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CatspawDTP — Astral game rules (color)
Published: 2012-09-19 19:10:50 +0000 UTC; Views: 10157; Favourites: 210; Downloads: 1011
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The rules in full color for Sun and Moon—The Astral Game. The PDF file is set up for US letter size (8.5 inches by 11 inches), and is four pages long. It also can be printed from Adobe Acrobat or Reader as a “booklet” on a single sheet of tabloid paper (11 inches by 17 inches), then folded in half.(I apologize for the bizarre category, but Deviantart steadfastly ignores the existence of any game other than digital games.)
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Comments: 367
Question, What if a player has "conveniently" boxed in the princess when the twilight line is crossed?
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If that could be accomplished, the player’s discovered a winning strategy—if the opposing player lets it happen.
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Several people have suggested position notations, most of them fairly similar. I probably will put one together from those suggestions, so stay tuned.
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This is really amazing. I mean, I can find it being incredibly hard, do to the limited number of pieces, but it would definitely offer a unique experience.
A few questions though: If you have a soldier on the twilight line, can you then move him anywhere on the twilight line (baring earth)? Or would he have to stop on every separate star on the twilight line?
And... I already answered my other question.
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Yep. Moving along the twilight line, a piece effectively is limited to moving one star at a time; there’s a sentence to that effect in the rules.
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Oop, Re-read that part. YUah, I misinterpreted it. Now if only I had someone who was willing to play with me
There needs to be a digital version of this...
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Oh, believe me, quite a few other folks have mentioned digital versions! We’ll see.
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If you ever end up with news on one of those, you have to let me know! I would play an internet version of this game with people...
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BRILLIANT
BTW, earth ponies can break the limit of 6 stars. Pinkie pie style?
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That’s true; I wrote the sentence about “six stars” before adding the turning ability to earth ponies. Plainly I shall have to rewrite that. On the other hand, there’s some discussion about modifying the movement rules to address some possible difficulties, so stay tuned.
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Okay, I've just posted my little primitive Vassal module for the game.
[link]
Huh, looks like I independently came up with a coordinate system very close to fotland42's.
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Excellent!
I suspect the coordinate system pretty much suggests itself—although I do like your day/night differentiator.
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Let the concentric circles be labeled A through F, with A being the closest circle to the Earth and F being the outer twilight line, and let the stars on each concentric circle be labelled 1 through 12, with 1 being on the curve of the dividing twilight line closest to the Moon (thus, the moon is B3). Have Moon place unicorns at A2, C6, D3, and E6, and place the other eight soldiers on the eight available spaces in circles B and D. His first move is then to move the soldier on D2 to F2, and his second move is to move his Princess to A3 or A4. After this, he moves pegasi and earth ponies between unoccupied stars in his half of B, D, and F (other than D2 which must remain empty) as suits his fancy. It is at all points impossible for any of Sun's pieces to move into Moon's side of the board without being captured. If Moon wants, he can even move earth ponies and pegasi onto the dividing twilight line to attempt an attack without risking losing any pieces not involved in the attack or allowing any of Sun's pieces into his territory. If Sun is expecting this, the only sensible option is for him to in turn completely defend his territory by setting up the same or an analogous configuration, since it's not like he needs to set up for an attack against an impenetrable defense. Thus we can get a clear stalemate from the beginning of the game.
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Sorry, no, that's not optimal. First move is Princess to A4. After that any moves of earth ponies or pegasi to any unoccupied spaces in B, D, and F are fine.
Why did nobody point out that I was leaving my entire border undefended for one turn because I forced my second move? It was pretty stupid of me, you must admit.
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A possible alternate schema . . .
Unicorn: Move to adjacent star, may then capture opposing soldier on star adjacent to its ending position. Perhaps add rule that it cannot capture on the twilight line unless it too is on the twilight line.
Earth pony: Move up to two stars in any direction, including turning a corner; may capture in conventional manner.
Pegasus: Move up to three stars, but only along an arc without turning corners, may capture in conventional manner. The question then is whether retaining “flyover” rule would affect its relative power.
Thoughts?
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Really, my thoughts are "the movement rules need to be different so unicorns will be balanced with the other soldier types" and "I like that suggestion I saw that it should be possible to win by capturing the opponent's heavenly body in some manner." I'm not much good at figuring out what rules work well other than by testing and by trial and error.
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I thought about the “capture the opposing body” idea, but I couldn’t see any elegant way to make it work. It doesn’t dodge, for one thing.
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Possibly, if you have the method to capture the opposing heavenly body be moving a piece onto it, the fact that only the Princess can move onto it will be enough to compensate for its inability to dodge. Alternatively, you could have the requirement be that you not only must move onto it, but not become eclipsed by your opponent's next move, and because controlling the opposing heavenly body is hard, you can't capture if your move begins there (also because otherwise it is impossible to threaten a Princess on a heavenly body). The heavenly bodies are special spaces already, after all. Moving one specific piece where your opponent most doesn't want it probably won't be easy, and moving your Princess out of your side of the board leaves your own heavenly body more vulnerable to attack.
