Chess Variant Pages Homepage

Discover and Play Numerous Games Similar to Chess

Chess has its origins in the Arabian game of Shatranj, which goes back to the Indian game of Chaturanga.

It is also related to Xiangqi in China, to Janggi in Korea, and to Shogi in Japan.

Many other games have been inspired by or based on Chess and its relatives. All of these games are similar to Chess yet also different from it in various ways.

Thanks to computers and the internet, it is now possible to play several of these Chess variants without physical boards and pieces. This website – The Chess Variant Pages – is here for cataloging, discussing, and playing the many games that are based on, related to, or similar enough to Chess.

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Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Missing description

Fergus Duniho wrote on 2021-05-25 UTC

I wonder if there is an option in Game Courier somewhere to have pieces rotate 180 degrees when the board is flipped?

There is no option for rotating piece images.

This is not the $flip variable in the set file, as that swaps the values for lowercase and uppercase keys when the board is flipped

That is not quite what it does. What is actually does is use the piece images in the $flipped array instead of those in the $pieces array. In case any piece labels have not been assigned to piece images in the $flipped array, it completes the $flipped array with this code:

if ($flip == true) {
    foreach ($pieces as $key => $val) {
        if (empty($flipped[$key]))
            $flipped[$key] = $pieces[flipcase($key)];
    }
}

This is useful for Shogi variants, in which the pieces on one side are usually 180° rotated images of the pieces on the other side. Note that some Shogi sets assign specific images to k and K for $flipped, because each side uses a different Kanji character for the piece, and they use the default values for the rest. Here's an example of such code:

$flipped = array (
    "K" => "WKing.gif", "k" => "flip/BKing.gif"
);

JT K wrote on 2021-05-25 UTC

I don't know enough about Game Courier to help you, but I experienced the same concern when putting one of my variant ideas onto tabletopia.com (8-Piece Chess) I eventually just decided to make piece designs that were symmetrical, because that site treats it all like a "camera" view ;)

Adam DeWitt wrote on 2021-05-19 UTC

I wonder if there is an option in Game Courier somewhere to have pieces rotate 180 degrees when the board is flipped? This is not the $flip variable in the set file, as that swaps the values for lowercase and uppercase keys when the board is flipped Such an option could be quite useful for pieces that use mnemonic symbols to show piece moves, since piece moves are flipped when the board. Maybe the board does this automatically and I am just missing it (I know this is the case when I use my phone). However, as far as I know, there is no option in Game Courier that flips that makes pieces images rotate as the board rotates. If there is, it isn't documented in the developer's guide. Either way, I think the idea is at least worth considering.

H. G. Muller wrote on 2021-05-19 UTC

I noticed that there also are links to various methods of computer play from the Play menu in the main menu bar. Shouldn't we also link to the Jocly overview page and the index page for the interactive diagrams there?

Greg Strong wrote on 2021-05-18 UTC

Your profile says your email is verified.

I sent him an email to confirm identity and then marked it as verified manually.

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