Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

There are two ways of interpreting the rules for this game. I think I know
which interpretation is correct, but it should be clarified. On one
interpretation, the powers of the captured piece are taken as those it
will have when it gets dropped by the player who captured it. On this
interpretation, a Pawn that captures another Pawn does not change its
powers of movement, a Rook that captures a Lance loses the ability to ride
forward, and a Gold General that captures a Silver General will move as a
Gold General in reverse. On the other interpretation, the powers of the
captured piece are taken as those it has prior to capture. On this
interpretation, a Pawn that captures another Pawn can now move one space
forward or backward, a Rook that captures a Lance loses the ability to
move backward, and a Gold General that captures a Silver General can move
diagonally backward, horizontally, or vertically forward.

I think the first interpretation is the correct one. The text mentions
putting the piece in hand (what it calls putting it on your bench) before
it mentions XORing the two pieces together. This interpretation also has
the advantage of requiring fewer different types of pieces. I think it
requires something on the order of 256 separate piece types, and the
second interpretation requires something on the order of 2048 separate
piece types. This assumes that I've counted the basic types of movement
accurately. The actual figures will be a bit less, since some
combinations, such as a Lance that can't move one space forward, won't
be included. But they are still high.

Making this into a ZRF or Game Courier preset would be long, tedious work.
Since neither ZRF nor GAME Code has the ability to XOR powers of movement,
each possible capture would have to be separately coded. I'm not
interested in taking the time to do this myself. But what I could do, if
someone else is interested in doing the rest, is to supply a set of
graphics. I can do this by writing a PHP script that automatically
generates diagrammatic pieces by coloring different sections of a standard
template. Maybe it could also mark the pieces with Betza's funny notation.

Shortly after waking up this morning, I realized how to program this game
for Game Courier. If it represents each piece by a number, it can XOR the
numbers together to determine what a piece changes to when it captures
another piece.  Also, instead of writing separate movement functions for
each piece, I can write a single subroutine, or maybe a function, that
handles all non-royal piece movement by checking the bits in the numbers
representing the pieces. Given this, the first thing to start with is to
identify the basic types of movement in this game. Each basic type of
movement is the largest group of possible moves that will always be found
together. More succinctly, what are the largest indivisible sets of moves
in this game? Here's what I identify.

Forward Vertical Leap

Horizontal or Backward Vertical Leaps
Forward Diagonal Leaps
Backward Diagonal Leaps

Forward Vertical Ride of 2+ spaces
Horizontal or Backward Vertical Rides of 2+ spaces
Diagonal Rides of 2+ spaces

Forward Knight Leaps

Since every piece can leap one space vertically forward, the forward
vertical leap doesn't have to be identified by a bit. Seven sets remain,
giving a total of 128 possible pieces. I have separated these into three
groups. There is a group for one space leaps, a group for riding moves,
and a group for Knight leaps. This is to accomodate octal representation
of the piece numbers. Base 8 has the advantage over base 10 of every digit
always having the same meaning in the same place. It shares this advantage
with base 2 and base 16, but it strikes a better balance than either of
these between being easy to decode (as base 2 is) and being easy to
identify (as base 16 is). The computer doesn't care what base the pieces
are represented in, but using octal numbers will better enable humans to
use the numbers as mnemonics for remembering how pieces move. Accordingly,
each piece would get an octal number, ranging from 0 for a Pawn to 177 for
a piece that can move as a Queen or a Shogi Knight. The usual Shogi pieces
would be Pawn 0, Lance 10, Knight 100, Silver General 6, Gold General 3,
Bishop 46, and Rook 33.

wow, your really 'out there' blackie, trippy game, well done. 
(probably the 2 ratings you got were a bit premature, so lets *bump* it)

I have now completed a set of pieces for Xorix Shogi. Contrary to the plans
I gave earlier, I used hexadecimal instead of octal and rearranged the
bit-order of the powers of movement. Details are on the page for the
pieces:

http://www.chessvariants.org/graphics.dir/xorixshogi/index.html

I plan to work on a preset tomorrow.

Very interesting idea!

You may probably better explain XOR for those who are not computer-savvy.

I'll try to summarize the XOR equation.  

If the capturing piece is A, the captured piece is B and the result is C,
then the formula will be expressed as A (+) B = C.

Thus:

If A = 0 and B = 0 then C = 0.
If A = 1 and B = 0 then C = 1.
If A = 0 and B = 1 then C = 1.
If A = 1 and B = 1 then C = 0.

0 represents the absence of a particular form of move, while 1 represents
the presence of the same.

A possible shorter form is to say that if a particular form of move is
present in one of the pieces, but not both, it will be present in the
capturing piece.  If a particular form is present in both pieces, it will
NOT be present in the capturing piece.

Then again, there really might be no simple way to explain. So the game
may be relegated to those who are already aware of its dynamics.

I have been developing a 15x15 Shogi game for the past two years.  It was
put on a back burner because there was really nothing special about.  But
the idea of applying boolean equations has now tweaked my imagination, 
and I may work this into the game. In that case, I might make it a 16x16 
game. ;-)

Larry, the text says the game is played the same as Shogi except as the
additional rules change it. The first rule concerns promotions. It says
that when a piece promotes, it gains the power to move one space
orthogonally. The text is ambiguous on what this means. I take it to mean
that a piece gains the powers of movement of a Wazir. More precisely, it
gains the power to move one space horizontally or vertically backward,
since all pieces can already move one space vertically forward. Using the
piece scheme I designed, this would be the result of ORing a piece's
number with 2.

The text here is ambiguous on one more point. It doesn't say which pieces
can promote. One interpretation is that only pieces corresponding to the
promotable Shogi pieces can promote. But I don't make this
interpretation. My interpretation is that any piece that cannot already
move as a Wazir can promote.

If I may clarify Larry Smith's clarification: When one piece captures 
another, the capturing piece gets all the captured piece's moves, except 
for those it already had, which it loses instead.  It's a bit of 
a 'toggle' if you will.

I tried to say that almost immediately after this game was posted but for 
some reason the comment system decided it hated me.

1. 9g-9f 
1... 7c-7d 
2. 5i-5h 
2... 8a-7c 
3. 8g-8f 
3... 2c-2d 
4. 8i-9g 
4... 8b-5b 
5. 7g-7f 
5... 5c-5d 
6. 6g-6f 
6... 5d-5e 
7. 5g-5f 
7... 5e-5f 
8. 4g-4f 
8... 5f-5g 
9. 5h-5i