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Does Fogs of Otmoor use algebraic notation?
Fogs of Otmoor does not support the standard chess algebraic notation. In fact, at best, Fogs of Otmoor could only support algebraic notation for the Top board. The Lower board would necessarily be a different matter. Standard algebraic notation was not developed with flexibility Fogs of Otmoor requires.
Instead Fogs of Otmoor uses a simple coordinate system where the X axis gives the file, and the Y axis gives the rank. However, for mainly technical reasons, we chose to implement the Lower board as a set of 8x8 areas (or boards, if you like) rather then as one 64x64 board. Practically speaking, this means that when you are playing a Lower board piece, the Move control shows your move using a two-part notation like:
| your X |
your Y |
| 0-7 |
0-7 |
| representing piece's X |
representing piece's Y |
| 0-7 |
0-7 |
For example, imagine you are the player playing the Queen Rook Pawn Red (i.e. Queen Rook Red is the piece representing you on the Top board). You want to move your own Queen Rook Pawn Red (on the Lower board) one space forward as your opening move. The move's starting position looks like:
| Your view (in the Lower board) |
0 |
1 |
| Within (i.e. square of the Top board) |
0 |
1 |
And the target square is given as:
Sounds complex and unfriendly, right? (Just like standard chess algebraic notation is!) Luckily, you don't really need to know anything about how the individual squares are labeled in order to move. Moving is a point and click operation, as you will see. The Move control shows you the coordinates mainly as a feedback mechanism, not unlike the way that the square you click on lights up to show you which square you selected. Each of your moves is recorded in the database as a set of coordinates, so at a future point you can reconstruct each move from any game—but again, the end result is as much visual as it is algebraic.
How do I talk about a particular piece?
As with the square coordinate system discussed above, the abbreviations are not often used. More typically visual cues in combination with the long form name is what you will see.
Why Red and Black? Why not Black and White?
While the most often heard names for the sides in chess are Black and White, other names are used. Red and Black are the most common alternatives to White and Black. Moreover, many people's first chess games are played on the common red and black boards.
True the images of our pieces are black and white, but for historic and incidental reasons the names of the teams in Fogs of Otmoor are Red and Black. Other than arguing that red and black are not that atypical, we do not have any strong opinions on this subject—except to point out that we are not going to do a search and replace on the source code of the game and Web site just to change "red" to "white". Sorry about that.
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