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H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Jan 28, 2023 01:26 PM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 01:35 AM:

Unfortunatey a general t modifier is a bit hard to implement. Which is a pity, as with the unload modifier it would make it possible to describe magnetic pieces and catapult pieces.

So for now I added capture of pieces adjacent to the destination as a standard feature, controllable through the capture matrix and from WeirdPromotion(), as internally it uses the promotion element of the move array to trigger it. An @ in the captureMatrix orders promotion to piece number 512 for that particular combination of attacker and victim (wher the latter can also be an empty square). Now this is an invalid piece number, and used as a kludge to indicate 'burning'. How exactly this burning works depends on a new parameter atomicCapture=N. For N=0 it does Tenjiku-type burning: only enemies get burned, and the capturer survives. For larger N is gives you explosion like in Atomic Chess: all adjacent pieces are destroyed, friend and foe alike, but the first N piece types from the table survive, while the capturer always selfdestructs.

Now this works the same when you return 512 from WeirdPromotion(). But you have additional control there. By returning 512+C (0 < C < 256) you also trigger the burning. But in that case it burns only the squares selected through the bits of C, where 1 = N, 2 = NE, 4 = E, 8 = SE, etc. So WeirdPromotion() could do additional testing on the board to decide whether an adjacent piece should be burned or not. This could for instance be used to implement Ultima Pincher Pawns, by checking whether there is a friendly piece behind the adjacent one.

All this only works with newClick=1, which unfortunately means that the move diagrams (using the old highlight code) would not show the burning. It is not easy to cure that, as the move generator doesn't know about it (as far as that it is just a promotion), and no clicks on the burn victims are required . (During hovering over the move diagram the highlighting is as if the hovered square had received the second click, and it shows where the third can go.)

BTW, I now added a link to the Extended Betza article.


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