[ List Earliest Comments Only For Pages | Games | Rated Pages | Rated Games | Subjects of Discussion ]
Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
Ultima. Game where each type of piece has a different capturing ability. Also called Baroque. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Oct 3, 2004 07:11 PM UTC:Greg, I have tested three ULTIMA games using Chess V. Good effort!, I appreciate it a lot, but I have some observations. First, you can take the enemy King and the game continues without end. It happened with immobilized Kings in the three games, so I have not seen if it happens in other cases. The second observation is about the A.I. game play, it is possible that you have noted that Chess V is a weak ULTIMA player, (much more than I thought at first, surprisingly to me) and I noted a strong ingenuity with the Immobilizer power, perhaps you must augment the penalty for immobilized pieces to 50%, but it is necessary that the A.I. take also in account situations in wich the immobilizer is immobilized with a Chameleon and then be vulnerable in the future. I could capture the enemy immobilizer in this way twice. Kings can act in a better way in Coordination with the Coordinator, it is necessary augment the bonus in the position evaluation when there are more enemy pieces in line with the King after a King move. Pawn movement is ingenuous too, but it is not easy a solution, perhaps the best should be a good bonus in the position evaluation (not in the piece) for a movement that reduces the brut mobility of enemy pieces (number of squares the pieces can reach), and other bonus in the evaluation function (a bit less than the other) for a Pawn move that augments the number of potential capturing squares using the pawn moved, i.e., looking how many sandwiches can make the Pawn with own pieces, although there is or not an enemy piece between (covering potential). I know it is not easy improve a lot this game, but it should be good a revision. I´m very sorry I can´t help a lot with the code, but I´ll try to help you as I can.
Greg Strong wrote on Sun, Oct 3, 2004 11:00 PM UTC:The bugs you metion would a dramatic effect on play skill, even with a good evaluation function. I'll have to take care of those, and post an update ... Thanks for the test-report!
CHESS V BEATED ZILLIONS!. Well, Zillions is a weak ULTIMA player, and I have had curiosity in a test game with the two programs. The game have had not great quality, but it was clear that CHESS V played with much more concept, and it won in a good final. CHESS V game play should be improved, but it was a great thing that Zillions was beated. Congratulations, Greg!. To all the interested people, I can send the saved Zillions file.
Chess V, playing White, beated Zillions, 30sec. per player, in this ULTIMA test game: Zillions Save Game File Version 0.02 HC RulesFile=C:\Archivos de programa\Zillions Development\Zillions Demo\Rules\Ultima.zrf VariantName=Ultima 1. Pawn g2 - g5 1. Pawn a7 - a6 2. Pawn b2 - b5 2. Pawn f7 - f3 3. Pawn h2 - h4 3. Pawn c7 - c4 4. Pawn h4 - f4 x f3 4. Long-Leaper b8 - h2 x f4 5. Pawn c2 - c3 5. Long-Leaper h2 - e5 6. Pawn f2 - f5 6. Long-Leaper e5 - a5 x b5 7. Long-Leaper b1 - b3 7. Coordinator a8 - a7 8. Coordinator h1 - h2 8. Withdrawer d8 - c7 9. Withdrawer e1 - g3 9. Coordinator a7 - f2 x e2 10. Withdrawer g3 - h4 x f2 10. Pawn c4 - e4 11. King d1 - e1 11. Pawn e4 - a4 12. Long-Leaper g1 - g3 12. Pawn d7 - d6 13. Coordinator h2 - f2 13. Withdrawer c7 - c5 14. Withdrawer h4 - b4 14. Pawn a4 - a3 15. Long-Leaper g3 - e3 15. Pawn