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New Grand Apothecary Chess Error.[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Thu, May 12, 2022 07:23 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 09:43 AM:

@HG, I had managed to do it despite some small setbacks. You know what's funny? This game also has berolina pawns!


H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, May 12, 2022 09:43 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 08:46 AM:

To add a new piece (say X / x)  to the GAME-code generated by the Play-Test applet you would have to add its move definitions at the end of the legdefs array, and supply functions X and x that return where in the legdefs array you have done that. Determining the latter is a bit of a pain; there are comments in the legdefs table that in parentheses indicate where the definition for each piece type starts, and you can then count the numbers appearing after that. Note that because the 'bare Pawn' is an asymmetric piece you would need different definitions for the white and the black one.

The move definition of a (white) FIDE Pawn is:

1  1  0  1     1
1  1  1  1     2
1  1 -1  1     2
1  1  0  2   16577 // pawn(1)
1  1  1  1     4
1  1 -1  1     4
0

The first 3 lines would suffice for the Shatranj Pawn; each line starts with the number of legs (always 1 here, as Pawns only have simple moves), the forward and sideway step size, the 'range' (= number of times the step can be repeated) and finally a code to indicate what the move can do (2 = capture, 1 = non-capture, e.p. capture = 4) and other details (like whether it is a virgin-only move). So the 4th line is the double-push, the 5th and 6th are the e.p. captures. For your bare Pawn you would leave these lines out. The final 0 indicates that the definition ends there, and that the moves that follow (if any) are for another piece. The move specifications for a piece should always end with such a 0.

In the example I copied this from the white Pawn was the first piece, so it starts at element 1 of legdefs. The special moves of that Pawn start at element 16 (as the three normal moves each take 5 numbers to describe). That means that just behind legdefs there is a line

def P cond #0 1 16;

that tells the code that the move definitions of piece P start at 1 (normal moves) and 16 (special moves = moves having side effect, such as creation of e.p. rights, or disappearance of pieces elsewhere). For pieces without special moves the latter number should always be 0. So for the bare Pawn you would have to add a line there like

def X cond #0 ... 0;

where the ... is the location in legdefs where the move definition starts.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Thu, May 12, 2022 08:46 AM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from Wed May 4 09:06 PM:

HG, I meant directly in the game code. Remaking everything is not an option as the diagram designer cannot imitate partially. I'm trying to rewrite just the game code.


ChessVA computer program
. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Thu, May 12, 2022 08:25 AM UTC:

I don't think this is a bug. At most it is a missing feature. Greg usually takes care of these but he probably not knew the rule.


Building chess. Add a square after every move.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Daniel Zacharias wrote on Thu, May 12, 2022 07:28 AM UTC:

These presets are all broken. They each have a 'conserve' command in the post move 1 section.


Falcon Chess. Game on an 8x10 board with a new piece: The Falcon. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
dead dead wrote on Thu, May 12, 2022 02:56 AM UTC:

The Falcon is a generalization of the Korean Elephant.


Pandemonium (Surajangäæ®ē¾…å “). Capablanca chess + Crazyhouse.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝Daphne Snowmoon wrote on Wed, May 11, 2022 09:36 AM UTC:

I Fixed a word

Promotes to 'Scepter' -> Promotes to 'Kangaroo'


ChessVA computer program
. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Samuel Trenholme wrote on Wed, May 11, 2022 08:21 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

I donā€™t know the correct procedure to file a bug report for ChessV, so I will just note the bug here.

Description of bug

ChessV does not use the standard Chess960 numbering scheme for opening setups. See https://chess960.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/chess960-starting-positions.pdf for the reference of correct number to starting position. In particular, ChessV is off by one (Position 0 in the official spec is position 1 in ChessV, etc.)

Steps to reproduce

Open up ChessV. Choose Fischer Random Chess. When it asks for an expected setup, choose setup #692.

Expected results

The opening setup should be RBBQKNNR (Mongredien chess)

Actual results

The setup is BRQKNNRB

Notes

Position 693 is the Mongredien setup in ChessV, so one just needs to add 1 to the official position number to get the corresponding position in ChessV.

Position 518 (519 in ChessV) is the standard chess starting position.


Turtle Shell Chess. Chess on a 33344-33434 tiling. (5x7, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝Samuel Trenholme wrote on Wed, May 11, 2022 07:54 AM UTC:

This is my attempt to put a chess variant on a non-standard tiling. While the hex tiling has been fairly extensively explored for chess variants, and there are a few games using a triangle tiling, and Tony Paletta has explored the rhombille tiling, and George Dekle has explored a few tilings, this is the first chess variant I know of that uses a demi-regular tiling (Onyx, a Hex-style connection game, uses a similar archimedean tiling).

