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Dōbutsu Shōgi

This is an engine for the Japanese chess variant Dōbutsu Shōgi (動物将棋). It uses a comprehensive endgame table base to achieve perfect play from any position.

Currently looking for people to localise this project into other languages! If interested, please have a look at the files po/dobutsu.pot and man/man6/dobutsu.6. These are the files in need of translation. Do not hesitate to open an issue if you have any questions.

Dependencies

The following dependencies are required to compile and run this package:

  • XZ Utils including the liblzma
  • libedit or GNU readline/GNU history
  • libintl and GNU gettext
  • pkg-config

Instead of using pkg-config, you can also edit the Makefile to add in the right library paths.

Installation

On a UNIX-like operating system, you should be able to compile the software by typing

make all

into your terminal. You might need to adjust the CC variable in case your system doesn't have a c99 binary. On most Linux systems, make CC="gcc -std=c99" should work. Then type

make dobutsu.tb.xz

to generate the compressed endgame tablebase. This may take a while but you only need to do it once. Finally, type

make PREFIX=... install

to install the software into the provided PREFIX, defaulting to /usr/local if not provided.

Usage

Once installed, you can start the program by typing dobutsu into your terminal. You can play moves by typing them. The following commands are supported, most of which are similar to those in GNU Chess:

help        print a list of commands
hint        print what the engine would play
exit        leave the program
version     print program version
new         start a new game
undo        undo previous move
remove      undo last two moves
setup       setup board with position string
show board  print the current board
show setup  print board as a position string
show moves  print possible moves
show eval   print position evaluation
show lines  print possible moves and their evaluations
strength    show/set engine strength
both        make engine play both players
go          make the engine play the colour that is on the move
force       set the engine to play neither colour
verbose     print the board after every move
quiet       do not print the board after every move

For more details, see dobutsu(6).

Rules

Dōbutsu shōgi is played on a board with four ranks 1–4 and three files A–C. The farthest rank for each player is called the promotion zone. The player whose pieces start out on ranks 1 and 2 is called Sente and makes the first move. The other player is called Gote.

  ABC
 +---+
1|gle|
2| c |
3| C |
4|ELG| *
 +---+

Each player starts out with four pieces, one lion, one elephant, one giraffe, and one chick. The goal of the game is to either capture the opponents lion or to advance one's own lion into the promotion zone without moving into check. In the software, pieces owned by Sente are represented by uppercase L, E, G, C, and R; pieces owned by Gote are represented by lowercase l, e, g, c, and r. An asterisk * denotes whose move it is.

The pieces move like this:

  • The lion can move one square into every direction (like the king in international chess)
  • the elephant can move one square diagonally
  • the giraffe can move one square horizontally or vertically
  • the chick can move one square forwards (towards the promotion zone)
  • a rooster can move like a giraffe or one square diagonally forward

All pieces capture the same way they move. A chick is promoted to a rooster once it enters the promotion zone. Instead of moving a piece, a captured piece can be dropped into any vacant square. A captured rooster loses its promotion when dropped.

License

Copyright © 2016–2017, 2021–2022 Robert Clausecker. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.