Comments by DavidCannon

Tony,

This PARACHESS board of yours is one of the best I've seen!  I've long
been a fan of unorthodox varieties of chess, and have been fascinated by
hexagonal, circular, and three-dimensional boards.  Your Parachess board,
however, has a special quality that all others I've seen lack : it
bridges the two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds, something I
thought impossible.  A piece riding on WAVES, for example, would bear a
striking resemblance to the Unicorn of some 3-D variants.

Keep up the good work, Tony!

The Zebra actually exists as the SAHNG (Elephant) in Changgi (Korean
Chess).  Korean Chess greatly resembles Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) except in
two basic ways.  One of these concerns the move of the Elephant.

Chinese Elephant - moves like an Alfil (but without the jumping power) -
and cannot cross the river.

Korean Elephant - moves like the Zebra described on this page - except
that it is not a leaper : there must be an unobstructed path from the
origin to the destination.  Also, unlike its Chinese cousin, it is not
barred from crossing the river - as there is no river.

I would like to see something added about the difference between the
Elephant in Xiangqi and the Elephant in Changgi (Korean Chess).  The two
varieties of chess are almost identical except for three things, one of
which is the move of the Elephant.

Xiangqi : the elephant moves two points diagonally (non-leaping) and
cannot cross the river.

Changgi : the elephant moves like a ZEBRA in some chess variants (i.e.,
one square orthogonally followed by one square diagonally, or vice versa)
- except that it is not a leaper; there must be unobstructed access
between the point of departure and the point of arrival.

Also, there is no 'river' in Changgi, so the rule about not crossing the
river is not applicable.

The movement of the Cannon is one of three significant differences between
Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) and Changgi (Korean Chess) [the other differences
concern the Elephant and the design of the board - Changgi has no river).

The Koreans have somewhat simplified the movement of the Cannon.  Unlike
its Chinese cousin, the Korean cannon moves as it captures : it cannot
move at all without flying over a 'screen' piece.

The effect of all this is that the Korean cannon tends to be an immensely
powerful piece in the early and mid-stages of the game, equal or superior
to the CHA (rook), but practically useless in the endgame, when there are
few pieces left to leap over.  Part of the strategy of Changgi is knowing
just when to exchange the Cannon for another piece.

Another distinctively Korean feature of the Cannon is that, unlike its
Chinese counterpart, it cannot capture an enemy cannon, or leap over a
fellow-cannon, friend or foe.  Shades of blood brothers?

Hi Graeme!  I'm delighted to see this variant.  I've been mucking around with a few trigonal boards myself, so I'm glad to see you cut the trail for me.  Just one comment: I notice that you've made the Queen a combination of Spire and Bishop.  That makes the Queen scarcely more powerful than the Tower (a Rook-like piece).  Have you considered a Spire-Tower combination for the Queen?  That would make a much more powerful piece worthy of the name, in my opinion.  You could still keep the present Queen, but perhaps change her name to something else.

And by the way, could we get a Zillions program to play this game?

Keep up the good work!

I'll add graphics later on.  I've exceeded my upload limit (on another game) for today:-(

A Zillions of Games file is in the pipeline and will be available soon.

Charles, have you considered including a reference to the KAIFENG in your game?  

KAIFENG is a city in China with a long Jewish history - it goes back many hundreds of years.  There is still a small Jewish community in the city, I believe.  Kaifeng Jews look Chinese, and differ from occidental Jews in that they trace descent through the father's line, rather than the mother's.  

I think some reference to Kaifeng would help to cement the connection I think you are making between China and Judaism.   Just a thought:-)

David.

1. Mark Colebank's INFINITE CHESS website has the original game.

2. I don't think I fully understand the movement of the pawns in your Fivequarters game. If I may summarize the pawn movement in a nutshell, each pawn moves in the direction indicated by its positioning - i.e. those shown 'right side up' move 'north' while those 'upside down' move 'south.' On reaching the so-called 'enemy zone' (the first rank reached beyond the diamond where the two circles intersect), a Pawn morphs into a Steward and can move passively in any orthogonal direction, and can capture in any diagonal direction. But to answer your question, no. No matter where on the board a Pawn may be, it may capture on either of the diagonals adjacent to the cell on which it would move orthogonally.

3. I would suggest downloading the link to the zillions file I programmed and play one or two games with it. You'll see the Pawn movement very clearly.

