Comments by Ben Reiniger
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Jan 11 07:50 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 06:53 PM:If you take the slice parallel to the cubic lattice coordinate planes, you get a normal chess board, and 3d bishops project to normal Bishops on it. As do Unicorns.
The way I'm thinking about it, when you project along one of the 3d orthogonal directions, you do get a normal chess board, but 3d bishops become 2d queens, and unicorns become 2d bishops. E.g., projecting along the z direction, a 3d bishop sliding along (+1,0,+1) projects to a rook movement (+1,0).
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Jan 11 06:06 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 04:57 PM:Apologies for the confusion; I had misremembered what I worked out years ago, and didn't spend much time checking how my thoughts aligned with the Red Blob site I linked.
When I've done this before, I project down along one triagonal, and the result is a hexagonal grid, but not with the "cubic coordinates" of the Red Blob site. Instead, you get coordinates whose sum is 0, 1, or 2 (any other sum in the cube coordinates get projected down to one of these, depending on its remainder mod 3), and those correspond to the 3-coloring of the hex grid. Under this projection, if my doodling just now is correct, cubic rooks are hex rooks; cubic bishops are hex rook+bishop; cubic unicorns are hex dabbabah+null-move.
That aside, I would still argue that Gilman isn't wrong in anything, but takes different definitions and reaches different conclusions. We've had games here on non-regular tesselations, and differences of opinions arise when trying to think more-topologically or more-geometrically.
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Jan 11 04:35 AM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from Fri Jan 10 09:12 PM:BTW, isn't it possible to cut through a cubic lattice so that you get hexagons (in a plane perpendicular to a body diagonal)?
Yep:
The relationship between hexagonal and cubic grids runs deeper, and in that sense hex bishops do correspond to unicorns. See e.g. https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/#coordinates-cube
TessChess. 4D chess featuring symmetrically-moving pieces. (4x(4x(4x4)), Cells: 256) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]💡📝Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Sep 6, 2024 03:01 PM UTC in reply to HaruN Y from 02:48 PM:I have no idea how that XBetza is accomplishing this, having just last week learned enough to understand the original version, but yes, the knight moves look correct! (You've kept the rook and bishop as 1- and 2-d, while in this game they pick up the 3- and 4-d slides respectively; and the pawns in this game don't get diagonal captures forward-forward or forward-backward. But I assume that wasn't the point.)
BTW, I updated my last comment, and the diagram should be fully functional. I just want to know how to put the pieces somewhere other than the center of the Move Diagram, and I'll put (probably an updated 1-space sep) diagram into the page. (Also, since it can't have the right coordinates, I'll be keeping the current setup diagram in the page.)
I played against the ID's AI. I didn't give myself very long per move, but it trounced me pretty thoroughly. I wouldn't be too surprised if the game turned out to be extremely tactical rather than strategic: everything is so close!
💡📝Ben Reiniger wrote on Wed, Sep 4, 2024 02:37 AM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from Mon Sep 2 06:00 AM:Thanks! Colors look good, so the 2-square separation will work, and I've now entered the main "round" initial setup. Next up is adding the higher-dimensional moves! Done! Oh, and I notice that your diagram on the ID page has the Move Diagram with pieces on a non-central square: how do I do that?
💡📝Ben Reiniger wrote on Sun, Sep 1, 2024 06:32 PM UTC in reply to Ben Reiniger from Sun Aug 25 03:38 PM:@HGMuller
The first problem to solve is that the square coloring doesn't alternate properly. If there's a way to set colors more manually, I'll do that. I think the coloring is important to see the bishop bindings and rook's alternation, so I'm not willing to just leave it as is. I can't put just one hole between little boards, or the knights will be afforded an incorrect move. I could put three holes between little boards, but that'll have quite a bit too much empty space (can you thin specific ranks+columns?).
Skimming the documentation page for the interactive diagram, I think I can do this, but just by creating a background image and setting the background parameter (keeping two spaces between boards)? That's a little obnoxious, and something like Game Courier's method for specifying custom coloring patterns would be nice, but also not a big deal.
Ideally I could override the coordinates
This doesn't seem possible besides setting a starting rank number, but I can suppress coordinates altogether. A new parameter with comma-separated rank/file names would be really nice.
Sphinx Chess. Likely the first 4D chess variant.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]📝Ben Reiniger wrote on Sun, Aug 25, 2024 04:21 PM UTC in reply to HaruN Y from Sat Aug 17 06:00 AM:Yours still seems to overprescribe movements (but this has been wonderful as a start to more-symmetric 4d games like my own TessChess, for which I'm dabbling with expanding your diagram here). Here's my attempt. Let me know if you have questions about the rules, or if I seem to have Betza'ed incorrectly (likely).
TessChess. 4D chess featuring symmetrically-moving pieces. (4x(4x(4x4)), Cells: 256) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]💡📝Ben Reiniger wrote on Sun, Aug 25, 2024 03:38 PM UTC:Testing an interactive diagram (huge thanks to HaruN Y for doing most of the work on a Sphinx Chess diagram):
The first problem to solve is that the square coloring doesn't alternate properly. If there's a way to set colors more manually, I'll do that. I think the coloring is important to see the bishop bindings and rook's alternation, so I'm not willing to just leave it as is. I can't put just one hole between little boards, or the knights will be afforded an incorrect move. I could put three holes between little boards, but that'll have quite a bit too much empty space (can you thin specific ranks+columns?).
