Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Some thoughts on the "can mate" property of pieces. Apparently, since K + NW vs. King can force mate, King + X can force mate if X is any of the Harvestman compounds, or presumably where X is the Harvestman itself, though I'm not familiar with mating with NW's and Zillions is not good at it. We know mate can be forced if X is a Cardinal. As has been pointed out, when X is a Gnu, the game is drawn. If X is a Caliph (BC), I assume it is also a draw, as the Caliph is colorbound.

In Chess, a major piece (Queen, Rook) can mate, while a minor piece (Bishop, Knight) can't and this is the definition of major and minor pieces. In Chess, the majors are stronger in terms of overall power as well. This is not necessarily true of variants. It is quite possible for a minor piece to have more overall power than a major piece. Can mate is only a significant part of piece value (the proportion is unknown and may vary).

A thought for research: how much less valuable is a Queen which can't capture a King than a normal Queen? The possibility of King capture is the basis for check and mate, though in Chess and variants using the checkmate rules, the capture is never actually carried out.

For Colorful Osmosis, if my assumptions are correct, the major pieces are Harvestman, Evangelist, Imam, Battlemaster, and Cardinal; while the minor pieces are Bishop, Knight, Camel, Gnu, and Caliph.

Please let me know if any of my assumptions are incorrect.

Bob's Zebras don't fit the theme, but I'm now inspired to create a leaper-heavy game with Knights, Camels, Zebras, and all their compounds with such other pieces as may be needed for adequate mating power.

NW cannot force mate. It cannot even achieve help mate, as it is a color alternator.

The can-mate property contributes only very little to the piece value. Of course not being able to check is a far larger handicap than not being able to force checkmate; it also means that in a K+X vs K with many Pawns present it would not be able to protect its own Pawns from attack by the enemy King.

In case it helps, I've named the Zebra compounds with Queen, Bishop, Rook, and Man: Malkia, Kuhani, Mtawala, and Jikilele. I have names for other compounds, too.

Thanks, H.G. A NW can't checkmate, my source was incorrect. No wonder I couldn't figure out how to mate with it. I want to give accurate information about the mating potential of Colorful Osmosis Chess pieces. As I'm revising the game page anyway, I want everything right. Can mate is important in the endgame--it might be quite bad to have a Caliph rather than a Cardinal. If I have this right, to have can mate, a piece cannot be either color-bound or color-switching but must be able to reach squares of both colors on a given move. In Chess, the Queen and Rook have this property, the Bishop and Knight. The Harvestman, Camel, Knight, and Bishop are all either color-bound or color-switching. Likewise, the Caliph (BC) and the Battlemaster (N - Havestman) should lack can mate. Cardinal, Evangelist, and Imam have the can-mate property. Of course, being neither color-bound nor color-switching is a necessary but not sufficient condition for can mate: King + Gnu vs. King is

A piece loses some value if K + piece can't force mate, but loses far less value than a piece that can't check the King. This might be a interesting way to reduce the power of an otherwise overpowered piece.

I can already tell that the new version is much more balanced. The Grand Chess-like setup with Camels on the corners of the board alone on the first rank is much more balanced. I have also extended the osmosis rules. Now when a basic piece captures anything but a Pawn or a corresponding piece, a compound piece is created. The promotion by capturing is reminiscent of Maka Dai Dai Shogi and possibly other large Shogi variants.

Somehow, for me, it just doesn't "feel" right without something in the center space next to the King -- like, maybe, some sort of modified Queen/Amazon (Q4NC). I also feel like something (Guards, maybe?) should be dropped right behind the Bishops. That's just my own personal feeling, though; the game's most likely better off as it is.

If the Caliph and Cardinal were equally strong in other respects, it would not matter much whether you had one or the other. As in >95% of the cases you would still have some Pawns as well, which provide the mating potential. As it is the Cardinal is far more effective than the Caliph in destroying Pawns and Pawn chains. Which is far more important than the can-mate property.

To allow (help) mates with K+piece on  a rectangular board the piece needs to be able to check two orthogonally adjacent squares. That implies it cannot be color bound or color alternating, but it is a stronger limitation than that: a BH or WA would be neither, but cannot cause help mates. Even if help mates are possible, it might not be possible to force a mate in general. Either because the piece is so weak that you cannot even drive the bare King into a corner, or because of a tactical peculiarity (such as with the quite strong Wildebeest, NC). The weakest piece I could find that still can force mate on 8x8 was the Deva (and its mirror image): lbfFrW, a sobset of the King, with only 5 move targets.

Btw, limitations of a drawing tool can never be a excuse for poor graphics; there exist plenty of tools without any limitations.

