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I modified a line on your logfile. It now refers to the previous preset ($settings='Galacticnocheck' instead of $settings='Galactic'). But even that preset won't allow a King to stay behind a non-adjacent fellow piece when both are threatened by a (Long-) Leaper.
Well, in any event, I'm glad you returned it back to the original.
How much work would it take to modify the Ultima preset to allow the Withdrawer to engage in additional withdrawals (in different directions, of course) if it ends up (fortuitously enough) in a square adjacent to an enemy piece that so situated it is subject to capture by the Withdrawer? This kind of a change would make the Withdrawer considerably more powerful than it is right now. Allowing 'bonus' withdrawals would, if implemented, make the piece enjoying that power a 'Multi-Withdrawer' (similar to the Multi-Leaper that is already part of the Preset). That may not be too important in an 8x8 version of Baroque (like Ultima), but in 9x9 and 10x10 versions with more pieces, and necessarily more Withdrawers, it could make the game that much deeper to ponder. Innovations along those lines *would* make it more difficult to calculate when a King is in check, but that's something I think I could live with.
This preset doesn't check for anything and should let you enter any move. But it would take too much time to write a move-verifying preset for uncommon subvariants.
Well, that's why the Presets shouldn't attempt to verify check,
checkmate, or stalemate. Let the players look at the diagram, and decide
for themselves whether the proper score is available to them. (And in
Ultima, a stalemate ought to count as 2/3 - 1/3 instead of 1/2-1/2, but
that kind of a change would probably screw up your rating system.)
And considering the large number of chess variants being discussed or developed at this website (with or without some other kind of 'real world' non-Internet avenue of promotion available to it), I can certainly understand why you'd find it a daunting matter to spend time on something you don't really spent much time playing, as it presumably involves a lot of spaghetti code that needs to be given a good looking at.
So, if that new Preset you mentioned allows players to type in anything they want, maybe it could be used for a variant of Ultima where a Withdrawer is given the honor of additional captures?
Yes, since you'll have to enter all the captures yourself anyway (either with an @ preceding the position of the captured piece or a minus sign following the position of the captured piece, say W b2-b4; b1-; W b4-c4; a4- or L b2-b7; @-b3; @-b5. But if your rules differ too much from Ultima as it is usually played here, perhaps you should modify the above preset yourself with the Edit command and enter a slightly different name for the game, such as Ultima with augmented Withdrawers, so that it gets listed separately.
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