I also considered the possibility that you can threaten the opposing Princess on your heavenly body with any piece even though they normally couldn't move there, but I decided that probably is too much of a special rule.
Or, you could have a more difficult requirement for capturing a heavenly body, like as a random example needing to have your Princess and two other pieces on or adjacent to the body.
I mean, it does make sense in a war to have to protect both your leader and certain important locations, which by definition cannot move. I think this is probably particularly important given how the Princess is the most powerful piece and is largely capable of defending herself. I might even go so far as to say that I imagine a war between the sisters actually would revolve more around capturing territory than the small chance of capturing or seriously wounding an alicorn, and thus that it would be thematically desirable if game were won most of the time by capturing the opposing heavenly body rather than the opposing Princess.
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If I implement any of those ideas, most likely it would be the requirement to move one’s princess onto the opposing body. That’s the most elegant and thematically solid concept, I think. The only question is whether it’s too easy or too difficult to do.
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I think this would be a good way to prevent stalemates. The new goal becomes increasingly interesting the less pieces there are on the board.
Limiting the capturing to the princesses seems like a good balancing factor to the fact that it's an instant win move, the princesses can't just carelessly go and do it.
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I think I’ll keep the idea in reserve for now, though if people want to playtest it in some form that would help immensely. At the moment I don’t have a good feel for its effect on the game, and I’d rather limit the number of balls I’m juggling until I can settle at least some of them.
That does not mean I’m rejecting the idea—just holding it aside temporarily.
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That might work. It's hard to say without playtesting, but I don't see any one of the soldiers that is obviously more powerful than the others or any broken strategies.
The lower mobility would probably make it a very different game from the current rules, but that's not necessarily a good or bad thing.
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I might give that a whirl, depending on some other feedback I may get. I do worry that the shorter move ranges may slow down the game a lot; I rather like the idea of the game exhibiting a moderately fast rate of play.
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Numbers proceed clockwise from the dividing twilight line near the Moon, by the way. I could have sworn I typed that.
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What I've thought of to fix unicorns is to have them able to move in a straight line, possibly ending in a capture, like other pieces, or they can teleport to any unoccupied spot within two stars of them (such as A2 to C2, for example), no matter what is in between (even the twilight line). I think that might be balanced.
Or, alternatively, make it so that unicorns capture other unicorns like other pieces capture. That would make it so that if your opponent built this blockade, you could break it with your own unicorns. But I'm not sure if I like suggesting making any capture rules depend on the identity of the piece being captured as well as the piece doing the capturing.
Or there's the possibility of allowing each player to make two moves on their turn, possibly of the same piece, in which case a piece could cross the twilight line in one turn at the cost of the relevant player not getting to move anything else. However, I could see this making banishment a lot harder to figure out.
Basically, I'm just throwing out ideas here.
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Yeah, I’ve realized something about classical games as a result of the shotgun discussions resulting from all the comments: Their feel of refinement and polish comes in part from their relative lack of special cases and exceptions. Since I want to emulate the feel, I need to avoid as far as possible introducing such factors.
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Heh! Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but thanks for the compliment.
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*Reading and analyzing the rules.*
Man, you're awesome!, now you got the complexity of Chess and Xiangqi (Rules on moving, use of points instead of "squares" or other regular polygon, the use of a "river"), and in an exceptional way, Shogi (The alternate rule of use captured pieces as your own.), but you made it beyond that: Not constraining the pieces to a certain pattern of movement, but let them move free along arcs, instead constraining them to certain points in the board and rules according those points, movements and pieces. What it makes all funny the way the princesses move: Like a chess "Queen" piece (Moves wherever it likes), but constrained to one of three soldier rules by turn.
Maybe there will be some people who will say that it is "another chaturanga (chess, for the average joe) clone" where you only change "squares" for "circles and points". Maybe are a little right, but again, chess is a clone of chaturanga, along with Xiangqi and Shogi, there is no wrong doing on combining some of them into a new kind of game with a different set of rules; or I can tell you american "Football" is a clone of "Rugby" and "Football Soccer" is "Mayan Ball Game". =_=
Your game has its charm, a very good one, a simple understandable rules with tactical complexity. Bronies, let's try to make this game for PC-Mac-Linux, I know it is possible to port it to C++/C#/Objective-C, Java or your favorite poison, but Lets do this! 8D
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Thanks very much! That very much is the sort of feel I was looking for. The game may require some tweaking and refinement, of course.
As for a digital version, we’ll see.
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Over time and while the rest of us play it, will begin to show its colors and the game would began to refine.
I mean, chess is not the game it is actually the next day it was created. XD It is only time that will refine this piece. Time, use and patience from the players. -_q
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Indeed. I’m starting to get some comments already about potential holes; on the other hand, I’m also getting feedback from people who apparently successfully played games through to completion. It’s a bit confusing to get “this doesn’t work” and “this works great” at the same time, and I’m wondering if there may be some confusion or misinterpretation of rules. Of course, that works both ways!
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Some are because they're misinterpreting the rules. The ones that are comments about "There's a hole here, you can overcome it this way." are sometimes good comments about how to handle certain things (I got a question about if princesses can travel like anypony else on the Twilight, or they travel freely, and another question about Draw game, I know in the rules it stated that in some cases one player can win automatically, but I'm curious on how to handle draws or if there's a possible way to prevent draws, like Xiangqi), and, from reading the other comments, mostly the arguments go toward the unicorn piece.
