https://3willows.github.io/js-hong-kong-sternhalma/
The version of Chinese Checkers I play in Hong kong is a variation called "Super Chinese Checkers", where (quote)
"...a piece may jump over a piece any number of empty spaces away, provided it can land the same number of empty spaces beyond it in a straight line.
Put another way: A piece can jump a single other piece at any distance, provided that the jumped piece lies at the exact midpoint of the jump. The basic 'adjacent jump' allowed in the standard game is just the shortest form of a long jump."
As there is no readily available online version of this, I decided to make my own.
Initially I wanted to modify existing open source repos, but found it difficult to map of the hexagonal board onto a 2-D grid (e.g. as was done here).
So I decided to simply by modifying the game to a game on a rectangular grid.
Prompts to get the project started.
- Build a simplified, rectangular sternhalma on s 5 x 20 grid.
- With html and js only
- Good, now add movable pieces. 10 on each end of the grid.
- Add a "jump" logic to this function "showValidMoves(fromCell)... [copy and paste the full function]"
- Now add 2-step jumping. Example. Suppose there is a piece at (0,0), nothing at (0,1), a piece (pivot) at (0,2), nothing at (0,3) and (0,4). Then you should be able to jump from (0,0) to (0,4).
- No. The modification should implement something like super-chinese-checkers, were a piece may jump over a piece any number of empty spaces away, provided it can land the same number of empty spaces beyond it in a straight line.
After that, I tinkered first by hand and then by Github co-pilot. For example,
- it took some wrangling to get the jumping behaviour to work correctly?
- using "textContent" to record the number of jumps required to get somewhere was too aggressive. Clearing it by "setting cell.textContent = """ took out everything within as well (including the piece).
- make responsive
- Add a simple AI: blue makes whatever move reduces the "data-col" the most.
- Testing is an important missing part of the project. The rules are simple, but many refactors add a "jumping over itself" bug, where the piece that is moved is wrongly counted as an available "middle piece" for the purpose of jumping.
- The code base is getting frustrating to read, further development (e.g. option to take back jumps; animate jumps step by step) to be done in a Flask project generated by LLM with this repo.