Newer entries are stored here.
Tuesday, March 30, 1999 |
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I received an email from Vu Vo, informing me
that there is an updated version of Bach Dang chess at his Voversions
web site. I have updated the link on my index page to point to there.
The game has undergone some significant changes, so be sure to take a look.
Today and tomorrow are the only days left for voting in the 39-square contest!!! On the Zillions of Games front -- I have a working version of Hans' Pick a Team chess. Weak points of my implementation: (1) I skimped on the graphics, pieces have the same shape, but different letters identify the various pieces. (2) There are some unimplemented minor rules like the initial multiple square moves for the pawns. (3) Help text for many of the pieces isn't there yet. But it all basically works. Look for the official release in another week or so. This game really tested the flexibility and power of Zillions of Games, and I'm happy to say, it's been up to the challenge. King's Court is the name of the most recent entry in the contest. This 8 by 12 variant was submitted by Sidney LaVasseur, and features two new pieces: the Chancellor and the Jester, along with variations on castling and king's leap. Look for a web page coming soon. |
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Saturday, March 27, 1999 |
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Ruggero Micheletto, in Japan,
has indicated he will be submitting one or two chess variants to the
contest. He's currently working on the web pages for them, so look for
them to appear in the near future.
Please cast your vote (if you haven't already) in the 39-square contest. There's only a few days left and just a few votes have been cast. This is a very important part of the contest, so please, surf on over to the 39 square contest page and do your Chess Variant civic duty! Or use our handy voting form. Zachary Catlin has submitted his Conveyor Chess as the most recent entry to the contest. This is a 12x12 board with special squares which force pieces to move in a particular direction, something like a conveyor belt, only the pieces don't automatically move. A web page for this game will be appearing soon on the Chess Variant pages. |
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Monday, March 22, 1999 |
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"Spinach Chess" is the unlikely name
of the latest entry in the contest. This is the second entry submitted
by the founder of the Chess Variant pages, Hans Bodlaender. The name
comes from the Popeye cartoon, whereupon consuming a can of spinach
(usually when in a perilous predicament) bestows Popeye with
superhuman strength. For more information on this entry, see Hans'
web page, which should be appearing soon on the Chess Variant pages.
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Monday, March 15, 1999 |
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Michael Asher has just submitted his second
entry in the
contest. It's called Camblam,
taken from the legendary last battle of King Arthur
who fought against his nephew Mordred. Look for a
web page soon.
The web page for Jester Chess has been completed and should show up soon on the Chess Variant pages. Any one who has access to a high resolution version of a picture of Grande Acedrex, please contact me or John William Brown. We'd like to use it for the cover of the Large Variant Contest book for the finalists. John is also exploring using the low resolution version. |
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Friday, March 12, 1999 |
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Vu Vo has submitted another entry called
Bach Dang Chess. This is a larger variant of Quang Trung Chess. For those
intending to submit more than one game, keep in mind that I am generally
limiting each submitter to at most two submissions.
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Wednesday, March 10, 1999 |
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Adrian King, inventor of
Scirocco, has actually implemented a
Zillions of Games version of
Chesseract! According to Adrian, this
will be available soon on the Chess Variant pages. After that,
Adrian will be implementing "Quantum Duodecahedron Chess"!! (-;
The web page for
Jester Chess is almost finished, and should be up on the
Chess Variant pages soon. John William Brown and myself continue to
work on the bound version of the Large Variant Contest submissions
to be awarded to the four finalists. We're considering using the
image of
Grande Acedrex chess
for the cover (that's the same image as on the stamp sent in from
Jean-Louis Cazaux).
Two more variants have been entered into the contest. Jean-Louis Cazaux has submitted Tamerlane II and Shako! By a happy coincidence, I just finished implementing Timur's Chess and Tamerlane II as Zillions of Games files (they're available from the Chess Variant pages). I'll get started on implementing Shako as soon as I'm done with the other four variants I have yet to implement! :-| In any case, with the two new entries that makes the total number of entries 14! And still over a month and a half to go!! |
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Tuesday, March 9, 1999 |
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Hans Bodlaender has submitted an entry for
the contest. This is a Chess Variant Pages first!! The submission is
called "Pick-the-team Chess".
The game is divided into two phases,
the first of which, players alternate choosing their pieces from a pool of available
pieces, and then the second phase where they play against each other with
the selected pieces. While I haven't looked carefully at how difficult this
game would be to convert to Zillions of Games, it seems at first glance
that this would not be too difficult to convert. I think the most difficult
part will be coming up with graphics for all those different pawn pieces! ;-)
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Monday, March 8, 1999 |
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Vu Vo has submitted
"Quang Trung Chess",
an 8x9 chess variant named after Emperor Quang Trung,
Vietnam's late 18th century military hero. This variant introduces the
concept of "advancing" pieces -- pieces which must advance one square
after capturing. Also, a corresponding "retreating" piece is introduced.
