Joe's Strange Notation

In attempting to design new pieces, I've found it necessary to come up with a shorthand way to represent these pieces, both on the board as icons in Game Courier, and on "paper" when writing about them. To this end, I've grabbed a little of Ralph Betza's work, but found it expedient [aka: easier] to create additional notation to quickly indicate how a piece moves and how it's related to other pieces with the same basic components, again both on the board and off. This is because some of these pieces are apparently unique, and don't move like most pieces used up until now. I've used the standard alphabetical symbols for pieces, and added a hopefully simple and easy to understand symbology. Most of what follows is my CV comment of 2007-03-14 on Big Board CVs. "TSRP" refers to The ShortRange Project.

The first part of our 'shortrange pieces for longrange boards' discussion
has given us 5 basic piece types with 5 simple symbols for easy
combination. Combine the wazir and dabbabah into the warmachine. The
dabbabah icon is a wheeled tower and the wazir icon is a plus sign, so the
warmachine is a wheeled tower with a plus sign on its side. The generic
piece can be identified like this: DW. This identifies the components
without specifying any particular movement pattern. Now let's define some
movement patterns with the help of this example piece. Then we associate
symbols with these patterns. Again, to keep things simple, we'll use the
basic movement patterns discussed in TSRP.

wwarmachinewazir.gifD/W

1] Or. The warmachine may move as either one of its components, that is,
like a wazir or a dabbabah. It steps 1 orthogonally or leaps 2
orthogonally. As this is the simplest movement pattern, it doesn't need
anything extra on the piece icon. So a combo icon with no info other than
the various piece symbols may move as any one of the pictured pieces. This
can be distinguished in writing by the slash '/' symbol. Our piece
appears on the board as a wheeled tower with a plus sign on its side, and
in writing, it looks like this: D/W.

wherowarmachinewazir.gifD+W

2] And (linear). The warmachine may move as either or both of its
components, in either order. It may not change direction during this move.
To the basic 'DW' icon, we will add a square around the central symbol.
In writing, we will indicate this by D+W.

wlemurianwarmachinewazir.gifD +/- W

3] And (nonlinear). The warmachine may move as either or both of its
components, in either order. It *may* change direction during this move.
To the basic 'DW' icon, we will add a circle around the central symbol.
In writing, we will indicate this by a 'plus/minus' symbol: D +/- W.

wdababbarider.gifD/W + D/W

4] And-Or (two-step linear rider). Our basic DW piece may move as either
of its components, then it may [or may not] move as either of its
components again. It may not change direction during this move. The basic
icon gets 2 'speed lines' on its side. Written, it uses the plus sign
between 2 of the [written] piece symbols: D/W + D/W.

wflexibleknight.gifD/W +/- D/W

5] And-Or (two-step nonlinear rider). Our basic DW piece may move as
either of its components, then it may [or may not] move as either of its
components again. It *may* change direction during this move. The basic
icon gets 2 speed lines connected by a crossbar, making a 'Z' on the
piece side. Written, it uses the plus/minus sign between 2 of the
[written] piece symbols: D/W +/- D/W.

There is also an analogous Elephant series.

blinearchieftainjumpinggeneral.gif[D+W]/[A+F]

6] [And]-Or-[And] (compound two-step linear rider)
The War Elephant. This piece may move as either the linear Hero, as seen above, or as its diagonal analog, the linear Shaman.

Finally, wherever there may be a possibility for confusion, I have indicated a single multi-component piece, or significant fraction thereof, by enclosing it in brackets. The basic brackets used are the "hard" brackets: [ ] For more complex multi-component pieces, the hard brackets represent a significant fraction of the piece, and the entire piece may be indicated by being enclosed in standard brackets: ( ) should I feel it's necessary. I admit to being somewhat inconsistent in my work. Partly this is because much was done before I elaborated this system, and partly because I tend to be sloppy and inconsistent unless I go back and edit my work repeatedly and rigorously. That's a benefit of using this wiki before posting to the Chess Variants Pages.

Precedence

This system needs to be expanded to include precedence. While I don't have an iconology for this, the written version is simple. A recent update of Lemurian Shatranj has added weaker versions of the bent hero and bent shaman. Specifically, these pieces have been split into 2 weaker versions, one with the 2-square leap always coming first, with an optional 1-square step afterwards, and the other with the 1-square step always first, and then an optional 2-square leap.
This is easily written as: D -> W or W -> D.

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