Question about wild ICC variants

[hgm]

I am currently fixing the WinBoard shuffle variants. This includes FRC, but also the ICC wild variants "wildcastle", "nocastle", "wild3" and "wild4". In particular, WinBoard seems to lack the capability to generate opening positions for these games.

I plan to remedy this by adding a menu item "New shuffle game ...". Clicking this would set up a shuffled version of the opening position belonging to the variant that is currently active. This way the command can automatically be applied to any variant, such as Capablanca Chess.

Not every game has its own restrictions on which shufflings are acceptable. E.g. for FRC you need unlike Bishops, and King between Rooks. The "new shuffle game" menu will allow you to orthogonally select which restrictions you want.

I don't know, however, what the default settings should be for the ICC shuffle variants. Wild1 seems clear. But I have questions about the other three.

Wild2: Can the Bishops be on the same color here, and the King in a corner?

Wild3: is there no restriction on the number of pieces of one type at all? e.g. can you have King + 7 Rooks?

Wild4: Do both sides have the same set of pieces her, just differently aranged? ICC says Bishops must be "balanced". What does that mean? Can you have 5 Bishops? If you have 5 Bishops, can the all be on. say, black, or must is be 2+3? If I have 3 of my 5 Bishops on black, must the opponent also have 3 Bishops on black?

[TonyJH]

Based on my observations at ICC:

Wild2: Can the Bishops be on the same color here, and the King in a corner?

Yes to both.

Wild3: is there no restriction on the number of pieces of one type at all? e.g. can you have King + 7 Rooks?

There seems to be no such restriction.

Wild4: Do both sides have the same set of pieces her, just differently aranged? ICC says Bishops must be "balanced". What does that mean? Can you have 5 Bishops? If you have 5 Bishops, can the all be on. say, black, or must is be 2+3? If I have 3 of my 5 Bishops on black, must the opponent also have 3 Bishops on black?

Yes, the sides have the same pieces but differently arranged. With positions that have 3 bishops per side, it was always 2+1 for both sides, but one side may have 2 dark and the other side have 2 light, or both sides could be the same. I haven't seen a case with 5 bishops yet.