Comments by (zzo38) A. Black
Insect Chess. On a 12x12 board. All pieces are insect and arachnid representations, with some unique pieces. (12x12, Cells: 144) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
What is a Chess variant?. An essay on what distinguishes a Chess variant from other games.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]You say "There are no Monopoly or Risk problems, because they aren't that kind of game." I have seen retroanalysis puzzles for Scrabble and Bridge. You say "Some Chess variants do introduce elements of randomness." Yes, also some (e.g. Kriegspiel) introduce elements of hidden information.
Mitred Framing 3: 6x6 to 8x8. Adding a rim of forward-only pieces around a 6x6 board. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Apparently 跳馬 (pronounce ã¡ã‚‡ã†ã¾) is meaning a jumping horse.
You do not have to edit the CSS of user-submitted pages to remove stuff you don't like; you can do what I did instead. I don't like the narrower content or sidebar ads either, although I used Stylish to remove them from all pages (and force the content to use the full width of the window), and to remove script warnings, as well as to remove the "fineprint" area (used for editing the page) from printouts (this also means I now have to maintain my own stylesheets, although I can deal with this; furthermore my stylesheets won't affect anyone else since they are local to my computer). However, I cannot figure out how to make the printout to use the full width of the page, nor to convert pictures to monochrome on the printout (if you know how to do these things, please tell me). However, note that at least Firefox does have "responsive design mode" which allows to test it at various screen sizes, as well as rotation and touch events (I myself do not use it, although it can be useful to you if you do mobile and that stuff).
Then if accessed by the old msdisplay.php (the new links seem not to use it) it should use that table to select the new ID from the old one so that old URLs will continue to work for compatibility purposes. (Due to this, the link for "Query Database" under the search menu currently does not work; I suggest both updating msdisplay.php and updating the menu.)
This messed up the site severely. I had to use the Stylish browser extension to fix it, and it is still not quite fixed (the margin is still slightly too wide). The menus also are not aligned properly, but I can later try to fix that too.
About Game Courier. Web-based system for playing many different variants by email or in real-time.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]For tarot cards you don't necessarily have to consider individual effect for each trump; the names may differ in some decks anyways, you can just use their number (from I to XXI). What you might do is consider the cards in six different category and then define them based on that:
- Swords (14) (corresponds to spades)
- Rods (14) (sometimes "wands"; corresponds to clubs)
- Coins (14) (sometimes "discs"; some decks have pentragrams inscribed on the coins; corresponds to diamonds)
- Cups (14) (corresponds to hearts)
- Trumps (21) (also, when combined with the fool, sometimes called the "major arcana")
- Fool (1) (also called "excuse"; sometimes considered the highest trump (even though it is marked zero in some decks, although this has to do with interpreting the sequence of major arcana as a journey and is not related to the card's rank); at other times entirely separate)
But, I do have other ideas to make chess variants too, such as:
- A variant based on INTERCAL
- A variant based on Slugterra
- The game where all katakana are possible pieces
- Can a piece subjected to mobile range expansion effect move by the actual tier as well as the one above, or only one above?
- Can a tier 3 piece have any effect when subjected to mobile range expansion effect?
- Can two mobile range expansion effects applied together and result a tier 1 piece to act by tier 3?
Why are the arrow, bronze, silver, gold using hiragana rather than the proper kanji of those stuff like in shogi? (In shogi, a pawn promoted to gold general uses the same hiragana mentioned there, but gungi has no promotion, just front/back. I also notice that all of the pieces that do have hiragana in gungi are the back side of the pawn, but I still think it might be better to use kanji there.)
For making the pieces, what you might do is make them one side black and one side white, and the front sides will have a border or something like that perhaps. Alternatively just make it like in shogi with all pieces the same color, and you might make the writing on the back side in red.
I remember I had a book once that described a chess variant known as "Emperor Wars". (I don't know if it may have been the only copy (it was made of plain paper, probably printed by computer or typewriter, did not mention any author's name or copyright notices, had hand-written corrections in it), and I don't know where it is now.)
