Status update

Hello, everyone! Here's a (bi)monthly update on things and stuff. I haven't wrote anything for last two months since I didn't have anything intelligent to say, except maybe "I'm still working on stuff". I still do, but now I wanted to share current status and a few thoughts with you.

First of all, as you might have seen it in my Codeberg repository, I'm still working on classical pieces, previously I supported all usual suspects (Bishop, Rook, Queen), then added support for Knight. Now I'm still working on King, I finished support for movement and castling on all variants, and wrote all relevant tests.

Now I'm working on checks if a field (and a piece on it) is under attack; or, should I say, again. Reason for rework is me being "clever" to speed-up development. Code was finished, tests (mostly) passed, everything was fine, except I overlooked pieces positioned between an attacker and a target. Sure, some are transparent to attacker, but not all. And so I had to get back to a drawing board, and the change isn't as simple as one would expect based on previously done code.

After support for King is finished, I'll start working on Pawns. I don't like to try to predict how long it'll take; but I'd like to finish it by early-to-mid October, since I might have some other (family) obligations, and most likely I won't be able to work at all for a week, or so (I hope); period of forced inactivity might be longer. Anyway, when support for Pawns is finished, I'll publish the very first public code release.

Generally, I agree with Drew DeVault that developers should do only code, and administrators should do distribution, but in this day and age that stance isn't very appealing, or convenient. So, I'll take a look at ways to make executables available for different platforms. So far, I have been ignoring CI/CD, or any other builders; on the other hand, application which isn't easily accessible is effectively dead.

After that, I plan on adding support for canonical variants in order of appearance, starting with Mayan Ascendancy; Croatian Ties is already supported. Recently, I started indulging myself again into thinking about changing some pieces and rules. I have already complained that Centaur might be too OP, even as I did significantly cut its reach. I already come up with a solution to straighten its course, but I'll leave this idea to take a proper shape on its own, rather then being forced into existence. You see, I really like its jumpy frolicking movement as-is, and would like to keep it if possible; problem is that at the moment I  really don't see a simple solution. Of course, if this come to pass, Waves activated by Unicorns and Centaurs would also get their straightening treatment.

There are also some other candidates likely to get rules updated, namely Starchild; regular visitors know I  already promised it'll get a proper revision, or at least a polish. Another candidate is Monolith, I don't like its diamond shaped movement pattern, it simply doesn't belong to it; but at that time I couldn't make my mind about simple to visualize, accelerating pattern. Yet another candidate is Serpent, although this change would be very simple; I'll just restrict its movement a bit, this time after I calculate its power compared to other pieces.

For now, this is mostly it. Take care!