Comments by BobGreenwade

Using the description I just gave, the F7-G9 leap would, going orthogonally, continue along vertically to g12. Any hippogonal move, by definition, rests between an orthogonal move and a diagonal one, and so an outward move after that would follow one of those two (or elsewhere along the range in between, if it's another hippogonal move).

Quite so. Sometimes, though, it's dependent on the visuals, and sometimes it's whether a physical piece exists either in manufacture or as a 3D model for printing. And sometimes it's in how the name is applied.

(Of course, I humbly concede the originality of the Magus, in terms of its move and relationship to the Wizard.)

OK, the hyphen, not the Ampersand; there's not much discussion on the use of punctuation marks (other than the asterisk) in this description.

As to the "fbrl" problem, you're probably ahead of me here, but on non-initial legs they can just all be relative to whatever an unmodified, default "forward" would be. This, something like [C-bW] would be a Knight that cannot move to a space with a piece directly beyond it -- it makes a Camel's (1,3) leap, and then slides one space back toward its starting point.

But I am a little at unease calling a Knight with permanent extra moves everywhere still a Knight...

I wonder what one would call a Knight with N2 or aN. Double Knight? Tomorrow Knight?

(A Nightrider combined with a Rose would probably be a Nightmare....)

Good thought, Aurelian! I'm not sure what I'd call it, though, in keeping with the Gerbil's portmanteau origin (and the need for it to describe something ridiculous).

Bn Em's quite right, of course; nonsense words are mainly useless, as they give no visuals to base the piece's appearance on.

if you are willing to open up the question of what kind of piece to call Rabbit it would interestiung to read such cuggestions.

I actually found this page because I was thinking of doing something similar. I think the Rabbit would work best with a combination of Bishop, Knight, and Antelope, because its Betza notation would be BNNY.

Yes, knowing the etymology of an apparent nonsense word can make it, well, non-nonsense, as is the general case with Alfil, Dababa, and Rook.

And of course there are other routes one can go for the piece's physical appearance. (Some time I'll be posting my version of the Fibnif.)

As for what to call the DNY piece, the starting point would be either "antabah" or "dabalope"; I'm not sure where to take it from there, to make a good visual.

This is mind-blowing, Jean-Louis. Well done.

Another possibility is that [N-fQ] could be interpreted as a combination of [N-fR] and [N-fB]. I think of 'outward' in continuations as excluding any crossing of a queen's path from the starting square.

Pretty much exactly what I've been getting at. (If Q=BR, then [N-fQ] = [N-fB][N-fR].)

3. Anteater. I did come up with something to go with Aurelian Florea's comment yesterday, to be a DNY to go with the Gerbil's AFX. Mashing together "antelope" with "dababah" gives us "antebabah," and "anteater" is the closest thing I could come to that.

As with the Gerbil, Charles Gilman does have an Anteater in his list, but it's specific to hex boards.

And the piece is done in the same style (and with the same height & base diameter) as the Gerbil.

And, as with the Gerbil, I wouldn't try to use this on a board smaller than 10x10.

I eagerly await the Interactive Diagram for this game. It looks like an incredible experience!

5. Pirate. The Pirate is similar to an existing piece, the Hippopotamus, in that it moves like a Knight but never moves except to capture. What's different about the Pirate is that it's neither White nor Black; it belongs to neither side (I think of it as Grey). Either player can move it.

In an initial setup, one or two Pirates would be placed in the middle rows of the board, in symmetrical positions. If the board is large enough, they should be in places where they can reach neither player's Pawns.

Related question: If the King/Mann/Commoner covers the first perimeter, the Squirrel/Bear/Centurion covers the second, and the Cheetah covers the third, what covers the fourth and fifth perimeters?

I initially had a similar thought to Daniel about the Snakes and Ships being in the corner; then I realized that standard Chess keeps the Rooks in the corners, with similar results, and doesn't suffer for it. But you do it the way you like.

And BTW, I recently added a Sabertooth piece to my Thingiverse (under Part VI). It's set to 62.5mm height with 30mm diameter base, and may or may not be suitable for your set.

That's helpful (and you have my thanks, Bn Em), but not as helpful as I'd hoped. Are there any others? Anyone?

6. Ghost. The Ghost leaps one or two spaces orthogonally or diagonally, without capturing. To capture, it slides through an enemy piece in an adjacent square to the empty square on the other side.

To be honest, I'm actually pretty sure I've seen a piece somewhere that moves the exact same thing (though described differently), but I cannot at this time recall where. I still like this take on it, though, just for the mental image.

I'm also wondering if it would be an improvement to extend its move (though probably not its capture) by one square.

I'll get to editing most of those notes later today, H.G. (the ID edits and checkmate rule will likely take a bit longer).

What symbol should be used on the rider move spots? The conventional dot?

And I agree with you on the concern about the editing staff. I already noted on the Unpublished Submissions page that there's a bit of a backlog, but of course there's nothing to be done about it. I'd volunteer for it myself if I had a better sense of game balance, but no game exists where I have that (and I spent many years writing for the HERO Game System tabletop RPGs).

I know that this variant is still flawed enough to remain Hidden, and I'm not at all surprised by it. As for my other submissions, I'm thinking of withdrawing Aquachess, but Beast Chess and Blender Chess may be good enough. I have a couple of others that I've worked on offline as well (I've mentioned one of them -- a 5x(12x12) game -- in a couple of places).

On another note, part of the issue I have with editing right now is that, once an ID is in place, the mere act of switching editing to WYSIWIG screws up the code. I have to copy-and-paste it into a word processor, change the interface, do my edits, change it back, and then copy-and-paste back from the processor. It does make editing the ID code a little easier, but for almost anything else it's a PITA. (I know it's not your department, H.G.; I just wanted to put it out there.)

Re: Rooks: OK, understood.

Re: Sabertooth: Maybe, just for this game, you should just call the piece Dire Wolf. It'd avoid a bit of confusion. (My own preference for that name would be as a third-circle leaper, but what the heck.)

And I had expected that you'd use just the head. The original is part of this collection. (You'll probably do a better job at integrating the head than I did anyway.)

Distant rider moves can use the same symbol as slider moves; only the first leap would use the jump symbol, where for sliders the adjacent square would use the same symbol as the distant targets.

OK, so a leap arrow on the first jump, and then dots on any others. Right?

Also, for a hopper one would not mark the square behind the mount as a jump; the jump symbol must be reserved for direct leaps from the square of origin. That reaching the square involves a jump is already obvious from the geometry; what the symbols should convey is whether the presence of another piece not shown in the diagram between the target and the moving piece would block the move or not.

It may take me a while to wrap my brain around how to apply that in Musketeer's Board Painter. If I understand you right, I'd use a leap/capture symbol on the square of the captured piece, and not mark the destination square at all. (Personally I'd still want to put a line-arrow from the starting square to get the information across to newbies.) Or would I use a dot on the landing square?

Note that the amount of information that one can display in a static move diagram is rather limited, and for unusual moves can easily  be misinterpreted. (E.g. imagine a 'stuttering rider', which alternately moves outward like D and then pulls back like W; it would reach the same squares as a Rook.

Yeah, for something like that, I definitely would use line-arrows, and of different colors for forward and back, along with an explanatory text. I recently put together a diagram for a combined Rose and Nightrider, which I appropriately call the Nightmare -- it's as likely to be that for both players, in different ways, as putting together the diagram was for me.