The game included such pieces as Plebians, Emperor, Tribune, Senator, Vestal Virgin, Praetorian Guard, Centurion, and possibly others I don't remember. Plebians are normally gray and can change color; also they can push other pieces and crush other pieces. I think Senator immobilized adjacent pieces except Plebians and Emperor. The initial setup involved Plebians already placed but other pieces must be placed one at a time before you start moving them.
Do you have any other information, or is perhaps the only copy I had?
I don't know if it works with the Diagram package; I use Plain TeX (and with DVI output format) and not LaTeX, but I did write a chess macro package (with many options that may be suitable for use with some chess variants too) for Plain TeX which uses my font by default.
I do not know which fonts are used and how much, nor do I know how to contact Marroquin.
Heroes Hexagonal Chess version 2. Hexagonal Chess with new movement rules on a "standard" 91 hex board.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The reason it is impossible to correct is a bug in the server software; when programming the initial contents of the textarea you must use htmlspecialchars function on the data before sending it to the client.
I did create a font with pieces for chess variants but doesn't include most kind of rotated pieces, and it is in METAFONT format so not for screen fonts. It does not use Unicode though (and as far as I am concerned it does not need to.)
I have actually thought of a way to define a variant too large for anyone in this universe to play (whether human, alien monsters, computer programming, or whatever) and therefore is probably impossible to solve by computer too; I have defined a googolplex kind of pieces but had some trouble to define the primitives it is made from in order to ensure all of them are different (however, I think I may have figured out the solution just now).
Perhaps that isn't what you want though. Well, the answer to your question still isn't clear. Even in games where "there aren't so many moves which are at all sound", it seems to me that you should need a mathematical proof of that statement in order to correctly take advantage of it. (Still, it may be possible to make such a mathematical proof without enumerating all of the moves; it is possible to prove a lot of things about numbers which are larger than the universe.)
Promote King Chess. King can promote into Cthulhu, and white pawns can promote into black pawns. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]You have the right to be negative and to criticize everyone (especially me). If it really is poor then I can hopefully fix it. However, for now I will simply to answer your two questions:
- Promoting into opponent's pieces can sometimes be used to block opponent from moving into the position you promoted on. It can also be used to improve your score. (You can also cause yourself to run out of legal moves and result a stalemate before opponent can make enough moves to win; remaining as your own pawn may also help with this.)
- You are (probably) correct, although rule 9 makes it to be not a draw. Also note that you can block your opponent's king from promoting too by moving Cthulhu back to your first rank; with enough pieces on the board they can try to prevent that however. However, it may still help to fix it a bit, perhaps allowing pieces to be regenerated somehow? I don't know for sure yet, but perhaps: Each time Cthulhu moves more than one move, opponent earns one regeneration point (you could start with -5 regen points perhaps?); you can spend any number of regeneration points on your turn in order to replace lost pieces on their starting positions if those spaces are vacant (this uses up a turn). Another idea can be that if the game actually does end in a checkmate, the final score is quadrupled for each king promotion (so if both kings promoted, the winner earns 16x normal points!!) There are also other ideas to resolve this issue.
Caïssa Britannia. British themed variant with Lions, Unicorns, Dragons, Anglican Bishops, and a royal Queen. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I am not quite in agreement in all ways. I don't like patents. I agree to put these contribution into public domain. Use stuff I put in here in whatever way!
Orphan. Moves like a piece that attacks it.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]How will you be in check if you promote into bishop? I thought it only applies if you are promoted into a queen.
Game Courier User's Guide. How to play games with the CV Play-by-Mail system.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The cards feature doesn't seem to work very well. I get a display of the backs of cards, and when I try to discard a card that is in my hand (just guessing, based on what remains in the deck; I tried with both players and ), I get an error message where the name of the card is missing. If it is not in my hand, the error message includes the name of the card. Also, what is the name of the PHP global variable that stores the contents of your hand? (I have already figured out $deck, $cards, and $discardpile) Also, a suggestion, it may be useful to display how many cards in opponent's hand and how many cards remain in the draw pile, and the ability to use setsystem with the $deck and $discardpile variables as well as whatever array stores the cards in each player's hand.
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