Talk:3020: Infinite Armada Chess

Did I do well? Added a very very basic explanation. 172.68.147.132 04:25, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, yes but I wonder if just one tiny fix is needed. If you replace the white side with a simplyfied artillery tower, you reinvented space invaders. 172.71.160.70 (talk) 04:57, 5 December 2024 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I was personally hoping for an explanation of the Infinite Armada thing, and I feel like a link to the TV Tropes page doesn't really. Explain that at all. So I would love a bit of an expansion on that part! Just want to be sure I didn't miss some reference or something. 172.68.23.91 05:48, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Likewise. I get the comic, but I assumed the 'armada' part was a reference that I just did not get. But it seems it is just a word choice. 172.71.102.105 09:39, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

The only "Infinite Armada" reference I can think of is Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which kind of makes sense because if you have a Star Forge to make chess pieces with, why wouldn't you make them all queens? 162.158.167.159 18:47, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I think that since the error was "out of bounds", not "out of memory", it's referring to indexing outside of the region of memory that the program allocated to deal with the board. This would happen since instead of addressing rank 1..8, you could address rank 9, 10, 0, or -1. Unless bounds checking is performed when converting the board coordinates into linear array indices, you'd get an out-of-bounds error (or worse, succeed in reading or modifying memory that you weren't intending to). --172.71.30.253 05:45, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

It was "Out of Bounds memory access". That means it was trying to access a memory address that was out of the bounds of the computer, as if it were trying to access the ω-th index of the board array, which would put it out of the memory range of any computer guess who (if you want to | what i have done) 06:15, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

There is no hint that the bounds are those of the computer, the simplest explanation really is that the bounds are those of an array. The error message does come up. In addition, to try to access the memory at the ω-th index, you would need to construct the ω-th index itself first (which would fail or not terminate) Jmm (talk) 07:01, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

The specific message, "RuntimeError: Out of bounds memory access", is a WebGL error issuing from its WASM cross-platform browser implementation. This implies to me that an attempt to render an infinite chessboard failed in a fairly trivial way, because of a poor implementation. It's very unlikely that there had been a problem with the Stockfish playing algorithm yet, which would have failed with a different message if it ran out of memory, such as "Killed", which is all that shells like Bash print when one of their job processes is killed by the kernel's OOM killer, or by anything else for that matter. 172.70.215.21 12:58, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Is this a reference to infinite chess by Naviary? HaruruChanDesu (talk) 11:21, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

"it does not really need to consider the infinitely many pieces" => a chess Engine would need to consider the infinitely many pieces (or have a way to abstract them), even if some pieces are currently stuck because the engine recursively evaluates moves and counter-moves (i.e. evaluates the game up to some depth).

Can someone explain the linked joke with all the extra queens? I don't understand why it's a bad position. 172.69.59.126 16:49, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Knight to d6. 162.158.167.175 17:09, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

...is checkmate by black. White can't capture the knight with either of the two queens that attack it because they're both pinned, by black's bishop and rook. (And we know it's black's turn to move because the colored squares indicate white just moved.) DKMell (talk) 17:54, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Hit me up when this becomes real.

I would like to try this out. Caliban (talk) 12:29, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

It should be easy enough. You will rarely get the queens out in play from deep in the array. So maybe just put two chess boars together and put some placeholder in for queens in the extra fields. If ever a queen in the bottom row is moved, place extra queens that can now be moved into the 2-3 squares that would be outside the board...--Kynde (talk) 12:39, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

It might be something one could set up in Infinite Chess, although having limits on the chessboard may be difficult. 172.68.150.67 14:01, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Here's a finite approximation in ChessCraft: https://www.chesscraft.ca/design?id=5KM4 Promethean (talk) 15:37, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

While I understand how to play chess, I don't get the bit about "having a bunch of queens doesn't go very well". At first glance, the linked chess layout looks pretty solid. Can someone please enlighten me? Also, what does the TV Tropes link about Title Drop have to do with Infinite Armada, aside from that being the title of the comic? 172.70.230.77 13:10, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

... Nd6. 172.70.91.246 13:31, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Moving the knight there puts the king in check, and moving either queen to take it exposes the king to the bishop or rook, so checkmate. 162.158.63.38 15:05, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

You are assuming that the opponent makes no moves while you spend at least three moves advancing your knight. Looks like either side can draw by always moving the king backwards whenever a queen has moved and made a hole he can move to and otherwise trying to make a new, deeper hole. Eventually he gets so far back that any attack turns into an infinite sequence of queens taking each other, with the attacker only having file attacks while the defender can retake from a rank, file, or diagonal. Any time the attacker breaks off the infinite sequence of queens taking each other to set up something else, the defender takes advantage of the break to move the king deeper and put more queens in front of him or to create more empty spaces to sidestep into when attacked. To me, this looks like a certain draw. 172.69.33.252 16:21, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

You might be able to get the developer of fairy stockfish ( https://fairy-stockfish.github.io/ ) to add this if you ask nicely. I have seen them add several reader requests. 172.70.211.143 15:46, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Could this be a reference to the meme about "eating an infinite armada of pizza"? The wording seems too similar to be a coincidence. 172.70.114.46 14:46, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Would this guarantee a draw between two competent players who'd played the variant before, or would there be more nuance to it than there appears to be?

Can someone explain the linked joke with all the extra queens? I don't understand why it's a bad position. 172.69.59.125 16:48, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

The explanation of the linked joke is that the king appears safe at first glance, but in reality there is a simple move that wins the game for black. Moving the black knight to the top left corner of the queen square checks the king. The king cannot move to escape. Two queens are in position to take the knight and save the white king, but both of those moves expose the king to attack from other black pieces (the rook or the bishop).

Wow. Not only did White give Black a mate in one, they also blundered a mate in one. 162.158.167.176 20:21, 5 December 2024 (UTC)