Comments by BobGreenwade
Short Sliders. Pieces are initially limited to 4 spaces (if that), and promote to longer moves. (12x16, Cells: 192) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Evidently I've misunderstood what the "Usual Equipment" section is about.
Icon Clearinghouse 1. A collection of chess icons for all to use in Interactive Diagrams and Game Courier setups.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Note for editors:
This is not actually for a new game, but rather a collection of graphics icons for anyone to use. I expect to start uploading them en masse tomorrow. (I suppose it could go under Piece Articles, since I'm also including XBetza for most of them.)
Muster Chess. Each player can muster different armies. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Truly interesting would be a game of this played between myself and Adrian King.
Dear editors,
I misspelled "okapis" in the index description for this, and now cannot fix it. Could one of you take care of that, please?
To whichever editor kindly corrected my index info, I give my thanks.
I've noticed that the correction I did with the game's name didn't take to the index listing.
Other than that, I think this one's ready for publication.
98. Candlestick Maker. It probably stands to reason that where there's a Butcher and a Baker, there's bound to be a Candlestick Maker (or Chandler). This one is simply a compound of the other two. (ACDZ)
I could also, based on the move diagram, see a Four-Leaf Clover as an alternate name (and piece design, though I don't have one right now because that only just now occurred to me).
In my own opinion, this is one of my best designs. Then again, it's all simple geometry.
Wedgie Chess. A triangular starting area on a rectangular board. (9x12, Cells: 68) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]With the addition of a working Interactive Diagram, this variant is now ready for publication (pending editorial review and other backchat).
I could always create a new version under the correct URL, and then "un-create" this one, if need be.
99. Nao (Chinese Nightrider). What the Pao (Cannon) does orthogonally and the Vao does diagonally, the Nao does along a Nightrider's lines: it moves normally when not capturing, but must leap over a piece to capture. (mNNcpNN)
We don't see this one much these days, which I think is too bad; it seems to me like a rather interesting piece, especially on larger boards.
That's worth a consideration; I've been thinking about doing another 16x16 game, this time with the row behind the Pawns filled with Spears (and similar pieces); if the back row (out of four) has the Nao and other "problem pieces" (like my own creation, the Sniper), it could make for an interesting game.
Zwangkrieg. Pieces affect other pieces' movement, including forced movement. (12x12, Cells: 144) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Now that I have an Interactive Diagram in place (albeit as yet untested), I think this one's ready to be published.
Boyscout. 
Moves in a diagonal zigzagline.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Your Wazir-Crooked Bishop sequence seems like basically a Crooked Rhino. (To make the name more colorful, you might consider Limping Rhino.)
As for your color-switching piece of approximately Rook value, the Play-Test Applet scores the Rook at 411, and the Okapi (NZ) at 421.
Once again, Bn Em's piece hunting proves to be quite superior.
Probably not for 101st, for the short notice, but you never know.
I can't quite wrap my head around the Astra, but the Torch is basically a Skip Queen, so it shouldn't be too hard to diagram, and the piece not much harder.
And yes, I've had tomorrow's #100 figured for a couple of weeks now.
Boyscout. Moves in a diagonal zigzagline.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Color-switching approximately Rook-valued pieces that I know are NH, NW, Mao-Bishop, Trojan Horse.
I guess the Okapi is a no-go? Is it too weak, or too strong?
You could also consider the Aurochs (NFX) or the Impala (NYN).
Ah! Well, you could always try a Skip Rook ([W-nD]). Or, you could use a Lame Okapi, Impala, or Aurochs.
100. Fairy. I'm abit amazed that, in over a century since the term "fairy chess" was coined, nobody (as far as I can determine) has invented a piece that's actually called a Fairy before now.
The Fairy, as I propose it, is a sort of "Relay Friend." Like the Friend, it has no moves of its own (though some may prefer to give it a King's move), but gets its moves from friendly pieces that guard it. It can further relay those moves to any friendly piece that it could reach using those moves.
For example, in the illustration below, the White Fairy is guarded by the Knight and the Bishop, and so borrows their moves. It could move using either of those abilities, but it can also use the Bishop's move to relay the Knight's move to the Rook, allowing the Rook to capture the Black Queen.
