Comments by CBagleyJones

hey joe
thanks for adding the game to the list of game courier games.
there seems to be some problem though, with the logging of games.
on the preset page, if you click on ..

'You may also review past games of 4-Handed Chaturanga.'

it does not bring up the game we finished last week, or if you try to see
'active games' it does not bring up our current game we are playing.

i do not know if the problem is caused by the error of spelling the name
'chaturanga', like, if you look at our current game it is under the title
of '4-Handed Chatarunga'. As you can see, the word 'chaturanga' is
spelt wrong.

(check your email, i asked you something about your warlord game).

welcome back, nice to hear your ok :)

So Charles, you are going with the 10x10 board as shown on the page, what about the the 10x8 you showed in the comments? Two variants? If so you should add to the page.
i like the look of the 10x10 myself.
Yeah i misunderstood those pieces you made, thinking them more powerful than you made. I really love the way they are, fantastic.

lol.
yeah that's ok, you wanna restart both games? .. i'll send you an email.

hey everyone. 
if your interested to see this game in action joe and i are playing a couple of games on game courier at the moment.
thanks.

ok i've done a couple of screens showing promoted and promoting pieces. It is at the very bottom of the page.
 
I have noticed also the ingame help for 'Rushing Bird' does not give info on what it promotes to, i'll update this game with that info and it should go up on zillions site next weekend.

Yeah i like the pieces too. I'll be releasing something to showcase over 200 fairy pieces (not a game), i'll add these 2 pieces.
I don't mind the 10x10 board, and as far as it making most pieces too slow, i think that really is a matter for personal taste. I do think though the piece density might be a bit heavy.

hi, i just need all the experts to help me with some piece info :)
can anyone tell me if they know a game where these types of pieces are
used.
1. Camel/wazir (3-1 leaper and moves one square orthogonally).
2. moves 1 to 3 squares orthogonally, cannot leap (like limited rook).
i guess i'm trying to find the earliest possible game these pieces have
appeared, but any game where they play is ok.
thanks

ah ha, thanks for info on 'Wrestler' in Taikyoku Shogi!!
i had seen this piece in this game but i just assumed it moved like it does
in Tai Shogi and Maka Dai Dai Shogi. That's excellent, thanks again.

Mats, i do not think this game should suffer from any type of exhaustion.
If two people sit down to play the game over the board, they do not have to play the game to the finish, it can played over a few sittings. I do think playing by email though would be best.

As far as mental exhaustion goes, due to the large amounts of different moves available that will arise during the game, this is not fide chess, it is a game on a very large board. One would have to use their intuition and feel for the game, you would have to disregard many moves that on appearance there would seem nothing wrong the move. There would be too many moves to analize, so you would have to do your best.
Would this add a greater element of luck in the game, i would say definitely yes, would this make the game unplayable, i would say definitely not.
I'm not sure what game people play on game courier that would be the closest to Leaping Bat, would it be Cataclysm?

Cataclysm plays on a 16x12 board with 16 pawns like Leaping Bat, but Cata has 24 pieces to LB's 32, so that is a fair difference, and the piece strength also in Cata is greater than LB, so this is probably not a great example, but still it must give us some indication i think.
Amazingly i have noticed that a couple of Cata games have been completed in under 80 moves, another seems to have gone to around 350, if memory serves me correct. Obviously, it appears that Cata is indeed playable.
In the interest of the study of big board games, if anyone knows another large board variant, at least 16x12 board, played on game courier, could you please post to say.

Leaping Bat seems to play with a fairly standard set of fairy pieces. Is there anything in particular about this game that makes you estimate the amount of moves it could take to play as you have?

Or are you saying, that any game played on a 16x12 board, with a similar set-up to Leaping Bat, (full row of pawns and two full rows of pieces playing at either ends of the board with at least the same amount of one square movers and similar piece strength/variety) would take this long?

Heya
Under the heading 'pieces' u describe the moves of the 'dragon', but u dont describe fully, the rest of the description u have in 'notes'. And it is an important part of the movement of the dragon. I really think u should put the full description of the 'dragon' where u describe it's movement.

Also, u say 'The Dragon on its own cannot kill another Dragon'

If the rule is simply 'a dragon cannot take another dragon', i think u should say like that, saying 'on it's own' seems to imply it might be able to take another dragon 'with help'.

Also i wonder why u say 'Hence the Dragon is more of a Defensive unit but can be used offensively but in a limited capacity.'
The dragon can take other pieces, right, except another dragon, and can't give check, but it does have range, it can back up pieces and can take other pieces, from range, yes? 

