
Show HN: Kung Fu Chess - paladin314159
https://github.com/paladin8/kfchess
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jedberg
Bobby Fischer would have loved this. He was constantly complaining that chess
had become boring because everyone had "memorized the strategy books". That's
why he invented Chess960[0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960)

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lonelappde
Fischer invented Fischerandom. It was renamed later.

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nevi-me
The idea is great, but seems the implementation (when playing a game) doesn't
quite work out well from an UX perspective. I kept struggling to move pieces,
while the AI was able to move multiple pieces in a few seconds.

Perhaps I wasn't holding it the right way, but it's something I'd want to play
against friends in the future. Great stuff paladin314159!

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paladin314159
Thanks for the feedback!

Are you playing on your phone? I never really solved the UX problem on mobile
because of the necessary speed/accuracy of moves. The original game was only
on PC.

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grawprog
Not the original poster, but I tried it from my phone. I found it sort of
playable. Pieces mostly moved where I wanted them to. The ai does seem to be
able to move more pieces than would be humanly possible at a time though. I
started, I moved one pawn and in the same time the ai moved 5 pawns and a
knight simultaneously. It would be fun against a human opponent using the same
kind of device I think.

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eps
There's also something called Chezz, which is virtually the same thing and
probably derived from the same original.

[https://quickbytegames.com/en/games/chezz/index.html](https://quickbytegames.com/en/games/chezz/index.html)

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brownbat
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyERPRjFLQs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyERPRjFLQs)

Interesting.

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EGreg
I used to play Kung Fu Chess by shizmoo games years ago. Their four player
mode was intense!

Not sure what happened to it but here is the wiki:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung-
Fu_Chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung-Fu_Chess)

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petters
Great to see!

I also recreated this amazing game a while ago because I could not find it any
longer:
[https://github.com/PetterS/realtimechess](https://github.com/PetterS/realtimechess)

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unnouinceput
This reminds me of the kick-chess with dices I used to play when I was bored
of traditional chess. You and your opponent would roll dices, whoever had
higher number would kick a piece of its own with fingers to go bump over as
many pieces of the opponent. Win the game when you kicked all pieces of your
opponent off the table. Hit too hard and your finger would bleed. Hit too low
and you might only kick over a single or sometime even none of your opponent
pieces. Use always the same finger for kicking was one of the rules. After 3
or 4 games, your finger would hurt so much that you'd also want to stop, but
there was another rule - who was saying 1st to stop playing was automatically
giving 3 games to the opponent. So you wanted to either have at least 4 games
ahead then stop or on a tight match you'd grind through your pain to outlast
the opponent's pain. Good times.

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hacknat
Good job, my only complaint: Check should have some kind of impact. The king
being able to move into check was surprising.

~~~
petters
Having implemented and played this game a lot I don't think check makes sense
in this game.

There is an advantage of moving into check quite often. (A check with a rook
across the board is quite weak)

Better to just play until the king is captured. (This is also how regular
check is equivalently played)

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jakelazaroff
I’m not sure I understand. In normal chess it’s illegal to move your own king
into check.

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_nalply
This is a variant of chess with different rules.

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jakelazaroff
I get that; I was just asking the parent to explain why check rules differ in
this format. (It’s okay though, another comment put it in a way I understood.)

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k_sze
Somebody should implement this in the physical form.

Here's an idea: Strong magnets (or just pieces of strongly ferromagnetic
material) would be embedded at the bottom of the chess pieces; the board would
use a strong solenoid on each square to fix the piece once it touches down.
Alternatively, the bottom of each chess piece could have a hermetic seal ring,
and there's a hole at the centre of each square that will create a vacuum to
fix the chess piece in place.

The pieces could be (3D printed) in translucent material with an induction
circuit with an LED inside. The LED will glow at various intensities to
represent the cooldown.

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smitty1e
The next obvious step in the escalation is a kriegspiel variant.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegspiel_(chess)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegspiel_\(chess\))

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29athrowaway
If 2 pieces collide while moving, the one that started moving first prevails.

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capableweb
That kind of makes sense right? First-mover advantage

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29athrowaway
It does make sense, but it caught me by surprise.

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smarri
This is great! Nice one! I'm intrigued by the idea of infinite chess - I'm
thinking a chess game that when a piece is taken it reappears on it's starting
square (when it's next free).

Edit - something like what I suggested exists -
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_chess](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_chess)

~~~
muraiki
You might also be interested in Shogi. Captured pieces can be redeployed onto
the board with relatively few restrictions in terms of location. It's fun!
[https://www.chessvariants.com/shogi.html](https://www.chessvariants.com/shogi.html)

~~~
akkyakimoto
Commercial Realtime Battle Shogi game was released this year for Nintendo
Switch and Playstation 4.
[https://www.silverstar.co.jp/02products/rtbs/](https://www.silverstar.co.jp/02products/rtbs/)

~~~
muraiki
Wow, that's awesome! I am bad enough at Shogi that I think I need to stick to
turn-based for the time being though. :)

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d--b
I think the moves should be near-instant, here you can see the pieces moving
and dodge them. That's probably the less "chess-like" feature of the game.

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ajhurliman
I played a few rounds, pretty fun!

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mruts
Very nice and very fun! Good job!

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mruts
Though sometimes have a problem castling? Is there a specific way I need to
click in order to do this?

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theli0nheart
This is amazing.

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abhisheksp
I enjoyed playing this

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doomjunky
TL;DR: "Chess Without Turns"

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ztratar
Haha - wonderful. Have an upvote.

