Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

In case it was missed, it's still the case that I'm currently getting an error message page (filled with code) when I click to play using an Ultima preset (that is, when trying to launch an invitation).

I am working on a new Ultima preset, and it's mostly working, but I've hit one snag. While suicide moves of the form "@-e2" are working, suicide moves of the form "P e2-" are making things go haywire, and I would rather use the latter, since they are easier to choose with the mouse. Here are the moves I'll replay tomorrow to continue trying to fix this:

1. P g2-g5 
1... p d7-d4 
2. P e2-e5 
2... x c8-g4 
3. L g1-g2 
3... x g4-g1 
4. X f1-b5 
4... p g7-g6 
5. P f2-f4 
5... p d4-e4 
6. P b2-b4 
6... x g1-g2 
7. W e1-g1 
7... x g2-g4 
8. C h1-f3 
8... p h7-h3 
9. C f3-e3 
9... x g4-f3 
10. K d1-e1 
10... i h8-h4
11. X b5-d7 // - Check! -
11... k e8-d7 
12. K e1-f1 
12... i h4-e1 // - Check! -
13. P e5-g5 
13... x f3-e2 // - Check! -
14. P h2-f2 
14... p h3-h1 // - Check! -
15. P g5-g1 
15... x f8-h6 
16. @-d2 
16... x h6-h2 
17. P c2-e2 
17... i e1-d1

Okay, I fixed the problem with suicide moves. I was thinking there were only two ways of writing them, but there were three, and by conflating two of these together, I had failed to update one of them to save values for $old and $moved when a suicide move is made. Given the multiple ways for writing these moves, I had decided to test for a suicide move by checking whether the moving piece and the last captured piece were the same, but for the full notation way of writing a suicide move, I hadn't done that.

The new Ultima presets are ready. Since the ones Antoine Fourrière had written were broken, and he is no longer active, I wrote entirely new ones that made use of the fairychess include file. These will display legal moves, and they will display piece names and descriptions in error messages. To test the new code, I replaced his preset with a new one and ran all the old Ultima games with it. Where a game complained about an illegal move, I checked which preset was at fault, and I made corrections in the new one when it was at fault. It turns out that the old preset allowed some illegal moves. In particular, I recall it allowing the King to move into check from a Coordinator. I also noticed that it handled suicide moves as deletions of spaces, which would be appropriate for Chesire Cat Chess or Wormhole Chess. For backwards compatibility, I enabled the substitute Galactic preset to handle deletions as suicide moves. But for the main fairychess preset, which the links on this page now go to, I did not. It will handle suicide moves as incomplete moves that do not include the destination. This is one of the standard ways that Game Courier handles suicide moves, and it works better with the mouse than the other ways do. One last thing is that I changed the notation to use co/CO for the Coordinator and ch/CH for the Chameleon. This should be less confusing than using c/C for the Coordinator and x/X for the Chameleon, especially if you are using the Abstract set, which displays the Chameleon in the form of the letter C. But this is only in the new fairychess preset. To be compatible with old games, the Galactic preset still uses the old notation.

The new preset is allowing Chameleons to capture pawns with diagonal moves.

The new preset is allowing Chameleons to capture pawns with diagonal moves.

Okay, that's now fixed.

@ Fergus:

I tried moving my Black Withdrawer to e2 in the following game log - it only announced check, not checkmate (I think it is checkmate) - does the preset allow a king to be captured, instead of first ending the game with a checkmate, or is there a bug?:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Ultima&log=panther-cvgameroom-2024-5-936

edit: Never mind, I see White has a defence to my Withdrawer move, with his Co-ordinator.

Never mind, I see White has a defence to my Withdrawer move, with his Co-ordinator.

Correct. It is not checkmate.

Actually, I'm still not sure if the preset will allow a king capture, instead of checkmate, as a general question unrelated to this game log at the moment.

It will not allow king capture. It enforces the 1963 rules described on the Ultima page.

Indeed. In the game log of my second last post in this thread, the game ended with the preset announcing a checkmate.

It seems that the pincer pawns are invisible using the fourth preset. The alfaerie animal set has even more missing graphics.