Show HN: Chess on a Donut/Torus and Deep-Dive | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Chess on a Donut/Torus and Deep-Dive

mchess.io

24 pointsmannymakes13 comments

Hey there! I just finished a youtube video explaining our donut chess in detail: https://youtu.be/iRcfHCPFgkM

So I thought it'd be cool to show it off here too- it can be played around with at mchess.io/donut - you can also set up an AI or online game on the site.

This is all indie dev work from a couple friends and myself.

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It's fun to sit down and draw what the board looks like when you cut and flatten the torus before you watch the video!

Bonus points if you hit upon the other 2D projection that is useful (I didn't)

that'd be a fun puzzle!

Thanks for sharing!

Rotating the torus eventually hits singularities and I cannot continue the rotation. Maybe use a different mechanism for rotations that do not suffer from "gimbal lock"?

Would also be nice to rotate the torus along the circular axis. That is, rotate pieces/rows from inside the doughnut hole to the outside.

Shameless plug. If you're into chess-themed puzzles, you might like: https://chedoku.com/blog/chessPuzzles

interesting puzzle collection :)

My favorite torus game is Tetris on a Torus

https://www.benjoffe.com/code/games/torus/

very neat. I'd say this is kinda on top of a torus, and more of a cylinder from the perspective of the Tetris pieces. not sure how you'd play on the surface of a torus, since you need to wrap around vertically too.

E.g the pieces from the rows you eliminate reappear at random at the top row.

Took me a while to realize it was a 3D torus and I had to drag around to see the whole board lol

Maybe when the page loads the torus should rotate around a bit

hmmm good idea, maybe we should have an auto-rotate that stops when you interact

Better than an automatic smooth continuous motion would be an "idle animation": after a few seconds swing the torus somewhat less than 45 degrees in a random direction and let it relax back into the original position. This suggests "the torus can move" without suggesting "the torus moves [only] in this specific way." You need contradict not just the user's intuition "Torus stationary" but much more importantly "Torus non-interactive."

Likewise, if someone thought the pieces couldn't be moved, you could idly wiggle the king pawn as a hint to pick it up.

Now, how anybody could look at a chess board and think the pieces were immovable, or look at a 3D torus render and think it was unrotatable, is beyond me. But if it's a real problem, I think idle animation is a good fix.

looks like the white king/queen aren't on the right colors (queen goes on her color) - confused me a bit when trying to map the space to a 2d board

ahha true, I forgot this was the case. we like the setup this way as it has rotational symmetry, which more naturally extends to supporting 3+ players

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