Ratings & Comments

What about Mountaineer for DZ?
AC should be related to whatever you'd call ND.

The author, HaruN Y, has updated this page.

The author, HaruN Y, has updated this page.

The author, HaruN Y, has updated this page.

I agree with all your points here, Jean-Louis! But I have two comments. I remember you did not like compound leapers. Also I thought about those pieces in an 8 stones chess environment!

P.S. By the way 8 stones chess is really good but not programmed!

Why this instruction: setsystem legalmoves ((e5 a1) (e5 b1) (e5 c1) (e5 d1) (e5 e1) (e5 g1) (e5 h1) (e5 i1) (e5 j1)); gives the error: e5-b1, which is listed as a legal move, is not a well-formed move.

Here is the preset in question.

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DFrog+Chess+with+Gryphon+and+Falcon%26settings%3Ddefault

305. Senator. and 306. Governor. These are two pieces whose names are given indirectly from their Betza notation. The first leaps two spaces orthogonally, or (1,3) like a Camel, and -- at least, to an American -- Senator seemed like a natural name. (DC)

Less obvious was the name for the piece that leaps two spaces diagonally, or (1,3) like a Zebra; in the context of the Senator, though, the only thing that seemed natural was Governor. (AZ)*

I'd originally just looked at these the DC and AZ moves for the novelty, but couldn't find any existing pieces** with those moves.

The crossed spears are from the symbols used by the Roman Empire; the wedge on the Senator recalls the eagle that was used in the Senate's symbol. The five stars on the Governor piece are just a decision based on desperation (I couldn't think of anything else!).

*For those outside the United States, AZ is the postal abbreviation for the state of Arizona, which is adjacent to the lower end of California. DC, of course, is the District of Columbia.

*Outside of Gilman's Man & Beast articles, that is. And I'm sure that if something exists anywhere to show that I'm wrong, someone will graciously point it out.

one of the viewing button becomes a "@". There is an info message: "Lacking data to view this position. To view whole game, load in last move.".

This means you loaded the game from an earlier position instead of from the latest position. You might have done this accidentally by clicking the View button, which used to be the only way to navigate through the moves of a game. You should follow the instructions and load it from the latest position. Click on the >| button, then click on the View button. This will load the game at the last move, making all past moves accessible without the need to reload any of them.

@HG: thank you very much for adding the icons I was missing for the ID of Obento. And thanks also to Daniel for their initial design.

Ok. I'm ready to declare a winner. In the 8x8 the fairy piece that delivers mate (major) on the most moves is: fWbrFfD2lfNfrblA with 159 moves from the most difficult position. I tried may other combinations and could not improve it.

@Fergus OK, I wanted to review a past game of Xhess. I picked Wed dec 13 2017. 23 moves, the last move was a resgin. so far so good. I click orentation 2nd palyer on the drop down list box. I click go back to starting position. OK so far so good. Now the view buttons contain a ">" go to next move button. I click that. next move. good. I click again next move. good. I do this four times and one of the viewing button becomes a "@". There is an info message: "Lacking data to view this position. To view whole game, load in last move.". From that point on viewing moves becomes difficult. Can you view a prior past game of xhess and see if the view functionality is working as you like? thanks. Jim.

There was indeed a fatal bug that would cause an immediate crash. I don't know how this crept into the betza.txt include file; I had seen that bug before, and fixed it, and when I tested Megalomachy it worked.Which would not have been possible with this bug. It must have reverted somehow, by the version I have on my PC and the version here on CVP being out of sync.

Anyway, I applied the fix again, and that seems to make it work. (I am not sure it would work if the King only makes a single step, though, as this is ambiguous.)

Random Omega Amazon

Attack on the Castles by Grandmaster Chessbloon, AKA a little narwhal's little brother

Of course, makes sense that Eric would've already been using such images; I haven't got round to trying Ai Ai yet so I hadn't seen them.

Though in any case I should maybe try my hand at doing some of these SVG conversions one of these days; there's still a few images (particularly these and the move‐based Bent Rider ones) that I quite like and haven't yet made it into SVG

304. Three-Toed Box Turtle. As (semi-)promised, here's the mirror counterpart to the Three-Toed Sloth from a week and a half ago. It shares the same history, except for the extra step of making it as a mirror. (And a special salute to HaruNY for the name.)

