Ratings & Comments

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Applet

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+2&settings=Applet

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+3&settings=Applet

Well, I fixed the previous problem we had as Fergus suggested, by retrieving the shuffle made when the game was created from the constant 'startshuffle', like:

  if isconst startshuffle:        // shuffle has already been determined
    setsystem space @startshuffle;// retrieve it
  else:                           // new game; must shuffle
    ... // perform shuffling on $space
    setconst startshuffle $space;        // save the shuffle for persistent use
  endif;

That is, Fergus told me to write an @ before it, otherwise a wrong, uninitialized variable was retrieved, which led to a board of all white pawns. This seemed to work at the time. If you get a new shuffle now, it can only be because the test "isconst startshuffle" returns false, and it starts making a new shuffle rather than retreiving the old one (which apparently for some reason ceased to exist). If you shuffle again you are unlikely to get the same position. Perhaps Fergus knows how a constant can disappear.

Happy holidays to you all!

Yes yes, excellentes fêtes à tous, tantissimi auguri a tutti, very happy season's feasts to all, muy buenas fiestas a todos, tre bonaj ferioj al cxiuj. You are a great community. Take care of you and your beloved ones.

Merry (belated) Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

Omega Chess is an interesting case, aside from being (I'd guess) something of a commercial success. 10x10 (instead of 104 cells) would be what a purist would wish for, and that size might look better on someone's coffee table (I should have mentioned in my previous post an obvious point [to be clear], that a replacement CV(s) for chess would do best if it could be played on a physical set).

Omega Chess also has the known drawback that K+R normally cannot mate lone K due to the extra corner squares off the edge. However, this incidentally gives me the idea that since Omega Chess could be played on a 12x12 board (with many squares covered up, except the corner squares), 12x12 physical sets may look okay (even on coffee tables), besides 10x10 ones - it's just a question of whether 144 cells, rather than 100 or 104, is too much for many people's mental grasp (though 12x12 Gross Chess is one possible counterexample, that has had quite a bit of testing, at least on Game Courier).

Still, I have the feeling that 100 cells is already a size allowing for more than enough extra pieces in a setup, for a given CV never to be exhausted in terms of opening theory (as FIDE chess now may be in danger of). A problem, though, is that unlike 8x8, on 10x10 already bishops would be normally significantly stronger than Kts, if both types are in a CV. Plus, pawns may already take longer to promote on such a longer board, which could slow things down. However, any attempt to vary from FIDE Chess will always involve tradeoffs, even if the CV invented is very interesting.

I think if a 10x10 game ever became very popular, 12x12 wouldn't seem so huge anymore.

What would it take though, for a bigger game to replace the current chess in popularity? People would have to feel that 64 squares is too few, and be dissatisfied enough to try something else. But there would need to be an obvious game to try, or it's possible that none would ever attract enough attention to be considered the standard chess. Having multiple candidates diminishes the obviousness of all of them. Right now, perhaps, most people interested in chess variants aren't looking for a new standard, they're looking for variety. I know I am, at least.

I wonder why the 64 square chess is so popular anyway, aside from being popular for its popularity. Could it be that people tend to prefer smaller games, as long as they're not too small?

Worrying about bishops being stronger than knights seems unnecessary, since there would be new pieces anyway. Also, the time it takes for pawns to promote doesn't depend on the board size so much as on the setup and promotion rules. In Gross Chess, pawns can promote with 5 moves, and in Apothecary Chess they can promote with only 4.

A fresh replacement CV for chess discussion really should be in a NextChess thread, but I chose to put it in this more recent thread. All the same, the Next Chess (if ever one) strongly relates to the future of chess variants, as it is from the best CVs that a Next Chess (or more than one) will be born.

Does there have to be only one Next Chess, in terms of one being the number one popular variant? I used to think so, though some have argued that since various forms of Poker are played and are each successful, there is room for more than one popular Next Chess. Right now, the undeniable Classics are chess, shogi and Chinese Chess, but with chess suspected to be most popular (600 million adults says FIDE) - some say Chinese Chess must be played more, but I haven't found authoritative figures.