H.G. the Diagram Designer is the tool provided by Chessvariants.com and is the preferred tool. The site discourages uploading images--I had originally uploaded a Zillions screenshot which has a proper Harvestman graphic, but the site maintainers strongly suggested I use the Diagram designer instead. Diagram Designer has already defined 26 pieces that don't include the Harvestman so the Rook is the least bad alternative to represent it, as the piece is the game's Rook analog.

Even if I had access to another tool (free, I can't afford to buy one), that would still involve uploading files.

Please tell me how it is possible to add a new piece to the DD piece set, or get the site maintainers not to complain about uploading screenshots.

A modified Queen doesn't fit the theme, but perhaps a Mann or Commoner (non-royal King) would work well. I'll try that out later today.

H.G. the Diagram Designer is the tool provided by Chessvariants.com and is the preferred tool. The site discourages uploading images--I had originally uploaded a Zillions screenshot which has a proper Harvestman graphic, but the site maintainers strongly suggested I use the Diagram designer instead.

This policy is completely unknown to me. None of my articles that were published here use the Diagram Designer. If uploading images was discouraged, why would every article have a file upload interface? I haven't seen your Zillions picture, but if there was any criticism on it I am sure it was more because of the quality than because of the fact that it was uploaded. If you already discovered you can use 26 pieces in the Diagram Designer, there would have been plenty of opportunity to avoid the use of an orthodox piece with a very strong associated meaning like a Rook; almost anything would have been a better choice. In fact the Diagram Designer supports the complete Alfaerie PNG piece set in the 'automatic' set group, which contains far more than 26 pieces. The Diagram Editor with Scalable Graphics can also give you a HTML link that you can insert in your text to display an image without uploading one, and allows you to use the full Alfaerie SVG set, even in rotated versions.

Sorry, but everything you are saying here seems complete nonsense...

Whatever that experience was, I have no clue. Most of my variants have diagrams created by Musketeer's Board Painter, which I'll continue to use for variants that Interactive Diagrams can't handle.

That said, if you really want something fitting, you can always try compounds like:

(Just as an example.)

Yeah, the Guards I mentioned are basically non-royal Kings too.

The Q4NC I mentioned is essentially a compound of the Rook and Bishop, both with reduced power, with the Knight and Camel, though to make it fit better the Rook part probably would be changed to a four-step Harvestman move. (A line of reasoning that's too convoluted for this post leads me to call it Matron.)

The site discourages uploading images

No, it doesn't. It even provides a file manager for you to upload your images.

the site maintainers strongly suggested I use the Diagram designer instead

I'm the site maintainer, and that's news to me.

(Deleted replied to the wrong person.)

Bob's suggestion of a piece on the blank space improves the game considerably. I chose the Guard (non-royal King) as the best fit. It provides better King protection and if it persists to the endgame K + G versus K can force mate. The Guard should be a Pawn promotion option as well. In certain positions, it may be the best choice. Thanks to all for the suggestions that improved the game considerably. I should be able to upload the revised .zrf this afternoon or tomorrow.

I almost suggested the Bodyguard, but I didn't feel like it fit the theme well. :)

Fergus, I know what I was told, I'm glad the rule is nonexistent, it must have been someone else's opinion. I will try the suggestions for better tools and see what works best. If none of those tools give satisfaction, I will upload a Zillions screenshot (trimmed to show just the board) as I wanted to originally.

After a large amount of editing, I think the game and this page are really ready for publication. I believe I have a playable game and a reasonable page now. I have to make a few edits to the help text in the Zillions file, and then that page should be ready as well. The Zillions page will probably be ready later today.

Are any further edits necessary or desirable?

This is just a test to see if I can replicate how you posted images to your page.

It appears that CkEditor lets you paste images in HTML format by directly inserting the binary text of the image into the HTML. However, this is not how you should be including images on your page. Instead of that, you should use the file manager to upload your images, then just provide a link to each image. Also, please use transparent .gif, .png, or .svg images for your pieces rather than non-transparent .bmp images. You should find that we already have many piece images on this site, and if we don't have the ones you need, you can upload them with the file manager. You will find links to the file manager in the Edit menu and beneath the content of your page when you signed are in and on your page.

Board image .gif created and uploaded, working on the piece images. Where are the existing piece graphic files? If necessary, I can convert all my .bmp files to transparent.gif files, but if chessvariants.com already has the correct piece graphics, I'd prefer to use them.

For most of the Alfaerie set (including, I think, everything you have here), there's this page.

But how do I link to the individual piece images? I don't want to show the whole set.