Check out Balbo's Chess, our featured variant for October, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Jul 15 06:42 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 05:01 PM:

True, a special 'inherit directions from square' modifier (say '?' as 'a' is already taken) would allow a very elegant move description in Smess-like games. But that is really a very specific case. In Elk Chess the Elk moves as a Rook or as a Knight, depending on the color of the square it is on, and the square property would have to encode more than just a direction. A Querquisite moves as the piece that started in the rank it is in, so it can move like many different pieces. Gerd Degens has recently submitted many variants that have location-dependent moving: Avatar, (where there is only one type of piece next to the royal King, which can move like any orthodox Chess piece in a pattern that is scattered over the board), Bull's Eye (where pieces in the 4 central squares move as Amazon). He also had a variant (I forgot the name) where on some squares pieces keep the move of the square they came from. This is an awful lot like promotion, as on the same square a piece could now have different moves. So the move the pieces have on a square can no longer be a square property.

In Kyoto Shogi the piece type toggles on every move, with as a result that you often reach the same square in either of the two forms, or return to the same square flipped. So the move depends on history rather than on a square property. But the move change does not have the permanence we associate with promotion. A mapping (micro-type, square) -> new micro-type can still perfectly describe all the mentioned behaviors. In micro-Shogi the pieces only flip when they capture, so there a mapping (mover micro-type, destination square, occupant thereoff) -> new micro-type is needed. But that is a very poweful way of describing things. For a given square that mapping of (mover micro-type, destination occupant) -> new micro-type could be considered a (rather complex) 'property' of that square.

I don't think that 'conceptually' really means much. As far as I am concerned game rules are an abstract mathematical concept: a set of game states acting as nodes of a directed graph that indicate the legal transistions between one game state and another. Where the game states imply the player who is going to decide which of the legal transitions out of the state will be taken, and game states without any exits are labeled with a game result. Any verbal description that unambiguously defines this graph is as good as any other, and concepts like turn, piece, move, cell, type are not more than personal preferences of the person or machine learning the game, to help him remember and apply the rules. Often different concepts are just rewording the same thing. One could for instance call micro-type also 'current move set of the piece', and it might sound much less abstract to some.


Edit Form

Comment on the page Storm the Ivory Tower

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.