Need some ideas for how to program pawn piece in a chess game

[iamsmooth]

Hey guys:

I'm working on a chess program for comsci, and surprisingly, the pawn is the hardest piece to program.

If you're not familiar with chess, this is the basic move of the pawn:

If the pawn is in its initial position, it can move 2 spaces forward, however, subsequent moves can only be one space forward. Secondly, it captures oponents if they are exactly one space forward and one space left or right (one diagonal space) ahead of them.

I just need to figure out how to keep track of whether a piece has moved or not. I guess I can put an if statement somewhere that determines if the piece is in the starting location, but if a pawn moves to the other side of the board, it might be considered a starting location of the opponent's side. My head hurts...

Thanks for the help!

[wildgoose]

Pawns only go forward. if they aren't in their home row, they've moved!

if that's a problem, put a move counter on them.
If count=0, they haven't moved. Even a bit will do the job!

[iamsmooth]

Ok, that makes perfect sense... I added a bool to my code, just skim along to see the lines that are commented:

class Pawn : public Piece
{
public:
	static const char SYMBOL = 'P'; 
	Pawn (Colour newColour);
	virtual bool canMove (Position start, Position end, const Board & board) const;
private:	
	bool hasMoved; // HERE IS THE BOOL!
};


Pawn::Pawn (Colour newColour) : Piece (newColour, SYMBOL)
{
	hasMoved = false; // IT IS INITIALIZED AS FALSE HERE
}


bool Pawn::canMove (Position start, Position end, const Board & board) const
{

	if (hasMoved == false) // so initially, it should be false, and it should let u go twice
	{	
		if (fabs(end.getY() - start.getY()) <= 2 && fabs(end.getX() - start.getX()) == 0)
		{
			return true; // this just means it will allow the move
		}
	}
	else // this comes in effect when hasMoved is not true
	{
		if (fabs(end.getY() - start.getY()) <= 2 && fabs(end.getX() - start.getX()) == 0)
		{
			return true;
		}
	}
	hasMoved = true; // this should set it to false for all other moves
			
}

However, I get an error:

"error: assignment of data-member ‘Pawn::hasMoved’ in read-only structure"

So, it won't allow me to assign variables in member functions?

[iamsmooth]

Never mind, the member function is const :(

[wildgoose]

Pieces don't need a color. They do need an identifier to indicate which color they are. A single bit would do. bit=1:White 0:Black

All piece go in all directions except for pawns which are unidirectional. You don't need an X,Y for position, a single byte will contain positions 0...63. Moving forward is +8, etc. If you need X,Y slot index easily turns into an x,y.

The nice thing is the chessboard is 8x8 whereas it is supported within 3 bits for each axis 2^3.

White is 8...15, Black is 48...55 White pawns move (+), black pawns move (-).

You may want to think about checkers first? But good luck!