Any comments or civil criticism is welcomed.

Until this variant gets published, guests can see a Zillions implementation of the game is at Zillions of Games; that zip file includes a PDF with full game rules.


Ironhouse. Members-Only Full tamerlane chess + Makruk + Shogi Pawns and Cannons. (11x10, Cells: 110) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.

ChessVA computer program
. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Samuel Trenholme wrote on Sun, May 8, 2022 07:00 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

https://samiam.org/chessv continues to host the ChessV software, and, indeed, has been updated to have version 2.2 of ChessV. Should chessv.org ever go down, this is an alternate download link.


Very Heavy Chess. A lot of firepower with all compounds of classical chess pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Sat, May 7, 2022 10:20 PM UTC in reply to Bn Em from 04:15 PM:

@Bn Em: thank you for your comments. Quite informative. About Heroin, drug or female hero, I was sure that it was a link. According to WP:

The head of Bayer's research department reputedly coined the drug's new name of "heroin," based on the German heroisch which means "heroic, strong" (from the ancient Greek word "heros, Ī®ĻĻ‰Ļ‚").

To be back on this debate on BWN and RFN, I hesitate between Popess/Heroin which are a bit generic or Pythia/Valkyrie which are more strongly culturally marked.

At this moment, although I like the second pair, I prefer to stick with the first couple because it will be easier to use in an other CV where a Greek or a Viking reference could be awkward. I think that Popess and Heroin do carry what I wanted them to carry, the idea of being at the top of a pyramid, being feminine, one link to spiritual, one link to physical strength. They are immediately understandable.

Sure, they are not very common words, but BWN and RFN are not very common in CVs either.


💡📝Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Sat, May 7, 2022 10:04 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 04:53 PM:

No I disagree. Popess is a word that can be used to designate someone, feminine, with a dominant position in a given domain. For instance I heard just today on radio someone speaking of a lady working in the shade for foreign affairs in France, saying she was the popess of the diplomats in her time in Paris circles. Even "pope" is used sometimes with this type of speech.

Maybe you don't know. You didn't know what a pythia is, so you don't know everything.

So, I have no problem at all to use Pope or Popess, not less than using King, Queen, Emperor, Guru, Emir, Shah or I don't know what.

On the contrary when you use the name of one person, many may think that you represent this person. Imagine I would want to honour Macron in chess, and I say, this piece is a Macron. Then if we have 2 Macrons on board, it is strange. There is no difference, if it is about Macron or Sissa.

Now, I don't care at all if games are using 2 Sissa, or 3 or 10. It's really fine with me. I understand the reference, I like it.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, May 7, 2022 04:53 PM UTC in reply to Bn Em from 04:15 PM:

but as Jeanā€Louis notes, if we can have two Sissasā€¦

Sissa is a name borrowed from a person's name, in this case a mythical inventor of Chess. Presumably, the piece is not understood to be this very mythical inventor of Chess but is just named in his honor. This is different than a title for a rank that is allowed to only one person at a time within a given hierarchy.


Manticore. (Updated!) Moves one space orthogonally, then slides outward as a Bishop.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
📝Bn Em wrote on Sat, May 7, 2022 04:18 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from Fri May 6 05:55 AM:

Perhaps that's where Daniil Frolov got it from?

I've found a few other uses since writing this page (including one in JWB's Metaā€Chess) but haven't yet decided to update it; perhaps some time soon


Very Heavy Chess. A lot of firepower with all compounds of classical chess pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Bn Em wrote on Sat, May 7, 2022 04:15 PM UTC:

If we're talking prior usage, it's worth mentioning that Valkyrie has at least three distinct usages already: A queen that can also relocate friendly pieces, Bishop capturing as Queen, and a 3Dā€specific piece moving as Rook or jumping two steps on either kind of diagonal. Conversely Heroine (albeit perhaps due to potential Drug associations) is afaict only used by Gilman for a Hexā€prismā€specific compound

Fwiw, Gilman also uses Hero on that last page, and there's also a Hero in Hero Chess. Surprisingly, Gilman seems to lack names for the two pieces under discussion (Knight+Chatelaine/Primate, to use his terminology) though. I suppose one could suggest Catholicos for BWN, as a rank above cardinal that starts with Caā€ (for the usual extrapolations: Zetholicos āŠc), but besides the long and awkward Archchancellor (note the double āŸØchāŸ©) idk what he'd've used for the RFN