I havn't played much chinese chess really so i don't fully know much about defending in this game, i just wonder how a 4 step mover can be a defender, seems if it moves it does move a fair distance away from defence, maybe? I would be interested in hearing your thoughts, game looks nice, would be interesting to see how it plays, would be nice to see a small diagram of the whole board with pieces on it too.
Thanks :)

edit - oh i'm guessing it plays defence by blocking?

Great game Mats, congrats. 
The pyrrhus, what a piece, i found it really painful at first, lol, i thought it's power of paralyzing pieces was too much, the knight being the only piece that could attack the pyrrhus! I wondered if the pyrrhus's range should be 'cut down', like say paralyzing 4 or 5 squares range on the queen lines. However, once i got used to the piece, it seems to me the game is very smooth and heaps of fun and very nice. I think the way the pyrrhus is is the best.

The knight in this game is actually a pretty powerful piece, much more powerful than the bishops and probably more powerful than the rooks too, because it can attack the pyrrhus. If both pyrrhus's are paralyzed, you wouldn't want to have two bishops against two knights, lol, that's for sure.
I'm rating excellent.

Oh i notice you have a 10x10 game with two pyrrhus's a side, how does that play compared to the 8x8 do you think, i'll have to check it out.

sorry for writing 'u' meaning 'you', but u just might have to get used to it when i post on the forums.

let's just remember i said u can call your pieces whatever u want, i couldn't care at all really.

You say about 'all the king's men' site .. 'seems to be considered the authoritative page on problematist usage'

This is a problematist page? Right at the top of the page is says ...
'A Guide to Variant Chess: All the King's Men'

It starts off with this ..
'This part of the Guide to Variant Chess is devoted to chess pieces.'

anyway, even if it is problematist page, i didn't know the chess variant community had a 'war' going on with them, but that page to me does not seem to be a 'problemastist' page, please correct me if i'm wrong.

oops sorry, i meant shatranj, i think u knew :)

Claudio, i'm from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. We recently got flooded bad here but the house i live in was fine, all good.
Now, what alfaeirie graphic's don't we have for what, hehe?
Sorry :)

oh, piece naming, it's a pain, i like to use the 'orginal' name mostly for pieces but some pieces get so well known by certain names in your 'community' that it is hard to resist, some names u don't like, etc etc.
i got no time at the moment, got to go out but i'll revisit the sticky subject of piece naming, bye for now, and, 'where's my beer' :)

ok, i worked out what the problem was with 'ballista_north' and 'ballista _south' files.

there is a 'space' after the last letter, before the '.bmp'

i.e. 

'wballista_north .bmp' etc etc.

Hey this game looks great, love the big board and not too many pieces added, really like the 'duke' too. I will have to check out the game courier logs, i like this type of game because one can learn more about gameplay with fairly short range type pieces on a very large board. Great stuff.

Heya Fergus, after our talk last week about pawns i thought i'd check out your game here. And i must say, it's been a lot of fun!!
Now, if u don't know, i am a big fan of the more 'chaturanga, shatranj' etc etc styled pieces, and have only played games with these 
kind of pieces for years now. So, this game, looked very daunting to me, to say the least, as i pondered my first move, hehe.

After the first couple of games, i was all over the place, the game seemed hard the manage, very dynamic and nearly chaotic. But 
then, after a few more games, i started to get a feel for it, and i had some wonderful games. I'm rating 'excellent'.

Nearly right from the start, the game seems dynamic to me, and it stays that way throughtout the game, but there seems to be a 
steadiness of play, the 'chaotic' i felt at first, was 'controlled', still there, but it's balanced and 'held' in the game. 
The Cavlier's i think put a uniqueness to the game. They do act as 'pawn's' but they are more flexible than a pawn, and 
when they get to the 8th rank they are in striking distance of promoting.

Nice piece placement for the opening, and great seeing the 'nightrider' playing too. Sometimes, in a somewhat wild position, it 
was interesting playing a cavlier non-threateningly up the board and feeling it was safe and the best move.
I really feel the cavlier makes this game unique and exciting. Great work.

ah that's ok Joe, all is fine now i hope, i kind of didn't even realise things got out of hand a bit here. Let's all forgive and be friends, i know the nameing of pieces can sometimes cause 'friction' among people, but let's try to remember, it's not really that much of a big deal hehe.

I don't want to get off the topic here, but, i am going to update this game (hehe) to fix the 'early check' problem arising from the 'trippers' on h1 and h10. At first i was going to simply remove them and not even replace them with anything but i now i'm thinking i could replace them with the 'threeleaper'. I know Jeremy Good has played a few games of 'Sky' on game courier here and wanted to know his opinion of this. Anyone who has thoughts on this i would be interested to hear too. Thanks all.

