TessChess / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page TessChess.

starting setup

Ben Reiniger 10 Jun 2010 19:10

One of the main things I don't like about the original setup is that all bishops are stuck on dark squares. I know I've come up with another setup where this doesn't happen but the pieces still guard one another well, but I don't recall it now…it may be just swapping the positions of KN and BR on the right.

Re: starting setup

Joe Joyce 10 Jun 2010 23:36

Might have been Gabriel Maura that came up with the idea of bishop castling, where K and B change places as a move. Maura's chess was 9 across, with 2 queens, so his bishops were both on the same color. He allowed them to stay that way, or castle with 1 B and K.

Re: starting setup

Joe Joyce 24 Jun 2010 16:02

Hey Ben, could you use this setup, with the pawns pushed up?

Re: starting setup

Ben Reiniger 05 Jul 2010 05:01

That suffers the same problem; notice that the colors on your image don't switch from board to board. That setup, incidentally, is equivalent to
_RN_ _BQ_ _KB_ _NR_
which looks a lot like the standard layout. I believe I started with that setup, but didn't like that the rooks were guarded only by the royals.

Re: starting setup

Joe Joyce 12 Jul 2010 03:00

Hey, Ben, that's Abdul-Rahman Sibahi's alternate setup for mine. He reverses the coordinates of my setup between big and little squares, so it is the same. Okay, how about this: expand the board to 4x4 x 6x6, where there are 16 levels - big squares - and 6x6 = 36 little squares in each one. This is a great increase in size, as you are adding 20 more little squares to each big square, which started with 16 little squares. You wind up with 576 little squares, from 256. But you still only have 16 levels, and here's the advantage - the change in dimensions the way I suggest prevents the pieces from bearing directly on each other from the starting setup. The diagonals now place the pieces in front of the pieces on the back level, instead of in them.

Re: starting setup

Ben Reiniger 13 Jul 2010 17:34

I found another idea I had for a setup:
oNRo KooB QooB oNRo
with a few extra pawns in the middle two big columns to cover the extra width.
This fixes the bishop coloring, and we have that the rooks guard the knights, the knights guard the bishops, and the bishops guard the rooks. Nice, but rather different.

Last edited on 13 Jul 2010 21:30 by Ben Reiniger Show more

Re: starting setup

Joe Joyce 13 Jul 2010 21:20

Well, then, shall we push pieces? It's really the best way in cases like this. Send me an invite.

Pawn diagram

Joe Joyce 30 Jul 2010 19:06

Hey, Ben, you can/should put a white pawn on B2c2 in the pawn movement-capture diagram.

Designer Notes

Joe Joyce 22 Sep 2010 23:07

Hey, Ben, in the intro, you dodge designer notes. I quote: "Intro
I'll keep this article as a simple ("simple" with respect to multidimensional chess) rules guide, and not get into the reasons for how these came about. There is a Game Courier preset at http://…"

Well, now that your game is working fairly well, you should do those Notes. You should give a brief design history [put in all the interesting spots], explain your thinking, and acknowledge your sources and inspirations, any collaborators, even your playtesters. How many people have heard of Vernon Rylands Parton?