A Zillions of Games implementation will be available soon (hopefully).
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Tuesday, March 2, 1999 |
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John William Brown
(author of the book
Meta-Chess,
and the large variants
Centennial, and
Millennial Chess)
has graciously
volunteered to publish a bound volume of all the Large Variant Contest
submissions! He plans to make four copies, which would then be distributed
to the four finalists. This would be spiral bound (in the manner of
Meta-Chess), with a laminated cover. As an owner of Meta-Chess, I anticipate
this will be a top-quality publication.
Thanks John! |
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Monday, March 1, 1999 |
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Kevin Begley has submitted a large
(in fact it's absolutely mammoth in size ;-) variant
called
Mammoth Chess. It's a decimal chess variant with
the corner squares removed, and features the Mammoth piece which
is a variant on the ancient Phil (or elephant) piece. The web page
should pop up soon on Hans' pages, and Kevin has graciously offered
to make the Zillions of Games version of his creation available.
Big news on the prize front. More later when the details are nailed down... |
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Wednesday, February 24, 1999 |
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I'm not overwhelmed yet, but I might soon be
if the pace of submissions keeps increasing like this. There are two
new submissions this week:
Scirocco, a chess variant populated by a very diverse set of pieces, from Adrian King. This is definitely not a game your typical 8-year-old is going to pick up and play in a couple of hours, but as the author points out, this is a large variant contest, and the complexity lies in the number of different pieces and not in arcane rules or rule exceptions. Maelstrom takes the concept of piece density to it's logical upper limit. Yes, a 1.0 piece density! Author is Michael Asher (along with Richard Winn). Look for web pages for both these games within a week! Also, Adrian has supplied a Zillions of Games version of Scirocco. Alberto Monteiro wrote in a few days ago inquiring as to the upper limit rules for this contest. I'm not sure whether he's joking or not, but he's considering a variant with an infinite number of pieces. Now this would be something beyond a large variant, but I'll wait and see what he comes up with first before making a decision. John William Brown's Centennial Chess web page should be up on Hans' web pages within the next day or two. An MS-Word document will also be available for making cut-out pieces for both Centennial and Millennial Chess. Also expect Zillions of Games versions of these variants (coming soon). With 9 entries in the contest so far, I have to say, I'm very pleased with the quality, imagination, and obvious effort and hard work that have gone into the submissions. Thanks to all who have entered so far! |
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Tuesday, February 16, 1999 |
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Ben Good has suggested a modification to
Xhess
-- don't allow the horsemen to capture when making the
forward non-jumping horse
(mao) move.
Based on our first game, I would have to agree that the horsemen are too
powerful, making any attempt at forming a defensive line futile. However they
do make for an exciting endgame.
This contest is really heating up now. Daniel Macdonald has just submitted Omega Chess. This is a commercial variant played on a 10x10 board (with 4 special corner squares), and two new pieces: the Wizard, and the Champion. Ben Good has also reviewed this game. |
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Sunday, February 14, 1999 |
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"Jester Chess" by Thomas Havel has been submitted
as an entry in the
contest! This game features the Jester which has no move of its own,
it simply inherits the move of the most recently moved opponent's piece!
However this seems to be another game which is "Zillions" resistant :-(.
We have a working version of Centennial Chess, and a web page for it, but the graphics are still being perfected. Look for both sometime this week, with Millennial Chess close on its heels. Received an email from Vu Vo requesting a clarification of the contest rules. The limits on the number of squares plus number of pieces are inclusive, so don't worry if your game has 'only' 104 squares/pieces. Also, the rules are mostly guidelines, so if you have a great game with 103 squares/pieces, submit it anyway, chances are it will be accepted. Web pages for Nahbi Chess and Edge of the World Chess have been submitted to Hans' pages and should appear soon. A Zillions of Games version of Nahbi Chess has also been submitted. Note that I did the graphics for the new pieces (and it shows). But at least it's playable. |
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Tuesday, February 9, 1999 |
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Another new entry for the contest. This one from Michael Fryer.
It's called "Edge of the World Chess", and features a 12x12 board,
with standard chess pieces, except once moved, they continue moving
with the same "momentum" each turn. Looks like a fun game, but
requires a little bookkeeping!
Should have a web page for it in time for Hans' Friday update. There is a very similar game called Momentum Chess (looks like it was written by Ralph Betza). The web page for it is here. Received a nice email from Adrian King a couple days ago with suggestions on how I might implement the rotating spearman in Zillions of Games. The approach was to actually have multiple spearman type pieces, each pointing in a different direction, and then have a single move which essentially promotes the spearman to a (different) spearman pointing in a different direction. Well, this was the approach I had taken. Here's some of my response:
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Saturday, January 30, 1999 |
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Uri Bruck has entered the fray with his submission "Nahbi Chess".
