Boardscript

Boardscript is a text based format for encoding the layout, rules, and pieces of chesslike games. Key design principles include:

• Completeness
• Simplicity
• Modularity

Completeness

Boardscript should be able to encode any move on an NxM board. Exceptions once raised should be swiftly corrected in a revision. Examples Include:

• NxM movement (2x3, 3x4, 1x2, etc) (Example: Knight's 2x3 movement in Chess)
• Vector Movement (Orthogonal, Diagonal, Forward/Back, etc) (Example: Rooks and Bishops in Chess)
• Turn Count Movement (Piece's first move, player's first move, etc) (Example: Pawn 2 squares forward in Chess)
• Piece Dependant Movement (Involving the state of other pieces) (Example: Cannon in Xiangqi)
• Moving Other Pieces
• Any Combonation of the Above (Castling in Western Chess involves the state of the Rook and King, as well as moving both pieces)

Simplicity

BoardScript shouldn't be dense, hard to read, excessively short, excessively verbose, or anything that the average computer user who can edit a text file would find difficult to open and modify.

• No dense 4-tab indent trees of data
• As much data as possible should be simple key/value pairs
• Basically, it shouldn't be JSON.

Modularity

Boardscript, ideally, should be a simple i-o program, taking inputs of moves and outputting board states. The exact nature of this IO is undecided, but the base boardscript implementation should NOT

• Provide a GUI
• Facilitate playing of games directly
• Contain hardcoded boards/pieces/rules