Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

The following comment by George Duke was copied in its entirety from its original posting in a different thread:
2007-09-14	George Duke Verified as George Duke	None	
Your welcome to use Falcon there staying on 8x8, as seem to be eager. [I see the 8x8 Short Chess Preset, which may be provisional and not appear later]

I wouldn't characterize myself as eager to use the Falcon. I am respectful and interested. Your Falcon piece/variant is a really nice shortrange idea that I doubt I would have come up with. Certainly not in the near future. My thinking and design have gone in different directions, and the Falcon is far from an obvious piece other than in hindsight. I enjoy design, and I enjoy good pieces. I hope people enjoy what is offered here. 

On the issue of whether a game needs to be played to evaluate it or not, I would be interested to hear from all those who wish to comment on how Falcon King will play without playtesting it. I think it will play nicely [otherwise I would not have posted it], but there is a possibility that I have managed to bring the 'slippery king' problem of 3D, 4D, and higher dimensional chess to the 2D board by making a pair of twisty royal pieces that move 3 squares. I invite comment, pro and con, on this.

George, thank you for taking the time to look over and rate the game, and provide some history. Since this is an experimental game and, like all my experimental games, is deliberately loaded down with excess baggage, I ccertainly can't dispute the rating, especially as I haven't played it yet. But I do wish to push all those pieces around a bit to see how they work. And you did say as a game, this might be average, so might be worth trying out. Still, it's cluttered with a whole bunch of new or unusual pieces of different styles that have little history of working together this way on a small [8x8] board. That unfamiliarity hurts its initial playability. It's a fault of mine. I get lazy and make one test game do extra testing.

:-) If you followed my work, you wouldn't need to ask 'why 4'. 
It's all part of a master plan... 
or at least an attempt to stretch chess in some new directions. I need piercing and grasping organs for chesimals as a next step in their evolution. Also '4' is at the edge of short range and getting to medium range. This is an area I'm starting to look at. While I like leapers for short range, sliders can be very nice medium range pieces, and I expect them to compete with some of the extended versions of my favorite short range pieces. The bishopy and rookish pieces are the prototypes for what I hope develops into a series of useful medium range basically linear pieces.   Thank you for asking, and giving me the opportunity to mention some goals. :-)
Enjoy,
Joe

Mr. Joyce, you say it is cluttered with a 'whole bunch of new or unusual pieces of different styles that have little history of working together...' You say, 'That unfamiliarity hurts its initial playability.' And you say that is a fault of yours. You say you get lazy and make one test game do extra testing.' This comment seems sad to me. You obviously are not lazy. Please do not insult yourself or your games. Let your own game's game play speak for itself. Please do not cave in so easy. You gentlemen, I think, should play each other in this game... and then discuss it. I would love to watch.

Dear Senorita Simpatica:

Thank you for your kind words. I understated my previous reply, testing the idea that 'a soft answer turneth away wrath'. Having a debate is fine, but I'm generally inclined to avoid fights [in spite of past actions]. So I softpedal some of my replies. 

You asked about 'excess baggage' in my design, and said you didn't see anything other than a game that looked well-balanced. Now, to explain that will take a bit of doing [and I tend to be long-winded ;-) ] but I'll try to do a short, concise job of it. 

The game tests:
1 a pair of new pieces: bishopy and rookish, [yes, the names are a cry for help, but accurate as names] that have a 2-square leaping component
2 another piece I've never used before, the falcon, in 2 roles: as queen [where it is rather weak], and as royal pair, with royal pair bringing in the potential for a 'slippery king' problem
3 a most unusual knight substitute, much stronger than the FIDE knight, that brings an aditional problem when coupled with #2, above: the power in the game shifts, with queens and knights trading places. 

The bent hero is the most powerful piece in the game; each side has a pair, replacing the knights. The falcon, on the other hand, can [for this game at least] be considered a knight-analog. This shift in power is radical, could be disconcerting to many [no big deal, we all should be more flexible :-) ] and hasn't been playtested. 

It's part of the designer's art to provide games that are balanced, or at least look balanced. This looks pretty good to me, too, or I wouldn't have put it up. But there are so many unknowns going on at the same time in this game that I can't tell if attack, defense, or checkmate is too easy, too hard, or what. It needs playtesting. A give-away is that I provide the same game with 2 different kings; that often indicates I'm unsure about the best way. But that's why it's labelled an experimental game, and that's why its rules are on the wiki, with my other experimental games that need testing.

Are these links working?

No, they have code that has problems.  Joe Joyce is the author of these presets and I do not know how to fix them (and I'm not sure they ever worked.)  I could make new versions with the code removed.

I don't know why they have code. I never use any code - I can't. Instead I erase all of it. I always make presets that are just dumb boards and pieces. When they were made, they worked. Whjen I look at what I put in, there's only this in the introduction box:

<p>This is a pair of experimental games featuring entirely shortrange pieces. There are two presets, ShortChess and Falcon King. ShortChess uses the standard FIDE king as the single royal piece with a Falcon "queen"; Falcon King has a pair of royal Falcons on each side.
</p>
<a href="http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DShortChess%26settings%3DfutC1">
  <h3>ShortChess
  </h3></a>
<a href="http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DFalcon+King+Chess%26settings%3DfutC2">
  <h3>Falcon King Chess
  </h3></a>

This is what you get when you try to get the presets:

Syntax Error on line 287

The function BIL has not been defined.        

287 for to fn join #piece L #from

If you append &submit=Edit to the URL, it will open up in Edit mode without trying to run the code. Both settings files are by Joe Joyce, and in each case, all he did was copy over the code for Chess without adapting it to these particular games. What the error message is complaining about is a line in which a function name is contructed from a piece name, but that function doesn't exist. The piece is identified by the label BI, and it looks like a bird. The particular function that the error message says is missing is one that would identify all the spaces this piece could potentially move to. But more functions that just this are missing. These games replace most of the Chess pieces with other pieces, and there is no code for these pieces. The required code is a set of functions for testing whether moves made by these pieces are legal, and a set of functions that indicate a set of spaces to check for potential legal moves. The former should be named after the pieces, and the latter should bear the names of pieces with L appended to the end. The BIL function would be one of this sort.

Joe:

The code you post is from this page, a page that provides links to the game courier presets.  But the presets themselves are separate.

Fergus:

I tried to help Joe out to remove all the code.  To do this, I wanted to (temporarily) change the ownership to myself so I could edit it.  This appears to be in two places - in SQL in the GameSettings table, and embedded in the PHP file for the preset.  I edited both places to change it to my PersonID, but it still says I can't edit it because I'm not the author (despite the fact that when editing the preset it shows me in the userid field.  Is there yet a third place when ownership is tracked?  I'm messing with the preset Game = "ShortChess" and Settings = "futC1".  Why does it not think I'm the owner of the preset?

@Greg: it looks like GameSettings wants your userID, not your PersonID.

That's correct. Game Courier expects your UserID, not your PersonID.

Ok.  I temporarily took ownership of these two presets, edited them with Game Courier to take out all the code, and then transferred them back to Joe.  I could have done it by editing the php file directly, but this seems safer.