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Play-test applet for chess variants. Applet you can play your own variant against.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Jun 17, 2020 10:54 PM UTC:

Problem is that just saying it is not enough; it must know whether stalemate is a draw or a loss, so that it knows whether it should go for it or avoid it, depending on whether it is winning or losing. So the stalemate result must become a parameter for the diagram, and the applet must somehow provide a way for the user to control that parameter.

I will work on it. It was first posted hardly more than 24 hours ago, and I had more problems than I expected to get promotions working properly. (We don't want to allow the AI to promote to any piece in the table, so it had to keep track of which pieces participate, and which don't.) And so far I was concentrating on the interface, how to make this reasonably user-friendly.

Feedback is much appreciated, btw. E.g. besides stalemate, should we also be able to specify other game terminations? Such as baring, or whether multiple royals would mean extinction royalty or not. Also, there are still many pieces in the list that do not have a move. Which seems a pity; as they are there anyway for their pretty looks, they might as well be used to provide the user more choice of moves without having to mess with the move definitions himself. Can you suggest any moves for pieces like Ox, Ram, Crocodile...?

I fixed the stalemate; I added a parameter stalemate=draw to the diagram, and actually made that the default. It now also prints the message. I also changed the King position evaluation in the end-game, to draw to the center (extra strong for a bare King) and to draw to the action; as a result it can even force checkmate with a Queen now, at 2 ply.

This facility isn't really meant for playing end-games; at a depth of two ply and without any dedicated strategic knowledge that will really suck. To see if pieces can checkmate a bare King we have the checkmating applet, which is based on End-Game Tables rather than search. This is intended for seeing how the design works out in the middle-game.