Thank you very much for the link there Mr. Knappen (i can't read your first name, webpage doesn't show 2nd letter, is it 'Jorg').
That page looks fantastic, lots of info, but it's in german right, lol, dang i can't read it lol.
I can make out some stuff though, and yes the 5-1 leaper there is called 'Ibis', and, come to think of it, i don't know if i have ever seen the 5-1 even mentioned. Also that page show's the 'flamingo', and besides this site, that is another leaper that is not mentioned on other pages too, i don't think George Jelliss has it on his page.
Also, that page gives two names for the 4-2 leaper, 'Lancer' and 'Hase'. Mr. Jelliss also calls 4-2 leaper 'Lancer', so, this page is not connected with him, right?

Oh, Charles, who is 'Torsten Linss', u give a link to some problems he composed about the 'flamingo'.

i think what Carlos meant to say was ...
'Fergus: What do you think about (this chess variant site) running a
tourney like this?'

I find it interesting about talking about pawns, and i would like the throw
some ideas around. Pawns no doubt are the soul of chess, they keep the game
structured. If the game of chess was just played with pieces alone, the
game would quickly become chaotic. They put a boundary between both armies,
and this is very desireable.

However, within the realm of chess variants, because of the nature and
concept of the games created, sometimes pawns would destroy the chess
variant.

Take for instance, 'The Travelers' by Roberto Lavieri. This is a
brilliant game, but there are no pawns, and there is no place for pawns in
this game, it would destroy the 'nature and concept' of this game
entirely. Also my game 'Sky', pawns would destroy the freedom of movement
of the 
unusually long jumping leapers, and pawns also here would destroy the flow
of the game. These games i think one can easily see how pawns are not
desired.

Lets have a look at Joe Joyce's game (hey Joe) in relation to pawns. Well,
first off, it is played on a very big playing field (16x12). How do pawns
go holding structure on a huge board like this? It must be harder to do
than on a 8x8. Now what is the 'nature and concept' of this game. Joe can
best answer this i'm sure. Just off the top of my head, it is centered on
piece play, and because the board is very big, we wont find the 'chaotic'
nature that would arise on an 8x8 board if this was played just with
pieces. Also, there is a rule in this game that greatly hammpers the
chaotic nature of a game that plays just with pieces ....

'No piece may ever move unless it is activated by a chieftain which has to
be within 3 squares of it at the start of its move'.

Probably also, on this size board, Joe has not put too many pieces in the
game, and lastly, the pieces are short range, and not powerful pieces.

I think a lot of chess variants are 'thinking out of the square' and the
rules that hold to chess or games very 'chess like' cannot be applied to
all chess variants.
 
Anyway, discuss, lol :)

By the way, hi to everyone here at this great site, i've been away for
awhile, busy and stuff. As regards the tournament u are all talking about,
i don't think i can play, but maybe in the future i can get it together
and find time to play in one.

heya, no, i looked at the piece movements and 'steps' cant be just for a single square move, for instance ...

Free Demon:
steps 5 forward orthogonal or backward orthogonal, slides left orthogonal or right orthogonal or diagonal.

Yes this is brilliant game, but u know u can play this game under a few variant rules, besides actually capturing the king, u can also play this game using the standard checkmate style.

Steve Nichols has a site where u can download a nice program that plays these variants, http://www.chaturanga.com/

Playing the 'double mate' variant, red and yellow play of course against black and green. Now how this works is, if for instance, red army mates black, then, black now cannot move as the different armies make their moves around the board (order is red, black, yellow, green).

So red would move, then yellow, then green, and so forth. Because each army has only 3 major pieces, this can often tie up the pieces and make them unable to move, if they want to 'hold' the mate on the board. Yellow would be able to attack the non-moving mated black army, and capture pieces, but this of course could lead the release of mate on black, but if enough pieces are taken then this of course can be ok. Green is not going to stand around and do nothing, and would try to attack red to try to release the mate on the black army, or even try to mate yellow!! If green can release black from mate, then black would again be able to start to make moves!

Exciting gameplay indeed. I did play a game with a friend, and early in the game, his red army did mate my black side, but, on his very next move as red, his ONLY legal move was to move his ship, which released my black army from mate, and, by the way, haha, i went on to win the game.

