I will not continue with my game idea project “SpringerJagd”.

That project simply got the short end as I was prioritizing all my projects. A pitty, but it is better that way. Now I have more time I can direct to my other projects. And, I will write about those here soon. With “soon”, I mean within a few months or so.

The preparations for the upcoming lecture term consume me. Literally. There is not much time left for my private projects. Let’s say it in another way: when I come home from work in the evening, then I had enough from computers for the day. Well, at least I managed to make a small update for the Springerjagd.net website: mainly styling and cleanup.

I am currently trying to sort, to organize, and to prioritize my personal software projects. The one probably most important to me, at this moment, is SpringerJagd, albeit it is most likely not interesting for anyone else. Like I care.

Thus I want to focus most of my private programming time towards that project. As a first step I rewrote the front page web site of SpringerJagd: springerjagd.net

More will come …

I moved to content of the Springerjagd website here onto my blog. It is just simpler only have to maintain a single website. The springerjagd website stays online, of course. For one thing, there is the redirection to my blog. For another thing I will publish the online game prototypes there.

Some time ago I talked with a good friend of mine about Knights Hunt. He said, I should move away from the chess-like board. Another nice type would be a hex-board. That time I rejected the idea, but the brain can usually not stop thinking about stuff. Basically, the shape of the board is not important.

The way knights move seems easy to transfer to a hex-board (1 field straight + 1 field diagonal => 1 field straight + 1 field in a neighboring direction). The knight loses some freedom in its movement (on a chess board there are 8 reachable fields, while on the hex-board there are only 6 reachable fields.) but that is not a problem. However, if you take a closer look, you will see, that there is a very huge problem! The knight can only reach 1/3 of all fields of the board. To fix this, the knight movement needs to be extended, either by allowing to move only one field or be allowing to move two fields in one direction. The solution is not clear to me yet. Let ignore this problem for now and stick to the classical movement.

Considering the size of the board a hex-board with four fields on each edge would be the same size as the smaller chess board currently used (37 fields vs. 36 fields):

One possible hex-board for an adjusted game.
The currently used Knights Hunt chess-like board

The fields with colored border are the fields the knights can reach in their first move. One further problem is visible: the reachable fields are further apart on the hex-board. This means that the meeting of the knights will need more turns and thus that the games evolve slower. However, Knights Hunt was designed for a fast game play. Thus, I do not like this.

One way to solve this issue is to make the board smaller. However, a hex-board with edge length of three fields has only 19 fields altogether. Too few for four knights. Thus we need to remove some playing pieces (which is a good thing for fast game play):

Smaller hex-board with only one knight

However, now there is a real movement problem: the knight can effectively move only to the center field, where he is immediate prey for the enemy. This is not good. While it would be possible to move the outer pawns out of the way, the problem of the center field remains. Other ways of moving knights might also not solve this problem. One thing we can try is a different starting layout (and rotating the board):

Alternative starting layout

Now, this looks nicely lilke the classical scenario (using the classical knight moves, which will not work). However, the second move (the first black move) is again a huge problem.

Concolusion: The hex-board simple do not work that way. I like the idea to simplify the game by only using one knight and I will continue to think about it. However, the result is likely a completely new game.

Busy days. But I am pretty happy with my new Job. And I like my new flat and my new city. … New life. :-)

However, my private projects are not completely on hold. Especially my brain is working as usual. Thus I finally found the name for my board game:

Knights Hunt

In German it is “Springerjagd”. I like the name because is focuses on the “Knights” chess pieces. Especially the German name can be interpreted both as a hunt of knights as well as a hunt after knights. (I hope this is right in English) And I hope this duality in the meaning is somewhat present in the English version of the name as well.

Although there is not much news on the game software development itself I secured the corresponding internet domain name. :-) http://knights-hunt.net (or http://springerjagd.net) Hopefully, I will be able to fill that site with some content.

I updated the rules of KDD (still don’t like the Name).

The extension rules are now removed. Neighbor-Attack and Switch-Move are now allowed special moves, while Single-Pawn-Block and Second-Free-Pawn are removed. These two where to fast to block the board (boring). Apart of that, my implementation of the Neighbor-Attack in the online prototype had a bug, allowing the enemy player to counter on a not performed neighbor-attack. I liked this, so I changed the rules to make this the actual correct behavior.

KDD_Rules_2011_11.pdfKDD_Rules_2011_11.pdf Knights Double-Duel Rules (November 2011)
[383 KB; MD5: b76e1d4489614ae95cfcf716663980ca; More Info]

Of course, I also updated the Online-Prototype.

Sorry, this entry is only available in German. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

Irgendwie ist es natürlich immer schön sich über andere Lustig machen zu können. Vor allem, wenn man sich über welche von den Großen lustig machen kann. Aber irgendwie finde ich die ganze Schachbrett-Nummer etwas arg albern. Ich will jetzt aber niemandem den Spaß verderben. In diesen Kreisen hätte dieser Fehler nicht passieren dürfen. Darum ist der Spott verdient. Nur sollten die Spötter sich bewust sein, dass sie selbst ebenfalls äußerst albern sind. Ein Hoch auf die Albernheit.

Ich muss auch zugeben, dass ich, sofort als ich von der Story gehört hatte, in meinem KDD-Prototypen nachgesehen hatte, ob ich es richtig gemacht hatte. (Ich hatte damals als ich das Programm geschrieben hatte weder darauf geachtet, noch auch nur einen Gedanken daran verschwendet ob da was wäre auf das man achten sollte.). Zu meiner Erleichtung: Ja, mein Brett, auch wenn es kein klassisches Schachbrett ist, steht richtig herum.

I need to get to feel my game. I am speaking of KDD.

So I wrote a small, simple prototype for playing around. But, since I wanted to be not the only one having fun, I wrote it in Php with JavaScript and put it online: KDD Online Prototype
The AI is rather stupid, as it makes purely random moves. Well, at least the chances are pretty high to win then.

Let the Games start! ^^