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H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Feb 24, 2024 08:04 AM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from Fri Feb 23 10:36 PM:

Thing is, when I try it in the Sandbox, it does allow moves parallel to the edge (which you've already noted yourself).

Not for me. Except in the corner, but that is because it is then perpendicular to the other edge. But oabyafK wouldn't move from a2 to a7, like an Edge Hog should have.

[oW-bW-aQ] is translated into oabyaW, which also does allow moves parallel to the edge, as well as not allowing diagonal moves.

It does allow move along the edge because it was supposed to move along the edge: there is no f in the final leg (and an a in the bracket notation). But yes, it is wrongly translated. Bracket notation is not really supported yet by the ID. The only thing that is guaranteed to work is slider after some not-to-far leaps, to work for Griffon, Manticore and Ospray, and with some rider steps in the second leg. With more than 3 legs it is basically a coincidence if it works, especially when the legs use different atoms: XBetza is based on the use of a single atom, and the code only worries about making the atoms in the first two legs compatible.

vvssoabyaK has the same result as the first one.

Again, not for me. This one can move from a2 to a7 (as intended). It does give the correct Edge Hog moves (for an Edge Hog on an edge square). If you try that move in the Play-Test Applet and generate GAME code, you can see that the legdefs array contains only 28 moves for the Queen, so there are no duplicats. (Testing in 4 different directions, each followed by 7 different 3rd-leg continuations.) Except in a corner, where two of the test steps would go off board, and would then continue in 3 different ways each.

Of course it is still stupid: of the 7 continuations the two diagonally backwards are guaranteed to also go off board, and would always be attempted in vain. So it would be better to write vvssoabyassfhK. This limits the continuations in the 3rd leg (after orthogonally stepping back on board) to sideway (along the edge) and forward-half, 5 instead of 7. Indeed the GAME code only puts 20 moves in legdefs, for that case.

I can accept that as a line of reasoning, though it'd be much more "natural" if there was a way to enter it other than opening the raw code and typing it in by hand (which is sadly open to typos and other errors).

Well, the Play-Test Applet 2.0 allows you to do that, right?

The oflabaoslabaofly sequence I suggested was supposed to test forward left, forward right, and backward of the desired move ...

Note that a move only succeeds if all its legs meet the specified target. So what you write here only succeeds if you get off board in all directions. Which would be  the case on a 1x1 board, but there the entire test would be redundant.


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