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Comments by Michael
Well here's an update... Sjaak II source code is NOT easy to navigate or understand - not by any stretch of the imagination (as would be expected, it is advanced chess AI after all). I don't know what possessed me to think it would be easy, I guess I just saw some methods and functions, and thought to myself "oh I know about those" :-) I have to say I feel a little bit embarrassed! Also you could be right about your 2 step king move idea. It could very possibly be more principled than my luft castling. But I only added the possibility of some kind of special castling rules in the notes, as tentative suggestions. And I'm resigned to the fact that I will probably never find out what is the best solution. I'm letting go of Latte Chess now - anyone is free to do what they want with it - for what it is worth (if anything). Thank you for your patience.
I've discovered that Sjaak II can be played in the terminal - which is good for testing, and means that I won't need to modify XBoard.
Latte Chess. Alternative starting position, with each player having 4 rooks/bishops/knights, 1 king and queen, and 8 pawns. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Thank you H. G. Muller for your input, I am always happy to receive feedback and ideas. The king double move to c2/g2 is interesting, however I feel that the king may not always be too safe on those squares, mostly due to the number and power of the bishops. e.g say the king double moves to g2, and then later the g2 and b7 bishops trade off. Now the king is rather vulnerable on g2, and whites queen does not want to get lured onto the a8/h1 diagonal, as blacks other white squared bishop might immediately spring into action. Also I don't want to give up on Luft Castling just yet! I agree with what you said about the location of the rooks, but I have found through testing (without special castling) that the luft manoeuvre sometimes tends to happen naturally (manually). It seems to have some advantages, that would be even better if sped up. This is sheer luck, as I can now see that there was a distinct lack of sophistication in how I decided to include it as an option (i.e. "okay so let me find something that is like castling, but with an extra rook"!). It has the advantage that it immediately accelerates the development of 2 rooks, while moving the king to a safer place behind some wing pawns and the luft rook. It seems counter-intuitive, but somehow it seems to work, at least from my very limited initial tests. I'm not discounting the double king move idea either though (I would prefer your first option - i.e. 2 steps to g2 subject to f1 OR f2 not being under attack). I feel it definitely needs to be tested along with the other ideas. And it could even be included along with luft castling and normal castling. I still have a lot of testing to do, which will be much easier when I can I find a way to modify an open source chess engine to include these features.
Thank you! I have to say that Sjaak II looks like a very nice program, that I hadn't come across up until now - and so far I have found that it works beautifully with XBoard. The source code looks fairly easy to navigate too. I'm trying to pluck up the courage to start tinkering with it, so that I can implement double castling - although I fear that I may also need to start modifying XBoard, and quickly find myself way out of my depth. But out of all the open source chess engines I have looked at so far, this could just possibly be one that I could do something with. And even if it is beyond me, I'm sure I will have fun playing with it!
I introduced the possibility of two rook castling for Latte Chess because from playing against engines I found that the kings were getting stranded in the centre files, and it was hard to manoeuvre the pieces into a position to enable castling, without making their position worse (chess AI seems to have little problems with this - however I feel that for us humans it could be somewhat unpalatable). On the other hand I quite like the challenge of having to balance the desirability of castling with other pressing issues on the board. I came up with two ideas that seem to be feasible for Latte Chess; these being Luft Castling or Two Rooks Castling (or both together), being available in addition to normal castling. Both seem to have pros and cons. My problem with the Two Rooks Castling, in the context of Latte Chess, is that it could make castling too easy. Luft Castling (in addition to normal castling) seems more promising, as there is still some challenge in arranging castling, especially as a piece must be moved to make space for the Luft Manoeuvre. At the moment I feel that Luft Castling + normal castling seem the most promising solution, although at present I can't find a way to test it! I feel that experimenting with different kinds of castling for other variants is definitely worth trying, and should be tailored for the specific flavour and requirements of the variant. Tactical issues also need to be considered. For example Two Rooks Castling introduces the possibility of powerful double attacks on open centre (or near centre) files. Also, I have tried to find variant software to let me play against chess AI, but have been unable to find any that support this kind of feature. I would be interested if anyone knows of any easy to use software for someone with very limited programming abilities, so I can test these ideas? Thanks guys!
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