d6 - d4 16. Withdrawer b4 - a4 16. Long-Leaper a5 - b6 17. Withdrawer a4 - b4 17. Long-Leaper b6 - c7 18. Long-Leaper e3 - e6 18. Chameleon f8 - f7 19. Long-Leaper e6 - e4 19. Withdrawer c5 - d6 x b4 20. Pawn c3 - c4 x d4 20. Pawn b7 - a7 21. Pawn c4 - a4 x a3 21. Long-Leaper c7 - a5 22. Coordinator f2 - c5 22. Long-Leaper a5 - a3 x a4 23. Coordinator c5 - c3 23. Pawn a7 - c7 24. Pawn f5 - a5 24. Long-Leaper a3 - c5 25. Chameleon f1 - f5 25. Long-Leaper c5 - a7 26. Chameleon f5 - e5 26. Chameleon f7 - f2 27. King e1 - d1 27. Withdrawer d6 - c5 28. Pawn d2 - d5 28. Long-Leaper a7 - b8 29. Pawn a5 - b5 x c5 29. Long-Leaper b8 - b2 x b3 x b5 30. King d1 - c2 30. Pawn h7 - h5 31. Coordinator c3 - f3 x f2 31. Chameleon c8 - f5 32. Long-Leaper e4 - g6 x f5 32. Immobilizer h8 - h6 33. Chameleon e5 - f6 33. Pawn e7 - e5 34. Coordinator f3 - f5 34. Pawn c7 - c5 x d5 35. King c2 x b2 35. Long-Leaper g8 - c4 36. Pawn a2 - a3 36. Pawn h5 - h3 37. Chameleon c1 - b1 37. Pawn h3 - d3 38. Chameleon b1 - d1 38. King e8 - d7 39. King b2 - b1 39. Long-Leaper c4 - a4 40. King b1 - a2 40. Long-Leaper a4 - f4 41. Chameleon d1 - a4 41. Long-Leaper f4 - f3 42. Immobilizer a1 - d1 42. Long-Leaper f3 - h5 43. Immobilizer d1 - g4 43. Pawn a6 - a7 44. Chameleon a4 - f4 44. Pawn a7 - a8 45. Chameleon f4 - e3 45. Pawn d3 - d1 46. Chameleon e3 - d4 46. Pawn e5 - e3 47. King a2 - b3 47. Pawn c5 - e5 48. Coordinator f5 - e4 x e3 48. Pawn e5 - f5 x g5 49. Chameleon f6 - f7 49. Pawn a8 - a6 50. Coordinator e4 - e6 50. Pawn g7 - g8 51. King b3 - b4 51. Immobilizer h6 - g5 52. King b4 - c5 52. Pawn g8 - g7 x g6 53. Coordinator e6 - g6 x g5 53. Pawn d1 - d2 54. Coordinator g6 - h6 x h5 54. Pawn d2 - a2 55. Chameleon d4 - d6 55. King d7 - d8 56. Chameleon d6 - e7 56. Pawn a6 - a4 x a3 57. Chameleon e7 x d8
Comment on the game: ChessV vs. Zillions, 30 sec. per player per move. Opening was weakly played by both programs, and you can observe the that the Pawn movements are not the best in both. The game play was more tactical than positional, the pair King-Coordinator is not used in the best way, and Immobilizer potential-and-risks is not well appreciated. But Chess V 'understood' better the game philosophy, and the end was played relatively good by Chess V, although with clear deficiences by Zillions. Very interesting test game!.
Three tests more, Zillions playing White, Chess V playing Black, 10 seconds per move. Results: Chess V won 3-0 !. Chess V is still relatively weak playing against humans, but it is definitely stronger than Zillions. I have detected an important bug, as I said, that must be corrected inmediately: When Chess V King is immobilized, it appears that if you can capture it, the prgogram does not detect it is Checkmated, you capture the King and the game cam continue endless. Now I think that 50% of penalty for immobilized pieces is perhaps too much, but I suggest augment it a bit, 30%, but if your immobilizer is immobilized, the value of your immobilizer must fall at least to half. There must be an important penalty for an immobilized King, much more if the immobilizer is potentially safe, Chess V takes not a good care with its King sometimes against the enemy immobilizer. I´ll add more when I have more to add.
Well, in my fourth game against Chess V, the program beated me, playing in a good manner. I have not played bad, neither commited fatal errors or clear blunders. Analyzing the game, I have played different than in my previous three games, with a relatively open position. It seems that Chess V plays well this kind of instances.
