Comments by BobGreenwade
Dovecote Chess. One small non-rules tweak generally changes the character and pace of gameplay. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I've been wondering about this myself. Would I (for example) have to write a Piececlopedia article to change the latter?
Very Heavy Chess. A lot of firepower with all compounds of classical chess pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I've been bothered by how to do the Heroine in a way that isn't equally well a Hero. I even have an extraordinarily cheesy attempt on Tinkercad that (I'm pretty sure) I've declined to upload to Thingiverse because of how bad it is in that regard. The sword (with the subtle Wonder Woman logo!?!) is certainly a step in the right direction; I'd love to see how it looks printed out.
My current attempt is a figure with a helmet on the head and a female symbol on the front and back of the shaft. Maybe it's not as cheesy as I think it is, but I still think it is.
I tried putting a bust on one of my figures, but it all came out either ridiculously exaggerated or stiff and mechanical.
The female symbol on the hilt of the sword would make a good one, though. (I'm resistant to using the Wonder Woman logo to avoid copyright/trademark issues, though again I'm probably being overly sensitive about it.)
95. Yagn. Like the Yaf (#73), the Yagn is based on a letter of the Tifinagh, one that makes a sound like the ñ in Spanish, and it takes both its movement and its figure from the letter. In this case, the Yagn can slide forward or backwards orthogonally like a Rook, but can also make a right-angle turn after two spaces to move sideways. (vRvafyasW)
(I thought about making the turn after only one step, but somehow that didn't seem to represent the letter quite right.)
A few other Tifinagh letters can also make for existing pieces: the Berber Academy yadj (ⴵ) as the Bishop's Dog (B3), Tuareg yax (ⵆ) as the Ferz, yan (ⵏ) as the Reverse Chariot (vR), yar (ⵔ) as the Templar (ND), yat (ⵜ) as the Vertical Mover (vRsW), and yat [fricative] (ⵝ) as the Bishop. Original pieces from various other letters are also possible; I already have yaa (ⵄ) and yagh (ⵖ), which I may feature in the future, and I can imagine pieces based on yey (ⴻ), Tuareg yah (ⵂ), yal (ⵍ), and yu (ⵓ); and I'm trying to figure out what can be done with the curved lines of the Ahaggar yaj (ⵋ) and yaz (ⵣ). All together, it can make for Tifinagh Soup!
96. Butcher. and 97. Baker. This weekend's pair came about as I was simply considering what two-leap combinations hadn't been done yet (that I'm aware of). I don't know why these particular names came to my mind for them, but here they are.
The Butcher combines the moves of the Camel and Dabbabah. (DC)
Perhaps I was thinking of the people over in the city of Washington... though this was before the current leadership crisis. Anyway, the physical piece was a simple matter.
The Baker (as you've probably already guessed) is the Butcher's rotary companion, and combines the moves of the Alfil and Zebra (AZ).
For the physical design, all I could think of was trying to simulate an open flame.
I'm not sure I succeeded (especially since a lower ring refused to render), but it's definitely visually distinctive.
Game Courier Developer's Guide. Learn how to design and program Chess variants for Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Easier to just use /membergraphics/MSdealerschess/. It's what I made/am making it for.
Betza notation (extended). The powerful XBetza extension to Betza's funny notation.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]A couple of questions about move induction using x:
1. I occasionally come across a piece that grants a move other than the one it uses to grant it -- for example, gives a Knight's move to a friendly piece a Queen's move away.
2. Negative Relay.
Are these even possible in the current setup? If they're not, don't worry much about it; I doubt that they'd be anywhere near common enough to put a lot of energy into implementing (like, say, more than about six new lines of code). I have a vague idea how the first might be doable (currently), but not so much the second.
That's pretty much what I was thinking. I can experiment a bit to see if the bracket notation works, but the xyampafsQ3 is close to what I was thinking (though I'm pretty sure I would've put the x in the wrong spot).
I'm pretty sure enemy induction would have to be done as a spell, and I have no doubt that that would be more trouble than it's worth.
And I get what you're saying about the brackets; the other day I tried to use [vcD-aK] for a "sting" capture (leap two spaces forward or backward, capture, then "bounce" to any adjacent square), and the resulting behavior was very strange. I had it convert to straight strings, edited it manually until it was right, and ended up with (including a separate non-capturing move) vDvmpafcaKvmpafcabW, which works perfectly.
I am so looking forward to the bracket notation consistently working as intended!
PS: Thank you again for all your help on the Icon Clearinghouse diagram! I may request a bit more if and when I go to make it into a separate page, but for now I'm very happy with it.
Addendum: About the apostrophes (single quotes): does this work, at least well enough to put them into the move descriptions without generating an error message?
Zwangkrieg. Pieces affect other pieces' movement, including forced movement. (12x12, Cells: 144) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I was just going about coding some of the pieces, and got to the Linebacker Pawn:
fmFfmWfmpamuabcFfmpamuabcWifmpafmpamuabcFifmpafmpamuabcW
It seems to work, but surely there's a way to make that shorter?
Favorite Games. Chess variants favorited by our members.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]It looks great, Fergus, and I wouldn't even have needed the legend to figure it out.
Dealer's Chess. Armies are chosen by dealing special cards. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Is there a maximum to the number of icons the system can handle at a time? I uploaded a few more earlier, and everything vanished from the diagram except the sample chessboard (the version that shows a piece's moves). I deleted a dozen of the new files, and it all appeared again.
