Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Very good work.  Clearly, a lot of effort and thought has gone into this,
and I agree with the former poster that it has usful information for game
design in general.

I will work on designing a short-range version of Brouhaha, called Hubbub.

Claudio: most combinations of the four basic building blocks have already been tried. The W+F+A+D piece has been called Squire by Eric V. Greenwood, Swiss Guard by Paul DeWitte, and Mammoth by Mats Winther. I estimate the Mammoth to be equal to the Archbishop (Cardinal) on an 8x8 board and to a pair of Bishops on a 10x10 board.

[EDIT]Key McKinnis lists multiple armies. His WAZIR army for the 9x9 board contains the minister (W+F+A+D), minirook (W+D), and priest (F+A).

The article reminds me of my college days... well done.  It also reminds me
of Taikyoku Shogi, which has many short range pieces... lots of piece
movement possibilities.  Joe and Christine are correct in pointing out
that evolution has been towards long range pieces... at least in Fide
Chess.  Xianqi still has the relatively short range elephants and palace
guards.  Shogi has the short range set of generals (gold, silver, emarald
(which we now call the King).

The following link to Wikipedia's Taikyoku Shogi page is likely a good
tie-in to '' The Short Range Project.''  Lots of pieces are discussed
there. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taikyoku_shogi#Step_movers

Here is an example of movement for one piece, uncommon today:

The Mountain stag

Step: The mountain stag can move one square orthogonally forward. 
Limited range: It can move one or two squares orthogonally sideways. 
Limited range: It can move one to three squares diagonally forward. 
Limited range: It can move one to four squares orthogonally backward. 

This and many other interesting movements can be found at the linked site.

Thank you all for the comments. We really appreciate them. The impetus for this article is contained in Claudio's statement that a shortrange piece 'Never crossed my mind'. Often these pieces seem to be used as filler or fancy pawns. Both of us believe they deserve more, and conceived this project to encourage others to design variants that actively use shortrange pieces. So it's gratifying to see Greg and David intending to do so. David, as he has so often done to me in our games, has left me in a sticky situation by carefully not mentioning my use of the Squire/Swiss Guard/Mammoth in 2 designs, forcing me to claim what is now the 3rd independent invention of Claudio's man-Alibaba piece, and relegating him to 5th place. Shortrange pieces have been around forever, but invisibly. Maybe that will change. [Use the pieces, Claudio, please!]

Gary, thank you for the reference to Taikyoko shogi; it has an amazing number of different shortrange pieces, and is quite a source for ideas. It also illustrates one main reason why this article deals with Western-style pieces, and that's for simplicity. The Eastern short-range pieces are often quite complex, gold and silver being 2 common examples which fall outside the scope of the Piece Builder. Instead of 2 directions, orthogonal or diagonal, these pieces require the definition of 8 directions. Or at least 4, ortho, diag, forward, backward, the last two of which are relative to the player and not the board. Attempting to include this type of piece was not even considered, as the complications would make a relatively simple system practically unmanageable, and certainly expand the article into novel size.

Doug, it's true all the pieces discussed capture by replacement, but that is the default simplest method of capture. In that sense it's deliberate; but this article discusses movement rather than capture, and certainly any of the pieces created may capture in Ultima-like ways or any other way one could devise.

Ha, this comment is getting to be article-length. Again, thanks all for your interest. Enjoy. Joe [As it's now about 3:30 a.m. in Australia, Christine won't see this for a while. Hope she doesn't mind I took the liberty to speak for both of us.] BTW, the games listed should be coming out in Zillions over the weekend. Then I'll try to use my slash-and-burn method to make presets for CV.

• N then (NW or NE)
• E then (NE or SE)
• S then (SW or SE)
• W then (NW or SW)

An interesting piece is the 'wazir then wazir', which moves as follows:

Leap:

• (N, S, E, or W) then (N, S, E, or W)

I have some other ideas in mind, such as defining riders and 'bulldozers', which I will detail in a later comment.

- Sam

A fine start to what I hope will be a lengthy and very informative series.
The various games already generated by this project are first rate and I
expect many more as the work continues. 

I might point out that the shorter range of pieces opens some
possibilities that may be more practical than in games with long range
pieces. Relay Chess leaps to mind, as well as various forms of
Progressive.