Robert Abbott now has a set of Ultima puzzles on his website! http://www.logicmazes.com/games/puz1to4.html
In contrast to the Carrera family, which have less differentiation, Ultima-like games are more sharply delineated in their features, metaphorically like USA Colorado's 54 'fourteeners', not somewhat similar hills of Carrera-Capablanca terrain. I would much rather have invented the 'Rococo peak' within the Ultima family than the 'Gothic hill' in its family; yet that one stands out within its environment.
Nice description of the game of Baroque, but we always played it with
Leapers limited to capturing one piece, and multi-leaping was illegal; as
for deciding which Coordinator (aka 'Vaporizer') to turn upside down at
the start of the game, thereby turning it into an Immobilizer, that was
White's prerogative to do first, and Black had to choose second.
<p>There are (or at least WERE) versions of Baroque played on a 9x9 board,
with a 1 square Bomb occupying an extra square on the 1st rank, next to
the King on his right, if I recall correctly. An immobilized Bomb could
not explode on its own accord, but an Imitator (Mirror) could detonate it,
so long as it was not immobilized too. The 9x9 version - with a Bomb -
used to be called Renaissance. I think the history of the 'Bomb'
variation to Baroque was a matter of interference from the 1960s game of
'Camelot.' Blowing up both Kings resulted in a Draw. Anyway, like
Baroque, Renaissance ended with the capture of the enemy's King.
<p>Regards,
<p>Matthew Montchalin
<br>mmontcha@OregonVOS.net
I am not sure what game or games are refered by Mr. Montchalin, and this is the first time I hear about Rennaissance, but I think here are mixed two known games, both from the 60's decade: Ultima and Bombalot. It is not clear which of these games was first, but I think it was Bombalot but not by much time between. Bombalot is a chaotic game with elements of the actual Ultima, but with Bombs, a lot of extremely powerful leaping and multi-leaping pieces instead of Pawns, similar to those in Camelot, Coordinator-Knights that coordinate one with the other and vice-versa, Tanks (Pushers), and Immitator (different from Ultima´s Chameleon, Immitator can move as the LAST enemy piece moved), an exotic Immobilizer that can leap adjacent pieces or move like a King, and without royal pieces in the game . I have played Bombalot in the past, and I have to say that this is one of the most unclear and chaotic game I have played, I think the game was certainly exotic in its epoch and it could produce certain commotion, but it seems it was not well tested in the game play, horrible in my personal opinion. I have not reference to Renaissace or the Ultima versions mentioned by Mr. Montchalin, so I will appretiate if he can give me more information about, if it can be found elsewhere.
Roberto,
<p>
Both the early version of <strong>Baroque</strong>, and the <strong>Ultima</strong> variant <strong>Renaissance</strong>, are described in the <u>Encyclopedia of Chess Variants</u>, the latter in the appendix.
Oh! Thanks for pointing me to that footnote on Renaissance. Insofar as
species of Baroque with Pushers and Pullers go, those kinds of pieces can
be deceptively treachorous. I've seen the game played both ways, but I
think that Pushers and Pullers were supposed to be able to affect all
pieces, not just enemy pieces, the only hard part is bringing them into
position to do so. Although Pushers and Pullers move like Queens, they
had to start out adjacent to the piece they were to affect. For one
thing, although they can't really capture pieces directly, they could get
other pieces to do their dirty work for them. For instance, under the
right circumstances, a Pusher could drive a friendly Pincher into a
position that pinches enemy pieces, and a Puller could pull a friendly
Withdrawer away from an enemy Immobilizer, thereby removing (capturing)
the Immobilizer. If two Kings are frozen in place by one another's
Immobilizers, but are fortuitously adjacent to each other, there are
positions where a friendly Pusher could drive its King into the square of
the enemy King, and win the game. Similarly, a Puller that was adjacent
to a Coordinator (Vaporizer), might step back a square and bring a
Coordinator into a 'coordinating' position to bring about a capture or
two.
<p>Naturally, regional rules tend to evolve as time goes on, and household
rules tend to admit to all kinds of variants, and I see nothing wrong with
that, so I was wondering how Jesse Plymale's Pushers and Pullers worked.
I tried to go to his Link, but the Link appeared to be broken.
<p>As for the game of Rococo, devised by Peter Aronson and David Howe, the
Pushme-Pullyu piece looks much more powerful than the Pusher and Puller of
Renaissance.
