Enter Your Reply The Comment You're Replying To H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Oct 2, 2009 07:52 AM UTC:You correctly noticed that the server is not finished. The help files are a minor problem; it is just a matter of putting a text file with the corresponding name in a certain directory. But so far I only had time for making descriptions of the more common variants that were not so common that I thought a description was not needed. The examin support is something I would have to look in to. I don't even know what examining a game is, on an ICS. There might be a problem with restoring the variant; I also noticed that when you have an adjourned game that is automatically resumed when you match the same opponent, it is not announced as the correct variant, so WinBoard often thinks the moves are illegal. I will definitely have to fix that. I am not very happy with the way the game rules are implemented in this server. For every piece type there is separate code. And not only one routine, but two: one to determine if a given move is (pseudo-)legal, and another one to generate all moves for that piece. This makes it hard to add new pieces; I'd rather seen that the whole process is table-driven, the table with piece definitions being read from an external file. The flexibility suggested by having a dedicated routine for every piece is also largely illusory. If you would want to use it to implement pieces with side effects, such as Mats' Catapult pieces, it turns out checkmate testing does not work anymore: it hinges on testing if any of the moves from an opponent piece to the King is pseudo-legal, and would not notice if the King is captured by a side effect. This part of the code should be completely redesigned. Another inconveniece is that there is no variant-dependent mapping of pieces to letters. This forces me to have duplicates of the code to handle certain piece types just to make sure that they can be used in one variant onder one name, and in another under another name. I think that an ICS of this type caters to a different kind of audience than you describe. There are plenty of people that ar not interested in designing variants, but just want to play one particular variant. And as a consequence know it well enough that they want to play it as a blitz or even bullet game, rather than as corresponcence chess. You won't find those people here on CVP, of course, but they do exist. Especially for 10x8 Chess. To experiment with new rules, it is questionable if a rule-enforcing server is needed or even desirable. I think it should be easy enough to add one 'free' variant where the ICS acts only as a passive chess board, not unlike WinBoard edit-position mode, where each player can grab any piece and move it wherever he wants. Even if it is an opponent piece, or when it is not his turn. They should be able to set up an arbitrary opening position on boards of various sizes, and then simply move the pieces around. Edit Form You may not post a new comment, because ItemID Variant ICS does not match any item.