3 Dimensional Cubic Chess 8x8x8 Board

https://users.monash.edu/~lloyd/tildeAlgDS/Recn/Queens3D/

Another reasonable, reasoning, and rational person, Hello. I stopped wasting my time arguing with him, he isn't listening, this fantasy of a chess game he is promoting is not playable, he's just seeking fame in creating something grandiose.

He has stated that 3D chess is not physically playable because the pieces can not move through the solid physical board, that should tell you something. His main false argument starts with the idea that a real cube chess chessboard should be 8x8x8, 512 cells, and if you read on the subject you'll notice reasonable people who discuss this are willing to admit it isn't playable.

I see you also pointed him to the online playable Raumschach site, but he won't play it, as I already said he just wants his delusional grandiose fantasy.

"EndgameEnthusiast2357 wrote: Actually, 3d diagonal bishop moves work differently with the colors. Every 1-cube movement along a 3d diagonal changes color (1,1,1 to 2,2,2 for example), but that movement still only gives it access to half the board, despite having access to both colors. But yes, 2d "edge" diagonal moves stay on the same color regardless because they only occur in one horizontal or vertical plane at a time." *This is where you said the bishops can change cube colors when they move.

What is your problem?

*This is where you said the bishops can change cube colors when they move.*

Yes, and my point was that 3d bishop diagonals change "cube color" each cube that they move, so they can access both colors but still are restricted to 1/4 (not 1/2) but 1/4 of the board. The ability to change colors in 3d bishop moves does not give it access to the whole board as it would in 2d chess. A 2d bishop having access to all 3 dimensions would be the same as bishop in 2d chess, because it would only have access to half. Any 2d diagonal move, no matter which of the 3 planes it is moving in, will always be stuck on that same color. This isn't the case with 3d moves.

How do you promote, what even is castling… this is a big difference from regular chess, even if it doesn’t look like it.

Promotion would work as follows:

The entire 2nd level and 7th level are filled with 64 pawns. Pawns move upward/downward only, and capture diagonally to any of the 8 cubes that are "up" but not directly above it. They promote after reaching the 8th and 1st levels on their opponents side. This means each side can have 65 queens!

Castling would be a two step process. The kings could castle with one of the 4 rooks across from it. Here's the set for white at the beginning if the game:

Now here are the only rooks in question when talking about castling:

The white king would move all the way to the edge and the Rook would land immediately next to it. For example:

2nd, they could castle "again" by now doing a normal castling move on the edge with one if the 4 corner rooks:

4 ways to castle the first time, and 2 the second time = 8 possible castling positions.

Is vertical castling a thing ?

No castling still only occurs on the horizontal plane of the initial setup. It's just that now there are 4 quadrants to castle in. Instead of kingside and queenside call it "Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Gamma" Castling. The 2nd part of the castling move there's only 2 options to can still be referred to as kingside or queenside but those terms become meaningless anyway.

For example, here's a step by step preview of black castling "Alpha-Queenside" on the 8th plane:

Initial position ^

Alpha component ^

Queenside component ^

= Alpha-Queenside castling complete!

This is the most complete 3d chess variant out there: https://web.archive.org/web/20080814164820/http://www.hixoxih.com/games/chess/3D8L.htm

It has way more variety of pieces covering all basic and compound 3d movement types (orthogonal, diagonal, triagonal, leapers and combinations)

That is actually the closest thing to what I've been trying to get at, kudos for finding that, much better than some of the bogus others on here have been suggesting lol.

I would probably limit it to 2 or 3 of the same piece, like 2d moves, 3d triagonal moves, and a combo of both, but I wouldn't have say a queen that leaves out triagonal moves. The queen and king would by default have all dimension moves available. For dimensions n, the king always has 3^n - 1 moves from the center. Not sure what the formula for the queen would be but there probably is one. Knights I might divide into 2-1-1 and 2-1 but probably wouldn't include a 3rd piece for both, unless the both piece was the only knight. My only other disagreement with this version is the setup should be on the bottom and top vs the front and back, but nice game!

