Shogi and Xianqi(Japanese and Chinese Chess)

Can these be considered for future updates?

What are these games?

I was wondering about that.?

These are what Chaturanga turned into as it headed East from India instead of West. In Japan, Shogi is very popular. There's a big match game going on as I write this: http://www.ryuoh.jp/club_1507/live1501/taikyoku06.htm The game is played on a 9x9 board, traditionally uncheckered, with flat tiles for pieces. When you capture a piece, it becomes your piece, and you may drop it on the board later in lieu of moving a piece. The branching tree of possibillities is much denser than in chess. Here is a hub for shogi links: http://www.shogi.net/shogi.html and here are the game rules: http://www.ricoh.co.jp/SHOGI/rules/erules.html I know much less about Xiangqi.

Thanks David. I remember playing a similer game at GT a long time ago.

Chinese chess is on a 10x10 board, and has some pieces that are restricted in the area they are allowed to come, and a piece that only can take other pieces if some piece in between, but mainly it is quite like our chess

At first I plan add mini-shogi (5x5). I plan create it with two set of stones (second with English letters) for choice.

Xiangqi (Chinese Chess or Elephant Game) is a great game and is very popular in China together with Weiqi (Go) and Majiang (mahjiong). It would be wonderful if this exciting game could be added to Little Golem.
The Xiangqi board is made up of ten horizontal lines and nine vertical lines. The verticals are interrupted by a central-horizontal void called a river. Two palaces are positioned at opposite sides of the board. Each player has the following pieces: 2 Chariots, 2 Horses, 2 Elephants (or ministers), 2 Mandarins (or advisors or guards), 1 King (or general), 2 Cannons, 5 Soldiers

For more details: www.xiangqi.org www.xiangqi.com www.chessvariants.com/xiangqi.html

I'll second the addition of these games, both are great. If I could only learn the strategies. :-)

The rules of Xiang Qi are given at http://www.chessvariants.com/xiangqi.html

However that page does not try to give the full rules covering perpetual check. I think it might be difficult to implement correctly, becasue of these rules.

Richard, if you ever do find time to implement XiangQi, you can get some piece images from http://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/gb/index.html and the http://www.ocrat.com/ link given there.

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