Check out Modern Chess, our featured variant for January, 2025.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Bob Greenwade wrote on Thu, Mar 14, 2024 04:18 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 03:34 PM:

One question you should ask yourself is why you want to expand xBetza.

My answer is: I don't. The use of an extended character set, as I'm suggesting it, would appear on a case by case basis, be programmed by the designer of the variant, and only affect that game's Interactive Diagram.

To clarify an earlier illustration. Normally, qN is more than sufficient to define a Rose, and XBetza is good enough to handle most variations that I can think of. But then there's the "Rifle Rose," which can not only move like a Rose, but make a rifle capture along the same path. There's not really any good way to do that in XBetza.

So, under my suggestion, I could define Þ to represent the Rose's movement path (possibly with a line something like def Þ = qN -- not just a character replacement, but a definition of a movement path). Then the Rifle Rose could be mÞcaibÞ. The definition wouldn't affect anything outside that one specific Interactive Diagram; other users could use a different character for the Rose, use Þ for a different function, or both. The Þ wouldn't even have to appear outside the ID, though I think that a brief explanation in the text would be the polite thing to do.

Addendum: It's already possible (though not generally a good idea) to use any Unicode character for single-character piece ID codes. I haven't experimented yet with using those in captureMatrix and similar functions, but if they work there then that's one problem (provisionally) solved -- though I'd still advise folks to avoid it when possible.


Edit Form

Comment on the page Betza notation (extended)

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.