So you wouldn't have a rook bishop hybrid? As I understand it, the knight in 2D fulfills two niches, is a leaper, and can move to squares that the queen can't reach in a 5x5 grid. If you generalize it to 3D (5x5x5 cube), you would end up with the Grand Knight, and I guess the problem is that it is comparable in strength to the 3D queen, so that is why the creator probably divided it into 3 types of leapers. There are tradeoffs when it comes to arranging the pieces front to back or top to bottom. I think the choice ultimately comes down to how you are going to play the game (physical or digital) and how the 3D board is designed.

The reason I made the knight combine both 2-1-1 and 2-1 is not to reduce the number of pieces, but due to the definition of a knight move. A 2-1-1 move is actually a 2-1 move, just with the perpendicular move being at a slant instead. The definition of a knight move is "the closest squares that are not on the same rank, file, or diagonal" or in this case "triagonals" too. If we just say "L-shape" than a knight should be able to go from a2 to d3 on a normal board, because two squares diagonally to c4 and then one square "southeast" to d3 is still a perfect L shape, just slanted! The "closest" square definition in the rule limits it to the beautiful movement that the knight has! On a 3d board, 2-1-1 moves are the same as 2-1 moves in thay regard, even though mathematically, the distance length between the two points is slightly longer when all 3 dimensions are used (radical 6 vs radical 5 or whatever it was).

The queen and king I just used the "any direction" rule, only the number of squares varies between them. "Any straight line" included 3d diagonals. The bishop is the only piece that is debatable in terms of how to divide up the diagonals. The thing I definitely despised was the concept of a rook moving to "any square" in a 2d plane on a 3d board.

I think I prefer a knight moving 2-1-0, with any of 6 combos of axes and 8 of direction. This gives 48 cubes to move to.

2-1-1 gives it only 24 cubes to move to (3 axes x 8 directions), and having both (72 moves) is not really in the spirit of a knight.

I think your definition is equivalent to mine, because the piece that can move in files, ranks, columns, diagonals, and triagonals is the queen, and the closest cubes that don't lie in them are those the queen can't reach in the 5x5x5 range. You are still leaving out the 2-2-1 leaper, though, which fits the definition.

2-2-1 leaper is different enough I don't think it qualifies as a knight movement anymore. You're talking [radical 9] now as the length of move instead of 5 or 6, that is a huge difference and wouldn't consider those the closest cubes. Same for any 3-2-1 piece, even though that concept is cool!

Yes that was what I liked the best. The 48 comes from the 24 [2-1] moves and the 24 distinct [2-1-1] moves as well. Axis is the best word to explain it, thanks, the "1" part of the move can be diagonally away from the "2" part since it is still perpendicular. There is one ugly implication of this though. This would let a knight fork 2 pieces that are right next to each other, which is really weird. A standard 2-1 knight simply utilizing all 3 dimensions with 24 possible moves would maintain the relative power ratio of the pieces, as in 2d chess, if both pieces are in the center, 8 knight moves 8 king moves. In 3d chess, 26 king moves and 24 knight moves. So 48 ends up seeming weird in that respect, like the knight is now almost twice as powerful as the king. Maybe an alternative would be to break it up between 2-1 and 2-1-1 leaders as separate pieces, but have nothing that could do both. So hard to decide lol

Oh and actually it is 48 when you combine the two, not 72, as the 2-1 moves shifted diagonally are redundant to the 2-1-1 moves.

Here's a helpful visualization:

3d Board level 5:

3d Board level 7:

These are the pawns that could be taken via 2-1 moves. Taking into account 6 directions = 24 total 2-1 moves.

3d Board plane 7 again:

These are the pawns that could be taken via 2-1-1 moves. Again the number is 24 for the same reason, 4 cubes X 6 directions for the initial "2" move.

So the total is 48 for both, 24 for each. Not 72.

Right answer, but I think the reasoning is different.

Each sequence of 3 distinct signed numbers gives a distinct location. So there is no overlap between 2-1-0 class and 2-1-1 class.

2-1-0 gives 6 choices of axes, but only 4 choices of signs. So 24 locations. (I included a sign for 0 to wrongly get 48).

2-1-1 gives 3 choices of axes and 8 choices of signs. So another (non-overlapping) 24 locations.

A knight with only a 2-1-1 move pattern would be restricted to half, possibly even a quarter of the cubic board. Not sure how to calculate which though.