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This page is written by the game's inventor, Ralph Betza.

Cavewars CSIPGS Chess

Cavewars is one of the best csipgs games; its rules are relatively simple, and they worked hard on the AI, and therefore the computer occasionally (in a limited range of circumstances) appears to be playing fairly well...

Cavewars has a 5-level 3D dungeon, and so "cavewars csipgs chess" should also have one the same size. I thought it would be amusing to have hexes on some levels and squares on others!

Thus, levels 1, 3, and 5 would look like this:

         __
      __/b3\__
     /a3\__/c3\
     \__/b2\__/
     /a1\__/c1\
     \__/b1\__/
        \__/

While levels 2 and 4 would look like this:

    +---+---+---+
    |a3 | b3| c3|
    +---+---+---+
    |a2 | b2| c2|
    +---+---+---+
    |a1 | b1| c1|
    +---+---+---+

And we would need to add some rules:

  1. Budget: the automatic budget is zero.
    
    
  2. Food squares: the location b2 on every level is a food square. You get 1 zorkmid per turn for each food square you occupy at the start of your turn.
    
    
  3. Vertical movement: You may only move vertically up or down through a hole. There are no holes at the start of a game.
    
    
  4. Drill: The "drill" power costs 1 zorkmid extra. A piece with this power can drill a hole up or down; the destination square must be empty, must not contain a piece, a food square, an existing square, or rock. The starting square may not be a food square. After the hole is drilled, the drilling piece disappears.

    A piece with the "drill" power can also dig sideways through rock, but then it disappears.

    
    
  5. Rock: The "rock" power costs 1 zorkmid extra. A piece with this power can turn itself to stone, after which the square it occupied becomes impassible to either player. It cannot become stone on a square that already contains either food or a hole.

Written by Ralph Betza. HTML conversion by David Howe.
WWW page created: January 23, 1999.