Subject: MN: Re: Year 3 Week 36 Proposals

From: "Wayper, Paul" <WayperP@p...>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 13:53:54 +1000

On Thursday, January 13, 2000 3:28 PM, Dunx [SMTP:dunx@d...] wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Jan 2000 20:08:03 -0000 "Snow" wrote:
> > > I've always accepted Compass Tricks as being the great exception;
> > > that
> > > they permit a non-Move piece move.
> > 
> > They seem to be the same sort of thing as Straddles which aren't Moves.
> 
> But Straddles are played in addition to a normal Move, whereas Compass
> Tricks
> are played in lieu of same.

OK, that proposal went down like a steel pancake. And, predictably, no
comments to say where the problem lay, nor any real suggestions in the
forum. Is there something peculiarly perverse about our little crowd, or is
fixing something less important than pointing out it's broken?

To the topic: to my understanding, Straddles and Compass Tricks take place
after a normal move (which would include a pass). The post-move action
translocates your Piece to the new location in the same way that a Special
Move translocates it. The difference being that a Special Move replaces a
normal move whereas Straddles and Compass Tricks (and, for that matter,
Charge Tunnelling) are done after a normal move.

You see, I consider the problem here to be exactly the same as when we first
looked at codifying 'Special Moves'. The 'move' involved is assumed to be a
'jump' - the Piece does not traverse any line segments but is moved to the
destination directly. I tend to like to codify these things; especially
since there is an existing structure for this type of non-line-segment-bound
move in a different context.

As I see it, there's a couple of ways of going from here, depending on what
you see the problem as being. We can either just leave it as is ("I see no
problem here"), create a "Special Post-move" rule which says that these
post-move actions do not traverse line segments ("divide and conquer"), or
amend the "Special Move" rule to include the definition of post-move jumps
("combine and unite").

I do worry about leaving it as is, because I can think of a few post-move
jump actions which would start to make things shaky unless we nailed it down
with a suitable definition.

What do people think? Which way do you want to go?

Paul Wayper -- DPI IS&S ITO Computer Systems Officer
SigClean 1.5a prevents all errors in transcription, transmission, and
reception of eMail, destroys sig and email viruses, and stops flames.
Report all bugs to the author. SigClean is FreeWare. (c) 1998-9 PJW

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From: "Ole Andersen" <palnatoke@g...>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 06:39:59 +0100

Paul wrote:
: To the topic: to my understanding, Straddles and Compass Tricks take
place
: after a normal move (which would include a pass). The post-move action
: translocates your Piece to the new location in the same way that a
Special
: Move translocates it. The difference being that a Special Move replaces
a
: normal move whereas Straddles and Compass Tricks (and, for that matter,
: Charge Tunnelling) are done after a normal move.

Basically, a Special Move *is* a Move, while a Straddle, Compass Trick or
Charge Tunnel is not.
If you created a new category (Translocations or whichever), and put these
in there, and then defined this category as being like Special Moves in
this and this way - well, I might vote for it.

Ole

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From: "Snow" <snowl@s...>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 21:07:27 -0000

> fixing something less important than pointing out it's broken?

Sorry. There were Voting comments, I just forgot to forward them. It has been done now.

I think, however, that Kevan pointed out what the problem was (it isn't a Special Move) and I posted
an agreement, I'm not sure what futher comments you might want beyond this.

The problem wasn't made clear at the time, so I couldn't really make suggestions for a solution.

Snow
-I now know what the problem is.