Comments by MichaelNelson
I like the Evangelist piece name and I will experiment with triple compounds. The Knight-Camel-Bishop-Harvester quadruple compound would be strange a more than a little frightening. It covers more squares than the Amazon (aka the Terror), but unlike the Amazon, can't mate unassisted.
I have a name: Colorful Osmosis Chess. Colorful refers to the importance of color-bound and color-switching pieces while osmosis is a synonym of absorption. I decided to not use triple and quadruple compounds. On the right of the King, the positions of the Bishop and Camel are reversed, thus using rotational symmetry as in Shogi rather than mirror symmetry as in FIDE Chess. This provides one Bishop and one Camel on each color. The absence of castling and promotion at the Pawn line rather than the back rank is also very Shogi-like.
I have a complete.zrf and should be able to submit as soon as I build the web pages. The game should be in the editor's hands tomorrow or the next day.
The North Wind would be an aggressive attacker with a good deal of forward forking power but relatively poor in retreating, while the South Wind is a rather nice defender but hasn't got much attack potential. Bob, do you feel like designing Four Winds Chess?
Colorful Osmosis Chess. All basic pieces are colorbound or colorwithching. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Colorful Osmosis Chess
. All basic pieces are colorbound or colorwithching and can create compounds. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]You're right of course, Bob. Should be interesting pieces, though. Perhaps a game where the winds are extinction royalty? I expect it will use a large board. I may try my hand at it myself in a a day or two.
Colorful Osmosis Chess. All basic pieces are colorbound or colorwithching. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Made a slight edit: Pawns may promote to basic or compound pieces. This shortens Z vs. Z games from averaging 100+ moves to 50-70, due to typically more aggressive play. Now King+Pawn vs.King is a win if the enemy King can't stop the Pawn. One will always choose a Cardinal in this case. But in more complex positions, other choices may work better.
Divergent Dreamers. Army for Chess with Different Armies where pieces can only move when it has a neighbour. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]You need to define what it means for a piece to travel. I assume it means "move without having a neighbor", but this should be specified.
Zillions of Games. It can play an endless variety of abstract board games, and we have a large collection of Chess variants you can play on it.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The Zillions user forum seems dead. I registered, but can't start a new topic.
I have the following move macro:
(define Mason-step ((verify (empty? $1))(create Stone) $1 add))
How do I turn this into a slide? All my attempts are generating pares errors.
I solved the Mason move by using single-step moves and add-partial.
The last piece I'm coding can push a line of pieces. This almost does what I want:
(define push ($1 (verify not-empty?) cascade (while (not-empty? $1) $1 cascade) $1 add))
But if the piece at the end of the line is at the edge of the board, I want to capture it (push it off the board). The above code disallows the move if the last piece is at the board's edge. I wonder if there is a solution using zones or dummy squares.
The piece is inspired by Nemeroth's Go Away (but it can only push one line at a time, and any effects of or on the pushed pieces are ignored).
Indeed, the whole game is inspired by Nemeroth, but on the whole, it's much simpler to code in Zillions. There is an unapproachable piece, a piece that turns the target square to stone (by a rifle-capture-like move), a piece that moves and captures as a king, a piece that lays down a line of stones, and so on. Stones do not move on their own but can be captured or pushed (a bit like ichor without the bookkeeping). Victory is by stalemate or opponent's repetition. There is no concept of compulsion or multiple-occupancy squares.
My game loses much of Nemeroth's peculiar flavor but is interesting in its own right. Pushing pieces of the board will make it complete. I will need to clean up the Zillions file and author a page.
This code works perfectly with correctly defined zones:
(define push-n (n (while on-board? (if empty? add (verify false))(if (in-zone? board-edge-n) add (verify false)) cascade n))) (define push-e (e (while on-board? (if empty? add (verify false))(if (in-zone? board-edge-e) add (verify false)) cascade e))) (define push-s (s (while on-board? (if empty? add (verify false))(if (in-zone? board-edge-s) add (verify false)) cascade s))) (define push-w (w (while on-board? (if empty? add (verify false))(if (in-zone? board-edge-w) add (verify false)) cascade w)))
The (verify false)'s are essential to stop move generation when the final square is found, otherwise, Zillions crashes. I decided to use rook-wise pushes to complement the piece's bishop-like move.
Colorful Osmosis Chess. All basic pieces are colorbound or colorwithching. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Need to post a board diagram and do some endgame studies.
Colorful Osmosis Chess. All basic pieces are colorbound or colorwithching. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I'll see what I can do with the Diagram Designer. I may need to add several images from other Alfaerie sets, Alfaerie 1 doesn't seem to include them.
Thanks, Lev for pointing that out. I will edit the page.
I see that the Alfaerie 1 set for Diagram Designer already has 26 pieces. How would it be possible to add a new piece?
Colorful Osmosis Chess . All basic pieces are colorbound or colorwithching and can create compounds. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I have been trying to add a description but the database won't update.
I have been trying to add a description but the database won't update.
I want this to display in What's New as "Inspired by the Game of Nemeroth" but it appears in the listings of my unpublished submissions as "Nemeroth Simplfied" (the original entry which I have reconsidered). How do I fix this? I am also open to suggestions about a possible better name for the game.
Agreed, I like Neo-Nemeroth better. I'll include an Inspired by credit and a link.
Colorful Osmosis Chess. All basic pieces are colorbound or colorwithching. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I've found a flaw in this design--the opening Camel move to the fourth rank is too disruptive to the enemy development, so as White, Zillions always chooses it. This seems to result in an excess of White wins. A recent series of ten test games yielded 8 wins for White, 1 win for Black, and 1 lack of forces draw. This is not acceptable.
I'm experimenting with a fix: play on a 10x10 board, ten pawns on the third rank, pieces (except Camels) on the second rank as in Grand Chess (with the square next to the King empty), and Camels in the corners.
Initial testing looks good. If more tests show more balanced outcomes, I will update these pages accordingly; if not, I will withdraw the game.
For now, consider this game on hold.
BTW the new setup on the 10x10 has a much more pleasing appearance. The rather ugly Bishop Camel swap on one side of the board is no longer needed to give each player one Bishop and one Camel of each color.
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My mistake. You are correct--it doesn't cover one of the wazir moves even at the edge of the board. But it does confine the King rather nicely as you bring in the King or another piece to cover that square.