| Author |
Message |
David Worton (Dmfw)
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 16, 2004 - 1:25 pm: | |
Hi all,
I'm completely new to Zillions (only found this site today). It looks fascinating and I'll almost certainly buy a copy. I'd like to implement an idea for a chess variant I've had in my head for a long time and wondered if people thought it would be possible to code up in Zillions. The concept is to redefine the movement rules of the pieces in terms of the colour progression of the squares they cross rather than the geometrical direction. So, for example, a rook is defined as a piece moving over squares of alternating colours, a pawn moves one space forward to a square of a different colour or captures onto a square of the same colour etc... The idea can be extended to all pieces (and even castling with a bit of thought). Normal chess then becomes a subset of a wider universe of games where the colours of the squares are not arranged in the standard alternate pattern. My idea allows players the option of changing a square colour (provided they "control" the square - too much to explain in this post!) instead of making a move. A square can also be made "void" so it is of no colour and nothing can move to it. The standard 8x8 board lives in an infinite void of potential squares.
In order to implement this I'd need to be able to change the board dynamically in play (I once had a physical version of this with coloured squares of card that could be dropped on a chess board, set on the middle of a larger peice of cardboard).
Reading the site it seems you have a lot of control over the definition of the board when you program but does it extend to changing it within the course of a single game?
Thanks for anyone that's read this far and I'd be interested if any of the programming experts in Zillion think this can be done with the game engine.
Dave |
Jeff Mallett (Jeffm)
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 16, 2004 - 1:55 pm: | |
You can't change the board definition nor the board bitmap during the game. Instead, you'd modify things during the game exactly like you did in your physical version: by dropping colored squares on top of the chess board.
To implement this, make a new piece type that's a colored square. By doing this you can add/remove colored squares or change their color during a game. Redefine the movements of each piece taking into account travel over colored squares.
There is only one snag I can think of: Zillions doesn't currently support stacked pieces, which is what you'd have if you had a piece on top of a colored square piece. It's a bit of a hassle, but a way around this is to define new piece types for each possible stacking, i.e. there might be a piece type for a Knight on a white colored square. |
David Worton (Dmfw)
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 16, 2004 - 2:23 pm: | |
Excellent! That sounds like a neat "work around". I'm off to purchase my copy and give it a try! |
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