used by the ordering of the King and Rook destination? I guess we could indeed consider it a defining property of a castling that it swaps the order of King and Rook. I am not aware of any exceptions to this, even in FRC/CRC the King is required to be between the two Rooks. So I guess your system is acceptable for in the PGN, with the additional preference rule that if there is only one castling possible to the given side, it would be written as O-O or O-O-O.

The way the move is transmitted between engine and GUI in WB protocol is a matter specific to the WinBoard GUI. And WinBoard does generate the list of allowed moves itself, there is no way in WB protocol to request it from the engine. As this type of castling with multiple King and Rook destinations is about as crazy as they get, anticipating this format would probably enough to cover everything. Even the normal castling requires the GUI to recognize castlings, and know which Rook to move and where. (This caused problems when I had Fairy-Max play Cylinder Chess, as a King crossing the side edge was considered a castling, and led to the displacement of a second piece on the display board!) In fact, with the assumption that the relative orientation of King and Rook destination squares implies which Rook has to be used (and even if there are several Rooks on that side, only the one nearest to the King could be involved in castling), there is no need to convey any information in the 5th character other than that it is a castling. So an O here would be quite convenient, as promotion pieces have to be lower case in WB protocol.

For a really dumb interface (like my battle-of-the-Goth javascript viewer) it is necessary to fully specify from- and to-square of each piece that is moved separately. So there I transmit O-O as e1g1h1f1 and e4xf5 e.p. as e4f5e4f4.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Grotesque Chess

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.