This variant is played on a 10x10 board and features a piece called
(unsurprisingly) the Nahbi. Also featured are archers, camels and
alfils. According to the author, this game is influenced by Chinese
Chess.
Uri has also submitted a large variant called Pyramid Chess. This is a 3D, four-player variant, that may or may not be an official entrant in the contest. |
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Saturday, January 23, 1999 |
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I've created a draft version of a Zillions of Games implementation of
Centennial Chess. Looks like the Zillions evaluation algorithm might be
assigning the Spearman too high a value. Also, getting Zllions to allow me
to rotate the Spearman without moving it was something of a problem. I had
to create a dummy move that a Spearman can always take, just so Zillions
would allow the rotation move. If anyone has a more elegant solution to
this problem, please help me out! Thanks.
In any case, look for the Zillions of Games implementation of Centennial to be posted soon. John and I are also working on a web page for Centennial Chess. Millennial Chess has been removed as a seperate entry. We are considering it to be a variant of Centennial Chess, so the Centennial Chess entry will cover both games. |
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Wednesday, January 20, 1999 |
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John William Brown (author of Meta-Chess) has decided to submit two games for entry into the contest! John writes: The first game (featured in Meta-Chess) is Centennial Chess. It's a 10x10, 52-piece game requiring about an hour to play (real time). The second game is Millennial Chess. It's a 12x12, 60-piece game requiring about two hours to play. John will be sending me material for web pages describing these games shortly. Meanwhile, since I have the Meta-Chess book, I can start working on a Zillions implementation of Centennial Chess. BTW: Meta-Chess is an excellent book. For a review see A Review of Meta-Chess, by Serge Kohl. This page also contains ordering information. Also, I have finished the implementation of Eight-stone Chess. However, I am somewhat dissatisfied with the outcome. It seems that I've managed to confuse the Zillions computer opponent, and therefore Black almost seems to be trying to lose! Anyone out there want to take a look at it and give me some suggestions as to what I might be doing wrong? You can download the .ZRF file along with the .BMP files at Hans' Zillions of Games index. You can also find the Zillions implementation of Xhess at the above page. |
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Monday, January 11, 1999 |
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More struggles with implementing Eight-stone chess in Zillions. I have succeeded in implementing a modified "Ko" rule, which I call "Over Ko", which will not allow a Stone to be moved if it was the most recently moved Stone. I've given up on implementing the Ko rule as stated in Jim's rules. The Stone swap move now works properly in that the player can only swap with his/her own pieces. Zillions is still convinced that a swap is a capture in some sense, so I've had to change the losing condition to be no King left on the board (ie. the King must be capture *and* removed from the board). But anyway, it's close enough... On to Chesseract! (just kidding) |
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Saturday, January 9, 1999 |
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Attempted to convert Eight-stone Chess to Zillions. Qualified success, but I'm not quite there yet. The Ko rule is turning out to be difficult to implement, as well as limiting the stone/piece swap to friendly pieces. Also having trouble convincing Zillions that the swap is NOT a mutual capture. My test game ended with White checkmating black by means of stones! Hmmmmph... Anyway, Eight-stone Chess looks really good, and is a fine start to the contest. The game seems to take a bit longer than normal chess, but that's not surprising for a large variant, where each player makes two moves per turn. The rules are simple, easy to remember, but there's lots of room for strategic and tactical complexity. Created the Logo for the contest. It's called "how to kill several hours playing with Kai's Power Tools and Photoshop". I have way too much free time I think. Ah well... it was fun. Also created a large variant called Xhess, but will not be able to enter it in the contest (seeing as how I'm running the contest). But I can still publish it, and will, sometime next week maybe. |
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Thursday, January 7, 1999 |
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Received Eight-stone Chess from Jim Aikin. Jim writes:
I'm not sure, but I think Jim was having fun with the rules here, as this variant exactly fits the lower limit for my recommended large chess variant size limit (one extra row, eight extra pieces). |
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Tuesday, January 5, 1999 |
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Received Chesseract from Jim Aikin. According to Jim:
After looking at Chesseract, verifying starting positions is the least of my "trivial problems"... ;-) I have trouble enough with 3D. 4D is beyond me. Might as well be String Theory. But, anyway, Jim is pushing the envelope here, so anyone else out there with strange, twisted ideas about large chess variants, feel free to continue with the inspiration... |
This page maintained by David Howe. For more information about the 1999 Large Chess Variant Contest, see the official rules page.