“I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” – Marcel Duchamp

Let me start off by saying that in my life chess has probably been the greatest game I've ever had the fortune to play.  I picked it up young and I am more excited to play a game of Chess with a friend than any other game.

So let's get into it shall we 

Here are some of the ideas I've been playing around with over the past couple weeks, oh but first and I just want to do a quick shout out to @Rutin & @lawnjelly for getting the ball rolling on this one, thanks guys!  O.k back to my little idea.

When I lived in China I had a chance to learn how to play Xiangqi

Xiangqi 'Chinese Chess' introduces some interesting pieces that I found quite enjoyable to strategies with, specifically the cannon.  The cannon can only attack a piece if there is another piece between it and it's intended target.  So imagine that it jumps over the piece in front of it to capture the piece in behind.  I found it much more dynamic than even the knight.  However, after playing Chinese chess enough I become aware that even the Chinese themselves recognised that the depth of strategy wasn't as great as Classic Chess, what we here in the West have wrongly dubbed 'Western Chess'.   

A quick history lesson reveals that it originated somewhere in either India or China.  There is a preserved board with pieces dating back to the 12th century from Iran that is indistinguishable with what we play today. 

Cool stuff, would have loved to have met that indie-gamer .

Anyways I digress...
What I'd like to do is create all the pieces for both Classic & Chinese Chess.  Then try my hand at AI, on a classic board at first.  Then the idea is to see if I can get the AI to play with differing combinations of pieces and determine a point value for each piece.  For instance, we traditionally consider the Queen to be worth 9 pts, rook 5 pts, bishop ~3.5 pts, knight 3 pts, and the pawn 1 pt.  I'd like to determine a point value for the new pieces introduced in Xiangqi, the elephant and cannon.  

Then... If I get there...
Give the player so many points and board to design their roster like Star-Control II's melee battles

You might be thinking Sacrilege, but I think it's cool idea B)

Cheers Everybody!