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Topic: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules... (Read 1072 times) |
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SpeedRazor
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On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules...
« on: Jul 21st, 2009, 12:29pm » |
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I love Arimaa  but it may be broken as it is written so far  (Please don't castigate your stones until you here me out.)
The former world Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker once opined that "Hex" (a node-based game like Go) would have to have ultimately been invented by every extraterrestrial civilization, as it is just obvious; kind of like discovering pi, or prime numbers: every-'thing/one' will eventually find it ... it was there all along.
Will Arimaa be "found" everywhere as the rules are currently written? i.e: Did Omar not invent the gem that is Arimaa, so much as being the "discoverer"?
I mean this with no prejudice, but one of the rules - (as currently codified) - seems arbitrary. (Stop! I'm allergic to stones...  )
«ahem»
Rabbitts can't move backwards. Cool! Arimaa rocks! (Like Chess and Go.) But ... why in the World do they have backward Powers? Allow me to elaborate...
1. Rabbits can un-freeze an friendly piece directly behind them. Why? How?? They can't move there?!
2. Rabbits can 'hold-up' an friendly piece over an Trap directly behind them. Why? How?? They can't move there?!
Okay ... every body's (and mine's) first inclination is to  But, really ... are the "Ambrosian mono-pods of Betelgeuse 30.1" going to come to the same conclusion while discovering pi, primes, and Arimaa? I'm hazarding a guess: no! Rabbits don't have backward powers . (...Ere, "wuzzlepuds"  )
This game is brilliant, and, as an outsider, I love watching it evolve. It's freaken' history, I tell you!
...just posting, Speedy
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| « Last Edit: Jul 21st, 2009, 1:13pm by SpeedRazor » |
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Arimabuff
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #1 on: Jul 21st, 2009, 2:21pm » |
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All rules are arbitrary and the same way as monkeys can type "Romeo and Juliet" given enough time. Changelings from Antares would eventually find Arimaa and Chess (with all its arbitrary rules like promotion of the pawn or "en passant" capture). Arimaa is extremely regular, the only exception being the fact that a rabbit can't go backward on its own (it can if pushed/pulled by an adversary piece though) and that exception is the only thing that keeps a game from going in circles indefinitely. Arimaa is a diamond of superior clarity as it is and any change at this point is more likely to include blemishes (I am working on that metaphor aren’t I ?  ) than anything else.
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Simon
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #2 on: Jul 21st, 2009, 7:44pm » |
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I think the current rules are more intuitive on this particular point. One thing I would change, however, is the repetition rule. I think it should simply be a prohibition of recreating any previously existing position. This would not only be simpler and more intuitive, it would also combine with the no null move rule.
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Fritzlein
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #3 on: Jul 21st, 2009, 8:21pm » |
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The fact that the rules of Arimaa are in some degree arbitrary is a weak justification for calling the game broken. By the same reasoning one would have to say that chess, xiangqi, and shogi are all broken because their piece movements are arbitrary. Also bridge, poker, and all card games are broken because the number of ranks and number of suits is arbitrary, to say nothing of other arbitrary rules.
Probably also Conway's game of life is broken. Yes, the generation rules are extremely simple and mathematical, but those rules are just one of a thousand equally simple mathematical rules, so they are arbitrary.
However, not all simple rules lead to complex emergent behavior. Conway chose simple rules that turned out to be capable of modeling a Universal Turing Machine, whereas other generation rules would not have had this property. Similarly Omar could have chosen more elegant rules, but they would probably have led to a game that was inferior to play, for example a game less deep or more drawish.
If the arbitrariness of Arimaa's rules is the most serious grounds for disapproval that critics can come up with, then I am confident Arimaa is destined for everlasting popularity and fame.
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Janzert
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #4 on: Jul 21st, 2009, 8:25pm » |
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I personally find the current rabbit rule more intuitive, but in any case I think it would be to great of a change in the rules at this point.