Anyway, chess is showing its age, and many think it will be played out sooner or later, opening theory-wise. Lots of draws at elite level, or engine level. Otherwise, chess would be a fine game - the fact it is a managable (and square) 8x8 size makes it all the nicer. However, for there to be longevity to a CV, it may require more pieces in the setup than 16 per side - or 9x9 shogi's 20 per side. That's where 10x10 comes in, perhaps. Even if Grand Chess is a winner as a Next Chess, at least there are 100 cells to play the game on, so opening theory is also hard to exhaust, that way. Plus, a nice square 10x10 board may be still managable for most people, compared to 12x12.

I'm for listing candidates, then narrowing them down if possible, to get one Next Chess. If that's not easy, maybe the more CVs the merrier, if lots of people play each. CVP website can be viewed as a lab where we try to come up with winning CV designs, and test them, or at least rate them.

A possible counterargument to 12×12 being too much for a ‘standard’ might be Chu Shōgi — after all, it was the most popular Chess in Japan before the introduction of drops to its smaller brother.

I'd expect a ‘Next Chess’ would be likely to at least have a single set of basic rules (i.e. regarding check, promotion, winning conditions, ⁊c.), probably the FIDE ones, though arguably even there there is some tweaking that might be worth doing; I would be very much in favour, though, of a poker‐like situation where multiple games (probably just different piece sets, in practice) enjoyed comparable popularity — and might even be mixed regularly in both casual and tournament play.

I'd have to look again, but I recall Chu Shogi has a lot of short-range pieces. Reasonably popular (so far) 12x12 Gross Chess does have quite a few long-range types though, which may definitely be a possible counterargument to 12x12 being too hard for most people to grasp. Maybe (like for Chu Shogi) a lot of folks would prefer a well-played CV game to not last for too many moves on average, though.

A very Much agree that the future chess should be more variants enjoying similar popularity! I agree with you Bn Em here!

One figure I've seen (on CVP website) is that 200 million play Chinese Chess (maybe low estimate), and I've seen elsewhere that 20 million play 9x9 shogi (again maybe too low). So, at the moment at least, both chess and Chinese Chess are the (2) most extremely popular CVs, to say the least.

edit: From the main page, a link to Fergus Duniho's ideas re: Designing good chess variants, fwiw:

https://www.chessvariants.com/opinions.dir/fergus/design.html

Chu does have quite a few short‐range pieces, like (Sho) Shōgi; it's not exactly devoid of longer‐range ones though: Rook, Bishop, Queen, as well as Dragon Horse and ‐King are the more conventional ones (and all but the queen in pairs), and it even has, to Western eyes, weird things like side‐/vertical movers and their promotions. And even with the short‐range ones, at first sight the variety of very similar moves might seem confusing just as several long‐range pieces might.

Gross Chess is popular here among CV fans; that speaks, no doubt, to its playability and potential popularity — and may well indicate it as a good candidate for a successor — but says very little imo about how 12×12 might fare among a more lay audience — while Chu demonstrates that it's possible for it to hold that status.

The point about game length is potentially a concern once the board gets bigger (and is almost certainly, alongside tractability, once of the limiting factors for going to e.g. 14×14 and beyond as anything ore than a novelty), though I'd've expected at least games with plenty of long‐range pieces to balance that somewhat. I wonder how long the average game of Gross or Metamachy (of which I've been playing a fair bit against Jocly's AI recently) is, esp. compared to Chu.

Tonight I went through Game Courier's list of all games, looking at those played at least 10 times, to date, to compile a preliminary list of 10x10 CVs. That is, for people to consider at leisure, to whittle them down to 1 or more possible 'Next Chess' candidates (if they could choose/predict), with the assumption that 10x10 is a very good board size (maybe the best). Some of these games I know have been played elsewhere, perhaps many times, and all seem interesting in one way or another:

1. Eurasian Chess (x103);
2. Grand Chess (x77);
3. Shako (x63);
4. Opulent Chess (x61);
5. Sac Chess (x61);
6. Caissa Britannia (x55);
7. EuChess (x41);
8. Colossus (x35);
9. Expanded Chess (x27);
10. Grand Cavalier Chess (x27);
11. Unicorn Great Chess (x26);
12. Storm the Ivory Tower (x25);
13. Bear Chess (x24);
14. Grand Shatranj (x23 = D & R versions in total);
15. Wildebeest Chess Decimal (x18);
16. TenCubed Chess (x17);
17. Butterfly Chess (x15);
18. Centennial Chess (x14);
19. Great Chess (x14);
20. Jetan (x11);
21. Atlantean Barroom Shatranj (x11);
22. Ajax Chess (x10);
23. Mimic Chess (x10).

Edit: My own personal Next Chess candidates I can tentatively narrow to #2,3,4,6,8,9 and 13 in the list above.

I think Eurasian Chess and Wildebeest Decimal Chess are easily good enough to consider as well.

Another excellent 10x10 game that was not mentioned by Kevin but was very much played on this website (but I don't think it is played elsewhere) is Rococo, even it differs a little more from chess than the other mentioned variants. Rococo is also a "recognised variant" on the CVP (for what it's worth). But I suppose that accustomed chess players would more easily be interested in more "conventional" variants.

I wasn't sure Rococo was truly a 10x10 CV, since the edge squares have special, restrictive rules applied to them, compared to the other squares (though I guess something similar might somehow apply to Storm the Ivory Tower, or even Eurasian Chess, each with River rules among others).

Another note I'd make is that I recall Fergus wrote somewhere that he preferred another one of his games (maybe [12x12] Gross Chess) to Eurasian Chess, though at least that one's currently on his personal Favorites list.

I am not sure though about future chess variants. What do you have in mind Kevin? I was thinking about your 3 games with FA, FH and WA. I though adding one strong piece on an 11x8 to Ballance things out. I think it would be an improvement. Or even a 12x8 or (a better in my opinion) 12x10. I'm particularly interested in adding an archbishop and a dragon king to the mix. Dragon horse and chancellor could be something, too. And want about the gryphon and manticore?

From the intro to (10x10) Centennial Chess, by formerly active CVP editor John William Brown:

"Such 10x10 games, often called decimal chess, have been the holy grail of game designers for ages. Many scholars felt that the move to a 10x10 board would be the next logical step in the chess's continuing evolution."

I have gone between liking 8 ranks in a CV (good for FIDE pawns' rules) and liking 10x10, though once again I think Mr. Brown is right about 10x10 being at least the next (if not final) step for chess' evolution - allows for more pieces in the setup (perhaps good for the final version of chess, if any possible), without the board size being too big, in case most people don't like games that might go too long.

Having thus arbitrarily narrowed the search for what a Next Chess looks like, I thought Game Courier might reveal some really good candidates (already) for a (10x10) Next Chess. Of course, something else 10x10 might come along eventually, but people have not made this argument explicitly - instead there seems to be a slight lack of interest here, as if future generations/elite chess players will decide, not us, so why should we even try to explore the question/lay groundwork? At least I compiled a preliminary list of 10x10 hits on GC.

I cannot recall what a Dragon King is, though I do know a Dragon Horse (RF). Aside from that, 11x8 strikes me as a board size that, since there is an odd number of files, not many may like it, though there was some popularity for Wildebeest Chess. The Gryphon is part of Daniel's 10x10 CV I included as one of my picks for a Next Chess candidate, so fine with me.

RF is Dragon King. Dragon Horse is BW.

It's morning here, so not too awake. Thanks for correction, H.G.

Having thus arbitrarily narrowed the search for what a Next Chess looks like, I thought Game Courier might reveal some really good candidates (already) for a (10x10) Next Chess. Of course, something else 10x10 might come along eventually, but people have not made this argument explicitly - instead there seems to be a slight lack of interest here, as if future generations/elite chess players will decide, not us, so why should we even try to explore the question/lay groundwork?

