Shogi variant

Andycyca has promised us an article on this soon!

Shogi variants come in all shapes and sizes, so this tag is necessarily complex. I'll try to keep the instructions simple, though. If you understand the Faerie Forsythe-Edwards Notation FFEN tags, this will be a piece of cake. Shogi and variants are specialized Chess Variants.

The root tag for the shogi variant game is [shogivariant]. You must start the game with [shogivariant] and end it with [/shogivariant]. You will find that this very closely resembles Portable Game Notation (which is a Chess specific format...)

Initial setup

All boards must be given a starting setup. You do this by including a FEN tag (which has no end tag).

   [FEN "<setup>"] 

where <setup> is the initial postion of the board in FFEN (see above)

Currently boards can be no wider than 26 squares.

Some set-ups have been preconfigured, so the FFEN can also be one of the following tags:

• Micro
• Mini
• Tori
• Modernshogi
• Wa
• Chu
• Chushogi (same as chu)
• Dai

You may then specify the following optional tags (none of which has an end tag):

• [Aliases <abbreviation>=<piece>,<abbreviation2>=<piece2>...] This will allow you to use abbreviation in place of the piece name (in parens) (you may use a comma or whitespace). Some aliases will be preconfigured for you.
• [PieceStyle "<Japanese|Western|figureine>"]
• [UseDrops] This will create an extra column to store captured pieces for games that use drops. The space will expand as needed to fit all the captured pieces.
• [Players "<Number of players in the game>"]
• [Event "<event>"]
• [Site "<site>"]
• [Date "<date>"]
• [Round "<round>"]
• [White "<name of white player>"]
• [Black "<name of black player>"]
• [Red "<name of red player>"]
• [Green "<name of green player>"]
• [Result "<result>"]

Move list

After the tags, you will write the game score with a space between each turn. The format for moves is (this isn't complicated, so look at the examples if you have problems understanding this):

<square to more from><square to move to>[=<piece to promote to>][x=<piece to place in hand (if using drops)>] 

or

<piece><@|'|*><square to add piece> 

or

<x|-><square to remove piece from> 

For example you might make the move: g7f7 to start a standard modern Shogi game (move the piece from g7 to square f7)

If you make multiple moves in one turn, you separate them with a plus sign (+). For example a Lion in Chu Shogi might make the move: f8e9+e9f9 That is the Lion on square f8 captures on square e9, then moves back out to f9.

Now this can lead to some rather ugly looking moves. If you have a better way to represent the move, you can change how it displays in the move list by adding the new representation in curly braces {}. For example if you want to change the Lion's notation to look like it usually would you could write: f8e9+e9f9{Lnxe9-f9} and the displayed move would be: Lnxe9-f9

Shogi Variant Board

If you only want a board (perhaps for a puzzle), you can use the [shogivarboard] tag. You enclose the board setup string (see Faerie Forsythe-Edwards Notation instructions) in [shogivarboard][/shogivarboard]

Currently boards can be no wider than 26 squares.- I'm working on getting Tai Shogi working, though.