| Author |
Message |
Mats W (Kålroten)
| | Posted on Saturday, December 24, 2005 - 4:24 am: | |
I have tweaked my favourite chess variant, the 8x8 version of Andreas Kaufmann's DescentChess, according to the method I used in HexQuad. The effect is remarkable! Earlier the program wobbled around with the king and weakened its king's position by making the moves e7-e6-e5 (or the mirrored moves on the white side). By adding links to the squares d8, f8 and f7 (and vice versa for white) the king is reluctant to tread on these squares. By adding links from e7 and e2 (and d7, d2), and adding shift moves for these links, the pawn is less likely to move because there are more freedoms on the initial position.
Most importantly, I have tweaked the pieces by copying their movement commands several times (like I did with HexQuint). It is however difficult to get the right relations between pieces. The knight movement commands were much increased, and the program is now very prone to introduce the knight to the board, instead of dropping the queen and wobbling around with it endlessly. It now also drops pawns more frequently, etc. The effect is that the game is much, much, better. The 8x8 version was completely useless earlier. Now it's a very interesting game.
The tweaked version of DescentChess is downloadable here. It's fascinating how one can completely change the capacity of the program by these simple methods.
Merry Christmas
Mats |
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