Video Chess Randomizer (Proof of Concept)

[bluswimmer]

So yesterday I had the weird idea of hacking video chess to give the player a set of random pieces. After about a day of poking around the source code, I was able to trim it down to allow for eight extra pieces to be stored in ROM. Using this modified ROM, I wrote a program that randomizes seven of the pieces in the back row of each set of pieces.

 

 

As you can see, the pawns and king are still present, but otherwise, both teams have a different set of pieces. I tried randomizing the front row too, but this caused so many weird bugs that I had to settle just randomizing the back row.

 

If you'd like to try the randomizer yourself, both the modified ROM and the randomizer itself are in the ZIP file below. The randomizer is a java program that replaces the pieces in the modified ROM with new ones. It takes a single optional argument; an integer seed for the RNG. Once the file is unzipped, just run the randomizer, and then copy vchess.bin into your ROMs folder.

 

ChessRandomizer.zip

Edited February 29, 2020 by bluswimmer

[davyK]

Nice idea. It might be worth checking out the random chess variant that Bobby Fischer invented. I think it shuffled the back row pieces around - players have the same set of pieces but they start in different positions.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess

 

You might need more ROM space to code in the shuffling rules - don't know how packed the original ROM is.

Edited March 1, 2020 by davyK

[bluswimmer]

4 hours ago, davyK said:

Nice idea. It might be worth checking out the random chess variant that Bobby Fischer invented. I think it shuffled the back row pieces around - players have the same set of pieces but they start in different positions.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess

 

You might need more ROM space to code in the shuffling rules - don't know how packed the original ROM is.

The ROM itself is pretty tightly packed, to my understanding. I'll admit I didn't dive into much aside from how the pieces are generated, but it looks like there's no bytes left in the default ROM. I had to change some things around to allow for the asymmetrical piece layout.

 

Also, I've uploaded a new ZIP with the source code of the randomizer below. Feel free to write your own variants of the randomizer.

ChessRandomizer.zip

[Voxel]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

[davyK]

The code is Java - was expecting assembler - have you some sort of tool that compiles java to 2600 assembler? Or are you using 3GL just as a way of testing functionality and then hand assembling its equivalent?

Edited March 2, 2020 by davyK

[+Andrew Davie]

1 hour ago, davyK said:

The code is Java - was expecting assembler - have you some sort of tool that compiles java to 2600 assembler? Or are you using 3GL just as a way of testing functionality and then hand assembling its equivalent?

 

You seem to be confused. I quote the original post... "The randomizer is a java program that replaces the pieces in the modified ROM with new ones."

The java code is not the chess program. It is a program that modifies the "original/modified" chess program ROM.

[davyK]

Ah.....I didn't read the OP correctly.

 

That means the Fischer algorithm can be implemented in Java which would create a bin for playing with one outcome of that.

 

Thanks. Will have a look at that. 

Edited March 3, 2020 by davyK