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.

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The year 2012 is almost gone. Let’s use this opportunity to reflect on what’s happend. Ok, ok. No one likes annual reviews (me neither), but still…

Early this year I defended my dissertation, and finished my Ph.D. With this, I also finished my work at the Visualization Research Center of the University of Stuttgart. And I mean “at”, not “with”. I still continue working with the “guys from Stuttgart”, and we have some pretty exciting ideas under development.

Then I moved to Dresden and started working at the TU Dresden in the project VICCI. It’s a great city and a great group working here at the computer graphics lab. I really enjoy working and we have some fascinating science projects going on here.

What else? TheLib started. Together with two friends and ex-colleagues from Stuttgart, we decided to fix the design issues of the VISlib, by creating a new, clean library. It is a lot of work, but it is worth it.

And, of course, there is my private game project: Springerjagd (Knights Hunt). Although, I already started to work on the rules last year, it was this year that the game finally got it’s name. And it’s webseit, although there is not much to see there. But this project is something I will be definitly going to continue.

And, with this we reach the New Year’s resolutions (although it’s 1-2 days early): basically, I only want to do what I can to make 2013 as successful as 2012 was. No, I will make it even more successful. However, I believer there is no need for more detailed plans :-)

And, because I do not plan to post again at New Year’s Eve, I wish you all:

“A happy new Year!”

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I had some very quite days this week. Nothing really happend, and that is a very good thing. Thus, the only thing I have to say this week is:

Merry Christmas!

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What a week.

The deadline for paper submission for the EuroVis 2013 was this weekend. I wanted to submit my current work there, and therefore the motto for this week was: “paper writing and polishing”. Hard work! And now I am curious about the results. I am satisfied with my results, but, of course, the reviewers have to be satisfied as well. And a bit of luck is required as well, as there is strong competition.

However, because the double blind reviewing process is now running, I, of course, cannot write about this work here (yet).

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