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Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.
Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.
I have now re-instated the buttons for selecting the second piece on the configurable 3-vs-1 Applet page. The fist piece will always the one specified by the URL, which is supposed to be the topic of the page. But the URL can specify the second piece through other=X in the query string, with a limited set of minors X. (And it will default to using a pair of identical pieces.) The user can then select another partner for the piece the page is about, from the repertoire offered by the buttons. (Which is pretty large.)
This pretty much finishes this configurable Applet page; I don't see any reason for letting the user change the board size. (Which can be configured through the URL, and would not be allowed to go above 10x10 anyway for capacity reasons.)
While adding checkmating info for most pieces in the Piececlopedia, I encountered some new mating patterns. (E.g. how an FAD can be used to checkmate in corners of the shade it is not on, or how lameness/sliding sometimes can allow mates that would be impossible with the corresponding unrestrained leaper. I could add these to the main 3-vs-1 Applet page, which already discusses the more common cases. But I wonder if it wouldn't be better to split up that page, to leave it purely for the 3-vs-1 Applet, and put the general theory in an independent article (to which it then refers). As it is the theory is already a bit hidden far down on the page, where people might never scroll.
The Applet page could use some enhancement anyway; the current one cannot do hoppers and bent (or ski) sliders. While the EGT code has already been upgraded to handle those. This is an interface issue, though. In the general 3-vs-1 Applet you must specify the pieces through the move-definition aid. I have no ideas on how this could be enhanced to allow specification of bent trajectories or hoppers. Perhaps there should be buttons in addition to the move-definition aid, similar to those on the configurable page, which could be used to select the most common hoppers and bent riders directly. (E.g. for the minors the Manticore, Osprey and Ski-Bishop moves.) Or perhaps better, to add such moves to the move set currently specified in the aid panel.