to Russ : idea when a king is in check

Would be possible to show when one's king is in check? For example
show him or its square in red, like when a move is wrong? It would be
more visual for players and would increase the ergonomy of the
playing interface... It's true that isn't absolutely necessary, but...
What do you think of?

Rémi.

Agreed, this would be useful. I will be doing an interface review soon -
so I'll consider this then.

-Russ

Perhaps he could shake with fear as well ;-)

Why not? Each idea is good to know!!! Hi to you rhmstr!

Hi to you too Rémi! And following on from your idea... perhaps the
Queen should rush over to mop his fevered brow, the bishops could
say prayers and all the little pawns could rush around in a panic.. ;-)

Rhymester

And then we could make the whole chessboard animated: rooks crumble when they're taken,
bishop excommunicate enemy pieces, causing them to skulk off the board, and knights
struggle to control their uncooperative mounts that won't go in a straight line!

I seem to recall that Battlechess on teh Amiga used to do that ... full
on anihilation of each of the pieces when they were taken .... Very
entertaining - could have been one of the first things to get me into
chess if I recall

This reminded me an old computer game named battlechess!! When
a piece was taken, it was like a battle between them and finally the
taken piece was killed! That was a very cool game.... 🙂

Yan

I played an experimental computer chess game in the 80's where
when a piece was taken it wasn't automatically removed from the
board. Instead the 2 pieces (aggressor & defender) went to a
seperate board and you had a fight controlled by the players. The
more powerful the piece the better it's attack eg. pawns were pretty
defenseless against rooks. The victor of this fight was returned to the
board, but any damage sustained remained so eventually even
pawns could take down more powerfull pieces.

I guess it was an attempt at making chess more like a real battle
(why should the attacking piece always win?), but ended up having
little to do with chess & as far as I know was never commercialised.

That sounds a bit like the game Archon, great fun and very popular in
the mid '80s.