To recap: This piece moves one step directly forward, or diagonally backward and to the left; or leaps two spaces diagonally forward and to the left, or backward and to the right; or leaps two spaces forward and one to the right; or makes one or two leaps of two spaces directly forward. (fWblFfD2rfNflbrA)

This isn't necessarily the end of it, either; the fun thing about completely asymmetrical moves like this, as well as the Blue Gecko and related pieces,* is that mirroring and rotating allows for up to eight members of the move family -- sixteen, if you allow for turns of 45° as well as 90°.

Aside from an unwanted rendering artifact or two, this came out somewhat better than I expected. It's the same size as the Three-Toed Sloth piece, and thus much smaller than the full-fledged Turtle, and is pretty easily distinctive.

*Besides the Blue Gecko, I've created the Purple Finch as a left-to-right mirror, and Adrian King's original Jupiter game has a near-match front-to-back in the White Fox (if I were to use it in a game, I'd make a full front-to-back mirror of the Blue Gecko).

I'm going to keep the old one, I'm not sure I'll be able to change the black stag properly. These images may be useful one day for something else.

I think that the table diagrams I use show the morphing possibilities quite well. But I readily admit that there can be different forms of presentation. I have opted for these and would welcome it if it could stay that way.

very nice Stag

@Bn Em: thank you for this indication. For the riders, I prefer those with arrows which are derived from the Gold and Silver G. with 1 point, at least in this Obento C. context. They have been used in AI AI by E Silverman for a long time and are also available in the Musketeer's board painter tool. Same thing for the Pashtuns with 2 points.

This one looks good now

As for Morphomania:

I'll have to think about that again, because I haven't really understood it yet. A little more time would be nice.

I have made the modifications you have suggested, and now it works as expected.

I made the change.

I wondered whether I should try to draw a different sprite because the movement is different from the flying stag.
I gave it a try, and we can change for it if you like, or try to do it better...

Actually I think we still have a problem. The heavy cannon can jump (but it cannot capture) the light cannon. This can't be an capture matrix thing because $ should do them both!

Well, without a link to the offending Diagram there is little I can do to assist...

So I don't think Obento Chess 960 is really an appropriate name. It would be better to call it Fisher Random Obento Chess.

Considering that the shuffle version of Capablanca Chess is called 'Capablanca Random Chess', it would be in line to call this 'Obento Random Chess'.

I renamed this game (Square Root chess). Diagrams redesigned. I also included the PDF file.

I saw that you copied over everything, which is good. However, an unfortunate side effect of this is that the Prancing Stag diagram in Chu Seireigi's rules description is that of the Shogi Flying Stag.

To fix this, you will need to copy the image below to the biscandine site without renaming it, and then update the HTML in the Chu Seireigi rules description (You can simply copy the HTML from the CVP file, which you can find here).

When I was kid I watched much TV and consequently thought that bell peppers are spicy, because they’re peppers. Until I tried.

Now I’m almost a vegetarian for several years, and I often eat salads with it.

taken into consideration

You'll also find two listed as #12. I need to edit the entries from Pirate to Zip and subtract one from each number.

@Haru: several BLACK pieces of your "960" implementation do not show up on the diagrams.

BTW, I listed the earliest comments on your page and didn’t found PotD #4…

thanks

@Daniel: this is exactly what I was hopping to see! Big thanks

@HG or another editor: would you be kind to add these to the existing Alfaerie folder?

Thank you

Clicking restart will shuffle the pieces. 960 because it'll only shuffle Bishops, Rooks, Queens, Kings, & Marquis.

Now the one for today...

302. Yadj / Bishop's Dog. This is a piece that initially made as part of the Tifinagh set, only to find that there was already a piece elsewhere with the exact same move. I couldn't come up with a better move for the Yadj (ⴵ) than three spaces diagonally, so I left it as-is. (B3)

The other version of this piece, the Bishop's Dog, is one that I found in Adrian King's Jupiter, though I understand that its actual first appearance was in another of his games, Typhoon.

Whichever model is preferred, I think they'd be interesting not just in their respective home games, but as part of a CwDA set.

The author, Piotr Smagacz, has updated this page.

For most of those, I have made some that I hope would be good enough. The only one I didn't try is ostrich

May I ask discreetly whether anything is still missing in terms of 'Morphomania' and 'Crossroads'?

I wasn't sure I could get an effective model for this, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I think the result is of a decent caliber.

Yeah, the model is effective and turn-able. Caliber is kinda acceptable.

I'm not sure I got all the letters in the right order in the last section, but I've no doubt someone will chime in if I messed it up.

