Author: Reinhard Scharnagl
Date: 08:21:55 01/09/04
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Hello to all fans of chess variants!
As I have tried to explain in some postings before, I see a need for to create a
wider chess protocol, covering a lot of chess variants. For this I will make a
proposal now to be discussed.
For follwing variants I think an integration within a common GUI might be
possible: normal chess, shuffle chess, fischer random chess, janus chess,
capablanca's chess, capablanca random chess, gothic chess (?), omega chess etc..
(now slightly more precise)
PROPOSAL FOR AN INTEGRATING (FULLCHESS) GUI CHESS PROTOCOL
a) the protocol is basing on UCI
(therefore any such new engine must be able to play traditional chess, too.)
b) always encode castlings as O-O / O-O-O
(except of the four classical moves in an 8x8 board like "e1c1" and "e1g1"
because of UCI compatibility reasons)
c) the engine has to signal its awarenesses to the GUI
c.1) being able to play at 10 files or not (default),
by using: "option name 10x8 type combo default aware var aware\n"
c.2) being able to fischer castlings or not (default),
by using: "option name FRC type combo default aware var aware\n"
(when not FRC aware, the engine allows only FEN positions, where
castling is only enabled, when the matching rook is placed in its
corner and the king is standing at the 'e'-file (8x8 board) or at the
'f'-file (10x8) board. All castlings will place the king either on
the c-file or the second last letter file.)
c.3) supported non standard figures:
by e.g. using: "option name extrapieces type combo default AC var AC\n"
c.3.1) "A" for Archbishop / Janus
c.3.2) "C" for Chancellor
c.3.3) to be continued ...
d) Supporting an extended FEN encoding analog FRC-FEN, where the first row
decides the board size. Extended pieces available for promoting have to proceed
as a group the castling information.
ADDITIONS
On FRC-FEN: possible castlings marked by "KQkq" have to be reinterpreted: a) as
for a standard the rooks standing at the baseline most outside are targeted, b)
"Qq" means the a-side, "Kk" the h-side. Some unlikely positions there really do
exist having more then one rook beside the king at the baseline, in which some
special castling rights cannot be expressed at all by conventional FEN.
That are those situations, where one more rook is standig outside beside of a
rook having castling rights. Here following downwards compatible FEN supplement
will be helpful by appending a letter for the affected column immediately after
the matching castling symbol (only if related to a rook not outermost).
(You may test the FRC-FEN with the freeware FullChess FEN Editor! see:
[http://www.rescon.de/Compu/fullchess7_e.html], not yet enabled to cover this
proposal, sorry)
On starting special variants: it is up to the GUI then, to start new games of
matching variants (keeping the awarenesses of involved engines), where castling
rights and available extended pieces always are encoded via that special FEN,
and where is no need to additionally switch to special variants.
Regards, Reinhard.
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