It's not inconceivable. With some of these, I'm not sure why there's an ID shown as assigned at all; nothing below the Virtuoso should have any. The only pieces with IDs explicitly assigned are the Pawns, those assigned in the original Playtest Applet (unnecessarily, I think, except for the Knight), and Centauride and Okapi (again, probably unnecessarily).
Afterthought: One of the pieces I deleted was 1rook, and it may have had a conflict with 1bishop. I'll see what happens when I upload the other deleted ones.
Status Report: It wasn't just the one. The board came back after I'd deleted four pairs of files, then disappeared again when I added one back. It seems to be currently maxed out at 512 pieces (1024 images). I'm not sure if another binary digit can be added to that, to make it 1024 pieces (2048 images).
Game Courier Developer's Guide. Learn how to design and program Chess variants for Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The directory I cited is full of PNG images, which can be used on Game Courier. There are over 500 pairs of them right now. (The Interactive Diagram is just a demo of how the pieces move.)
As an aside, I do plan to convert most if not all of those that I created (by one means or another) to GIF for putting into the download area.
Variants playable against the diagram's AI. 
Index of variants that can be played against the interactive diagram.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Attempting to get things clear here...
Are you talking about rows on the board that orthogonal leapers can't go beyond?
Game Courier Developer's Guide. Learn how to design and program Chess variants for Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The GIF images are legacy, and should no longer be used for new projects.
I did not know that. I won't worry about that, then. Never mind. :)
Dealer's Chess. Armies are chosen by dealing special cards. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The problem is pretty close to what I assumed. I think I'll wait until I have an opening in the pages, and make the Icon Clearinghouse its own thing, a display page similar to the graphics pages already on the site. I'll reserve the ID here for use as a personal "notepad" of sorts, reminding me of what moves I associate with what icons. (That'll allow me to take out certain icons that I'll never use myself.)
...allow the user to add a number of 'very exotic' icons he needs to the Diagram's table, selecting those from some other table that you embed yourself in the page (E.g. showing white icons only, without name or move, and let a click on those add them behind the King, which then would also reveal the image name.) Perhaps all automatically added pieces should go into this table.
I think that this would be a good idea.
Zwangkrieg. Pieces affect other pieces' movement, including forced movement. (12x12, Cells: 144) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I found that fhmKfhmpamuabcKifhmpafmpamuabcK works just as well (fhK = fF + fW), cutting the length by nearly half. I'd love to make it even shorter, but this is definitely an improvement.
When I also include the non-pushing and initial pushing moves, it breaks down to fhmKfhmpafabucKifhmpafmpafabucK, which is the exact same number of characters as fhmKfhmpamuabcKifhmpafmpamuabcK (plus, I only just realized that I forgot to include ifhmK2). While fhmKifhmnD[fhD-bucK][ifhH-bucK] is a bit more reasonable, I'm a bit reluctant to use bracket notation while it's not working consistently, so it looks like fhmKifmnDifmnAfhmpafabucKifhmpafmpafabucK will be it for now. Thanks for trying, at least....
(It's always fun trying to "bucK" the system....) #BadPunNoCookie
Play-test applet for chess variants. Applet you can play your own variant against.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I suppose we could decide to make uu mean color-flipped unload in XBetza. But that would then have to be implemented in the ID, as well as in the GAME-code include file. It is unlikely this will be done any time soon.
FWIW, I support this idea in general (I've seen more than one case where this is done), though I certainly agree that there are more important priorities right now.
Fluky Chess. Fast-paced mini-chess variant with dice. (5x5, Cells: 25) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Don't fret, Ilya. It can take a good bit of time before a submission is approved. I have several that have been waiting one to two months or more. Three of them, I could see being delayed for differing reasons, but the other four are good to go and delayed only because of the backlog and because the editors somehow manage to have lives outside of chess. :)
Beast Chess. Replace conventional pieces with those that look like animals. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Thank you! (Even though the AI whallops me every time I try to play....) :)
Game Courier Developer's Guide. Learn how to design and program Chess variants for Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Not all GIF images have been converted to SVG. So, if you want to use certain images, GIF is still your only choice. So, he may as well make his images available as GIFs. But if he can, he should also make them available as SVG.
I'm not sure how well those (the SVGs) would work out. But I can give it a shot.
Update: I tried a converter, and got some very interesting-looking white-on-black impressionistic figures that would work wonderfully if that had been my intent.
Anyone else is welcome to give some PNG-to-SVG conversion a shot to do better.
For the most part, the discussion is academic, at least as far as my original and modified icons are concerned; I've tried several different tools now, and the best SVGs come out blurry, blocky, or both. The only exceptions would be those made up of only horizontal and vertical lines, and out of 151 such images there are only 7 of those, 6 of which are Tifinagh letters.
To be sure, I'd love to have SVG icons for most of these pieces, especially those used in Vanguard Chess, Short Sliders, and Zwangkrieg. My ability with static arts is just too meager.
If additional images would have to be added to any directory, it would be better to convert the GIF images for which no SVG version exists to PNG, and add those to the PNG directories. (It should be possible to do that automated in bulk.)
I can testify that this is not an especially difficult thing to do, as it's what I've done for most all of the other 360+ icons I've handled -- certainly, all of those not already shown in the Play-Test Applet. If you want to copy some of the results, they're right there for the taking (and I can handle anything that's missing).
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Ah, well. It was a thought. At the least, though, PP should yield an Arabic Spear. (And I do think that the Berolina Pawn is used pretty often.)