Comments by BobGreenwade

7. Samurai. In his Man & Beasts articles, Charles Gilman proposes calling a (2,6) locust-capture leaper a Katana. And what do you get when you cross a Katana with a Knight? A Samurai, of course.

In part because of the Knight move, and in part because the Katana move represents a sort of "lightning step" attack, I'm assuming that the latter cannot be made unless there's a target to capture. Thus, that makes the Betza (I believe) NcafmC.

This piece is presented somewhat as an experiment, looking for a good way to represent a locust capture using Musketeer's Board Painter. The leap icon (in this case, with a "capture only" red X) shows the destination square, the straight arrow shows the overall movement, and the square where the captured peice would be is shaded black. Prompt feedback on this would be very helpful; I'll be using it to edit one of my unpublished submissions. Tomorrow's planned entry will be an extension of this one, and I'll implement whatever recommended changes seem right.

One nice thing with Board Painter is that I was able (for a change) to find the perfect icon for this piece: the crescent, turned 45° so the opening is straight up, like the crescent symbol on a samurai's helmet. A simpler version of the piece could have just the crescent, though for now the full helmet (with mask) will do.

The Interactive Diagram for Bigorra is now completed, including promotions.

I tried a game earlier this morning. I got whalloped, of course, but I had great fun at it nonetheless.

Notably, though, the Soldier and Troll entries on the list do not have their locations marked.

But beyond that, I think that the only thing remaining is to get the setup diagram to match the text and ID.

8. Kimono Dragon. That's right -- I said kimono, not Komodo. I've seen that as an actual mistake a few times, but I came across it recently and immediately envisioned a dragon wearing a kimono. I just had to find some way to go with it.

For the figure's move, I wavered between a couple of other things I've done, but settled on the Samurai (yesterday's Piece of the Day) as the starting point for the "kimono" part (NcafmC). For the "dragon" part, using the traditional Dragon (NP) would've added just a Pawn's move, and I wanted something more impressive than that; then I saw that a couple of variant Dragons have Bishop (or Bishop-like) moves, so I decided to go with that, yielding BNcafmC -- basically, an Archbishop/Minister/Paladin/Princess with the Scimitar locust capture added.

I don't generally go in for full-figure forms with my pieces, but given that the kimono is an important part, I decided to go for it this time. The kimono, dragon's head, and katana were taken from three different sources (and hopefully don't look too incongruous together).

Historically (from what little I've read), pieces based on dinosaurs have been found only in Fairy Chess Problems and Megasaur Chess (not found on this site), and are only able to move to capture. What you've done here is taken several dinos that are not a part of Megasaur, and given them full capabilities that are both logical to the animal and interesting for the game. In fact, I'm "stealing" the Velociraptor for my own purposes.

As for the presentation, a diagram for the Gallimimus would be a welcome sight. (For that matter, all of your diagrams are a welcome sight; I really like what you've done there.)

Yeah, I'll adjust that head. I may need to beef up the katana as well. (I'm pretty sure the picture here won't change; I may or may not post the update.) Thanks for the note!

And I'm aware that many of my piece designs are rather fragile; that's why they're marked as Works in Progress (on Thingiverse). I had to do a bit of extra work on the Ghost, in fact, after I found that it wouldn't even print at all the way it was (I'm not even that sure about it now). I'll have a better idea of things once I can fix my 3D printer.

I'd be surprised if anyone besides me wants to actually use this in a game, though. It's mostly here for the pun (and the second part of testing the locust-capture method).

This really is more of a proposal for a new piece, the Progressive Pawn.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with that; there are many variants on this site that are pretty much the same. And I do rather like this piece; it would completely change the texture of back-line maneuvers.

9. Nighty Knight. This is quite simple: a Knight that, if the first space it leaps to is empty, can make a second leap in the same direction (N2).

It could be called the Double Knight, Super-Knight, Two-Knight, or any of many other names; I just like Nighty Knight best.

For some reason I think the figure looks kind of creepy, though it may benefit from an update with the heads at a narrower angle (at 22.5º they make a piece with a 30mm base almost 45mm wide).

EDIT: I decided to go ahead and make that update; I'll put the image here after it updates on Thingiverse.

And it looks great from here!

OK, I got through the edits on most of your notes, H.G.

I'm not sure what the problem could be that you're having with the Bowman moving close to the edge; the nN part of the XBetza should handle that.

What I did get:

• The "morph" parameter on the Pawn, Soldier, and Sergeant
• Fixed the Sergeant's sideways move in the ID
• Redid the diagrams for Bowman, Helepolis, and Nightrider
• Clarified the text descriptions for the Berserker and King
• Deleted the Pawn-line strategy (it turns out, that's good advice for most chess games -- or at least that's how the ID plays -- so it's not that important.)

Still need to:

• Fix the text for Bowman, per notes
• Possibly another try with the Helepolis diagram
• Figure out if there's any way to code in the Royal promotion
• Figure out if the Berserker might be more easily coded as [K?K]NAD
• Explore similarly simple ways to code the Wizard's move ([F?fW3], perhaps? Plus the position-switching code, of course), then clarify the text based on what I find and per notes.

10. Rabbit. The Rabbit combines the moves of the Bishop, Knight, and Antelope, because that makes the Betza notation BNNY.

If one really wants to include the U, it should be a lower-case U before the first N, which would mean anything captured with the (1,2) leap won't be captured, but instead will be put where the Rabbit started. (BuNNY)

That, I'm sure, would work for the capturing move; I think I'll still want the nN for the non-capturing/conventionally capturing move.

For the Wizard, I'm thinking FyafsFyafsafF for the basic move, if I'm reading the coding correctly. (I'll probably keep the place-switching part in leap mode: udFudNudC.)

Question: could captureMatrix be used to effect the royal promotions (Prince to King and Princess to Queen, upon the capture of the second in each pair)?

Reminder to self: Include the technical difference between "rifle capture" and "advance capture."

I prefer the BNNY as well, and will use it in any game I make that includes it (and I have one in mind).

I think all that's left right now is to check the Berserker and Wizard text descriptions against your notes, H.G. (I'm pretty sure getting the royal promotion into the ID is a lost cause, at least for now -- not even a captureMatrix seems like it would do that trick.)

11. Hangman. The Hangman moves like a King, but similar to the Withdrawer, captures by moving away from an enemy piece.

I'm still working on the XBetza code; KcaibaK is what I think would work.

(I originally designed this piece as a Rope for a chess variant based on Clue.)

I'm amazed that that one got past me....