Simon, that modification to the repetition rule has been brought up in the past. While it is slightly simpler to use I've argued against for the following reason.
In simple repetition (positions repeat a->b->a->b) there isn't a benefit to allowing the play to continue. But consider the case where the position sequence is something longer* like a->b->c->d->e->f->g->h->a and the best place to break out of the loop is at b. Disallowing the first recurrence of a position means the player has to be able to see all the way to the end of the loop when making the move. By allowing one recurrence it gives the player a chance to break out at any point along the loop after having seen that the previous play does actually lead to a loop.
Janzert
* and theoretically it can be arbitrarily long so long as no capture occurs.
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SpeedRazor
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #5 on: Jul 22nd, 2009, 3:36am » |
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Rabbits having backward Powers are an non-sequitur
Thnx, Everybody 
Arimaa is almost an 'transcendent' game. Almost every rule follows from the first two criterion Omar put down for himself when inventing it: 1.) hard for computers; 2.) playable on an chess set. (The elegant trap mechanic is just the icing on the cake.) Except for rabbits having backward powers, every other rule can be can be deduced from Omar's first two premise'.
As noted, Go and Chess are both 'arbitrary'. They are. Arimaa is special and close to being an archetypal game. Something that the "Changelings of Antares" ~ [Arimabuff] would figure out. Why is the board 8 x 8? Isn't this just arbitrary? Actually, no. The first two "perfect numbers" - 6 and 28 - are mathematically weird, but every other perfect number is intrinsically modeled on eight, and gets more so the farther in that you go. Why we have a decimal system, and not an octal system, is more a mystery to me.
The size of the board isn't the arbitrary decision that I'm arguing against. It was the "executive decision" that Omar made when finding this masterpiece. Namely: Rabbits (wuzzlepuds) can move orthogonally forward only, but have powers which over-ride this? How?? Call their bluff! If somebody tries moving a piece over a trap, thinking that it is immune to falling in - (there's an friendly rabbit just ahead of this trap, "guarding" it) - take it anyway! What's your opponent going to do? Move his Rabbit backward? He can't! It was a bluff! Take it! Rabbits having Powers which don't sync with it's Moves seems arbitrary to me...
Thank you, Karl, for mentioning the 'game of life'. An topic that I've never adequately studied, but I will now.
Thank you, [janzert], I'm going to keep trying to figure out what you meant by your post. (I don't yet.)
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| « Last Edit: Jul 22nd, 2009, 7:24pm by SpeedRazor » |
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RonWeasley
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #6 on: Jul 22nd, 2009, 4:14am » |
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Perhaps this becomes clearer if you play with live animals, freeze charms, and portkey traps like we do at Hogwarts. Rabbits don't move backwards because their back legs are made to hop forward. That is a movement property. In arimaa, movement and proximity are independent attributes.
Rabbits have the same proximity effects as other animals. The heat of an adjacent rabbit, even its fluffy tail when it's in front, is enough to deactivate a freeze charm. That's because freeze charms are actually sensitive to heat from a particular side. The opposite side makes you colder while your own side makes you warmer. Cool, huh? The trap portkeys are also sensitive to sided heat and don't teleport animals (back to Hagrid's) if heat from the same side is next to them. Note that a rabbit does not have to be able to move to the square behind it for its heat to have a proximity effect. On really dry days, you can simply change the heat triggers to be sensitive to shedding instead. That's why we play with mammals.
I'm sure this is what Omar was thinking about when he made the rules for the abstract game of arimaa.
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SpeedRazor
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #7 on: Jul 22nd, 2009, 10:21am » |
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Interesting, [RonWeasley]...
So, you kind of think of the powers of the Arimaa pieces as if they were 'glowing' one space in every orthogonal direction, independent of whether they can actually move there? This metaphor may be why both [simon] and [janzert] think the game is more intuitive as it is now. Plus, you writing it with grace and humour is a plus. Now, if you could just write it in Haiku, too...
