I’ve been working on a loop-forming game, called Glorieta, and I’ve made enough progress on it that I’d like to share it with more people. The idea behind the game is to create a game like Havannah, but where the only goal is to form a loop. I think I’m pretty close. Comments/criticism invited. The key is to introduce neutral spaces/stones which count as both colors, which makes it much easier to form loops on a hexhex board. See link below for diagrams and rules:

http://nickbentley.posterous.com/revised-game-glorieta-20

I’d like to repost the essay here so you don’t have to go through the link but I don’t know how to post figures and the essay won’t make sense without out them. Can someone explain how to insert figures here?

The mindsports update is progressing nicely. In the process we’ve also published a work in progress called On the Evolution of Draughts Variants. Since I need 600 characters minimum in a message here (who runs this site, a woman? ;-), I’ll paste the provisional into:

"This is a work in progress, so don’t shoot the workers. Comments and suggestions are welcome, nitpicking is not.
The authors are Benedikt Rosenau and Christian Freeling, both of whom believe that Draughts is in a constant state of evolution, and that the current state is one where the main variants – Checkers and International Draughts – got stuck.

Draughts players are largely in denial of this. They wallow in ‘corrective measures’ such additional rules, different counting, blitzgames and the like. As if band-aids would help. Most in denial are those who would have the problem arise from the ‘mentality of the players’ rather than from the structure of the game. It does not."

Dave Dyer has implemented Crossfire at Boardspace.net.


It’s a beautiful board, breathing ancienty (wholly unjustified but gladly accepted) and it comes with an AI to play against on different levels. Of course live play against another human player is also possible.

Dave writes:
"Crossfire is a minimalist stacking game by Christian Freeling.  It’s played on a “snowflake” shaped board with hex connectivity. It’s a game so simple and elegant, it doesn’t need a separate rules page."

I’ve thanked Dave for that and asked him to mention Sid Sackson’s Focus as the source of this simplicity and elegance.

At the same time I should mention that Crossfire has by some been discarded as a “Focus clone”. Apart from the question whether a translation of a game to a different grid automatically makes it a clone, I disagree.

The ‘twist’ that characterizes the game – replacing the artificial ceiling of a stackheight of 5 by a natural ceiling defined by a cell’s number of neighbors – is of major strategical and tactical relevance. Aiming large stacks at low capacity cells is an estabished part of both strategy and tactics and provides fixed ‘focuspoints’ for both, that are totally absent in Focus.

The eighth annual Arimaa World Championship tournament began on January 5th, 2011, with thirty-three players, including Jean Daligault (chessandgo), Fritz Juhnke (Fritzlein), and Greg Magne (Adanac), the top three finishers in each of 2008-2010. This year, however, a crop of new players lead by Gregory Clark (rabbits) is challenging the ruling trio. Each of the top three has suffered a loss to a rising Arimaa star. Now the field has been reduced to only eight players, four of whom have two lives left and four of whom are only one loss from elimination. Toby Hudson, the fourth-place finisher the previous two years, has already fallen. Will the revolutionary movement of 2011 dethrone the champion, or will Daligault manage to defend his crown and become a four-time-champion?

To read the full news report including graphical image (view at your own discretion) of the action on the streets visit: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/news/20110225ShakeUp/

Larry Wheeler has submitted his game

Kasanari Shogi (Stacking Shogi)

It’s a pdf file, so I can’t show a picture, but it looks very nice.
A Zillions version is well underway (using stacks made of separate pieces).

A quote:
“Kasanari (Stacking) Shogi was inspired by the large, historical Shogi variants with their hundreds of different pieces, using, for the most part, combinations of a few simple directions. The stacking and flipping mechanics of Kasanari Shogi allow you to build myriad combinations using essentially three types of pieces.”

Kasanari Shogi has been implemented on the Axiom Game Engine.

Greg Schmidt writes:

Gentlemen,
With permission, I have just completed programming 3 of the 7 games (including my own) entered into the stacking games contest. I focused on these 3 mainly because they all limit the stacks to pieces of a single type which greatly simplifies the programming and graphics. I would have liked to implement them all, but due to the time and complexity involved, I simply do not have the time do go further.

I have therefore created the following web page where these games can be downloaded:

The 2011 rec.games.abstract Stacking Games Contest Resource Page (The Axiom Game Engine)

In addition, if anyone would like to add additional resources to this page (e.g. print & play downloads, links to applets), please contact me and I will add them to this page.

I have listed the games in order of implementation (Splay, Monkey Queen and Parquet (pending)).

Next to these three, Grabber and Kasanari Shogi have now also been implemented on the Axiom Game Engine.

The 7th entry at the R.G.A. Stacking Contest is by Greg Schmidt. The game is called Splay.
Here’s a pict of a game in progress:



Greg writes:
Please accept my game submission titled “Splay” for the r.g.a stacking game contest. I have attached an image of the game during actual play. The link to the game’s web page is:

http://splay.webstarts.com/

The web page contains links to download the rules in PDF format and to download the Axiom computer implementation of the game.

The free Axiom Game Engine for PC plays its own game, but also allows players to compete against each other.

Splay was the first entry to be implemented on the Axiom Game Engine.

The 6th entry at the R.G.A. Stacking Contest is by Dave Barnes. The game is called Twisties.
Here’s a pict of the initial setup:



Dave writes:
My old mate Martin H. Samuel in Florida of (Games Above Board) sent me your link ~ so that I could send you a link to my entry of this ace competition... and so here it is...
Have a looksee and do whatever with it.

Cheers..
Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Dave

The 5th entry at the R.G.A. Stacking Contest is by Dieter Stein. The game is called Mixtour.
Here’s a pict of a game in progress:



Dieter writes:
This is my entry for the Stacking Games Contest on rec.games.abstract.
Many thanks to Daniel Shultz for initiating this contest. Actually, Mixtour includes a mechanism which is reminiscent of his game Charisma.
Working on this game was quite exhausting but also very satisfying. I hope you like it.
Dieter

The 4th entry at the R.G.A. Stacking Contest is called Grabber.
Here’s a pict of a game in progress:



Here’s the how and why

Grabber has been implemented on the Axiom Game Engine.

Grabber © MindSports