Just BASIC Files Archive

Here is a game that was designed primarily to introduce Japanese children to the concepts of Shogi, which is a Chess-like game.

In this JB version, you must play both sides. The game board will be reversed after you decide to confirm your move. As far I know, it enforces the rules correctly.

The pieces can move to adjacent squares that are marked with a dot on the moving piece. When a piece is captured, the capturing player can later drop it onto any empty square. If the chick moves to the final row of the board, it is promoted to a chicken/hen. If the lion moves to the final row of the board that player wins. The other way to win is by checkmating the opposing lion.

Now with an AI eval function!

Eval v.03
Eliminated a bug in the moves function that generated bad drops.

Added a bonus to capturing moves.

Added a penalty when evaluating unprotected moves, i.e. ones that can be captured by the human with no re-capture possible.

Improved eval() has more bug smashing and also "learns" as it plays. The learning consists of keeping a book of positions it has proven as losing. If a position appears in the lostpositions.dat file, eval() evaluates it the same as an immediate loss.

Nice variant of Dōbutsu shōgi, thanks a lot!
Unfortunately all the pieces are upside down and identical — how to distinguish our pieces from opponent's pieces?