It’ll be fW4bWsmWsmpafabcduW. It’s the first time when I fix XBetza because I know where my Shieldholder with such a technic is coded, and taken that code (though then added d to make it push all pieces)

Generally such a technic of pushing is like switching bullets in revolver:

Video from “Mr. Freeman” (pt. 04).

Actually I think we still have a problem. The heavy cannon can jump (but it cannot capture) the light cannon. This can't be an capture matrix thing because $ should do them both!

(Yesterday's PotD; I had a very full and tiring day.)

301. Bullet. This piece of Lev's is one that I've categorized as "technically a spear," though its truncated forward move makes it more of a Shogi-like piece. It slides normally up to four spaces forward, or steps one space backward. It also can move without capture one space sideways, though if the space is occupied and the next one over is not then it can push the occupying piece into the unoccupied one beyond. (fW4bWsmWsmpafabcduW)

On a particularly large board (at least 16 rows), this might even be usable as a Pawn.

I wasn't sure I could get an effective model for this, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I think the result is of a decent caliber.

Hi. I need some more Alfaerie pieces for coding an ID for Obento Chess. Some are probably easy to do:

Silver Pashtun: from Silver General with 2 points instead of 1 on every direction

Gold Pashtun: similar construction

Silver Rider: from Silver General with points replaced by arrows (?)

Gold Rider: similar construction

Wildeguard (KNC): from NC with a star (?)

Is there any editor who could make them and add them?

Another one would require more work: Ostrich

Thank you

@HG My preset for this game is giving an error about fast castling. It used to work. Any idea why?

Thanks.

I've taken the comment into account, which will improve the doc.

Marking of attacked squares to weed out illegal King moves is just one of the two things the accelerated check test does. The other thing is that it tabulates for each board square which (attempted) sliding moves visit it.

It's not the same thing that you're doing, but I have now made a quicker version of stalemated called stalemated-quick, which does some preprocessing to reduce the work involved in checking for check. It starts by creating an array of the King's location and each space it may move to, and for each location in this array, it makes an array of every location with an enemy piece that has it in its range. The code looks like this:

// Build threat lists
set krange merge fn join const alias space #kingpos "-Range" #kingpos #kingpos;
set threats ();
for to #krange:
  set threats.{#to} ();
next;
for (from piece) fn #enemies:
  set in intersection var krange fn join const alias var piece "-Range" var from;
  for to #in:
    push threats.{#to} #from;
  next;
next;

So it creates multiple elements of an array called threats, each of which is an array of the enemy pieces that include that space in its full range of movement. At the start of Chess, threats.d2 and threats.d1 both have one element set to d8, and the others (elements e1, e2, f1, and f2 of threats) are empty.

To check for check, it first assumes a value of false, and it tries out the move only if there are pieces potentially threatening the space the King is on. That move looks like this:

set checkpos cond == #from #kingpos #to #kingpos;
set checked false;
if count elem var checkpos threats:
  move #from #to;
  set checked fn threatened #checkpos;
  restore;
endif;

Instead of using the checked function, it used the threatened function, which looks like this:

def threatened anytrue lambda (fn const alias space #0 #0 var king) 
elem var king threats 
=movetype CHECK 
=king;

This function expects threats to be populated with appropriate values. So it can't be used everywhere checked can.

In tests with Chess, everything seems to be working. After making sure it worked, I did some speed tests comparing 100 calls to stalemated with 100 calls to stalemated-quick. In each pair, stalemated is first, and stalemated-quick is second. The results show that stalemated-quick is normally quicker.

Elapsed time: 4.7686970233917 seconds

Elapsed time: 2.8460500240326 seconds

Elapsed time: 4.8747198581696 seconds

Elapsed time: 3.0506091117859 seconds

Elapsed time: 4.4713160991669 seconds

Elapsed time: 2.9584100246429 seconds

@François Houdebert,

While I was on the biscandine site, I noticed a few errors in your rule descriptions, as well as an error in the Tori Shogi Jocly implementation.

In the Tori Shogi Jocly implementation, Player A's Left Quail has its movement mirrored from what it should be.

I have attached the corrected images for the movement diagrams below. I also removed the extraneous black lines from the Mini-shogi setup image.

https://www.chessvariants.com//membergraphics/MSa.-m.-dewitts-miscellaneous-files/corrected-images-biscandine-jocly.zip

The author, Bob Greenwade, has updated this page.