Ratings & Comments

For some reason, it cannot find the description even though the path to that file is correct, but I'm not really concerned about that.

It wasn't prepending ROOT to the filename. So it was actually incorrect. I have now fixed that.

For some reason, the 3d graphics for Seireigi and Chu Seireigi are only showing as blank Shogi pieces, and in the case of certain Chu Seireigi pieces, not showing at all. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I noticed a bug in the Hectochess file, where, when castling, the Champion starting square is not checked to see if a piece is there or not.

I filled in the board size metadata as 8x8, but perhaps it would be better as 8x15 (still with 64 cells)?

How about switching Diamonds & Onyxes? or Onyxes with Lame Ducks? That'll make Onyxes easier to bring to long diagonals.

How about LafJ instead of Diamonds?

Ishskwaday II by Stuart Spence, AKA Zulban_tyr

280. Yak. No, this isn't another Tifinagh piece*; this is named for the animal.

It simply occurred to me recently that particularly large boards could use a piece that's the equivalent of a Buffalo (NCZ), extending one space further. I considered naming it for a pouncing predator, but besides most such creatures being already taken, it didn't seem to fit the established pattern. This piece combines the leaps of the Knight (horse), Camel, Zebra, Giraffe, and Antelope, and also includes many compound ungulates (Gnu, Bison, Okapi, Buffalo, and so forth), so an ungulate seemed fitting. After a little bit of research, the animal that stood out was the Yak. (NCZFXNY)

I deliberately excluded the (4,2) leap of the Hare/Stag/Lancer since it's just an extension of the Knight move; pieces that add the DY or N2 can be considered separately. As it is already, it can be a formidable and versatile piece.

*The two forms of the letter yak are ⴽ and (in Tuareg) ⴾ, neither of which (in my opinion) make particularly good chess pieces -- at least, not without some sort of mirror image.

This is an excellent concept. There's just one tweak I'd like to see. Pawns on the a-file cannot move any further to the left, so that could be a problem. One way to remedy that might be to divide the board vertically down the middle, giving pawns on files A-D a move to the RIGHT, and on files E-H to the LEFT, as you have currently done for all pawns.

Done!

Demiurge Turtle is mScK4 since it's based on Mock Turtle from Jupiter.

There appears to be a mismatch between the shogi graphics on CVP and that in the current source code. On CVP there are directories .../chessbase/res/shogi and .../chessbase/res/shogi2. The first contains the tile meshes and diffusemap for mini-Shogi, the second for Chu and Tenjiku Shogi. The current source code was derived from the latter, even though it reorganized the location where the diffusemaps are stored.

The problem occurs because the newly made Seireigi diffusemaps are made according to the Tenjiku design, (and placed so the view files can find them), but use the mini-Shogi tile mesh files. And it appears that these mesh files specify the use of a different part of the diffusemap for painting the top face: the mini-Shogi tiles use the top-left quarter, while the Chu-Shogi tiles use the bottom-left quarter of the maps.

I fixed the problem by editing the chu-seireigi-view.js file, to make it use the mesh files from the shogi2 folder. The kanji then appear. But apparently not all mesh files used by seireigi are there, as some of the pieces now disappear completely.

[Edit] The problem was in the map files: some Seireigi pieces use the diffusemap of Chu-Shogi pieces, and these are in a different location on CVP from where they are in the current source code (and have different filenames too). I adapted the path for the diffusemaps of Copper, Kirin, Phoenix, Lion and Queen to where these images are on CVP, and now the initial position of Chu Seireigi is correctly displayed.

Powerchess V.2.5 (also with random)

Note that it is possible to control the way the captured pieces are placed next to the board by defining arrays Model.Game.handLayout[color][handIndex]. This array should contain the square numbers where you want the first captured piece of the given color (1 or -1) and hand value to be placed. (A second piece will be placed at sqr+color, and after that counters will appear between the two shown pieces.)

Currently the default assignment is used, which places the white pieces on the first 'file' on the right of the board, the hand number equal to the rank number (which starts at 0). By defining a handLayout you could also use the ranks under or above the board to place pieces, thus requiring fewer extra ranks.

E.g. with a single extra rank (instead of the 4 you have now) you could place 6 white pieces below the board, and 14 white pieces to the right of the board.

Thanks for the catch. I only just recently realized my error there. I'll go fix that, both here and in my games where it appears, today and tomorrow.

It's good to know that you can use the bottom squares for that. Does it mean that we have to specify something like Model.Game.handLayout[1][{2:18,4:17}]; // eg : square 2, hand 18 for the white for each piecetype?

281. Mei (Chinese Rose / Rao). If a Nao is a Chinese Nightrider, then could there be a Chinese Rose? Well, of course there could! Like the Nao, the Mei (the best translation into Chinese for the word "rose" that I could find*) moves without capture normally, but must jump over a hurdle to capture. It's just that the Mei moves like a Rose. (mqNcqpN)

I don't think a move diagram is needed in this case, since most of us here knows how the Rose moves. I can vouch that the above XBetza does work; I tried it out in the XBetza Sandbox, and it behaves just as intended.

As I was informed in a later reply, this piece is called a Rao by chess problemists.

Creating this led me to discover some serious design flaws with my original Rose piece, which I've now corrected on my own system and will upload some time soon (Thingiverse is still having problems.)

*I have no doubt -- and, in fact, much hope -- that someone well-versed in the language will correct me if I got it wrong.

No, you have to write something like

Model.Game.handLayout[1] = [0,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,30,46,62,...];

if you want the first 8 'hand squares' for white to be at the bottom, and the rest along the right edge.

I still have Astra (Rosetta) on your queue, but also I’ve recently created Astromech (even squares diagonally or odd ones orthogonally, AA[W?DD]). Try to guess who is Astromech)