| Author | Message | ||||
| Mohamed El Mokhtar Messaoudi (Dumberbytheminute)
New member Username: Dumberbytheminute Post Number: 1 Registered: 11-2008 |
Hi. I am working on a chess variant and am stuck due to self-imposed absconse rules. So I am asking you: if the "checkmated" condition were not built in the ZRF language, how would one go about scripting it from scratch? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. | ||||
| Karl Scherer (Karl)
New member Username: Karl Post Number: 377 Registered: 9-2000 |
Checkmate simply means : any move by the king either would end on an attacked position or is a castling move through an attacked position, and any move by any other piece still ends with the king attacked. So all you have to do is to put this into code. | ||||
| Mohamed El Mokhtar Messaoudi (Dumberbytheminute)
New member Username: Dumberbytheminute Post Number: 2 Registered: 11-2008 |
Well, thanks for the answer, Karl. I would be hard put for implementing it in this particular game, though (I am not much of a programmer, and my knowledge of ZOG language is rusty from dis(mis)use). You see, I noticed the complete lack of a three-player game of chess on Zillions' site, so I set my mind to creating one that would take place on a graph I happened to see in a book (I could not reproduce it, so I designed something somewhat like it with Illustrator). The concept I had in mind was the time-old paper-rock-scissors one: a player may only mate the one on his right, and only be mated by the one on his left (but he may capture non-regal pieces of both, depending on variants). The topology of the board allows for an peculiar logic for directions, permitting for instance a Bishop to eventually cover all the cells; but it sits Queens face to Kings in initial setup. I was hoping for some interesting gameplay, expecting that 1- A player would have to help the one he attacks to beat the third (his real adversary), but in so doing would risk defeat anyway, since 2- the first player to mate wins the game, as the remaining two players can no longer fight on equal bases- one being immune from defeat while the other would have no better outcome to hope for than a draw. (Confusing, but makes sense. Probably.) Anyway, I made a first draft, verbatim-copied from the standard Chess.zrf, with all directions duly modified and adapted to a minimal, experimental board. There! Kings get captured in spite of loss-conditition imposing a checkmate, and ZOG's play is extremely weak. To go back to your suggestion, I expect -as a player- that I will have to check my identity, make sure I am not under check, take counter-measures if so, and if not look for a possible check myself, execute it if need be, and warn my opponent by some adequate means (eg. by putting a dummy piece some dummy place- make that two pieces, one for every opponent, as one of them could turn into an ally for the turn being). This scheme would also mean 18 different piece species instead of 6, turn-zones and lots of flags and attributes . Just to begin with. Not unfeasible, but how to check if King is going through an attacked position while castling? Scanning the board from where it stands would be too cumbersome. Blah! So if you- or any zogrammer reading this thread- would like trying your hand at this, you are welcome to the graphics and I attached to this post. ( I want no credits. I would just like to see how the game was done. And to play at it.)
Of course, I could not resist calling this PaRoXysmChess.
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