Comments by ChessShogi

When I replied to this initially on the interactivce diagrams page, I should have posted it here...so here is my response in the proper place.

It's a good idea to think about. The main problem lies in describing very complex pieces such as those in Ko Shogi, but most variants don't have pieces that complex.

The main issue with implementation is where you would put the description. I would put it at the end, as a description is entirely optional. You will want to make a distinction b/w the pieces in hand and the description, though this is likely very easy to implement.

However, it is important to keep in mind that if the descriptions for the pieces are all kept within the diagram itself on a CVP article, then people might not know where to find the moves of the pieces, even when the text used to open/close the table mentions descriptions. This is why I always have, and always will, keep all piece descriptions in the Pieces section of my CVP articles, which is meant to fulfill this purpose. As a result, having descriptions in the table would actually benefit other sites more than it would benefit this site. Even so, the benefits of such a feature are worth considering.

Though you are right when it comes to implementation, it is possible to know whether I'll consider it, as this would technically fit into my philosophy of consitency between most piece moves across games, as Ryugi is my only game with Chess-style Pawns without a setup covering the entirety of a single rank. However, it might be some time before it is implemented in the diagram and Game Courier.

Also, I noticed a few mistakes in the set file I just sent you. If you could overwite the old file with the new one when I send it to you that would be great.

@Greg Strong I saw your email that you updated the Large shogi: Taishin Mnemonic set file, but whenever I try do do anything with the new set, the page becomes completely blank for some reason. Does Fergus need to update the sets.php file as well?

Edit: The set is working now. Now to check that everything in the new set is correct...

I did not mean to propose hiding the table like the piece legend for the diagram is hidden by default. Or even have the diagram generate it 'on the fly' in the client's browser. (Noe that the diagram can make the piece table appear anywhere on the page, in a place of your choice, through the satellite parameter.) The problem with the latter is that it would not work for people that have disabled JavaScript in their browser.

So I can see why you, and presumably many others, want such a list in your articles. So my proposal was actually: given the fact that the piece names / images / moves already have to be specified to create a diagram, couldn't we make life easier for the author by offering him as a free side effect the HTML for an (almost complete) table, which he just has to copy-paste into his article in the place where he wants it to appear? Most people would create the diagrams through the design wizard or the play-test applet, and would then copy-paste the provided HTML for the diagram into their article. They could do the same for a table with textual descriptions, which the design wizard would show in another text-box (or perhaps in the same box, after pressing a button "Piece Table".

And it doesn't matter whether the descriptions for complex pieces like Lions or Hook Movers would be inaccurate, clumsy or missing; there will be only few of such pieces, and the author can edit their description by hand after he copy-pasted the table into his article.

That is a genius idea. I would love to see something like that.

As to the format of the table - What I meant was this:  In the article above you use the piece names in the first column. E.g. "King", and then the text says "The King moves one step in each direction". Mentioning "King" twice here is redundant; you could have said "Moves one step in each direction", because people already know it pertains to the King from the first column. But I think it would be better to keep the piece name in the move description, as you had, and replace the name column by an image column. Presumably you did not do that because it is a lot of work to write all the HTML image tags with the URLs of the images. But when generated automatically that would not be an issue. It would also not be an issue to attach a handler to the table cells so that clicking on them would evoke some response (for those with JavaScript enabled). E.g. like opening/closing a normally hidden able row right below the one clicked, which by default would be empty, but which the author could use to provide a hand-made move diagram.

Actually, the reason I did the table the way I did for this game and Taishin Shogi rather than using the format I used for my smaller shogi variants (the piece images and the name in a column within the cell) is because of the size limit for the HTML editors. There is an actual limit programmed into the HTML editors on the site for how big a HTML script can get, and using the format for my smaller games exceeded that limit for both this game and Taishin Shogi because the piece list was so big. However, when I took out the images, it worked just fine, so I decided to just leave the images out. Automatic table generation is a good idea, but the size limit might make it unfeasible with images, depending on the size of the script.

I also wanted to keep the format between my Shogi variant pages as consistent as possible. Indeed, making the list is a lot of work, but a consistent format across pages makes it much easier by letting me copy-paste the text for each piece into the appropriate cell.

Also, the redundency may not actually be a bad thing. I've seen quite a few CVP articles by other people that have the piece name in both the image and the move description.

@Greg Strong I sent you an email containing the next set file I want to upload to Game Courier. This one is for the Shogi pieces with full piece names, but I haven't gotten a response yet. Did you get my message?

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.

Something is wrong with GAME Code. Whenever I try to load one of my large Shogi Variant presets, and by extension any preset that uses a similar stalemated subroutine, the last expression in for/foreach is calculated wrong. It evaluates to a single square, whereas before it would correctly evaluate to the array of board spaces.

I decided to rename Futashikana Shogi to Dai Shosu Shogi. I would like the game's corresponding pages, https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/futashikana-shogi and https://www.chessvariants.com/play/futashikana-shogi changed to https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/dai-shosu-shogi and https://www.chessvariants.com/play/dai-shosu-shogi, respectively. I would also like to have the Game Courier presets for Futashikana shogi deleted. I have already transferred their code to presets for Dai Shosu Shogi.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed Yangsi. I'd love to see a CVP article on your Heavy Shako game - it sounds like a very interesting concept.

The 12x12 Yangsi idea could be interesting, but I think Gross Chess kind of already has that covered.

Also, what is Ai Ai? I've never heard of it before.