I play this game with a few friends and all agree this 'double mate' variant is the best way to play.

ok, giving this game an excellent rating because of your effort to make this a zrf in the style of playing it with no dice, and, because this is my fav game too hehe, well done :)

hello :))
after white plays h1-e4 black has five diff moves to get out of mate and i believe this is more than enough. After black moves a tripper in front of the king, if white decides the play the same piece again and check black king then black can move their king forward. Now i know in normal chess, moving the king to the 2nd rank on your second move is not good, lol, in this game, it is fine, the king can nicely move up the board because of the nature of the pieces in the game, and the king is a 'strong fighting piece' in this kind of game. Also, it is interesting i thought that there is a mate on the 2nd move hehe.

i tested the game a lot, and didnt find white had any winning advantage.
the idea of this game is to give pieces which are generally seen only in fairy chess problems a field of play. Having pawns in the game makes these pieces very awkward to play, so with no pawns these pieces can freely play without problems associated with pawns, and play they do, surprising well and flowing very happily. the very set up of the pieces actually makes them not come in contact with each other easily in the opening play.

the idea of having a queen in the game i would consider extremely bad because it is too powerful and would destroy the mood of the game, and also a piece that moves like alfil/dababa too strong and would also destroy flow and mood of game.

well i hope this site is going well, i take a look every now and then and of course new games keep getting invented, nice :)

i have been playing 'World of Warcraft' these last few years, what an amazing game :)

kk all the best, bye for now :)

sorry yep there will be seperate pages done for each game, but you can see
descriptions of each game here (starting half way down the page)
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MPtheshortrangep
(ohhh not having zillions, how can a chess variant lover do without it!)
Joe will be doing pages for each game soon, i don't know why he is taking
so long :)

i know i'm late with this, but happy new year everyone, thanks to David
and Fergus and all editors and contributors, readers and players etc etc,
hope all is fine and well, thanks for making this site the best chess
variant site in world (yes the world) !!!!
So many great variants created last year, hope this year brings many more,
which i'm sure it will!

Claudio, i like it! (sorry for late reply).
thanks for taking an interest in 'the shortrange project', i think it
should be added to 'project 2', i am sure Joe would agree.
If we can't put a zrf together, we can at least add info/link for this
game.

yes it is a tough call, i am not sure about what colors are normally used,
but they all look good to me, i think you should buy 2 sets :)
black and white look good, but the red looks pretty good too hehe :)

well i don't understand something here, if the 'guard' can move 1 or 2
squares in any direction, it must be easily more powerful than the knight
or bishop, but you say it is not as strong as these pieces ... even a
piece that can move like a 'king' is more powerful than a knight or
bishop.
Joe and i recently put out 'the shortrange project', and in these
variants we have a 'sliding general' (moves 1 or 2 squares any
direction) or a 'queen-2-slider' (moves like a queen, but only 1 or 2
squares), and both of these are easily more powerful than the humble yet
beautiful bishop and knight.
so either i don't understand how your guard moves, or you don't realise
how powerful it is :)

you are on the wrong page, you should read here
http://www.chessvariants.org/d.chess/chess.html

Yes UGLi, well noted. The extreme outer part could be a place for the missing '4th' position, but this still doesn't work, each quarter of this board has 3 spaces within it, the Byzantine board has 4, so this cannot be a Byzantine board.

* 3 spaces on one file or row or whatever call it. It has 9 spaces in total within a quarter, while Byzantine has 16.

The centre also is different, being more a 'point' than a 'circle'.

Joe says ..

I will note that while it's easy to tell our writing apart, people will find it much harder to tell our designs apart, as we fall into the category of designers exemplified by Fighting Kings and Royal Pawn Chess. And since we discuss games and look at each other's work, it's sometimes hard for us to tell just who did what. [Now if we could only understand each other...]

Wow, very nicely put. Looking at the games now, it seems like one person put them together. i know i was doing stuff thinking 'you are going to like this' and visa versa, but how does this explain the 50 million emails that went down all with the theme of 'what are you talking about?!' lol.

he is the hometown boy, why can't he play if they want, he doesn't mess
up the tournament or anything, in 2004 linares i think it was, he drew
both games with kramnik, and both games with topa!
linares wouldn't be linares with vallejo!

even if kram wins, when the 2007 wc comes around, he won't go in it, say
he is 'classical' world champ, and we will get 2 world champs again.