<p>Do you know if there is a chronological history of 'computer
championships' for Baroque or Ultima somewhere? Are computer tournaments
for these games held every couple years or so? I'm still exploring this
website, so it's possible I haven't stumbled on the right place yet.
<p>Regards,
<p>Matthew Montchalin
<br>mmontcha@OregonVOS.net
I Have not seen Computer Ultima Tournaments. In fact, I have seen only a few engines that are capable of play Ultima. There is at least one Zillions of Games ZRF which plays it, but it is relatively weak. Greg Strong´s CHESS V plays better, and it is an excellent contendor for an experienced average player, although I can not say it plays at extremely high levels. It plays, I think, with an approximate rating between 2000-2200, if you can translate FIDE ELO to Ultima in some manner. If you have not tried CHESS V, you can mail Greg Strong, an active member of this site. I have not seen other efforts looking for stronger programs. On the other hand, Ultima is relatively 'popular' between humans in certain circles, most in Universities, and it is played in many places around the world, but not as Chess, of course, the difference in popularity is, say, 2000 to 1 or more. It should be interesting seeing Computer Tournaments, but I think it needs sponsors and prizes, and I do not know if there is interest enough on it. Some variants in this site are very interesting too: Rococo, Maxima, Fugue and Toccata, by example, are 'evolutive' consequences of Ultima, but much less known by the people. There are Zillions of Games ZRF´s for all these games, but they are not very strong.
Greg Strong wrote on Thu, Jun 16, 2005 05:31 PM UTC:<p>If you are interested in computer Ultima, please check out ChessV. It is free and open-source, and can be downloaded from:<br><a href='http://sourceforge.net/projects/chessv'>http://sourceforge.net/projects/chessv</a><br>I would like to see computer competition, but at present, I believe that my program is the only one in the world that is even capable of implementing the rules correctly. (Zillions plays for capture-the-king instead of checkmate, which, for reasons difficult to explain, is different and does affect the way it plays. Zillions also plays this game very badly because it assigns material values to the pieces that are not even close.) I hope to add support for Rococo to ChessV in the near future. Zillions also does not play Rococo correctly; some complex Chameleon captures don't work right.</p>
Yes, the Chameleon in Ultima for Zillions can capture two adjacent Long-Leapers in the Chameleon line when the next square is empty. Maxima ZRF's corrects it. Mine is a capture-the-King implementation, and Joost Aan de Brough implementation uses the checkmate condition, although in the last one some pieces values are not the correct. I used some tricks for balance the values, but, unfortunatelly, I have had to generate some additional possible moves, and it has its influence in the computer game play force if you use little time for computer thinking. Chess V plays at a very good level, it should be interesting to see a Computer Tournament, Chess V should be a very strong competitor, because it is far from easy construct a 'master-level' Ultima computer player. If someone constructs one, I think there are not many humans that can beat that program; by the way, Chess V is a bit stronger than me, and I think I am a relatively good Ultima player, but far from master levels, if such concept applies in this game.
I'm giving serious thought to slapping together a program that plays
Renaissance in 68000 assembly language. Maybe Ultima (Baroque), too.
Regardless of the game, I don't expect it to perform very well against
machines with far faster processor speeds, but it just might produce some
useful benchmarks to test your programs against. (And thanks for the
link
to Sourceforge; I'm sorry to say that all that C++ stuff at Sourceforge
is
a trifle over my head as I was raised on assembler instead of C.) Still,
whatever I slap together, it only takes a handful of adjustments to
change
one game into the other.
The only things I'm a little bit uncomfortable about are:
1 the multi-leaping rule for the Leaper, and
2 the suicide rule for immobilized pieces.
Are those the main differences?
As for piece name nomenclature back in 1968, we learned 'Imitator' for
what Ultima calls a Chameleon. Does anybody use Mime, Mimic, or Mirror
for that piece as well? The one that looks like a Bishop.
You mentioned how one of the programs currently in vogue recognizes
checkmate as the proper way of ending the game. But isn't the main
difference between capturing the King and checkmating the King a matter
of
one extra ply of searching? When we used to play Baroque, we used chess
clocks, and capturing the King outright just made for easier play.