The Betza for this is still under development, but I'm pretty sure it'll involve the M atom and the x modifier.
Icon Clearinghouse 1. A collection of chess icons for all to use in Interactive Diagrams and Game Courier setups.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I have this page almost ready for potential publication, and I've hit some sort of wall. I can still edit the text just fine, but adding even one more icon pair causes membersubmission3.php to come up as a blank (pale yellow) screen.
Could the problem be too many tables, too many graphics icons, or just a glitch in the system?
(I hope it's not having too many icons on one page; if that's the case, I'll have to make it a multi-page project, and I don't know how many openings I still have for new pages.)
It sounds like, even with that change, I'll have to break up the information pages to more than one (though I'll still be keeping all the actual graphics here).
Thanks for the info, Ben, and the advice.
Addendum: After taking a good look (while changing the addresses for most of the graphics), I can see that it's going to need at lest three additional chapters. Hopefully, not more than that.
So it is, Jörg, and I hadn't noticed -- the King Cheetah/Pronghorn does share that move. That's worth noting, though for the Pegasus I really prefer the Tiger Chess version ([N?fR]).
That one I was aware of, and in fact I've mentioned it a few times here and there. While Ciccolini's General (BDD) is more widely known, I'm reluctant to ignore Paulovitz's version, so for my own part I'm calling it Janaaral (the English loanword of "general" to Arabic), and I'm using the name General as the basis for all other K+leaper compounds as I go along (Jikilele, Mkuu, etc.).
Icon Clearinghouse 1. A collection of chess icons for all to use in Interactive Diagrams and Game Courier setups.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I'll change the listing, and while I can't change the filename here I can try changing it on my own computer and re-uploading.
Thanks for the note!
On another note: I did get Part 2 started, but I hit the "maximum open submissions" wall for doing Parts 3 and 4 (as well as the Vanguard Chess Game Courier link). I'll just keep at these two until a couple of spaces open up.
OK, clearly the "Mann/Menn" pun fell flat. (Interlinguistic puns tend to do so, but I thought I'd try.) I'll make it Man/Men.
I don't really understand what's the point behind this if it is not in SVG. I made my own designs in PNG initially, and then manually converted them to SVG with appropriate changes.
I've tried batch-converting SVGs from some of these, and the results were disappointing at best and disastrous at worst. And doing that manually? There are over 500, and only a relative few are already available as SVG.
Note that Motif is available as SVG ( http://chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/svg/motif/ ), and Magnetic and xboard as well. It appears you have copied the Motif pieces that are not anti-aliased, and it should be possible to get much better images. Especially since it appears you are using converted images collected in your own directory, it seems advisable to convert the SVG rather than the deprecated GIF images.
I hadn't really looked at the Magnetic set; I tried converting the XBoard set from the GIFs, and the results were horrible. That said, I wasn't even aware that there were SVG images available here, other than the basic Alfaerie. I'll need to grab those, and make a whole new page for them.
(I'd replace the images here, but I've had issues with trying to replace files with new files of the same name; the old ones stay around for some reason. And no, flushing my cache, or even clearing it out completely, doesn't change things. Also, my facility for editing them into my own creations -- such as most of the QBRM table -- is, to say the least, quite lacking.)
I don't think it is a good idea to mention the Alfaerie Champion icon as a possible representation of RN. If you are going to show every icon corresponding to a name that was given to a piece moving in a particular way, things would completely get out of hand. Nowadays the name Champion is strongly associated with the Omega Chess WAD, and using it for RN would only cause confusion. Similarly, I would not use the Alferie Princess icon for a BN. Note that Utrecht has a (rather awkward) KnightBishop icon that on this website is often used for the BN. Is there really anyone that uses the Utrecht Angel icon for a QN? Utrecht does have a good icon for RN, which you omitted.
Right now I'm just putting all possibilities.
I need to find that Utrecht Knight-Bishop and Knight-Rook; I'm surprised that I don't have those in hand.
I prefer the name Commoner, though.
I haven't yet put up the listing of alternate names for the Man piece, which will go in the same section and also include Guard, Fool, and (though it lacks its own icon) Sage.
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And this was how I learned that a couple of people had already made Beast Chess a Favorite. There's hope for me yet... ;)