While I love the Shatranj Pawns in the variants, I think that a shortrange
piece game with stronger Pawns might be most interesting as well.

Sam, Mike, Greg; thanks for the comments.
Mike, all the games listed to be released do have 'modern' pawns except
Shatranj 10x8; castling is also available. I do have to admit that this
project is already pretty lengthy, though. Also, you are right that most
of my games are actually, and as deliberately as they could be, part of
this project, although I didn't realize it would involve something like a
position paper with a fancy name and lots of work and definitions.
Christine certainly didn't, and she was there and very involved right at
the start, which was just after I posted Modern Shatranj, and we started
corresponding. She lets me do most of the writing, but I let her do all
the ZRFs, so it works out. The next article will be at least a while,
though. 
Sam and Greg [you guys ever consider singing together?], I also have
worried about the possibility of draws, but the only format in which I
fear them is 8x8. Ironically, the one posted game of mine that I fear has
a substantial draw potential is Modern Shatranj, the only one of my games
to make it into the upcoming tournament. The larger board sizes, coupled
with shortrange piece sets, pretty much seem to eliminate draws. In MS,
I've drawn 4 of the 6 games I've played online, but I've never had a
draw in any of the larger variants, whether played online or
face-to-face.
Finally, Sam, 'of course' a knight move can be described as a 2 square,
2 step move with ferz being the first step and wazir the second step. [But
I'm almost computer illiterate these days.] It's like being on the SW
corner of a city block and going to the NE corner. You can go N, then E,
or go E, then N. Now, what's a 'bulldozer' piece? Looking forward to
your definition of 'rider'.

Here is one possible notation for some short range pieces:

A B C D E
F G H I K
L M . N O
P Q R S T
U V W X Y

There are about 16 million possible pieces using this notation.

- Sam

Gentlemen, I'd like to suggest some things. First, I'd suggest draws are
so common because 8x8 is actually a very small board, and even one or two
pieces and a few pawns can clog it up rather easily. As board size
increases, especialy board width [the front across which pieces attack], I
believe the chance of draws should diminish. Next, if the number of leapers
is increased, the ability to attack past a pawn blockade is enhanced, which
may also reduce the number of draws. Further, longrange pieces make
excellent defenders, often better than shortrange ones, as they have a
greater reach. So make all the pieces shortrange. Combine these ideas, and
I believe you'd get a marked reduction in the number of draws. For
evidence, play Great and Grand Shatranj, especially without using rooks,
and see for yourselves. If the tournament weren't about to start, I'd be
happy to demonstrate... man, that sounds like being afraid to back up my
statements; if you guys won't play against each other, email me and
we'll negotiate 3 week moves or something. Hmmm, maybe I better stop here
before I start swinging wildly... :-)
Enjoy!

Indeed, this is what Cherry has done with some of her .zrf packages.

- Sam

Joe, please feel free to be the spokesperson here, you're doing a great job.

Thanks everyone for your comments and interest, and thanks to Joe for the fine essay he has written on this project. i don't see myself really as writing the zrf's, more like hacking hehe, i'd rather see myself as a creator of games, but you know :)

Michael Nelson said:

While I love the Shatranj Pawns in the variants, I think that a shortrange piece game with stronger Pawns might be most interesting as well.

Michael, as Joe answered, all games except 'Shatranj 10x8' have modern pawns and castling. I do feel this is an important aspect of gameplay, it is like the 'platform' that 'The ShortRange Project' plays upon. i do think it is interesting, and a lot of fun.

Well i don't know if we are releasing the game this week at zillions now, i want to add a 5th zrf, and i guess i should talk to Joe about it.

It is a nice little add, ...

A doubt strucked me.

The 1, 2, 3, 4 squares range is a absolute value (no matter the size of
the board) or a n/2 range (where n=8)?

Looks silly to ask that, but, in a 8x8 board the piece crosses 1/2 board
in a move, but in a 12x12 it just crosses 1/3, while a n/2 piece would
still crossing 1/2 board.

In a rectangular board the things could be worse, after all wich number
should be used to get the number of squres crossed, or in a odd shaped
one?

Well, regarding the 1st question I don't really know an answer.

About the 2nd, the lowest number should be used in the equation (round
down), and in a odd shape is a case by base situation, but, as a rule of
thumb treat the board as square or rectangular (which fits best) and do
the math.