Seirawan subvariant idea about pychess-variants

[gbtami]

Pychess-variants is heavily based on Fairy-Stockfish. I use it for move generation, validation, SAN conversion, analysis, BOT play, etc-etc. Because of this I can add variants only supported by Fairy-Stockfish. Until it is not there I have to close this issue, sry.

[Nordlandia]

What do you think about the suggestion in general?

Do you like the suggestion?

[ianfab]

Variants with non-rectangular boards have been briefly discussed at fairy-stockfish/Fairy-Stockfish#1 and in principle it should be feasible to integrate into Fairy-Stockfish, but the move generation would need quiet some adaption to support such board shapes, so it is unlikely to be supported in the near future.

Just now I had the idea for an easier workaround. As part of the Xiangqi implementation, I anyway will have to implement the possibility to restrict the mobility of pieces to a certain area, so one could just use a full 8x10 board and disallow any piece to move to the first and tenth rank. However, as mentioned, such feature requests rather belong to the Fairy-Stockfish repo, since the rules need to be implemented there first.

[Nordlandia]

Seems like a lot of work for a mere subvariant.

[CouchTomato87]

That's actually a pretty slick solution though, ianfab

[gbtami]

@Nordlandia I like the gating in S-chess because it creates more possibilities (opening/middle game variations) than this suggestion or Musketeer chess method.

[Nordlandia]

@gbtami i know few have mentioned that they find the drop or gating system confusing so this is an compromise.

[gbtami]

If someone find drop/gating confusing but want to try H/E he/she can choose Capa/Gothic/Grand :)

[Nordlandia]

Those board compromises general piece values and especially knight value. On 10x8, the knight devaluate and even more on 10x10.

Giraffe board shouldn't influence general piece values.