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For me the planar pieces are what makes this game what it is. The Towers Game is just another variant using the same pieces as a good many 3d variants (including a couple of my own). A front rank dominated by planar pieces in number rather than just strength might be interesting. An interesting way to increase the range of planar pieces is to consider the Scientist a compound piece, as it covers two quite different kinds of plane, and the University and Spy as triple compounds. As the names seem to be the only ones for planar pieces I will stick with them and try to follow the theme, so let's call the Scientist a compound of the Theorist (where the diagonals are at right angles) and the Technician (where they are at 60°). For the additional compounds of one but not both Scientist components I suggest Base+Theorist=Study, Base+Technician=Laboratory, Theorist+Reporter=Reviewer, Technician+Reporter=Printer, Base+Theorist+Reporter=Library, and Base+Technician+Reporter=Press.
Excellent graphics. I finally got to appreciate the starting position (and I just realized that there's no Prince in the starting setup.) However, I still don't think this game is playable for humans. Not because of it's complexity, but because of the many piece types. I made an attempt to simplify this game, a whole lot, to make it more playable and closer to Standard two dimensional Chess. I called it the Tower's Game because it's played on a tower-like board.
Interesting, though I think there should be no more than 50-60 pieces per side. I have been trying to design something similar to this while avoiding the almost inevitable problem of too many pieces. It may be a good idea to add linear jumping pieces to supplement the others you have devised.
Great concept! The planar pieces seem a bit too powerful for a 3D version. However, I think they would be more useful in a 4D game. I think the dimensions of movement of a piece should not excede half the number of dimensions of the field.
<p>I have been playing around with the idea of a '4D8L' type game, but it now occurs to me that a 4D field would be too 'open' for a family of 'knight-hoppers' and 'line-movers' alone, even if there were 512 pieces and 512 pawns per side. So the concept of 'planar' pieces my help balance the 4D game.
Visualize for a moment that we have software that displays the game of Prince on binocular-vision LCD glasses. The glasses superimpose images onto a transparent view of the wearer's real environment-- not virtual reality, but augmented reality. Imagine also that we have two telemetry gloves. The index finger and thumb are tracked in 3D and 'mouse click' when they touch-- the two fingertips are displayed as two cursors floating in the image. I would want to play this game. Since a computer simulation has no gravity, we do not need surfaces on which to rest pieces. Each piece sits on an intersection of three translucent lines, one for each dimension, in an eight-by-eight cube. Grasping and pulling any edge of the cube allows free rotation. The cube should fill half the visual field, since the user's reach can be transposed on a huge scale, or the user can also change to the size of the pieces and stand inside the cube when desired. Ideally though, the glasses would be tracked with telemetry so that the cube would always float in the same space in the user's real environment while the user moved around it. In this mode the whole cube should fit within easy reach, perhaps three feet to a side. Without gravity there is no reason for pieces to be stable pedestals with radial symmetry along only one axis as they are in 2-D chess. The shapes that represent one-dimensional ranged movers could be 3-D stars. The piece is formed of arms extending from the intersection it occupies, and dwindling to tips before reaching adjacent intersections. Each arm points out toward an intersection to which the piece could move if it weren't obstructed. So, a rook looks like a thickening of bright, bold opacity along the three translucent board-lines of its intersection. Arms of bishops and merchants do not lie along the board lines; they reach across the gap toward adjacent line segments and intersections respectively. Leaper pieces have thinner, threadlike arms, that fork into Y's tipped with spheres. Two-dimensional movers are formed of a set of intersecting surfaces. Pawns are half-spheres. Kings are large spheres. For a game this complex, no one should complain if there is as much graphical computer assistance as possible. All pieces glow when under threat. A large crown symbol appears outside the cube when check is given. When a piece is grasped and dragged, the intersections to which it can legally move light up. Moving an index finger onto a piece, without touching the fingers together on it, causes its name and animated graphic description to display in the space above the cube. The piece on the board grows without thickening its arms: the arms stretch as far as they can without being blocked, to show all the intersections to which it can legally move. At the option of the user, all pieces on the board simultaneously extend their arms/spheres/surfaces as ghostly fogs of color. Since the sides are red and blue, they blend into purple where they cross. This represents threat from the red and blue sides, and varies with intensity based on how many pieces have a line of sight to the intersection.
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