Mapped Chess

This is a rules file for Zillions of Games, a Windows program that will let you play any puzzle or strategy board game you can feed it the rules to. With Zillions-of-Games installed, this rules file will let you play this game against your computer.

This game is a mapping of my game cross3D (8x8x8, two sets, extended moves in 3D) on two boards played with a single set of chessmen.
The objective is to give a 'feeling' of 3D space while keeping it 'affordable' to common players.
Each boards represents whether odd or even levels (Board1 represents levels 1,3,5,7 and Board2 levels 2,4,6,8). 
Analysis reveals that pieces have almost twice as much moves, so that overall relative control of space is the same as in 2D.
Only the Queen is a bit weaker (only 3/4 of her influence in 2D).
The reason is that rook and bishop have common squares in the mapped domain.
The King has the same influence as in 2D, but is very mobile: he can't easily be trapped (but some proof games show it possible with a few pieces, as K+Q/K, K+2R/K, K+R+N/K, K+2B/K, K+N+B/K). 

Pieces movements:
King[K] steps orthogonal, diagonal or triagonal.
Queen[Q] slides orthogonal, diagonal or triagonal.
Bishop[B] slides diagonal on the same color.
Pawn[P] steps one vacant forward orthogonal or triagonal, or two on the first move, captures one forward diagonal.
Knight[N] leaps in a 2:1:0 type movement.
Rook[R] slides orthogonal or triagonal on alternate colors.

When mapped, the Bishop gets additional alternate orthogonal moves on each board, the Rook additional alternate diagonal moves owing to triagonal direction, as long as no piece is encountered, and Knight gets four additional orthogonal steps on current board, and also four additional orthogonal double moves on the other board.

Usual King castling, Pawns double initial step, en passant capture and promotion are allowed. But Pawns are not allowed to move (but may capture) in case at least one of the available position is occupied. 
The game is won by checkmating the opponent King.
The variant called "Mapped Chess Protect" adds initially on the empty Board Protective Pawns on top of the usual ones, which cannot move nor capture (but can be captured) in order to protect the Kings from direct "3D" attacks.

Download Instructions

Instructions on downloading this Zillions file:

• Download the .zip file
• Extract the contents of the .zip file to your Zillions of Games folder
• Be sure you have the "Use folder names" checkbox checked when you extract the files.