AverageHuman’s Simplified 5D Algebraic notation

After looking at the Reversible Algebraic Notation that was posted on discord, I decided to try my hand at making a less verbose notation intended for use by human players. It’s designed to be as easy to read and similar to standard chess notation as possible, and as far as I’m aware, it still encodes all of the information required to replicate a game. However, I may have missed something.

The move ordering system is similar to RAN, but it only has a move number followed by a period, then both players moves separated by a comma, with individual parts of each player’s move separated by spaces (or semicolons if you prefer to avoid spaces as a required format)

Example:

1. <move>, <move>

For the contents of each individual move, we only actually need to specify a few things: the starting timeline and square of the piece moved, and the ending timeline, turn, and square. I’ve included the square of origin of the piece to remove the requirement for disambiguation rules found in normal algebraic notation. We don’t need to specify the turn of the departing piece because there is only one board per timeline that can be moved on. I’ve also decided to use relative turn notation instead of absolute. So if a white piece moves 2 white boards back, that’s T-2. This can be visualized easier with the history view, where the opponent’s boards in between are invisible.

For further simplicity, when the ending timeline is omitted, the piece is assumed to stay within its own timeline, and when the ending turn is omitted, a piece is assumed not to be creating a new branch by time travelling, aka it is moving to another space on it’s own board, OR to the active board on a different timeline. When the starting timeline is omitted, it is assumed to be L0. Since castling can’t involve moving between timelines or history, we don’t have to worry about it.

So, for the formatting, it goes: <starting_timeline><starting_square>[destination_timeline][destination_move]<destination_square>
With no spaces.

For familiarity to regular chess, we can also add a symbol denoting the piece that was moved after the starting square and timeline, an x after the starting square to denote capture, + after any individual move to denote check, and # after a player’s turn to denote checkmate.

As an example, here is a game I played with ComputerSmoke, transcribed in my notation.

1. e2e3, g7g6
2. d1Qd3, g8Nf6
3. g1Nh3, f8Bg7
4. b1Nc3, 0-0
5. h3Ng5, d7d6
6. c3Ne4, c8Bf5
7. g5NxT-1g2, g7BxL+1g7
8. L+1c3Ne4, L+1c8Bf5
9. e4Ng5 L+1e4Nxf6, f6Nh5 L+1g7Bxf6
10. g5Nxh7 L+1g5Nxh7, h5NxL+1h7
11. h7NL+1h5, d8Qd7 L+1d8Qd7
12. L+1h5NxL0f5, d7Qxf5 L+1b8Nc6
13. f3Qxf5 L+1e3e4, L+1f6BxL0f5
14. f1Bc4 L+1e4xf5, L+1Nc6xL0c4
15. d2d3 L+1f5xg6, c4Nb6 L+1f7xg6
16. E3e4 L+1f3Qe4, f5Be6  L+1d7Qf5
17. c1Bh6 L+1e4Qc4+, b6Nd5 L+1d6d5
18. h6BxL+1g6, b8Nd7 L+1f5Qxg6
19. h1Rf1 L+1c4Qb3, d5Ne3+ L+1g6Qe6#