BTW, I have played Tenjiku at high level according to 'modern' rules, where the King can be jump-captured. To my surprise this was very playable, and not too unbalanced. If you know the correct opening lines. Which my Tenjiku engine was able to determine.
In addition I came to realize that the King has highest rank does not necessarily have to refer to capture. Originally I thought that outlawing jumping over a King only would be pointless, as you would never be interested in doing that when you could also capture it. But it could also refer to your own King. So the evidence that historic rules did not allow King capture is starting to get flimsy.
Jumping Generals are not allowed to jump over a King or Prince (or other higher-ranking pieces) of either side, regardless of which ruleset you use, so the fact that the rankings could refer to friendly pieces is a rather dubious piece of evidence for allowing jump-captures of royals. Besides, even if the evidence for forbidding jump-captures of royals is indeed flimsy, it still improves the gameplay, as allowing jump-capturing of the King creates a critical weaknesses in the opening after 1. 7k (2. VG 2g#) which is only solvable via 1... SE3f. Furthermore, this weakness persists throughout much of the game, as the King remains boxed in throughout the opening and (early) middlegame, the Soaring Eagle on 3f (and other pieces defending 2g and 1h) can easily be threatened with capture, and one wrong move can result in a smothered mate. The point is, you should not need to use an AI to find a good opening.
Unfortunately this is not so easy, because BadZone only gets the locust squares passed. Not the pieces jumped over. The non-destructive intermediate squares are not part of the internal move representation. But I suppose BadZone could be made such that it scans the board for high-rank blockers along the path from origin to destination itself.
You can just use board[y][x] & 511 for the piece type, and a call to a recursive function that scans the in-between squares to handle the rest.
Jumping Generals are not allowed to jump over a King or Prince (or other higher-ranking pieces) of either side, regardless of which ruleset you use, so the fact that the rankings could refer to friendly pieces is a rather dubious piece of evidence for allowing jump-captures of royals. Besides, even if the evidence for forbidding jump-captures of royals is indeed flimsy, it still improves the gameplay, as allowing jump-capturing of the King creates a critical weaknesses in the opening after 1. 7k (2. VG 2g#) which is only solvable via 1... SE3f. Furthermore, this weakness persists throughout much of the game, as the King remains boxed in throughout the opening and (early) middlegame, the Soaring Eagle on 3f (and other pieces defending 2g and 1h) can easily be threatened with capture, and one wrong move can result in a smothered mate. The point is, you should not need to use an AI to find a good opening.
You can just use board[y][x] & 511 for the piece type, and a call to a recursive function that scans the in-between squares to handle the rest.