I agree, [Fritzlein], me calling Arimaa broken was a little too far, and I am an Arimaa critic (a reluctant critic). But aren't we all? (Trust nothing, criticize everything.)
I'm still not completely convinced, though; it seems that it could have just as easily been the other way. Plus, the obvious new strategy of taking rabbits as hostages to block/frame the wrong side of traps, etc, if they didn't have backward powers. (Why kill them now, when they're more useful alive...) This is very double-edged, though; if freed, they may be one-step from winning the game.
This is a little off topic, but would it be a bad idea to recommend that your local library pick up the "Beginning Arimaa" book? (After Z-Man publishes the game, of course.) And, if you did, should you recommend that it be put in the chess section? (It would get read there - might even be hot - as opposed to putting it in the Arimaa section gathering dust...) Just saying...
Speedy...
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| « Last Edit: Jul 23rd, 2009, 7:12am by SpeedRazor » |
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jdb
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #8 on: Jul 22nd, 2009, 5:47pm » |
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on Jul 22nd, 2009, 4:14am, RonWeasley wrote:| Rabbits don't move backwards because their back legs are made to hop forward. |
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I laughed for a long time when I read this. Excellent.
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camelback
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #9 on: Jul 22nd, 2009, 8:13pm » |
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on Jul 22nd, 2009, 5:47pm, jdb wrote:
I laughed for a long time when I read this. Excellent.
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Yeah.. me too.  RonWeasley is simply amazing. We should have a humor category in the forum
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rajmahendra
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #10 on: Jul 22nd, 2009, 8:28pm » |
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yes is funny... but i still thinking ... why animals have only head but no legs but still! they are walking!!!!!!!
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RonWeasley
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #11 on: Jul 23rd, 2009, 7:23am » |
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on Jul 22nd, 2009, 8:28pm, rajmahendra wrote:| yes is funny... but i still thinking ... why animals have only head but no legs but still! they are walking!!!!!!! |
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You're suggesting playing a board game with severed animal heads? Yuck! Obviously you intend to reattach the heads after the game. I didn't know there was a spell for that.
No. We just make the bodies invisible, but they're still there. The advantage is that anything coming out of the animals, if you know what I mean, stays invisible too. That way we play a good, clean game. When the game is over, the loser has to clean up the field. Excretia vacuous!
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chessandgo
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #12 on: Jul 23rd, 2009, 9:55am » |
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on Jul 22nd, 2009, 8:13pm, camelback wrote:
Yeah.. me too. RonWeasley is simply amazing. We should have a humor category in the forum |
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Even a "Ron" category
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omar
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Re: On the Official Codification of Arimaa Rules..
« Reply #13 on: Jul 28th, 2009, 8:09am » |
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on Jul 22nd, 2009, 4:14am, RonWeasley wrote:Perhaps this becomes clearer if you play with live animals, freeze charms, and portkey traps like we do at Hogwarts. Rabbits don't move backwards because their back legs are made to hop forward. That is a movement property. In arimaa, movement and proximity are independent attributes.
Rabbits have the same proximity effects as other animals. The heat of an adjacent rabbit, even its fluffy tail when it's in front, is enough to deactivate a freeze charm. That's because freeze charms are actually sensitive to heat from a particular side. The opposite side makes you colder while your own side makes you warmer. Cool, huh? The trap portkeys are also sensitive to sided heat and don't teleport animals (back to Hagrid's) if heat from the same side is next to them. Note that a rabbit does not have to be able to move to the square behind it for its heat to have a proximity effect. On really dry days, you can simply change the heat triggers to be sensitive to shedding instead. That's why we play with mammals.
I'm sure this is what Omar was thinking about when he made the rules for the abstract game of arimaa. |
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Wow Ron, your justification of the rules is a classic. I am still recovering from the laughter I'll have to show this to Aamir and Amina; big Harry Potter fans.
SpeedRazor - I also struggled with not wanting to have an exception rule for the rabbits. But ultimately I it was needed to prevent defensive play from prevailing and also to help keep the state of the game moving forward.
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