A Game Courier Preset for Al-Ces

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Al-Ces

Uncoded. No rules enforced. No legal moves displayed.

Welcome to Game Courier, where you can play Al-Ces and many other Chess variants through online correspondence.

Rules of Al-Ces

(Köksal Karakus, 2000)

	Gold General moves without capturing like an orthodox Queen, but regardless the occupied squares in between. It captures by moving one step diagonally forward or orthogonally.
	Silver General moves without capturing like an orthodox Queen, but regardless the occupied squares in between. It captures by moving one step vertically forward or diagonally.
	Assassin moves without capturing like an orthodox Queen, and captures by moving like a King. Moreover, it may capture all adjacent pieces of any color while being removed in the same time; this count as a move.
	Deve (Camel) is a (3,1) jumper.
	Cannon moves like a Rook and captures if there is exactly one piece of any color between itself and the captured piece.
	Elephant jumps 2 squares diagonally. When it reaches to the last rank, it may optionally promote to Bishop.
	Lion jumps 1 or 2 squares diagonally or orthogonally.

King, Queen, Bishops, Knights, Rooks, and Pawns are orthodox. En passant exists.

When castling, the King moves 3 squares horizontally, and the Rook goes next to it, to the other side.

Pawns promote when reaching the last row of the board to any non-Pawn and non-King piece. If it promotes to an Elephant, the Elephant can promote to a Bishop if it goes back and comes to the last row again.

Check and stalemate are as in orthodox chess.

How to Move Pieces

Full Algebraic Notation

Algebraic notation identifies each space by a coordinate that begins with its file label and ends with its rank label. On the Chess board, files go up and down from one player to the other, and ranks go from left to right. In most games, files are represented by letters, and ranks are represented by numbers, but there is no fixed rule requiring this for all games, and some games, such as Shogi, reverse this convention. If you look at the diagram, you will usually see the file labels going from left to right and the file labels going up and down. And if you hover your mouse over a space, you will normally see the name of the coordinate appear in a tooltip.

It is not uncommon to see algebraic notation being used for Chess, but it is often in an abbreviated format that requires you to know both the rules of the game and the current position to know exactly which piece moves where. For example, the notation "Ne6" indicates that a Knight is moving to e6, but it doesn't indicate which Knight, and it doesn't specify where the Knight is coming from. To figure this out, you need to know how a Knight moves and which Knight on the board can make a legal move to e6.

Although rules may be programmed for individual games, Game Courier itself does not know the rules of any game, and it is unable to parse abbreviated algebraic notation. Therefore, it relies on full algebraic notation, which completely specifies the move without requiring any knowledge of the game's rules or the current position. The most usual type of full algebraic notation indicates the piece that is moving by its label, the space it is moving from, and the space it moving to. In Chess, a typical first move might be written as "P e2-e4". When you hover your mouse over a piece, you will normally see the piece label followed by the coordinate for the space, and when you hover it over an empty space, you will normally see the coordinate label. Including the piece label in your notation allows Game Courier to check that the piece you're moving is the right one, and it makes game notation easier to follow, but it is not mandatory.

You may promote a piece by including a promotion move after your regular move. A promotion move has a piece go directly to a coordinate. Here is an example: "p e7-e8; q-e8".

You may remove a piece from a space by adding an @ to the space or by omitting the destination coordinate. For example, both "@-e4" and "e4-" would remove the piece on "e4". This is useful for en passant when you are playing a game that does not handle this automatically. For example, "P d5-e6; e5-" removes the Pawn on e5 after a Pawn moves from d5 to e6.

You will not need to remove spaces for most games, but if you should need to, you can do this by omitting the first coordinate in a move. For example, "-e4" would remove e4 from the board. To add or return a space to the board, you may add an @ or any other piece to it.

Available Pieces

Pieces are represented by labels, usually using uppercase letters for White and lowercase letter for Black. When you enter a move or specify the starting position for a game, you should remember that piece labels are case-sensitive. Many piece sets are available for use with Game Courier, and this table shows you which pieces belong to the piece set you are currently using.

These pieces come from a set containing more pieces, but this preset has had the set of pieces reduced to those used in the game.

Credits

This preset uses the alces_alfaerie settings file for Al-Ces, which was made by Erik Lerouge.

Game Courier was created, programmed and written by Fergus Duniho.

Game Courier, Copyright © Fergus Duniho, 2001-2017