Other known issues: Ideally I could override the coordinates, but if not it'll be fine, I just won't use it as the main setup diagram. The knight is still a Centauri, none of the pieces have their triagonal or quadragonal components yet, and obviously the layout isn't set yet; I expect I can fix those once the layout is settled.
If I can fix up those issues (and any others that arise), I'll include it on the page, along with a separate game (maybe this should be a separate page) that features the raw orthogonal/diagonal/triagonal/quadragonal sliders, just to help demonstrate.
Sphinx Chess. Likely the first 4D chess variant.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]📝Ben Reiniger wrote on Sun, Aug 18, 2024 12:48 AM UTC in reply to HaruN Y from Sat Aug 17 06:00 AM:Your interactive diagram has given the pieces too much power: a piece never changes both its board and its relative position. (I've described this before as "2+2 dimensions" as opposed to a fully symmetric 4 dimensions.)
Muje (Untitled). Members-Only Janggi + Chess + Drop rule of Shogi. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Frog/Hannibal/Waffle chess with Gryphon/Manticore and falcon. Expansions of Kevin Pacey's Frog/Hannibal/Wafle Chess. (9x10, Cells: 90) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Ben Reiniger wrote on Thu, Jul 11, 2024 12:57 PM UTC:I see the point. The diagrams' four functions--setup diagram, individual piece movement displays, move pieces around, and play against AI--each naturally fit into different sections. But breaking it apart into those would be worse. So then do you replace a static diagram at the start of the article, or add the new one later? I don't think it matters too much, but saving some space by replacing the setup diagram is nice, and giving the interactive tool near the beginning of the article is more engaging.
Imaginary (Complex) Chess. Members-Only Extremely complex chess. Chess masters become powerless. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Square Root Chess. Chess on a ladder-alike tilted board. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Apr 23, 2024 10:01 PM UTC:I filled in the board size metadata as 8x8, but perhaps it would be better as 8x15 (still with 64 cells)?
Octal XiangQi. Missing description (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Apr 23, 2024 01:07 PM UTC:You should add the western-style piece images for the rest of the pieces in the Pieces section (to align with the interactive diagram).
Intersection Chess. Members-Only Chess variant with boards overlapping each other. (8x8, Cells: 192) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Wide Chess. Members-Only Chess with extra width. (12x8, Cells: 96) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Time Machine. Private Queen, but with a 2-turn delay. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Territorial Chess (Go-King!). Members-Only "Territorial Chess," a revolutionary fusion of two timeless strategic games: Chess and Go. (21x21, Cells: 441) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Centaur. 
Moves as Knight or Man. AKA Crowned Knight.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Apr 1, 2024 12:12 AM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from Sun Mar 31 04:07 PM:Snark or not, I agree with H.G. that this is entirely too much art for a piececlopedia page. If you wanted to get feedback on the various outputs you've generated (to decide on one or two for the page), that should've been done in comments.
Raumschach. The classical variant of three-dimensional chess: 5 by 5 by 5. (5x(5x5), Cells: 125) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Mar 15, 2024 02:44 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 10:38 AM:The promotion zone the article mentions makes no sense to me
Indeed. And the CECV and Moeser both say that the promotion zones are E*5 and A*1. (Not also D*5 and B*1 as you suggest, perhaps just because the pawns there can still advance one more.)
Also, @Fergus, the green version of the item description here is completely unreadable on the new background color of comment headers.
Torus Chess (The Shape of Space). Chess on a torus from the book "The Shape of Space". (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Mar 4, 2024 10:23 PM UTC:From Jeff's website, in the Torus Games source code zip, there is a Revisions History file that lists Jan 2006 as "Initial Torus Games 2.0 release." I've tentatively set the invention date for this game as 2005.
Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Mar 1, 2024 01:31 AM UTC:Hmm, I didn't have the Centaur in mind for this tag, but I guess it fits (Royal Court, Sac Chess). Any opinions about that?
What about pawn compounds (any existing games aside from some absorption games? Speaking of...should Absorption Chess be here?)?
@Fergus, clicking the links at the top of this comment (the link to the tag page or its comment list) doesn't work, again something about the + in the name. I suppose at this point we should just change the name and avoid url encoding characters in tag names?...
Not-Particularly-New Chess. A fairly restrainted variant on a 9x8 board, with Cardinals, Unicorns and Jesters. (9x8, Cells: 72) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Mar 1, 2024 01:21 AM UTC:@BnEm: this page doesn't qualify for the Chess+Compounds tag, with the unicorn (debatable I suppose) and jester (not debatable, I think).
Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Mar 1, 2024 01:12 AM UTC:I've started occasionally getting full-page google ads on my phone when clicking from one CVP page to another (or coming back to a page from a sleeping screen). They seem to be between the two pages: the second page takes a moment to load after I dismiss the ad.
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Can you expand on this? Xyrixa is a 3d geometry featuring slices that are rectangular and others that are hexagonal. Maybe the issue is that slice of the tessellation don't necessarily correspond nicely with the adjacency relation of the cells' centers?