And about the Unicorns, hmmmm... it can be overcome by giving it a "range" of attack, like only 2 or 3 stars from its position, another one is reducing unicorns to two and reducing their range on the Twilight, as a representation of a "magical barrier".
Like I said, only playing and hear the community comments about, the game can obtain standard rules. And again, chess wasn't made on a day.
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A possible alternate schema . . .
Unicorn: Move to adjacent star, may then capture opposing soldier on star adjacent to its ending position. Perhaps add rule that it cannot capture on the twilight line unless it too is on the twilight line.
Earth pony: Move up to two stars in any direction, including turning a corner; may capture in conventional manner.
Pegasus: Move up to three stars, but only along an arc without turning corners, may capture in conventional manner. The question then is whether retaining “flyover” rule would affect its relative power.
Thoughts?
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Unicorn: Moves one star only? If true, then it needs to move to then capture a piece and it retain the magic capture? I suggest to retain the capture on the same arc, with a limit of 2 or 3 stars around the star the unicorn is, except beyond the Twilight, if a Heavenly Body block the path, or an own piece block the path. I recommend this since it could represent "magic" inside the game.
Earth: Is ok.
Pegasus: Maintain the "fly over" within the 3 star movement, because it represents a pegasus flight and it could represent the knight.
I'll try to read again the rules, print the board and pieces, and try to get more ideas. ._q
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For the unicorn, I think you’ve grokked it. Let me rephrase to make sure I’ve communicated the idea clearly: Unicorn moves one star, then may capture one star away from where it ends its move. I’m not sure I want to extend the capture range beyond a single star, though.
Please do! I hadn’t intended to put poor in a bind, but I want to see if the problems can be resolved before he has to stand before his class and present a reasonably final version of the game!
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Ok, so in the end, the unicorn, when the turn starts can't capture, only when it moves one star on any direction, and only captures a piece on a range of one star from its position after move itself. ._q
Understood.
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Yep, that’s it. I want to get some feedback on that idea before I formally implement it, but it feels right.
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I'm a C# developer. I haven't played the game yet, but if I like it I might make my own port using the mono or something. Just to see if I can develop a good AI system for it.
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The logic of the game (What compels the logic of the future software piece) is in the rules. The difficult part is the abstraction and the automation of such abstraction, since any piece can move n number points, that are an intersection between 18 circles (12 of them with their centers at 30º from each other, and 6 concentric circles, relative to the center of the board, and the fifth being the limit of the board itself and a Twilight Line), and the interaction of each intersection with the behavior of each piece and special rules.
The "easy" part, drawing and delimiting the board: The 6 o'clock circle and the 12 o'clock one are the max limits for night and day (6 o'clock for night, while 12 o'clock for day), or said in better words: The middle Twilight line; while the center of both circles are the heavenly bodies of Moon (6:00) and Sun (12:00). The center of the board is a heavenly body itself (Earth), I forgot to mention.
Well... too much text, to the point: We can know each point and extrapolate from there, counting "stars" from each of the concentric circles, calculate their position on degrees, create each circle from an scale, since their edges are at different distances, and from there, calculate and draw the 12 other circles (which their edges will intersect the fifth circle and the center of the board) since we know at least the position of the center of four of them (12, 3, 6, and 9). The next part are the constraints (Movement and behavior of each piece in the board, specially on the Twilight Line and while using their "abilities") and that would be the logic and HARDER part of all. Maybe later I can make a better analysis. For the moment I'm going to sleep. See ya!! 8D
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I am massively confused by the Twilight line.
If a piece MUST stop there, but a soldier cannot begin or end a move on it.... ???
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Can you be more specific? I confess I don’t understand the problem.
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Is the intention that one side's pieces don't cross over and making it so that only Unicorns and Princesses can actually capture opposing pieces?
If a soldier cannot end a turn on the Twilight line, but going to the twilight line ends the turn... or is it that they must pause on the star...
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Any moving piece that encounters a star on the twilight line must stop on that star and proceed no farther on that turn. On a later turn it may move off the twilight line freely.
Any piece may capture as described in the section titled “Capturing Opposing Soldiers”.
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Thanks I was just a lil' confuzzled is all.
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Glad that cleared it up! I may rewrite the rules for greater clarity once I have enough information to judge what people need.
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Additionally, it is possible for the Moon player to position his pieces such that with his first move, he has a unicorn controlling every star on the Twilight Line along with the Earth. While this doesn't help him win directly, it makes it literally impossible for the sun player to do anything at all to begin an offense until the Moon player has repositioned all his pieces as he desires and decides to allow the game to continue, as any move the Sun player makes until the Twilight line will be punished with the loss of his piece at no positional cost to the Moon player.
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Not that it matters much, but it would have to be the Princess that was controlling the Earth. She would be by default, unless you put another piece in the way, but the point still stands that a unicorn cannot capture the opposing Princess while she is on a heavenly body because the unicorn could not move there.
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