Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I have never really like the rule that the Joker needs to be dropped within X turns, so I am happy to see it go.  I do not think white's first move needs compensation.  In a game this complex I think it is unlikely that will be the deciding factor.

This new setup is ok, but I agree with Thor that it looks a little unusual.  The King's position is off center with nothing beside him.  He looks lonely and the queen is way off to the side.  But this minor estetic is probably not too important.

Other posibilities - not sure how much they simplify the programming - leave the board as it was and either (a) have the joker drop in automatically at the first opportunity, or (b) there is no turn limit to dropping him.

I agree with Greg. White's opening advantage is likely to be a deciding factor mainly between equally skilled players who are both expert at the game. This will rarely be the case for Chess variants, which are more often than not played between people who have little experience at the game. Also, this game is bigger than Chess, and that also makes it less likely that White's opening advantage will be a deciding factor. As long as your game does nothing to increase the significance of White's opening advantage, it should be okay for you to do nothing else about it. Mainly, make sure all the Pawns are protected in the opening setup, so that neither player begins with a vulnerability that White might be able to exploit faster. Also, placing Jokers on the board gives Black the ability to move his Joker first, which is itself a slight advantage for Black.

@Thor,Greg&Fergus

Thanks guys for your thoughts on the matter.

So the crux of the matter it is that the dropping of the joker is not needed but the initial position should be given further consideration. What about then adding another brouhaha square for the joker? This would mean a champion more to the side. King in it's original position. King keeps special initial moves.

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/diagram-designer.php?submit=Update&code=---wcjwc--%2Fr8r%2F1abngknbq1%2Fpppppppppp%2F10%2F10%2F10%2F10%2FPPPPPPPPPP%2F1ABNGKNBQ1%2FR8R%2F---WCJWC--&shape=square&scale=100&group=Apothecary+Chess&set=apothecary-standard&files=a+b+c+d+e+f+g+h+i+j+&ranks=0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11&font=Verdana&point=12&cols=10&board=23.10.01.10.01.10.01.10.01.10.01.32.&colors=339933+CCCC11+DD99DD+FFBBFF&bcolor=111199&tcolor=EEEE22&bsize=16&bgimage=maple-walnut.png&nextfile=50+0&nextrank=0+50

Simplicity is a hallmark of elegance. So I think it is in general better to not use several completely different mechanisms for introducing pieces on the board. Use gating, dropping or brouhaha squares, but then stick to the method of choice.

Of course a question could be: why use any of these at all? What does it add to the game that some of the pieces start on brouhaha squares? They still have to make the first move as if the brouhaha square was a normal board square, so for the pieces themselves it makes no difference. One uses brouhaha squares to prevent distortion of the board regularity, which could interfere with checkmating abilities as these are on rectangular boards, such as the Omega-Chess Wizard squares do. So you can create room for extra pieces without side effects on the board.

But why would you want to create any extra room at all, if you already have so many empty squares on the back rank, in your initial setup?

@Greg & Thor: I used that same 'lonely King' setup in Elven Chess. I did not consider it odd at all. Why would you want the King to start in the front line? This way you have free castling paths immediately, so you don't have to worry about evacuating non-jumping pieces to clear the path, and destroying the Pawn shield in the process.

@HG,

Withouht the brouhaha squares the wizard may quickly capture powerfull pieces in the opening. That was the initial idea but it does not work! Also, this way rooks stay conected.

Well, it delays their development one move, as they can use their F step to move to first rank. Disconnecting the Rooks in the process...

What is the use of giving the Rooks a free rank if you cannot castle with them anyway? Rooks have to move to (half-)open files, and it will take you quite some time before any such file arises, with not only a full rank of Pawns in front of them, but also a rank filled with pieces. By the time a better place to put a Rook emerges, the Wizards and Champions would hardly ever be in the first two ranks or on the brouhaha squares, no matter where you start them.

If you are considering to have pieces on the first rank with the rooks, there is also another option.

As long as it is not a major programming problem to add or subtract brouhaha squares, then you could consider having only 3 brouhaha's, moving EITHER the champions up to e1 and f1, OR the wizards up to somewhere on the first rank, could also be c1 and h1, for example. You will of course always have a asymmetrical set-up with the odd number of pieces, so with 1 pair of either wizards or champions, then you just have to decide if you want the joker 'king-side' or 'queen-side' on the 3 brouhaha squares.

I agree with all the insightful thoughts of H.G.Muller, and I think ELVEN CHESS looks very nice, and it does not have that 'odd look' at all, probably in Aurelian's new set up it was because of the 4  brouhaha squares below the 'lonely King'. 

@HG,

That one turn delay makes the game possible, and quite fun in my experience! These principles came up from 4 years of testing with human players!

@Thor,

Programming the brouhaha squares in game code is quite easy. In C++ or another language for an engine I'm not sure!

Oh sure, that would be very easy as well. An efficient way to representthe board is by an array much larger than the board itself, and surround a board-sized central area by unmovable and uncapturable 'boundary guard' pieces. Then moves that stray off board will be automatically rejected by the code that prevents capture of your own pieces, without having to test whether it ended on the board proper. So all you do is when a brouhaha square is evacuated, not set it to the code for an empty square but to one for a boundary guard. You could do that by replacing the statement board[fromSqr] = 0; in the MakeMove() routine by board[fromSqr] = shadow[fromSqr]; where the 'shadow' array can be initialized to indicate which squares revert to empty, and which to boundary.

