Cultural Games

I’d like to make some different games from different ages/civilizations

I’m just trying to build a list of different ones that would be fun to do.
I don’t care about complexity, I even put Shogi on the list!
I’m not a programming noob, I have a lot of prior experience with as3
-Mancala
-Senet
-Shogi

Help me expand my list?

Xianqi/Changgi (Chinese/Korean Chess — slight differences between the two)
Shatranj (Arabian chess predecessor; however, it is probably too similar to traditional European chess to be very interesting to most, so I’d go with Tamerlane Chess, the larger version)
Chaturanga (Indian chess predecessor; again, for maximum variety, I’d go with the four-player version)
see Chess Variants (though there’s a lot of non-traditional stuff on there)
Tablut (Skandinavian strategic board game — doesn’t appear to be on Chess Variants pages)

You know that there are several different versions of Shogi? Tori-shogi (IIRC, the smallest of the variants) to Dai-shogi (the largest (Chess Variants page calls it Taikyoku Shogi) — any game that has room for a drunken elephant has got to be good, though, right?). :)

Originally posted by dragon_of_celts:

Xianqi/Changgi (Chinese/Korean Chess — slight differences between the two)
Shatranj (Arabian chess predecessor; however, it is probably too similar to traditional European chess to be very interesting to most, so I’d go with Tamerlane Chess, the larger version)
Chaturanga (Indian chess predecessor; again, for maximum variety, I’d go with the four-player version)
see Chess Variants (though there’s a lot of non-traditional stuff on there)
Tablut (Skandinavian strategic board game — doesn’t appear to be on Chess Variants pages)

You know that there are several different versions of Shogi? Tori-shogi (IIRC, the smallest of the variants) to Dai-shogi (the largest (Chess Variants page calls it Taikyoku Shogi) — any game that has room for a drunken elephant has got to be good, though, right?). :)

Sweet! You either have a passion for chess varients, or you found a sweet cache of them friend. I didn’t know their was variants of Shogi actually.
It seems that will make it more interesting/challenging to make! And drunken elephants sounds like a sweet addition!

Rithmomachy is one of the most known games that was the predecessor of chess. (Sometimes called rithmomachia)

Shogi as it is normally played is actually “middle shogi”. I’m not sure much of anyone actually plays the others any more. I first played shogi around 15(?) years ago with a friend of mine (IIRC, we were at a Magic the Gathering competition). I don’t recall if we tried Xiangqi before or after (I found a Battle Chinese Chess programme which was nice), but personally I prefer Shogi (I’m not very good at either, though).

I recommend Steve Evan’s Shogi variants programme, which you can download here. I downloaded that many, many years ago; it is a fun and informative, easy-to-use programme. Several years later (but still many years ago), I got Zillions of Games (which you can find on the Chess Variants page I provided a link to above). Haven’t really toyed around with that too much (you can actually write scripts for your own games or variants for that programme).

Making a decent computer opponent for Shogi is, from what I understand, exceptionally difficult; I imagine Dai-shogi must be an absolute nightmare. Good luck to you.

Addition (@jasonjie88): I’d never heard of Rithmomachy before. I looked it up on Google. Seemed interesting at first, then more painful than fun. I guess you have to really like math…

From France – Les Dames (aka French checkers)
From Japan – Go (the AI may be devilishly difficult to program)
From India – Pachisi (Parcheesi is the American adaptation of this game)

Go because it is awesome.

Go because it’s basically impossible to program a Go AI that can challenge high level players at this point, any additional effort in that direction is appreciated.

Originally posted by dragon_of_celts:

Addition (@jasonjie88): I’d never heard of Rithmomachy before. I looked it up on Google. Seemed interesting at first, then more painful than fun. I guess you have to really like math…

That’s me all over. ;D