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I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

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Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#141

Post by jakeinspace »

palata wrote: post #101
nescioquid wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're ever going to get the point where you recognize tactics (or anything, for that matter) on the board, how the pieces move must already be internalized and not require any thought. People even especially practice visualizing knight journeys between arbitrary squares to make this more automatic. If you ask an experienced player to use a weird piece set, you will only be introducing error and cognitive overhead…

Exactly this. Relatives have been trying to choose "fancy-looking" chess sets for me as a gift, and I always hated them. I don't want fancy pieces, I want the standard ones that don't give me cognitive overhead :-). "Tournament chessboards" are my favourites, obviously.

Hell is filled with glass and ornate chess sets, I am convinced.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#142

Post by batch12 »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #112
paulddraper wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people think of the knight moving 2 and then 1.

Chess players do, yet experience of basically any non-player I have ever heard describing it as "one straight, one diagonal" tells me otherwise. Also "moving two and then one" is ambiguous and would allow moving 3 squares into the same direction.

I've always thought of it as an L

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#143

Post by JCharante »

infogulch wrote: post #63

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

I have no source for this but that is the definition for a knight's valid moves, it goes where the queen cannot within that distance

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#145

Post by dev1ycan »

What I find funny about chess it's such an elegantly designed game... except castling. Always seemed like a random thing to me to be in the game, and then I found out that it was added centuries after in medieval europe to the game, makes sense why it feels so out of place.

Wish we had a league without castling for that sole purpose.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#146

Post by thrdbndndn »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #94
dheera wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Chinese chess, the horse behaves like the knight in western chess except that (a) it cannot jump over pieces, and (b) the definition of jumping over is that it first move horizontally/vertically 1 step and then diagonally 1 step. It cannot first move diagonally. This also leads to situations where two knights can be positioned amongst other pieces such that one knight is able to capture the other but not vice vers…

Most people think of the knight move as one straight and then one diagonal. However, this is still ambiguous. Imagine one up, then one down left for example, resulting in the square left to the original square. A better description is moving 2 squares straight, not diagonal, into one direction, then moving 1 square into a 90° turned direction.

But you can do the same unambiguously if you are going to involve angles.

"Move one straight and then move one diagonal into a 135° turned direction."

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#147

Post by topaz0 »

russellbeattie wrote: post #59
ikedeno wrote: post #53

I've wanted to see something like those scope beams, another idea is each square on the board could change colour by how many pieces can "see" it.

I've been wanting the same exact thing! I think for beginners (and mediocre players like myself) it would help a lot to prevent blunders. Being able to visualize the squares attacked by the knight would be especially useful. I've thought about having the squares show light shades of primary colors so you could see which side is attacking a square, and the composite colors would highlight contested ones, darker shades…

As a fellow mediocre player, my sense is that the best way to prevent blunders is to slow down and enumerate the possibilities. Sure, tools will help, just like having the computer suggest the three best lines will help, but it kind of defeats the purpose of trying to be good at the game. If you're frustrated by missing something that you feel you should have seen, slow down and see it next time.

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#148

Post by Izkata »

porphyra wrote: post #85
aurelwu wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some non-orthodox chess variants have a piece which combines Queen+Knight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(chess) very old variants often had such compound pieces like for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Acedrex

There's also the knook that combines the Knight and the Rook, which was hilariously invented as a meme on /r/anarchychess: https://anarchychess.fandom.com/wiki/Knook

Here's a whole page of chess variants, many of which include such invented pieces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_variants

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#149

Post by Izkata »

zeteo wrote: post #138
Reason077 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A swastika shape would make sense for the knight. I guess there is still a cultural aversion to its use, however.

A swastika?! Not quite, it's more like a cross: ꖅ

Speaking of swastikas, that's very close to an Iron Cross.

...anyway so people can see it better, that actual character is a pretty close representation of the knight's movement, it's just a little hard to tell the 2-then-1 distances: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%EA%96%85

Re: I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions

#150

Post by anthk »

freyfogle wrote: post #11

I suspect Josef Hartwig would like a word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Hartwig#Chess_sets https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus-Schachspiel

So that's where the inspiration for BeOS/HaikuOS came from.

https://www.haiku-os.org/development/icon-guidelines/

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