🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Jan 27, 2003 12:15 AM UTC:
When I first described Piece Code here, I gave a brief legend only for the
symbols actually used in the examples, but several of these symbols were
macros for code you didn't see. Absolute directions have been defined as
hexadecimal digits between 1 and C, as per the clockface model. But this
does not work so well for a square board. So I think I will use a numeric
keypad model for square boards.
There is a relative direction for every absolute direction. It is
presently identified by prepending an absolute direction with the /
operator. F, L, R, and B are aliases for four of these. I plan to add P
and S for port and starboard directions. On a square board, these would
default to the two forward diagonal directions. Y could be used for (P|S),
and a Mao's movement could be represented as OeY. A Knight might be
described as moving OY. A Holywar Squire would be OeY|DeY or (O|D)eY.
I'm also planning on adding symbols for rotation without moving. I may use
lowercase d and w for deasil and widdershins, which mean clockwise and
counterclockwise but start with different letters. Each of these would
rotate a piece's orientation to the next axis. This would be 45 degree
turn on a square board, a 30 degree turn on a hex board. The letter u
could be used for a U-turn, i.e. rotating 180 degrees. Rotation would
change a piece's relative directions without moving it. This would give
another way to do a Mao move: Oe(w|d)F. Using lowercase y to represent
(w|d), a Mao's move could be expressed as OeyF, moving one space
orthogonally, then if the space is empty, rotating one turn deasil or
widdershins to one of the forward diagonal directions, then moving
forward.