Fourplay Chess
I decided to look into resurrecting my online four-player chess game now that my previous plans are officially “previous plans.” I ran some searches to see if anyone had built an online four player chess game resembling my first attempt, but found none. However, I did find something called “Fourplay Chess.” I don’t think the homonym was intentional, but thought twice before clicking. The basic idea of the game is kinda fascinating. There were a lot of rules, and I didn’t have time to go into how it works so I decided to blog it here so that I would not forget it. There are some interesting aspects of it that might make their way into my four player chess game.
The game is apparently listed on a website devoted to a bigger game called “Nomic” which is a game where the rules change, and the rule-changing is part of the game. The whole thing is quite interesting. Certainly a game for geeks, especially the hermit variety. The Fourplay Chess game is one of many listed in a “dead games” section of the site. I don’t know yet what “dead” means. The game is worth looking into. I want to make it playable online, but it looks like some of it relies on human interpretation of things and might not be possible to automate.
As a nomic player (primarily in Agora), I believe I can answer some questions, if they haven’t been answered for you already. A “dead game” is one which no one is playing. Fourplay was, as far as I can tell, a game which certain players were playing, not a generic template for a game to be played by people everywhere. As such, gameplay is likely to be unbalanced, at least until the rules are changed. I haven’t read the rules for Fourplay since maybe 2003, but it seems to me like if the portions regarding the changing of rules were removed, Fourplay would be automateble, however, this would eliminate the ability to fix the rules game as needed throughout the game.