Perhaps I should support brouhaha squares in the Interactive Diagram. It already recognizes the special piece type 'hole', which can used to place boundary guards on the board. (Usually as edge fillers to implement non-rectangular boards, such as for Omega Chess.) I could als have it recognizepiece type 'brouhaha', and use that to place hole on the shadow board instead of the regular one.

The last thing I'd like to consider is that I'd like to try an unseen to my knowledge type of symmetry. The jokers will fill a place in the brouhaha squares but mirroring the center of the board like in mirror symmetry while the rest of the pieces have regular symmetry. This has the advantage of populating the board in a balanced way (as many pieces on both sides of the board), although one player will have a king side minor advantage while the other will have a non-king side minor advantage. I'd like to call this twist symmetry. Twist symmetry would mean that  we split the pieces of one side in two so that one part has mirror symmetry to the opponent while the other has regular symmetry. This concept resembles the mathematical concept of Chiral symmetry but I'm not sure about a proof that it is the same thing.

 https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/diagram-designer.php?submit=Update&code=---jww----%2Fr3cc3r%2F1abngknbq1%2Fpppppppppp%2F10%2F10%2F10%2F10%2FPPPPPPPPPP%2F1ABNGKNBQ1%2FR3CC3R%2F----WWJ---&shape=square&scale=100&group=Apothecary+Chess&set=apothecary-standard&files=a+b+c+d+e+f+g+h+i+j+&ranks=0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11&font=Verdana&point=12&cols=10&board=23.10.01.10.01.10.01.10.01.10.01.32.&colors=339933+CCCC11+DD99DD+FFBBFF&bcolor=111199&tcolor=EEEE22&bsize=16&bgimage=maple-walnut.png&nextfile=50+0&nextrank=0+50 

I'm sorry, I had not looked at your set-up with 5 brouhaha squares with the Joker in the middle. I have now. And it looks great. So forget my latest mainly nonsensical comment. I don't quite understand about the pieces you want to twist symmetrically, and the link doesn't seem to work. But if you want even more game testing, you are very welcome to send me an invitation (ID: Slavensky) for the 5 brouhaha square set-ups with or without twisted symmetry (if you have the time with all the testing of your new Grand Apothecary series).

I have updated and brushed up the article for this game and the preset now is in working order (here). Thanks to all of you out there contributing with thoughts and especially Fergus for the help with the preset. Have fun guys!

@Thor

I had sent you an invitation with the new preset.

Hi Aurelian, I really like to try out the new set-up, as I said it looks like very 'game-logical' with the Joker in the middle and the auxillary pieces nicely spread around it.. But I cannot open the invitation, I can't find the accept buttom, it just says, that it's your turn to move. Would you try again, or should I send an invitation to you ? 

Hello Thor,

I have sent 2 general invitations 1 for each game. It should work.

Considerring the arguments made by Jean-Louis Cazeaux I have changed the names of 2 of the pieces to my original intent so the griffin and aanca became dragon and griffin (meaning the aanca is called griffin now).

Can I do the following changes to the apothecary: standard piece set?

I'd like to be able sometime myself because in the near future I hope to come up with some other new games.

Add a dragon (with the letter D) 

Delete the Bird

Rename the AB to A  the CA to L and the CH to H

@Fergus,

I have noticed that I forgot to ask you how to restrict the king's special moves to when the king is not in check. May you give me a final extra hand for this project?

The preset is here : https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Apothecary+Chess-Modern&settings=ApothecaryChess-Modern

Considerring the arguments made by Jean-Louis Cazeaux I have changed the names of 2 of the pieces to my original intent so the griffin and aanca became dragon and griffin (meaning the aanca is called griffin now).

This seems a very bad change, and it also seems you misunderstood the arguments of Jean-Louis. For one, Griffin is the established English name for an F-then-R, and it would be very confusing to now use it for another piece. Jean-Louis never claimed the Griffin would be a suitable name for the W-then-F; only that Aanca was the historic name of the F-then-R, and that it would be bad to use it on another piece. And that Aanca referred to a monstrous mythical bird for which no English name exists.

And you now use the image of a Griffin for a piece called Dragon, and the image of a bird for a piece called Griffin...

The castle subroutine contains these lines:

  move #to #from; // Temporarily undo King move
  if sub checked #from:
    die A King may not castle out of check.;
  endif;

And before it ends, it includes this line:

  move #from #to; // Redo King move

@HG,

I will be changing the pictures once I figure out how.

For now you can use the symbolic apothecary piece set.

I had tried the following in the postmove section 1 but with little succes:

if flag f2 and == moved K:
move $dest $origin; // Temporarily undo King move
  if sub checked $origin:
    die A King may not castle out of check.;
  endif;
move $origin $dest;
endif;

You had this code before it. You should be able to see how it would stop your other code from working.

if == moved K: 
  unsetflag f2;
  set Kpos $dest;
endif;