Battle Chess (unitbuilding variant)

I had planned the game as either some sort of world map, like risk, or perhaps to have given it a space theme (just had placeholder graphics and a grid for the time being). Anyway, I had the idea that the board could be various sizes and shapes, depending on how many players were in the game. You could ally with other players, send reinforcements etc. On a 1v1 game, a standard chess board would be used, on 1v2 or 2v2 the board would be wider, to allow your ally's pieces to be setup next to you. All would be played on a standard layout board, however the number of squares would increase depending on how many players, and also the other idea is that certain planets or territories would be worth different amounts of points, and therefore vary in board size. Conquering a larger board would generate more points/turn, which could in turn buy more reinforcements.

I also had the idea of missions, including checkmate the king, get the king to the other side (for the bong cloud player ;) ), capture and control a space for x turns etc. The game would feature computer controlled and player controlled areas - where a player isn't involved I would have the computer take over.

Just stumbled upon this thread by complete accident!

Earlier this year I began working on a very similar idea. A multiplayer online game, where you have your own army, and the idea is to conquer as much space as possible.

I had planned the game as either some sort of world map, like risk, or perhaps to have given it a space theme (just had placeholder graphics and a grid for the time being). Anyway, I had the idea that the board could be various sizes and shapes, depending on how many players were in the game. You could ally with other players, send reinforcements etc. On a 1v1 game, a standard chess board would be used, on 1v2 or 2v2 the board would be wider, to allow your ally's pieces to be setup next to you. All would be played on a standard layout board, however the number of squares would increase depending on how many players, and also the other idea is that certain planets or territories would be worth different amounts of points, and therefore vary in board size. Conquering a larger board would generate more points/turn, which could in turn buy more reinforcements.

I also had the idea of missions, including checkmate the king, get the king to the other side (for the bong cloud player ;) ), capture and control a space for x turns etc. The game would feature computer controlled and player controlled areas - where a player isn't involved I would have the computer take over.

I started programming in Javascript and used HTML/CSS and the scriptaculous libraries for the front end stuff, as thats the language I know best, and I know its cross compatible on a number of platforms. Plus its a hell of a lot quicker to develop with than say c++ which I'm ok with, or Java which I hate! I started designing the database side of things for a persistent universe, but never got round to actually writing anything.

The first part I began writing was the chess engine bit. Luckily, someone had already started a basic javascript chess engine, however it needed extending to support different sized boards, different number of players, and above all it was quite a weak engine and I don't think it acknowledged the draw rule or en passant correctly. Draw rule I managed to figure out, simply by having a move limit on each game, and I from memory I got it to support different sized boards easily enough, getting the engine to be more sophisticated was the harder part (it could see something like 2 moves ahead, which is probably a 1200 rating), and I think thats about where I left it, the maths did my head in. 

Haven't touched it for several months, but knowing others may be interested in a similar sort of game might make me return to complete it over winter. If anyone has experience writing chess engines, drop me a message 

Sounds good! :D This variation truly has infinite variations possible:

- prices of the pieces
- (groups of)squares being worth more/less
- squares having different characters, like catan: wheat, ore, brick, sheep and wood
- bonuses
- size of the board
- number of players
- etc.

Personally I think the core is solid: an economy that allows one to buy pieces. But the finetuning needs to be done very carefully to keep the game as fun as normal chess.

The guy Im allmost closing the deal with is also enthousiastic he too started brainstormin and also came up with a multiple player on bigboard idea. His idea: allow armies to stand on the same square (say 3 pawns and a queen on d5). Also fun, but we havent figured out yet how they attack, may one do multiple attacks from and to various locations in one turn, can a rook move through an army of your own? etc.

For the battle chess and rubicon chess I came up with a sandbox idea so people could finetune their game themselves. I'm kind of leaving that idea, because sometimes less is more. I'll leave the options that allow the player to finetune the game, but take away the options that completly change the character of the game or those that add very little.

The programmer on scriptlance is Ancosys. I dont know if he plans on building the engine himself, but i think not. You could ask him how he's going to do it. When the game is finished (probably in 1 or 2 months) the game will be downloadable from sourceforge. I dont know if that allows you to download it and alter it to your own taste, but if that is possible... do your worst! :P

Will do! Though I think Ill make a new topic for it.