ChessCode
Posted on 15 March, 2008 by maximinus
You've probably heard of LOLCODE, an esoteric programming language, and quite possibly also of LOLCode.NET, a .NET ("a LOLCode compiler for the .NET platform"). Tonight, I witnessed (and partook in) the design of a new esolang - ChessCode.
It was spawned by and IRC discussion on A(a)rgh! - which silentcoder stated is "like assembler for chess players." This then moved into a discussion about a chess-based esolang - and hence ChessCode was born. I'm not actually sure that "discussion" is the best word for it - it was mostly a monologue from silentcoder, with interjections from EvilTerran - and I then found myself inexplicably being drawn into the discussion. Around half an hour later, we were done, and silentcoder wrote up the gory details (linked above).
Here's a (very) brief rundown of ChessCode: a program consists of a series of "games" - with each game consisting of a full set of pieces being placed on a board (in programmer-defined locations), and the pieces making only legal chess moves. Pawns hold value; other pieces represent operations. When a pawn is taken by a piece other than a pawn, that piece's operation is performed on the value of the pawn (white=1, black=0) and the square on which it resides (also w=1, b=0). The result is added to the output buffer, which results in a character being written every time a byte is completed. See silentcoder's post for more details.
If you have any questions or comments on ChessCode, or would like to try writing a ChessCode interpreter or compiler, please feel free to contact silentcoder, or leave a comment below.
Update:
After I left for sleep, some further discussion was had, and the specs now provide for conditionals and looping, and there is now a two-byte stack rather than having the data go straight to an output buffer. See link above for further details and to keep up to date - silentcoder would really like to see this become properly Turing-complete, so keep an eye on it!
It was spawned by and IRC discussion on A(a)rgh! - which silentcoder stated is "like assembler for chess players." This then moved into a discussion about a chess-based esolang - and hence ChessCode was born. I'm not actually sure that "discussion" is the best word for it - it was mostly a monologue from silentcoder, with interjections from EvilTerran - and I then found myself inexplicably being drawn into the discussion. Around half an hour later, we were done, and silentcoder wrote up the gory details (linked above).
Here's a (very) brief rundown of ChessCode: a program consists of a series of "games" - with each game consisting of a full set of pieces being placed on a board (in programmer-defined locations), and the pieces making only legal chess moves. Pawns hold value; other pieces represent operations. When a pawn is taken by a piece other than a pawn, that piece's operation is performed on the value of the pawn (white=1, black=0) and the square on which it resides (also w=1, b=0). The result is added to the output buffer, which results in a character being written every time a byte is completed. See silentcoder's post for more details.
If you have any questions or comments on ChessCode, or would like to try writing a ChessCode interpreter or compiler, please feel free to contact silentcoder, or leave a comment below.
Update:
After I left for sleep, some further discussion was had, and the specs now provide for conditionals and looping, and there is now a two-byte stack rather than having the data go straight to an output buffer. See link above for further details and to keep up to date - silentcoder would really like to see this become properly Turing-complete, so keep an eye on it!
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