I have (somewhere) a book on Kriegspiel. Its major failing is that it consistently misspells rook as “rock”. I think Kriegspiel is ideally suited for correspondence play, in three player sections where each player acts as referee for the other two.
Alex Relyea
It seems to me that it would be good as a game played online between two players, with the computer acting as referee. Or maybe it could be played by a human vs. a computer, with the “strategy” part of the program only knowing what it was allowed to know.
Around 1980 I actually wrote a program, in BASIC on the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I Level I home computer with 4K of memory, to act as Kriegspiel referee. Each player, in turn, would approach the computer, enter his password (actually passnumber, since Level I couldn’t do much with text), see just the position of his own pieces, and enter his move. In the event of an illegal move attempt, the illegality was prevented and another move requested. After a legal move, the screen would blank out and the other player’s password would be requested.
Checks and captures were reported to both players.
A few years later, I upgraded the program and added some features for the newer TRS-80 Model III Level II with 16K of memory (but still no diskette drive, let alone hard drive).
Bill Smythe
I’m surprised you didn’t sell this idea to Atari. 