Shogi is Japanese Chess.
The object is to checkmate your opponent's King.
In Shogi, captured pieces belong to the player who takes them and may be replayed later in the game as a turn. Captured pieces may be placed on any unoccupied square, except for Pawns, which can be placed only on unoccupied squares on columns without any friendly Pawns.
This implementation of Shogi is a modification of the Shogi Script by Fergus Duniho. I have created three seperate Shogi Scripts, as follows:
- Beginner's, with the notation using English names and no traditional Japanese Kanji Pieces.
- Traditional Shogi Set, with letters and numbers on the board to denote the grid lables, something that is frequently done in printed Shogi material.
- Large Shogi Board, with a mix of pieces that are traditional and for beginners. It's just, well, big, using larger grapics.
The most important alteration I made to Mr. Duniho's Shogi Script, though, was to include handicaps. One of the nice things about Modern Shogi is that it has a well defined and workable handicap system, where the stronger player moves first, but has less pieces. The greater the difference in playing strength, the larger the handicap. I have included a total of 10 handicaps, from the small Left Lance handicap all the way to the challenging (!!) 8 Piece handicap.
And while handicaps do allow weaker players a better chance to win, they also serve as an exercise for the stronger player to practice more challenging play too.
Please note that in all the handicaps, White moves first, not Black! The rationale being that Black's first move is considered to be the removal of the pieces White shall not be using. Note too that the missing pieces will be unavailable for either side to use.
Note that one of my main reasons for creating this set of shogi scripts is so that shogi players can record their games with Zillions as well as use it for playing live games on the Internet, using handicaps.
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