Charles, you’re a funny guy :) I wasn’t going to say anything, but I can’t
help myself, I must protest this great injustice to Pluto.
You know, there is just something about Pluto, I love that little guy!
And, I don’t care what the scientists say Pluto is, it will always be a
planet to me. Besides, there are scientists that still call Pluto a
planet, so it is ok.
Yes, what an embarrassment for the scientists this year lol, when it
became known to the general mass of people, that they didn’t really have a
clear idea what a planet was!! Interestingly, that didn’t stop them from
naming planet after planet, till we were told we had 8 other planets
around us. 
I am not sure, but I think in 2009, they will meet again, our brilliant
minds, and then, most likely, we will have a new definition of a planet,
and maybe, just maybe, Pluto will be a planet again ha ha. Actually, there
is practically no doubt they will produce a new definition.
Anyway, on the up side, there is a spaceship on it’s way to the outer
reaches, to visit Pluto and beyond, called ‘New Horizons’. 
Home Page –   http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/index.php
Mission page - http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/mission_timeline.html
This could be the fastest spacecraft ever, it reaches Jupiter in early 2007, 
it left Earth Jan 19, 2006!
see here http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/New_Horizons.html

yeah it is not a very good design, and at the moment (was ok earlier) it
seems sometimes you need to refresh, then highlight names again and click
on '>>' to go to last move ...

sorry, i have added variant specific castling information to the
description of each game (in-game help/description).
so it is updated, you can download at zillions site

go topa!

Oh, i posted a few weeks ago, but it seems when all those dumb 'my chess
program is better than yours' posts were deleted, my post went too. 
Ok, so, what a brilliant program! And it's free! And best of all, for me
anyway, it plays Great Shatranj, and it plays very good with pawns too.
Hopefully, this program will just get better and better, congrats Greg!!

this game is so bent i can't understand it at all, but it reads extremely
interesting, to say the least .. check out here, direct link to game
explanation - http://www.geocities.com/chessdp/ttchsrules.htm
now how bizzare is this explanation of the game!
How can i rate a game i can't understand, pfft, it is so easy :))

wow, this zrf is just fantastic, congrats Fergus, so good to play Alice on
two boards the way you have done it (seeing move on brd 1 and auto -> to
brd 2). Also, the options you give for play, with armies on different
boards and zero move. I know sometimes people may think i 'over praise'
games, but stuff it, i can't help it if i love chess variants and am
excited about them lol. i'm like that movie rater in US that rates most
movies highly, he says he can't help it, he loves movies!
So, this zrf is like an 'event' in the history of Alice Chess and chess
variants itself :)

hmm this place is a bit frisky lately, anyway, i'm going to rate some
unusual games, and what better place to start than here. 
This is an amazing game, no need to say anymore. Highly original,
strikingly beautiful concept.

1. e4 
.. e5
2. Horsey f3
.. Horsey c6 

hey, i like it!

you just have to become a member, then you put up an invitation, see here
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbmlogs/index.php
anything with 'open' in 'next move for' column is a game that someone
is wanting an opponent.

Sam, yes of course you can add 'schoolbook shatranj' or any other variant
based on this to your 'schoolbook' zrf. That would be great to see.
There is really no 'official variant' with this zrf, it is called
'Capablanca Shatranj' because everyone is familiar with Capa name etc. I
did put 'Birds' up first, because his game came first, then Capa's, the
rest then are placed kinda due to the king position, all variants with
king position same as Birds/Capa come directly after etc

http://www.chessvariants.org/large.dir/janus.html

no this page doesn't have a download link, there is another page for that, but there is a problem with uploading files at this site at the moment, so it hasn't been done, but you can download it at zillions site :)

link

Chaturanga (4 player, or 1 vs 1 with each person having 2 armies)
The Travelers
American Chess
Shatranj of Troy
Great Shatranj

i think it best if people don't say their own games ..

seems there is a problem uploading games .. i got this message when trying
to upload zip file for a new game (74 kb)

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restriction in effect. File(/var/tmp/phpyM8jKc) is not within the allowed
path(s): (/home/chessva:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp) in
/home/chessva/public_html/index/memberupload2.php on line 101

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101

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size!

Aronian won FiNet Rapid Chess960 Open 2005, that is why he is challenger.
there is no doubt the winner of this tournament is next challenger.
yeah the time limit is bad, but what can you do, the sponsors pay the
money so ... fr is not main chess, even normal chess not so long ago found
their wc with terrible time controls. At least, this is better than
nothing.
Hey Moro is in it, he must be a big chance to win, that would be great to
see him next challenger!

yes you have to win a tournament in order to challenge the champ the
following year, this has been going for awhile, anyone can enter, it's
all fair enough. What is the reason you don't see this as making a fr
champ?
 
I like Moro the best, he is the best natural chess player in the world,
not afaird to sac (like kramnik lol), i think he would be the best at fr
too, but does he go in these tournaments, you would think he would, will
have to look. But, just being a gm does not mean you play fr chess, maybe
moro doesn't like it.

actually, thinking about kramnik, has he ever played fr chess? 
i highly doubt he likes it, their is no opening book, 
kramnik wouldn't even be able to play it ha ha