Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
@Aurelian, that is a really interesting comment, and I love that idea. Like you say, an unbounded board can be populated with an infinite number of pieces in many ways. In addition to what you mention, and "on top" of the "normal" armies (near the kings), pawns can be populated for example on every 10th file and every 10th rank. So the density in half the plane is 1/10 x 1/10 = 1%. Similarly bishops and rooks can be populated with a density such as 0.1%, and queens populated on 0.05%.
So now you really have an "infinite" game with "infinitely many" pieces. But still - only one king of each color. As in the diagram, the White king starts on (5,1) and the Black king starts on (5,8).
This could have amazing and very interesting mathematical properties. Obviously, the strategy of the end-game cannot be "simplification" to just a few pieces! Players will need to learn to mate as other pieces slowly march inward, trying to replenish captured pieces.
Who is going to solve this type of game strategy? You said it best: "But we as cyborgs of the future will get there". I agree with you 100%!!!
In the comments section of chess with different armies Vickalan Reinhart (the author of CoaIP) stated " As far as I know, there is no upper bounds for the maximum size of a good board size, and even infinitelly-large boards are easily playable and fun. " I think the remark I am going to make is more appropriate here.
I just wanted to make the remark that the term "on an infinite plane" is appropriate as the game is not that infinite after all. It has a decent number of pieces and the effect of board largeness fades away far. It would be more "infinite" if maybe players would have pieces according to some rules all over the board (with an 50% density maybe). For example white would have a knight on all white squares on even files, and black would have a knight on all black squares on odd files. That would be quite silly (almost all knights are undefended and attacked), but with work one can make more complex rules for more pieces. From a mathematical point of view these games would be quite interesting but as of 2018 we don't have the technology or not even knowledge to tackle such complex problems :)! But we as cyborgs of the future will get there. Mark my words :)!
Thanks Ben,
I did update the images to the CVP site, and updated the links. It looks fine now. This same game was also released with Fergus' abstract icons, but I'd like to show the game with both pieces sets.
The game is already being played with the classic icons (this submission), and some people might prefer this style because it looks much more similar to the normal chess pieces.
Thanks for your support!
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Feb 25, 2017 12:23 PM EST:Images seem to be broken. You can upload images to this site (see the text near the bottom of the page), fixing any issues with Flickr.
Oh, but you resubmitted with new images. I've kept this one hidden in favor of that one. They are the same game, just with different images, right?
5 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.
Yes, that will obviously make it "more infinite". Still the kings are the point of atraction. But if you make more kings then you have two cases.
1. You have to mate one king to win. Which after a finite number of moves will often degrade in the previous situations as one king will become more vulnarable although each side could need to use plenty of moves for the defence of it's wekest king. And surellyanother win condition would be to simultanioulsy check 2 kings with an unattacked piece. Also winning. So 2 and in extremme conditions even 3 enemy kings could get involved but it is not a big difference in the end.
2. You have to mate all (which is probably a countable infinity, maybe the ordinal omega0). That is a whole other devil I don't know how to aproach yet.
You may also make different winning conditions like capture the flag, like bringing a piece to a certain area of the board withouht beeing caputed at the next turn.
Also you may make a condition to clear a certain area of enemy pieces.
So there is a whole world of possibilities out there.