Cheers!

David Cannon.

I will spend the next few hours or days updating this page; new graphics and a new Zillions file will be uploaded, so please bear with me.

The question you have just asked turned out to be my single most difficult programming problem when writing the Zillions file. I solved the problem by dividing the Pawns into four 'classes', depending on what quadrant of the board they originate from. White has 'southwest' and 'northwest' pawns; Black has 'southeast' and 'northeast' pawns.

If a Pawn makes a capture, and in doing so, ends up back in its own territory in the way you described, it simply turns around. A southwest pawn thereby converts to a northwest pawn, and thereafter behaves as such.

Thanks for raising the issue as it is not merely hypothetical - in playtesting with Zillions, I found that it really happens!

Cheers, David.

I've just had a look at your Tai Shogi link - wow! That'll take me a while to master. Yes, I am considering a number of 'mini' variants of Diamond Chess (I deliberately included the number 306 in the name, denoting the number of cells, to allow for variants with different numbers of cells).

Is the problem the same one that I had with the graphics yesterday - the umlaut? If so, I'll avoid it in future submissions. [David, yes, same problem. Sorry you see the system as being full of bugs. I know it must be frustrating. I will fix this up later today or tomorrow. --DH]

However, I can't get this page to link to it! Can somebody please help me?

The "See Also" links appear automagically after the pages are made visible. --DH

Hi Graeme,

You mentioned having made a ZRF for this game.  Is there any chance of publishing it here?  Thanks.

David.

Here may not be the place to discuss it, but I would like to propose raising the daily file size limit to 1MB. I think it would make work a lot easier for many of us.

Anyway, this game, along with the associated Zillions page, is now ready to go live:-)

'As far as I know, that remains intact are the Knight, the
King and the pawns.' Not so fast, mate.  I believe the Rook has remained fundamentally unchanged throughout the entire history of chess.

1. 3D chess creates extra paths on which pieces may move. The most obvious of these is the so-called 'trigonal' path (like a diagonal path, but not colour-bound); various variants have introduced a UNICORN or a MACE as a line-piece to move on this path. A variant that misses this is really lacking something important, I feel.

2. One weakness with the starting position is that a couple of simple moves by the Rook or the Queen can check the opposing King. As white moves first, this gives quite a head-start to white, which is not fair.

3. The piece density is too low. FIDE chess has 32 pieces for 64 cells (50%); Shogi has 40 pieces for 81 cells (almost the same, although Shogi's pieces are somewhat weaker). Changgi (Korean Chess) has a lower density of 32 pieces for 81 points (40%). Now, there's nothing sacred about these percentages, but they have stood the test of time. Having designed quite a few games and playtested them on Zillions of Games, I've found that Changgi's 40% density is close to the lower limit at which one may play a satisfactory game. With too low a density, the players just chase each other around the board forever. (My own Diamond Chess 306, whose Zillions file you can download from this site, has a 38% density, but in two of the variants each piece is really a three-piece compound that can be unpackaged). The popular 5x5x5 variants have a 16 percent density, which I find too low. Your own 32 pieces per 320 cells is only a 10 percent density. You've got to be joking.

Now, some suggestions for you, Hafsteinn: 1. Either borrow a Unicorn/Mace-like piece from other variants to ride the Trigonal path, or modify one of the existing pieces to utilize it. 2. Give us something most of the existing 3D variants haven't got. Leapers, for example. Most existing variants simply extrapolate the Knight's move (one orthogonal step plus one diagonal step) to the 3D board. How about bringing in some new leapers that cover the orthogonal plus trigonal, and diagonal plus trigonal, steps? 3. Increase your piece density! Either reduce the size of the board, or increase the number of pieces. (I know the solution is problematic - I'm working on the idea myself, and it's tying my brain in knots - but we've got to try).

If you want to experiment with your ideas, we've got quite a few Zillions experts around here. (I know a little Zillions programming, but I'm no expert and it takes me weeks to produce a functional game, but there are others here who could do a better job much more quickly). If you have a Zillions implementation and let the computer play against itself, you can see what goes on and analyse it - which I've found very helpful.

I think I spoke a little too hastily last night. I've seen a few too many games that seemed just slapped together, but now that I've taken a look around some of your work, I can see that's not what you're about. It's probably a good thing that you've submitted your 'first draft' raw for others to look at, and I'm sorry I shot from the hip last night.

