Chess on a really big board Puns

tl;dr: you can download and try the program for yourself below

First off, I'm gonna say that I am not a programmer (will get to this later). but recently I've been into big chess variants and I, disappointed with how few options there are to play these variants, decided to make my own. I followed a simple chess GUI and AI tutorial by a Youtuber Eddie Sharick (you can find his channel and tutorial here).

initial piece setup

took some creative liberty and scaled the board to 16x16, and added some classic fairy pieces:

• The Chancellor (C), moves like a knight and rook, depicted as a knight with a rook's head as a base
• The Archbishop (A), moves like a knight and bishop, depicted as a knight with a bishop's base
• The Lance/Amazon (L), moves like a knight and queen, depicted as a knight with a queen's crown
• The Ferz (F), moves 1 square diagonally, depicted as a baseless queen
• The Mann (M), moves 1 square orthogonally, depicted as a baseless king
• The Wazir (Z), moves like a king but is non-royal, depicted as a pentagonal-shaped piece (idk how to call it)
• The Alfil (G), leaps and only leaps 2 squares diagonally, depicted as an elephant

Pawns can move up to 5 squares on their first move and can only promote to an Amazon. there is no en passant (since the chance of it happening is even more astronomically low than regular chess) nor castling (since you'd have to move like a million pieces just so you can castle).

Mr. Sharick (the creator of the code) has stated that he does not want to share his original source code but I guess the changes I made are major enough for me to share my source code here.

One small caveat is the AI is very slow, depth 2 takes a minute just to make a single move, this is because:

1. I haven't implemented features such as move ordering and transposition tables in the AI, and quite frankly, I don't know how to.
2. it is written in Python which is in and of itself very inefficient

if anyone know ways to improve the AI, or maybe knows how to hook it up to chess fairy AIs like Fairy-Max or SjaakII, that would be appreciated. I also do apologize that some of the code is written in my native language

Full Quote:

>“It was different. This was different, a different game,” said George, who was held to 12 points on 6-for-20 shooting, including going 0 for 8 from 3-point range, noting afterward that his legs felt heavy. “Having their three-man and their five-man switching and not giving up much in the interior – this is a different game.

>“We couldn’t really get out and run as much,” George added. “They were sending multiple guys at the rim, getting rebounds, so I thought that was kind of deflating to us. We couldn’t really get out and run, we was using a lot of energy trying to rebound. And then when we did rebound, we had to send everybody to the board, so really wasn’t no outlets or advantage going down, fastbreaks, so they just did a good job of that, that allowed them to load up on their defense.”

https://www.ocregister.com/2021/10/27/cold-shooting-clippers-fall-to-1-3-with-loss-to-cavaliers/

Hey everyone! I'm new here so let me know if I'm going against any rules.

I've always been fascinated with the way some board games work and look, especially Hnefatafl and Chess. I've played both casually but spent a few years not even touching a set. A few days ago I got this sudden interest in playing Chess again and also looking for cool sets.

Then I decided I would model my own minimalist set which I'll reveal here once it's complete. I intend to send the model of the board to a company that offers excellent woodworking services, and the model of the pieces to a company that offers metal 3D printing services which from what I've seen is also much better than anything I've seen years ago.

But I'm having an issue deciding which dimensions to use for the board and pieces, so there are a few things I would like to know before I go on with this project. I've searched for details such as piece to square ratio, as well as minimum and maximum sizes for the pieces. I decided not to take it too seriously and so I started modeling it this way:

1. All pieces have a hexagonal base and overall shape, even then it's pretty easy to tell which is which.
2. I'm not really caring if the base diameter of the King is 75~80% of the square as suggested in some guidelines. Maybe it will be close to that but I'm not paying attention to it.
3. I'm also not taking into account things like a square having to fit four Pawns.
4. This might be the trickiest one: my Knight, Bishop and Rook all have the same height, and the Queen and King have the same height. All pieces have the same base shape and sizes.

I don't intend to turn this into a set that could be used in official tournaments or anything. Would any of the things listed above turn out to be a problem even if it's supposed to be a casual and artistic set more than anything? I thought maybe things like Knight, Bishop and Rook having the same height could be an issue that I'm not aware of. I just really want to keep it this way because it's looking great, but I also don't want to make it a set that will have flaws when it comes to playing it.

I had forgotten that I still have the drawing skills of a six-year old.

It looks okayish form a distance though, and I only have four squares left to color in.

I also have to still have to draw the border around it, but I am afraid I'll ruin it when I try to do that.

How is your day going?

I'm curious about this particular act on tournaments I watched on Youtube. Anyone knows?

Spells would still work as normal, but every creature is now a moving part on the board. This would make it feel like more of a "battle", and add a new layer of strategy to the game. You would have a set 2*8 area on your side where you can play creatures. Some more optional additions:

• Different types of terrain.
• Creatures with more esoteric movement options, like a crab that can only move side to side, or a cannon that needs to take a few turns to get into position and aim itself in the right direction.
• Spells that manipulate the board in certain ways, such as laying traps or summoning creatures in otherwise unreachable spots.

The possibilities for such a game are endless, and I already have some ideas for cards and mechanics. There are several problems though:

• I have no idea how to balance this. Not only do you need to factor in a creature's stats, but also their movement and attack range, which are very abstract.

• A lot of my card ideas are very complex, and I don't know how to put them into words or even get around to trying.

What do you think? Should it be a simple enough game that's just about tactics and board management? Should there be more exotic cards that have complex movement mechanics? I'd like to know what your opinion is.