Pythia seems to be unused (understandably, given its relative obscurity); arguably it falls afoul of Fergus' objection to multiple ā€˜popessesā€™, as there was only one Pythia at a time, but as Jeanā€Louis notes, if we can have two Sissasā€¦

Imo Popess feels a bit awkward as a word, and I share Jeanā€Louis' reservations re unnecessary loanwords; Pythia, Valkyrie, Heroine, and Baroness all sound fine to me


Glinski's Hexagonal Chess. Chess on a board made out of hexagons. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Daniel Zacharias wrote on Sat, May 7, 2022 06:07 AM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from Fri May 6 05:01 PM:

Thank you!


Sign in to the Chess Variant Pages. Sign in to the Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Kirito139 wrote on Sat, May 7, 2022 12:23 AM UTC:

help. i can't create an account


Glinski's Hexagonal Chess. Chess on a board made out of hexagons. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, May 6, 2022 08:31 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from Thu May 5 08:17 PM:

I took some steps to prevent the image from tiling, and now it will also work with the GIF, PNG, and JPG rendering methods.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, May 6, 2022 05:01 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 03:29 AM:

There was a typo in a new bit of code that was preventing you from selecting CSS as your rendering method. For some reason, this preset works only with CSS, and it will not work if you try to display the board as a GIF, PNG, or JPG image. I repaired your log so that it uses CSS again, and you can now continue your game.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, May 6, 2022 04:21 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from Thu May 5 08:17 PM:

I now see that you were using the unprogrammed preset that actually uses a custom grid rather than the vhex shape. So, I was going in the wrong direction when I tried to make it use the vhex shape. So, the problem is different than I thought it was, and I will have to start over. In the meantime, I have reverted it back to the custom grid shape.


@ Fergus Duniho[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, May 6, 2022 03:42 PM UTC in reply to Calixtus Wee from 03:06 PM:

You could post a description of the rules on this website.

https://www.chessvariants.com/how.html


Calixtus Wee wrote on Fri, May 6, 2022 03:06 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from Fri Sep 24 2021 06:46 PM:

Hi, I made my own Chess variant, that I call Cathayan Chess. Is there anything we can do about it?


Bombalot. Bombs can wipe out most pieces on the board.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Paul Ruane wrote on Fri, May 6, 2022 10:13 AM UTC:

For anyone who's interested, I wrote up a rulebook PDF for Bombalot.

The rules are based upon the Sir Bombalot ruleset, that I have fond memories playing back around 2000, but I mention the differences breakout boxes throughout.

Paul


Who is Who on Eight by Eight. A compilation of Zillions-estimated piece values on an 8x8 board.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, May 6, 2022 08:40 AM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 05:53 AM:

Consensus values for pieces in Xiangqi are R=10, C=6-4 (opening-endgame), H=4-6, A=E=2, P=1-3 (unpassed/passed). So C and H only approximately half a Rook, and it depends on the game phase which of the two is somewhat stronger. And one should realize here that the Horse (Mao) is only worth half an orthodox Knight on a board as crowded as orthodox chess. (Which is quite a bit more crowded than Xiangqi, so that extrapolating the Xiangqi values to that higher density might give H=3 and C=7. That would then imply N=6, which indeed gives the correct relative value of R and N. So this suggests C could be worth slightly more than a Knight in a FIDE context.)

In games without drops the opening value of pieces is dominated by what they will be worth in the end-game. E.g. it is still much better to have a Rook in the opening than a Bishop or Knight, even though a Rook on a crowded board trapped behind his own Pawns is hardly of any use at all. But it is almost unavoidable that it will get to express its true power later in the game, so that hanging on to it is a good strategy. But for Cannons the end-game value is low, and rather than waiting for their potential to develop with time, one should try to trade them in the most-favorable way before that time.

To do a meaningful empirical test of the Cannon value you would need to do it with an engine that handles it well. Otherwise the value will be underestimated. ("A piece is as strong as the hand that wields it.") And handling hoppers well means you have to be very much aware when it becomes time to exchange them for other minors. If you do that too early you would not have exploited any superiority while it still existed; if you do it too late you will be stuck with them when they get nearly useless. To make the program seek trading at the right moment it is essential that it makes the hopper value dependent on the piece density, in the correct way. Which would have too be determined empirically too.


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