61–70 of 269 posts
The lines don't need to be so thick I think, which would allow little arrow heads to make it even more obvious. And while we're at it, they don't even need to look like actual physical pieces, so the knight could be designed to show how it hops over squares by having blank spots in its icon.
It would be interesting to do an experiment on people playing one another (online) with these pieces vs regular pieces (e.g. one player with a regular set and one player with this set). Because I do feel like I can visualize the state of the board more easily with this approach--but would that translate across people into better play, or is there some point where a more expert player (I don't play very often, though…
The knight shape does seem off. But it avoids the piece being a sun symbol / fascist tribute piece :-)
I.e. the knight is an anti-queen.
[1]: https://twitter.com/skidbladnirr_/status/1750285122769957129
This would be awesome for teaching beginners. I'd probably go with circle for the king, and maybe an L or a sideways H for the knight, even though they break the original design rule. Otherwise K/Q/N just look too similar.
For me the most surprising observation from this thread is this tweet [1] showing that the knight's moves are exactly the squares that the queen can't get to within a 2 square manhattan distance. I.e. the knight is an anti-queen. [1]: https://twitter.com/skidbladnirr_/status/1750285122769957129
very old variants often had such compound pieces like for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Acedrex
It would be interesting to do an experiment on people playing one another (online) with these pieces vs regular pieces (e.g. one player with a regular set and one player with this set). Because I do feel like I can visualize the state of the board more easily with this approach--but would that translate across people into better play, or is there some point where a more expert player (I don't play very often, though…
If you ask an experienced player to use a weird piece set, you will only be introducing error and cognitive overhead. If you ask someone naive to the game to use the piece set, do they internalize how the pieces move more quickly and get over the impedance when they start to use a normal set?
Going at a tangent to your idea, maybe it is possible to construct a set that aids the performance of a naive player, but which degrades the performance of a more experienced opponent. Could that handicap be as great as a club player offering pawn odds against a naive opponent?
Off topic, but does anyone know a browser extension that lets you block certain domains from the HN list? I've blocked twitter/x from my DNS, and don't want links to it cluttering the feed.
I'm not aware of one, but if you can insert custom css rules it should be simple with something like tbody tr.athing:has(.title .titleline a[href*="twitter.com"]), tbody tr.athing:has(.title .titleline a[href*="twitter.com"]) + tr, tbody tr.athing:has(.title .titleline a[href\*="twitter.com"]) + tr + tr { display: none; } This selects for any `tr` which has an anchor to a url with twitter.com somewhere in it (with so…
That is very clever! But I hate the way the pawns face. Makes sense! But it still reads, to me, like one of those "color, but the text is in a different color" things. Feels like the pawns should be facing the opposite direction. =/
It's attack direction not movement direction. Pawns are the one piece where there is a difference and I'm not sure which is better ;-)
That is very clever! But I hate the way the pawns face. Makes sense! But it still reads, to me, like one of those "color, but the text is in a different color" things. Feels like the pawns should be facing the opposite direction. =/
It is very clever, except accidental rotation can easily turn rooks into bishops and vice-versa.
Unfortunately, I never got around to writing a good AI so you could play against the computer. At some point, I'd like to get back to that project.