My one issue is that the Demon is so weak in the Suzumu family of games that the flavour of Tenjiku is mostly absent; Tenjiku is almost defined by the terrifying presence of the Demon, much like the Lion in Chu Shogi. If the Demon were powered up to something in between the original and this one, I think this game would be even more interesting.

When designing the Suzumu Shogi pieces, I wanted pieces with moves representable in XBetza Notation, less brutal than those in Tenjiku, but in line with the original theme. Also, I wanted to make sure that the piece moves didn't create weaknesses in the start positions of any of these games. It's a difficult balancing act, I know.

All in all, though, I think I did pretty good. The range jumper's moves definitely fit in with the theme while also being sufficiently powerful, even in Taishin Shogi. The Fire Demon was much more difficult to design though. I went through a bunch of iterations with its move before settling on the current one. Giving it the burning ability from Tenjiku Shogi would kind of ruin the theme, not to mention be impossible to describe in XBetza Notation. I did try giving it the ability to burn one neighbor after moving (not when stationary) but that ended up being a mess both in terms of the XBetza move description and the legal moves display in the interactive diagram (which had question marks everywhere, making it kind of difficult to see what was really going on).

Do you think giving the Fire Demon the ability to slide in all eight directions (like a Queen) in addition to its other moves would help?

After thinking about it, I decided to cancel the renaming of Futashikana Shogi. Please delete both presets for Dai Shosu Shogi.

@Eric Silverman @H.G. Muller I think I found a real winner for a new version of the Suzumu Shogi Fire Demon and the games it appears in. The new Fire Demon has a novel burning ability instead of the Lion's double King step. This new moves allows it to optionally shoot (capture without moving) an enemy piece a King's move away from its final destination. This ability only activates when a Fire Demon moves.This makes it much more powerful then the previous iteration, but it's still weaker than the Tenjiku Shogi Fire Demon. This should make these game much more interesting while still being less brutal then Tenjiku Shogi.

This change will also necessitate changes to the starting positions for all games that the Fire Demon appears in to eliminate any exploitable weaknesses to the new ability in the starting positions, some more drastic than others. Each will be designed to protect from normal captures, double captures of all kinds, and the Fire Demon's new burning ability.

Mitsugumi Shogi/Gyaku-sama Shogi will introduce the Horned Falcon and Soaring Eagle from Suzumu Shogi/Hanten Shogi in adittion to rearranging ot some of the original pieces. Suzumu Shogi/Hanten Shogi and Chushin Shogi will rearrange the side/vertical soldiers and side/vertical movers (and in Chushin's case, the side/vertical chariots as well). I am not sure what Taishin Shogi's new starting position will look like, but it will likely be changed drastically.

Now the only question remaining is how to implement the new burning ability in Game Courier.

P.S. In case your wondering what the Fire Demon's XBetza string looks like, it's this:

BympacabBympacabBsRsympacabRsympabcabRKaKaaKmabKmpacabKmpabcabKmampacabKmampabcabKmamampacabKmamampabcabK

I love the new behavior for parentheses. For complex pieces (e.g. Suzumu Shogi's new Fire Demon) it can be a real lifesaver.

The Game Courier presets named Dai Shosu Shogi are still there. They can be deleted as they are basically clones of the Futashikana Shogi presets.

Thanks for catching those typos. They are now fixed. Yes, both the Left General and Right General promote to Shogun.

I noticed that for the PNG, JPG, and GIF image rendering options that the hitboxes for the squares were off center compared to where the image was, with the effect being least at the upper left corner and increasing as you go towards the lower right corner.

The ii modifier (or something similar meaning the same thing) is a genius idea. For the burning, there may be some merit to having something to determine certain specifics of the burning move (i.e. whether the move is passive as well as active, and if it is, which piece has priority in a conflict b/w the burning pieces) with diagram parameters. XBetza wouldn't necessarily be able to handle those specifics on its own.

The hitbox positioning is much better. The images may be slightly off center, but that isn't much of a problem.

Is there a way to detect suicide moves in Game Courier (form XY- or @-XY)? I'm trying to figure out how to implement the new burning ability for the Fire Demons, and I think suicide move are the best option to keep things simple. But I'll need to know how to do the following in order to use suicide moves to execute burns:

• Detect a suicide move on the board
• Detect whether the value of thismove is a suicide move

Once I successfully implement the new burning moves I can carry that over to the other games in the Suzumu family.

I guess I worded that wrong. What I meant to say was the the highlights for empty squares are slightly off center.

I've added the implementation in the Interactive Diagram. Still need to add it in Game Courier though.

Edit: Apparently by happy accident, the Game Courier preset had this implemented already without me realizing it.

This game was a bit neglected on my part for a while, partly because of my interest in large Shogi variants and the long process of experimentation with the Suzumu Fire Demon's move. Now that those are out of the way, I have decided to give this page a facelift. I have added an interactive diagram to this page and updated its images to keep its style in line with the rules pages for Yangsi and Ryugi, and I did some double-checking to make sure the rules were in line with those of Yangsi and Ryugi. I also fixed a few typos in the ruleset references for the Hectochess and Ryugi presets.

Now all that is left is the difficult tasks of implementing the Suzumu Fire Demon's burning move in Game Courier, implementing the Lion Dog in Game Courier (for the larger games in the Suzumu family), and figuring out how to implement Cannon Shosu Shogi in Game Courier (The hopping moves make it impossible to use the code I used for Shosu Shogi and Futashikana Shogi).