A Game Courier Preset for Avatar Reef Riders

This rule-enforcing preset was created through the Play-Test Applet

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	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h	i	j	k

Avatar Reef Riders

Legal moves displayed. Might enforce rules.

Welcome to Game Courier, where you can play Avatar Reef Riders and many other Chess variants through online correspondence.

Pieces

Night-, cardinal-, chancellor-, amazon- and zebracamelrider as well as king and pawns. .

	pawn	steps one square straight ahead, or diagonally forward to an empty square, or jumps to the 2nd square straight ahead
	nightrider	repeatedly makes a knight's jump in the same direction
	amazonrider	slides in all 8 directions, or repeatedly makes a knight's jump in the same direction
	cardinalrider	slides diagonally, or repeatedly makes a knight's jump in the same direction
	chancellorrider	slides orthogonally, or repeatedly makes a knight's jump in the same direction
	zecari	repeatedly makes a (3,2) leap in the same direction, or repeatedly makes a (3,1) leap in the same direction
	king	steps one square in all 8 directions, or castles by stepping 4 squares towards the chancellorrider

Rules

Except for the following changes, the Fide rules apply. There is no capturing en passant. Castling is part of the game. The promotion of the pawn only affects the pawn on the f-file - provided it reaches the opponent's base line in direct file.
Bare king loses. Stalemate is a win.

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The king is excluded from morphing.
There is no morphing on the f-file.

Ranks 1 to 11
In this area, pieces are morphed to:

• chancellorrider on a and k files,
• nightrider on b and j files,
• cardinalrider on c and i files,
• zekari on d and h files and
• amazonrider on e and g files.

F-file
There is no morphing on the f-file.

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.

The inclusion of a piece does not indicate that it is used in the game you are playing. But if your game uses pieces not included here, you should choose a different piece set.

Credits

This preset uses the avatarreefriders settings file for Avatar Reef Riders, which was made by Gerd Degens.

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

Game Courier, Copyright © Fergus Duniho, 2001-2017