Comments by MichaelNelson

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.

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 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 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.

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.

I have invented a new variant and have a working .zrf. I don't have a satisfying name for it. (Rather reminiscent of my first variant Separate Realms.)

The essential idea is to use four basic pieces, two leapers, and two sliders. One of each type is color-bound, and the other is color-switching.

For the leapers, I have the Knight and Camel, and the Bishop is the obvious choice for the color-bound slider. For the color-switching slider, I'm using Jörg Knappen's Harvestman from Seenschach, which moves a wazir and then continues as a crooked bishop.

Also, simple pieces can combine with captured enemy pieces as in Assimilation Chess, but the compounds do not split, and there are no King compounds.

So Gnu, Cardinal, and Caliph can appear as well as three Harvestman combinations I've never seen before. I've named the Bishop compound the Metropolitan (a title used in Eastern Orthodoxy for a prelate ranking above an archbishop but below a patriarch). The Camel compound is the Imam, which has the property of mating a bare King on an empty board unassisted. I haven't done the endgame studies to see if mate can be forced. The Knight compound is named Battlemaster, after the Fighter subclass in D&D 5e.

The Harvestman is a good Rook substitute on the whole, though not as good at forcing mate. It does however move in a general rook-like direction with greater mobility. Intuition says this is a reasonable trade-off.

The game is played on a 9x9 board with normal Pawn movement including promotion at the enemy Pawn line rather than the back rank, allowing very FIDE-like Pawn play. Castling is forbidding, so the King is very exposed in the center of the back rank. This is rather reminiscent of Shogi.

A very playable game judged by Zillions vs. itself play. Now I need a name, and I can change some piece names if that fits the theme better.

(deleted)

By intention, the Royal Lion is hard to checkmate. The games run quite long (100+ moves) but draws are not common per Zillions vs. itself at a strong setting. This won't be to everyone's taste. If further testing indicates the game is drawish, perhaps bare Lion should be a win, but so far it doesn't seem to be.

The page should be ready for publication now. I have a working .ZRF, but it needs a bit of polishing.