It is interesting to think about what might be the next step for chess; but, supposing there were one obvious choice, what would you do with it? It's interesting to try to find or design likely candidates, but to really become the "next chess" it would need to be promoted somehow. I guess the choice of board size and piece selection and other rules is limited by the need to appeal to existing chess players. Probably most, or all, of the games suggested are good enough in that way. What's really needed to replace chess isn't finding the right game, there are several of those already; it's getting enough of the right people, with the ability to promote such a game, interested enough in one such game to do so.

It would be better, I think, if people didn't think about chess as a specific game, but as a family of more or less related games. Being a good chess player wouldn't mean specializing in mastering one set of rules, but developing skills applicable to many different varieties and being able to adapt to different systems.

Well, I didn't mean to imply by my previous post there would be only one Next Chess - previous posts clarified a plurality may be fine, too. Old threads specifically about a Next Chess explored various types of CVs (e.g. Circular, Oriental, Ultima-like...) and which candidates there might be for each type, if the chess world ever had similar thinking to many of the denizens of this CVP website, when it comes to sampling from a variety of variants.

Once and if a Next Chess (one or more) are popular choices with at least a clique or cult-like following of people, promoting some or all of them is indeed the next challenging step - made easier with the internet these days, though. Some variants in the past were promoted fairly quickly, with no followers initially, even, but then apparently cooled out in terms of popularity (e.g. Chess960).

A question maybe of more interest to people on CVP website is, why haven't chess variants (in general or on this website) already been more than sporadically promoted, and why have relatively few, if any, really taken off to any degree? This returns to the main subject of this thread, if people already see the Next Chess topic as flogging a dead horse. Or would that also be flogging a dead horse, too?

Well, I didn't mean to imply by my previous post there would be only one Next Chess - previous posts clarified a plurality may be fine, too.

I didn't mean to imply that you implied that. I actually like the whole Next Chess idea, whether it's one game or several. Others might have more worthwhile things to say about it than I have.

This returns to the main subject of this thread, if people already see the Next Chess topic as flogging a dead horse. Or would that also be flogging a dead horse, too?

I don't see it that way. It's an interesting topic. Regarding your question, I have some thoughts about that, but I don't know much since I've never been involved in organized chess playing. It seems like whatever variants do achieve some popularity are very conservative, such as 960. Perhaps many who take chess seriously are interested in chess primarily for the shared experience aspect, or competition—thinking of chess as a sport more than as a game. Someone who thinks that way might perceive any suggestion of a significant change to the rules as promoting an entirely different game—a revolution rather than an evolution. Does that make any sense?

Definitely makes sense, to me. Almost all the seven 10x10 Next Chess candidates I picked for my own personal list resemble FIDE chess a lot. Caissa Britannia may be the most different of the bunch, with a different royal piece and some piece types that use complex movements - still, I thought it might seem a cool enough game that might appeal to all but the most conservative FIDE chess players (maybe most of them, unfortunately), assuming they ever think about the Next Chess topic.

My own 10x10 Sac Chess has been played over 60 times on GC, and I was tempted to include it, but so far I (the inventor) have been mostly one of the players of these game logs. There may also be imperfections with Sac Chess, that I think I now see, but I may be wrong. In any case a Next Chess ideally should have a lot of different playable opening sequences possible, early on in the move count.

Maybe it would be reasonable to try blocking this particular word or item in the settings of your advertising provider (I can't say exactly if an eBay account is required). I'm not sure if the CV staff can help in this situation, although this seriously seems to be quite a fun case.

Being based in France, I see ads from e-bay in French. But many are not related to chess. The reason is that "chess" is "échecs" in French, always at plural, with an "s" at the end. The word in singular, "échec" means "failure" in English. (It also means "check" which may complicate).

So, there several ads for books dealing with the failure of something, failure of education, failure of economy, whatever, but no relation at all with chess.

The search term has in fact been "echecs", but since you pointed it out, I did see some books in the preview for the books ad that used the world echec, such as L'ECHEC DE L'ISLAM. To fix this, I changed the search terms to "echecs -echec", and only books with "echecs" in the title showed up.

I have now modified insertlink.php to enforce the same rules.

A tournament would be nice. A longer one than usual maybe.