There are a number of ways to increase the number of pieces without getting too complicated. One way is simply to have more of the familiar range of pieces - e.g., four Rooks instead of two, etc. Another is to make new pieces with new moves, or to borrow pieces from other well-known variants (such as the Elephant and the Cannon from Korean Chess). A third way is to have compound pieces (a number of my own games explore this possibility).

I appreciate your offer to 'host' both Hafsteinn's version and mine (which is still on the drawing board). I'll have to crystallize my ideas a bit more and get back to you about that as soon as possible.

I wouldn't worry too much about 'stealing' others' pieces. Anything completely original wouldn't be a chess variant - it would be something else entirely! Of course, you can't just copy the game in toto and present it as your own, but there's nothing wrong with borrowing ideas, as long as you acknowledge the source. I did this with a number of my games, such as Diamond Chess 306. The tiling pattern and many of the pieces are taken from Parachess, an earlier game by Tony Paletta. I did invent a number of new pieces, but many of them are logical extensions of Paletta's ideas. I briefly acknowledged my debt to him (and to Fergus Duniho, for some other ideas) on the web page, and in more detail on the information file that I included in the Zillions package.

One weakness, as I see it, with a lot of 3D games is that the King is too mobile, making checkmate problematic. We'd all do well to explore ways to address this.

Another thing you might notice: most of my games allow pieces to merge with other pieces; this one does not. That is deliberate: as this board was designed with the Bishop in mind, I want to let the Bishop shine without merging with other pieces.

I feel flattered by all the 'excellent' grades people gave me, but at that time, there were not so many games posted on the CV pages so people didn't have much to compare it with. I would probably rate it as 'below average' or 'poor' myself now, which is why I've never programmed it and have never made any diagrams. But this was my first serious attempt to design a game, and I've left this page standing to remind me of where I came from.

I did use the idea of pieces merging with other pieces for many of my other games (Diamond Chess 306, Dürer's Chess, Matrix Chess). You could saw that I see this game, not so much as a game worth playing, but as more of a source of raw material for other games.

I'm not finished yet.  I have a few more images to upload and some polishing to do before the game is ready for publication, so I would respectfully ask the editors to postpone publication until I've finished (in 24-48 hours or so).  Thanks!

Note to editors: Could you please link this to the description page (http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSwindowschess) under the "See also" section? I don't know how to do it:-(  Thanks!

Note to editors: I'm more or less finished now.  I don't know how to link it to the zillions file under the "See also" heading, so I'd be grateful if you'd do that fore me.  Thanks!

I like this concept. Pieces can suddenly "come out" as something else. I suppose this could be called a variant of chess with incomplete information — as the "true identity" of each player's pieces is known to the respective players, but not to their opponents. At the same time, cloaking forces the player to decide in advance which piece will morph into what, preventing arbitrariness. 

I still don't understand how the Charging Elephant is supposed to move.

I like the game, but I question whether it belongs on this website. To me, a chess variant must meet the following criteria : 

1. Played on a board with multiple cells.

2. Diversity of pieces. In other words, pieces of different types that move and/or capture differently. That is why go and draughts/chequers don't qualify, and I don't think Amazons does, either. 

3. Royalty — there must be a piece (or pieces) whose survival is indispensable. Again, go, chequers, and Amazons don't qualify. Arimaa perhaps does — just : if you lose all eight rabbits, you lose the game. But to have eight royal pieces seems a stretch, so that's why I've said "perhaps". 

I'm aware that this website has a "crossovers" section, which allows for games that have borrowed ideas from chess. Cheskers is a good example. It fails the royalty provision, but meets the diversity provision and therefore qualifies as a crossover. But Amazons fails on both counts, in my opinion. 

I'm delighted to see a variant based on triangular cells, rather than squares or hexagons. Not that there's anything wrong with squares and hexagons, but that triangles are under-explored and under-exploited. Christian Freeling and Graeme Neatham invented several trigonal chess games, and I contributed a couple of my own (Rotorblades Chess and Rotorblades Fusion Chess). And of course there's Klinzha. But for the most part, inventors seem to give triangular boards a miss. 

