Late last night managed to get my weird little team vs. computer chess variant working in a rudimentary form. The extremely goofy "Zillions of Games!" engine continues to be indispensable to me, despite that / due to the fact that I barely know what I'm doing.
This is a game where 1–4(?) players coordinate your weird fairy pieces against a computer player controlling a standard set. Currently, we have a Nightrider, a Queen, a Ruin (with limited movement), and something I'm calling a Ring (not sure if this exists already) which is a knight + dabbaba + alfil, forming a sort of square ring shaped range one space away from the piece. These together are overpowered, I think.
The task remaining to make it actually fun:
- Learn code better so I can substitute some of my weirder piece ideas
- Modulate difficulty by available pieces, player/piece count, maybe additional pawns for White, and messing with the computer strength / thinking-time settings. Zillions' chess has been said to play at strength relative to 1900–2100 rating, but it actually depends on your processor and the time granted for the computer to think it over.
- Play a lot