The classic answer was to hold a Design contest (the obvious themes in this case being Silver and/or the nr 25), but I'm not sure if we have enough people active here aþm for that to really work — istr the 2017 20th‌‐anniversary one never really went anywhere (though I suppose one could always try recruiting from other Variant fora…).

That said, a tournament would work too. Featuring games from throughout the pages' tenure…

But what was CVP in 1995-1997 then?

It looks like I had incorrect information on the page I consulted last night. So, the Silver Anniversary was two years ago in 2020.

That is sad, then.

I'd like it, but people do not seem interested at this time.

I was merging the functionality of canonicalURI, which takes an ItemID, into make_link_url, which takes a row, and I didn't do a thorough job of it. That is now fixed. Instead of duplicating functionality, canonicalURI will now use the ItemID to get a row with which it can call make_link_url. Having make_link_url call canonicalURI, as it was doing before, was wasteful, because it queried the database for a row it already had from a previous database query.

The Google Custom Search turns up this when searching for ‘ski‐rook’: https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/abc-chess.html

Apparently it contains a (leaping) ski‐bishop, though no actual ski‐rook. Only one I could find though. EDIT: Never mind, apparently it's just an example. And all the other usages of ski‐sliders or Pickets (and their compounds) seem to be lame. Which leaves only a game which I've had in mind but not yet got round to writing up, where a leaping‐picket+wazir promotes from a Phoenix/Waffle. And arguably (albeit failing the ‘straight line’ condition) the original GA unicorn/rhinoceros

I must admit I'm surprised these aren't more popular…

Where does the ski- name come from then?

The Heavenly Tetrarch in Tenjiku Shogi has ski-slide moves, but combines them with igui on the skipped square. The Wyvern in the Daring Dragons army of CwDA has a sideway ski-slide. (This caused a lot of trouble when programming it in the KingSlayer engine.)

‘Ski‐’ seems to date back at least as far as Jelliss' ’All the King's Men‘, which would seem to be a work about pieces but not an actual game (I can't seem to access it though, and fsr the link in the Alphab. Index is to https://www.chessvariants.com/link/). Idk if he got his terminology from another source himself

I knew I must have forgotten something — looks like it was indeed Tenjiku's Tetrarch

The correct external link page for All the King's Men is https://www.chessvariants.com/link/pcAlltheKingsMen (a semantic version of https://www.chessvariants.com/index/external.php?itemid=pcAlltheKingsMen).

There Jelliss references himself in a '73 The Problemist article, which somewhat remarkably are available online at https://www.theproblemist.org/mags.pl?type=tp. Clicking and searching through the issues, I find Ski pieces defined on page 387 of the November/December issue 285.

In English, skiing is a winter sport that involves sliding on snow with a long plank attached to each foot. The piece name probably refers to a ski jump, in which a skier goes down a ramp that sends him up into the air for a while before touching ground.

It worked before! Hopefully HG knows better!

It seems no one knows what happened. It worked before.

It seems the J/j piece is not defined as an imitator. In the Pre-Game code the legdefs array should be initialized for the Imitator as

1 -2  0  1   16777219 // joker(1826)
0
1 -2  0 -1   16777219 // joker(1832)
0

But instead of a -2 you now have a 1 there.

How was this Pre-Game code created? Did you paste an existing Interactive Diagram into the Play-Test Applet, or did you select the pieces one by one from the table?

To be honest I don't recall it is a long time ago. But it worked before. Anyway I'll make the change.

I have made the change and now it works! May I enquire what the -2 stands for?

Each line in the legdefs array represents the leg of a move, and contains either 5 or 4 numbers. The first leg always contains 5 numbers, the first number indicating how many legs the move has. A zero there indicates no more moves follow for that piece.

The other 4 numbers are range (1 = leaper), x-step y-step and 'mode'. The latter describes what must occupy the target square for the leg to be possible.

Ranges smaller than 1 are of course meaningless, and those are used to indicate special cases that cannot be described as a (repeated) step. Such as imitation. These 'invalid' rages are recognized, and will cause execution of dedicated GAME code to handle the particular case. E.g. -1 would be used for the variable range of Pawns moving up to the board half. A -3 would cause calling of a user-supplied GAME code subroutine for generating the move.