I see that Chessagon tries to be as faithful as possible to traditional chess. That's one "pole" of the chess variant universe; the other "pole" is games like Arimaa, which barely qualify as chess variants. My own taste is for something in the middle —I like games that extrapolate the moves of the traditional pieces to the new geometry, but also introduce pieces that take advantage of the new geometry in a way that the familiar pieces cannot. The only piece of this nature to do so in Chessagon is the Duke, and I think there is room for more unusual pieces that would create interesting possibilities for play. 

Hi Silvia! Thank you for introducing us to this exotic blend, which is one of the best I've seen. I've seen a few east-west hybrids before, and even tried inventing a couple of them myself, which I never published here because I didn't like them very much — they seemed to be neither fish nor fowl. But yours blends them in a way that doesn't seem forced or stretched, and I really like that!

This is very similar to a game that I have conceptualized, but never published. My own game starts with the usual 8x8 square board and the pieces arranged as usual, with all the usual rules of play, except that in lieu of moving a piece, either player may move an unoccupied square. A square may only be removed from the edge of the board (an edge cell being one with less than four orthogonally adjacent cells) and placed orthogonally adjacent to another cell.

I have a (general) rule of not publishing things here until I have programmed them for Zillions. I'm a mediocre programmer at the best of times, and when it comes to creating cells that may be moved by either player, I'm stuck. I've worked out how to make cells that only one player can move, but making them neutral and moveable for both sides is something I've had no success with. 

I've thought of a similar game based on moveable hexagons.

Anyway, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one to have thought of a game with a "dynamic" board.

I don't usually like games with different armies, but this is an exception. You've put a lot of thought into making a game whose different armies are not unevenly matched. For sure, the Spartan side lacks a Queen and its army appears to be slightly less powerful, but that is compensated for by the presence of two kings, both of which must be checkmated/captured. 

Great idea. I have always loved Fischerrandom Chess, but I really don't like the way it gives players no control over where their pieces start. I also consider Fischer's castling rule to be cludgy and it's hard to believe that a man of his genius came up with that. Your project fixes those shortcomings. 

One tweak I'd make if it were up to me is to require both players to enter ALL their pieces before making any other moves. White would enter a piece, followed by black, and they'd take it in turns to enter pieces, one at a time, until the first and eighth ranks were full. Of course, Bishops must be required to be on different coloured squares. 

Welcome to our two new editors. It's great to see some new blood. 

Next step : see some new blood in terms of contributors, not just editors, too. I'll try to find time to design a new variant or two myself, if I can get some letup from my 70-hours a week job, but I'd also love to see a lot more game designers get on board.

You mention that Jetan has long fascinated you. But I see few parallels between this game and Jetan. Can you please explain the connection and/or inspiration?

I'm pleased to see this game! One correction : it is a trigonal, not hexaxonal, chess variant. The cells are triangles, not hexagons.

That said, I think this is an excellent contribution to the much under-explored trigonal tiling. Apart from a couple of games contributed by Graeme Neatham and Christian Freeling, along with a couple of my own, I think this is a little-used tiling which has lots of interesting possibilities for play.

Do the "crowned" pieces become royal? I.e., do they gain ONLY the movement capabilities of the King, or do they have to be checkmated along with the King?

Ed. note: I've moved this to the Kingsmen thread on the assumption that was what was intended. Please let us know if this is the wrong place; it was originally posted as a comment on the home page.

I love the concept of spherical chess. I think one thing needs to be changed, however. Chess is already drawish enough on a square board, and more so on a round board. On a spherical board, where pieces move in all directions, draws may become the overwhelming norm. That is not my preference.

So, on a board like this, I would love to see something done about that. Possible ways to do it would be to put some restrictions on the movement of the King (as in XiangQi and Janggi), or to immobilize the King when in check, or to take away the King's ability to capture pieces, including attacking pieces.

Could we get some info on how the non-FIDE pieces move? Thanks.

A good concept, but it needs improvement. I don't like having only one Bishop, as it can reach only half the cells. It's a colour-bound piece, so we really need two. To avoid attacking non-pawns on the other side, perhaps enlarge the board and put a "hedge" of pawns around each army — I don't see that there needs to be only two of them.

This is an excellent concept. There's just one tweak I'd like to see. Pawns on the a-file cannot move any further to the left, so that could be a problem. One way to remedy that might be to divide the board vertically down the middle, giving pawns on files A-D a move to the RIGHT, and on files E-H to the LEFT, as you have currently done for all pawns.