🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Apr 17, 2015 05:00 PM UTC:
First, what you're calling flexible castling here is similar to but not identical to what I called flexible castling in Grotesque Chess. I defined it as moving two or more spaces toward the rook with the Rook moving to the space adjacent to the King on the other side. Your description of flexible castling differs from this by allowing the King to also move one space. One problem with this from a programmer's perspective is that the King's movement alone is no longer sufficient to indicate whether a move is a castling move. If a King moves one space to the side, it might be a castling move or an ordinary move. Perhaps this could be handled by making castling a Rook move. But no, that won't work either. I suppose the best solution is to handle it as a King move when it is two spaces or more and to handle it as a Rook move when it is one space, in this case moving the Rook to the King's space, which would then automatically shift the King over.
Second, it is unclear whether a King can castle with Rooks in the back rank. You say there are seven castling positions to choose from, which would be true if the King were on the back rank, but on the second rank, where the Rooks are closer to the King, there are only five.
First, what you're calling flexible castling here is similar to but not identical to what I called flexible castling in Grotesque Chess. I defined it as moving two or more spaces toward the rook with the Rook moving to the space adjacent to the King on the other side. Your description of flexible castling differs from this by allowing the King to also move one space. One problem with this from a programmer's perspective is that the King's movement alone is no longer sufficient to indicate whether a move is a castling move. If a King moves one space to the side, it might be a castling move or an ordinary move. Perhaps this could be handled by making castling a Rook move. But no, that won't work either. I suppose the best solution is to handle it as a King move when it is two spaces or more and to handle it as a Rook move when it is one space, in this case moving the Rook to the King's space, which would then automatically shift the King over.
Second, it is unclear whether a King can castle with Rooks in the back rank. You say there are seven castling positions to choose from, which would be true if the King were on the back rank, but on the second rank, where the Rooks are closer to the King, there are only five.