I guess there is currently a mismatch between how the Interactive Diagram handles imitation (indicating it by some bit in the 'mode') and how the betza.txt GAME-code include file handles it (through range = -2). It would have been the task of the Play-Test Applet to make that translation when you make it generate GAME code. I cannot recall changing any of these. But I must have, if you say it worked before. In any case I should fix the Play-Test Applet to emit the -2 as range when the mode specifies imitation.

Thanks, HG. I got it. Good luck!

HG, Actually in the following it is not about an error. But I need to figure out how to edit the already done preset so that when the joker that imitates a pawns it inherits only it's basic properties, no double move, en-passant, promotion. The way I had done that earlier was to treat the pawn separately and when it is the case that it is the last piece for it I imitate a barren pawn piece. This worked fine. But I do not know how to do it here. The diagram will still not be able to do that and that is fine for a newcomer, the game is complicated enough as is, but for the game code I think I can do it, just guide me a bit to how.

The GAME code in the betza.txt include file updates a variable 'toimitate' in its HandleMove routine, so that it will contain the ID of the piece to imitate on the next move. You could use the trick with the dummy piece also here. Say that its ID would be X or x, you could add this code in the Post-Move 1 section after the call to Handle move:

set toimitate cond == #toimitate p x #toimitate;

And in the Post-Move 2 section the same, but with capital P and X. The == #toimitate p tests whether the next piece to imitate would be a pawn, and if so, changes it to x, but otherwise leaves it as it was.

Thanks HG!

I now fixed the Play-Test Applet's GAME-code generation such that it does use the correct way for specifying a move as imitation in the 'legdefs' table it generates.

One caveat: the trick the betza.txt include file uses for determining whether moves are legal during highlighting is not reliable when imitators are present. Because it determines the pinned pieces and attacked squares before the move. And the move will usually change what the imitator is immitating. So it is recommended to use highlighting of all pseudo-legal moves, by specifying

set pseudo 1;

at the end of the Pre-Game section.

Thanks, for that HG!

It seems in the game code I can castle out of check and that should not happen.

I think it just highlights the move as legal but doesn't let you actually do it.

I verified this. You are correct!

That is a consequence of pseudo-legal highlighting. The issue of moving into / out of / through check is what makes the difference between fully legal and pseudo-legal moves.

Ok!

@HG, Hello I want to use the dummy piece trick here the way you suggested a while ago. I don't know how to define the dummy pawn (a pawn with no capture, en passant or promotion).

EDIT: I mean without having to redo the diagram from scratch.

Can you help me?

I think another design contest would be nice. I like having the option of two different numbers; I could do something nice with 62 spaces if we need more submissions.

(This is the same Sam Trenholme who made Schoolbook a long time ago. I’ve given up on password recovery, so I’m just using a new account. As an aside, Gmail isn’t getting the verification emails.)

Whether a piece can promote or not depends on its ranking in the piece list and the value of maxPromote. If you want a Pawn that cannot e.p. capture you just leave out the e mode. E.g. fmWfcF instead of fmWfceF.

You will find it in the alphabetical index under P. It can generate GAME code for rule enforcement / highlighting in Game Courier presets. But it has no provisions for uncommon rules like Frog kissing, or mixture of chess and shogi promotions. So it would be necessary to supplement it with code of your own.

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.

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

I have also created dummy berolina pawns and made the trick for them, too!

In my opinion riders based on a leap other than a king step are very awkward to play with. That holds for NN, but also DD and AA. It is never intuitively clear whether the path between such a rider and a distant target is blocked, especially when the blocker is far from both. For me that makes them annoying pieces.

I guess the problems with tactically non-quiet opening positions can be avoided by putting all pieces more valuable than a Nightrider two ranks behind the Pawns. Then the Pawns will block any Nightrider attacks on them. And of course make sure all Pawns and pieces directly behind them start protected.

I find nightriders difficult to visualize, even with the three-colored board, but despite that they seem to work well in the grand apothecary games since there are enough pawns and weaker pieces to block them.