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Megalomachy. A huge game with 2x80 pieces, some able to jump over many others. (16x16, Cells: 256) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Apr 21 07:08 AM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from Sat Apr 20 09:33 PM:

I think it did, at least partly. But it is not obvious, because the I.D. does pseudo-legal highlighting, and the capture restriction on Terrors is a context-dependent rule that results in some pseudo-legal moves to be illegal. If I set up a position where the AI can gain a Queen by trading Terrors (TxT, QxT, BxQ), it does not capture.

The I.D. in the article had configured the rule the obsolete way, though, through a protected=32 parameter. This could not specify the 'asymmetric' version of the rule, which forbids Eagles to capture protected Terrors, but not Terrors to capture protected Eagles. I changed that now by using the captureMatrix for specifying the forbidden cases by marking those with a % sign.

The betza.txt include file currently also doesn't support asymmetric anti-trading; the I.D.'s anti-trading through the protected parameter is implemented there by initializing an array

set protected (...);

which lists the labels of all pieces mentioned in protected parameters. But it then bans all captures of the mentioned pieces by each other (when protected). So if both the Terror and Eagle go in there, T x protected E would also be forbidden. I suppose I could fix this by having the betza.txt include use two attays, 'protected' and 'restricted', and then ban only the captures of a piece mentioned in 'protected' by one mentioned in 'restricted'. When the PTA translates an I.D. that contains protected= parameters to GAME code, it could then define both arrays with the same pieces in them (where it now only defines 'protected' in the Pre-Game code).

More precise definition of what can capture what will have to wait for full implementation of the captureMatrix in the generated GAME code. But in most case (including Megalomachy) such a temporary fix would be sufficient.

[Edit] I now modified the betza.txt include file to support these changes. So in Pre-Game you would have to define an array 'opaque' with the flying pieces and those that can shoot them down, an array 'protected' with the Terror, and an array 'restricted' with Terror and Eagle.