Finally, as for notational differences, it was my understanding that
captured pieces were set off by commas between each other, all enclosed
equally within a single pair of parentheses, e.g.,
32. Pc2-c6 (Wc7, Lb6, Id6) <--- White's turn, taking 3 pieces
Pf5-f3 (Pf3, Cg3) <--- Black's turn, taking 2 pieces
The advantage to this kind of notation is that it makes for playing the
game backwards just as easy as playing it forward, assuming you have a
diagram to refer to. However, with the Chessish 'x' symbol, do you
repeat the 'x' symbol between every piece you have captured? I don't
mind much one way or the other, as the differences are purely cosmetic,
but if you could describe the notational standard that is currently in
place, that would be great.
So, if I slap together an Ultima game using run-of-the-mill 68000
assembly
language, does anybody using Windows out there have a good 68000 emulator
for trying it out? For tournaments that are not face-to-face, but
involve
some kind of real-time processing, do you have a link that describes how
those kinds of tournaments are managed?
Feel free to send me email as my webbrowser tends to crash very
frequently.
Matthew Montchalin
mmontcha@OregonVOS.netI wanna play! And is it like chess???
I;m currently working on an Atari ST implementation of the game of 'Baroque' - at least the way it was when I learned it back in 1968 (although we adopted the name 'Baroque' we declined to adopt Professor Abbot's 1968 Amendments). If you have a PC compatible running Windows (?) you might be able to boot up an ST emulator so you can play it against itself. From what rumors I have heard, you can use Windows to boot up a lot of ST emulators, and run a different emulation in each window. I guess wonders will never cease! To keep things interesting, I've got flags for the multi-leaping 'Long' Leaper (default is single-leaping), and the Suicide Rule (suicide is prohibited by default), which not everybody necessarily agrees on. Also, flags for center-counter symmetry (whether the Kings are both on the E file) and corner-counter symmetry (whether or not the Immobilizer is on A1 or H1). And then there are some people who prefer to use their first move to decide which Rook to turn upside down, so another flag for that option too. As for tournament play, I don't know exactly how to implement an Email/Webmail option, so I guess I'll have to leave that for the future. Direct dialing sounds like it is easier to implement, but who wants to eat the phone bills? In any case, 5 minutes per move appears to be fair, but how many minutes should we allow the 'operator attendant' to consume in typing out each move? One or two minutes? I think that the early radio chess matches of the 1940s and 1950s were mostly a matter of gentlemanly agreement, so that ought to serve as a guide for any similar Baroque/Ultima tournaments.
Back in high school (1980s) we had a variant for when we were running
short
of lunch break. We called it Chultima, and at each move we could play as
chess, or as ultima. This made for some very short games, and most of us
were howling with laughter at the (in hindsight) really stupid moves we
had just made.
[For some reason we had slightly different terminology:
Chameleon -> Amoeba ('changed shape', or similar spurious reason)
Pawn -> Roller (because they rolled up and down ranks)
Long Leaper -> Leaper (could only jump a single adjacent piece like a
weakened draughts/checkers king)
Also, the coordinator could only take one piece at a time: in the useful
direction.]When I was playing this game I simply could not do it with a regular chess set. Being a fanatic speed-chess player of 5 min. games where you have to move mostly as a reflex, the chess personalities of the piece images were simply hard-wired in my brain. So I made a separate set of pieces, looking nothing like chess men, based on a set of checkers chips and other pieces of wood. The pawns were just plain chips (since I don't play checkers, they meant nothing to me, so no harm there). The King could of course still be represented as an ordinary chess King, since it moves like one. But for the Long Leaper I used a cylinder (remaniscent of a draughts King), for the Immobilizer a Cube (looked pretty immobile...), for the Coordinator a checkers chip mounted perpendicular on another (representing a dish antenna, symbolizing its action at a distance), for the Chameleon a spere (supported on a chip) to represent a spherical mirror in which every piece would see itself. The whole set looked quite nice, with a pretty homogeneous style.
Could you post a picture or two of your chess set somewhere, and let us have a link to see it?
Done! Look at http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/ultima.html
25 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.