kazan29 January 11, 2012 at 19:37

New conceptual item for Apple

InCube Chess: the first successful implementation of chess in a three-dimensional field

Hello!

Although toys are not usually discussed in Habré, believing them to be frivolous activities - I deliberately made an exception today. Very rarely, something truly original happens in the "gaming industry". In addition, with a bright originality, it must also remain playable - and this is quite a rarity. But in this case, it seems, both requirements converged. In general, I found something for the real "tadpoles" ...

The bottom line is that the small Ukrainian company InCube Games released the computer chess of the same name: InCube Chess. And this would not deserve absolutely no attention (are there many chess programs?) - if not for one essential detail: the chess field is not a 8x8 flat “board”, but a 8x8x8 cube. That is, the struggle between the figures of the players takes place not in two-dimensional, but in three-dimensional space!

Honestly, I almost completely lost interest in classical chess as an intellectual pastime after I got into the hands of a textbook on chess theory, and it became clear that the game was almost completely calculated and “schematized”. And then a message came that the chess computer had beaten Kasparov ... "Well, I thought - the end of the" game of civilization ". And in general, interest in classical chess has clearly weakened in recent years: how many students can you find now who can do more than just rearrange pieces? .. However, the simple but elegant idea of adding a third dimension to a classical chessboard can breathe in chess a completely new a life. Relatively speaking, we got “chess of the third millennium”.

In addition to implementing the third coordinate axis and turning the field into a cube, the developer should say thanks for one more thing: for carefully preserving the classical rules. Both in the Internet and in patent archives you can find a cloud of all kinds of “board-games” implementations with a claim to “true three-dimensionality”, which are either completely not playable or require new rules. Therefore, no one plays in them. Who remembers the first Star Trek - there was also something similar there : several different-sized boards, one above the other, and pieces “jumping” on them ... In the case of InCube Chess, the developers kept all the classic rules of the game that have been around for centuries, so you can easily start play immediately, without preparing and reading manuals: everything is completely intuitive.

It is clear that when expanding the chessboard in 3D, the main task is the interface with which you could confidently control the situation. In this case, the sets of figures are set in the opposite faces of the rotating transparent cube, divided into black and white “cells”. A lot of visual settings helps to play: a “chess cube” can not only change the color, but also set the internal and external frame of the cells (Outer grid), turn on and turn off the drawing of internal cells (Internal cages), as well as diagonal sections. By default, the illumination of the diagonal cross section of the chess cube (Diagonal grid) is turned on, since the shortest attack line is located on the diagonal. But it can be turned off if the player decides to pursue a strategy other than the speedy occupation of the center.

Since you can hardly find a Jedi in the neighboring courtyard that can make you a decent game of three-dimensional chess - InCube Chess has a good robot with three levels of difficulty. By default, the game is configured so that when you select a piece, all fields of possible moves are highlighted, beaten fields, and around the pieces that you can attack, a red halo lights up. In addition, the robot that calculates your game will offer the optimal (in his opinion!) Move. But all these gadgets can be turned off.

Starting to play, I thought the game would take about three weeks. It wasn’t here: it took us about 40 minutes to each of the games with a friend (and not only due to “yawns”, but also due to the power of the figures many times increased in three-dimensional), and the “careful robot” (Careful Nous), who develops his figures in a tight safety net mode, dealt with me in about 20 minutes ... I also liked that in a difficult situation the robot demonstrates almost human behavior: it is able, for example, to go to the gambit - that is, even substitute you with a couple of heavy figures, if, according to his opinion, you are a step or two away from checkmating ...

So games It’s really interesting. At first glance, the only thing missing is the network interface to fight the remote opponent - but judging by the press release, the guys are already working on it.

This "arthouse" thing is released not only for Mac (that is, for OS X), but also for iOS . According to my personal feelings, the game on the iPad from the Mac version does not differ either in convenience or in speed, except that the settings are smaller: the robot is pretty optimized for the platform. But I haven’t tried it on the iPhone: I think the screen will still be small. Although it’s a matter of habit ...
It’s also important that in spite of a rather conditional price (for some reason it has been “jumping” in recent days on the developers’s website, depending on the version of the update, but has never exceeded 4 bucks), the developers were not greedy free version, which differs only in robot levels and the ability to save a batch.

In general, under Apple, as has already been the custom, another Conceptual Thing has been released. And I recommend it to my habrazhiteli, as the most “big-headed”. The game, as I said, is available for both OS X and iOS. But when it comes out for Windows and / or Linux - is unknown. The developers website says that they have an early (and tricked out, with the possibility of 4 players!) Version for Windows, but they don’t promise to bring it to mind before the second half of next year ...

New conceptual item for Apple

InCube Chess: the first successful implementation of chess in a three-dimensional field

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