Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Dec 14, 2021 10:43 AM UTC:

The o modifier for straying off-board is a very powerful tool, but unfortunately not very intuitive. From the examples I discussed in the previous comment it appears that it almost exclusively occurs in back-and-forth move, for testing if we are on an edge square. This is somewhat clumsy idiom, and last night it occurred to me it could be useful to create a new atom to perform this task in a more intuitive way: E could mean a null move that can only be made on an edge square. The Edgehog would then be [E-Q][mcQ-E], which I would consider a rather intuitive description. Because a null move has no intrinsic direction, we can stipulate that for the leg following it the forward direction is determined by the leg preceding it. (Or, in other words, 'forward' is continuing to move in the same direction as the latest leg that really moved.) So [B?E-sB] would be a reflecting Bishop. When the E is in the initial leg, the forward direction for the following leg could be defined as perpendicular away from the edge. So [E-fR] would mean a Rook move away from the edge. I guess we could allow directional modifiers on the E for indicating in which absolute direction it has to test for an edge: [B?sE-sB] would only be able to reflect from the left and right edges.

The other idiomatic construct in which o appeared was useful for 'burning' a single piece as the side effect of a move, i.e. a locust capture that must be made when it is possible, but would not preclude the move from being made when it is not possible (because there is no enemy on the indicated square, or the square would fall off board). This also involves a back-and-forth step, which needs the 'most-general non-overlapping' mode omc + friendly hop, which covers all possible states of the target square, and specifies its clearing only when it is an enemy. This problem was compounded by the fact that we have no modifier for friendly hopping, and that this needs the ckludge of friendly-capture + immediate unload. Where the need for the unload then makes in uncombinable with the c, so that you end up with a horrible [..omcK-bK...][...dK-buK...] construction. It would be nice to have some shorthand for this: burn the target if you can, but never mind if you cannot. One idea that came to mind is to use cc for this. So ccK would burn (without moving) an adjacent enemy in the direction of choice (which could be limited by directional modifiers) if one was there, but also continue if there wasn't. The Advancer would then simply be [Q-fccK]. The Withdrawer would be [ccK-bmQ], the b indicating that the Q move should go in the opposit direction from the burn square (and an m needed to suppress normal capture the final leg would have by default). Of course we could have a similar dd for friendly burning.

If no single direction is specified on the cc leg, any single one of the allowed directions can be chosen (as is usual in Betza notation). So the Forest Ox of Odin's Rune Chess could be written as [N?ccK]: move as Knight, and then optionally burn one enemy of choice adjacent to the destination square. If you would want to burn more victims, you would have to repeat the atom. E.g. [R-flccF-rccF] would burn two victims diagonally forward from the destination. It is a bit awkward here that the second burn needs r rather than fr, because it is referenced to the previous burn rather than the Rook move. (But ccK must (re)define a 'last direction', or otherwise the Withdrawer could not work.)

Does any of this make sense?


Edit Form

Comment on the page Betza notation (extended)

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.