Comments by ChessShogi
It should be noted that stalemate is a win for the stalemating player. It's extremely rare due to the drops, but it is possible.
It seems that the code for handling parentheses is broken, as when I click on a Fire Demon or any jumping General in this Tenjiku Shogi diagram, it is shown to move like a normal slider, without any jumps or area moves. The Suzumu Shogi diagram also shows that the code for certain directional modifiers (such as the h in shQ (equivalent to BsR)) is broken as well. as when I click on a Fire Demon, it shows that piece moving like a Queen with this weird burning side effect.
As it is now, the h modifier on K and Q atoms are very useful for compacting certain atoms, since it can be used to specify a unique set of directions. For example, it allows the Suzumu Fire Demon's ranging burn to be expressed as a single atom (shy(mpacab)2Q), rather than having to define it as two separate atoms (y(mpacab)2Bsy(mpacab)2R).
I'm simply pointing out the h modifier's usefulness on K and Q atoms, because your last comment made it seem like this combination wasn't working as you intended.
That was before you fixed the parentheses parsing. It probably got fixed as a happy side effect.
While I'm still here, I did notice that the highlighting of moves pieces is somewhat inconsistent between the on-board pieces and the movement display from the piece overview. For example, in Dai Seireigi and Chu Seireigi, the Horned Falcon and Soaring Eagle (promoted Kirin and Phoenix, respectively) have stinging moves that replace their Lion moves, but the move-only part of these moves seems to suppress the move-and-capture parts of the move. It's a fairly minor bug, and the hovering works fine, but it can be a bit misleading in some cases. My guess is that the piece overview still uses the old highlight generator, which works differently from the new one.
The problem of moves eclipsing each other has always existed. Usually it can be ameliorated by reordering the moves in the XBetza descriptor. E.g. DR would show the same move diagram as a plain R, and if you want the possibility to show that the 2nd square can be jumped to you would have to write RD. I recently improved this slightly by combining m moves from one atom with c moves from a later atom, to show up as normal destinations. so that mQcK would show the K targets as having both m and c.
The Seireigi Falcon and Eagle are also outlier cases. Their move-only parts are part of a locust capture, so I was unable to eliminate the problem completely.
Perhaps the Highlight function can highlight squares based on a hierarchy, such that if the program is told to highlight a square, it will replace the current highlight color if the highlight has a in precedence, or keep it the same if the highlight is of lower presence. Such a system would all but eliminate this problem, regardless of what move generator is used. A few outlier cases may remain, but they would be very few and very far between.
The problem appears to be that the order in which atoms are parsed is different for each system. From what I can see, the piece overview highlights are parsed left-to-right while the on-board highlights are parsed right-to-left.
If you want feature a large Shogi variant, Chu Shogi is a prime example.
- It has been played on Game Courier a lot, and was the dominant game in Japan for centuries.
- It is playable several other programs as well, including LiShogi.
- The page itself, provides a good example of formatting that is less image-heavy while still meeting the high bar set for the formats of featured variants, adn received editorial approval a long time ago.
The only thing left is for people other than me to nominate and second it (and to not be vetoed).
If you want a choice that is less intimidating, Seireigi is another great pick, as it only changes the promotions of the back-rank pieces in Shogi while keeping everything else the same. Although it is a standard-size Shogi variant, and is still quite new, it does meet many of the requirements already.
- It had been played on Game Courier (albeit only a few times).
- It has also been programmed in Ludii. The piece names in Ludii are slightly outdated as of right now becaue the process of adding and updating games is quite slow, but all the moves are up-to-date.
- Furthermore, it can even be played over-the-board using a Shogi set. A special PDF file has been made for this purpose.
- The article itself is a good example of how to craft a well-formatted article that is a bit more image-heavy, and has received editorial approval, albeit only recently.
The only thing holding Seireigi back from being eligible is that this post is from its inventor, so it needs to be nominated and seconded (and not vetoed) by people other than me.
I am actually doing an overhaul of this game that has pieces promoting in blocks as in Chu Shogi, in order to reduce the learning curve.
- The Kirin listing describes the Phoenix move; I think you did a copy-and-paste and forgot to edit (as I often do).
I don't see the error you are referring to. Maybe try refreshing your browser cache?
- I'm a little confused by the description of the "stinging moves." I get the part about making a capture and then moving to an adjacent space other than the space of origin, but I do not understand the other option.
Stinging moves are Dai Seireigi's version of Lion moves, specifically weakened to compensate for the drop rule. With a stinging move you can do one of the following:
- Step to the stinging square and do nothing (normal step move)
- Step to the stinging square and then step to any empty adjacent square that is not the origin square, capturing or ignoring what is on the stinging square
- Capture a piece on the stinging square without moving
- Which of these pieces are your own creation? A lot of them look interesting, though I see a fair bit of overlap in names with existing pieces in my collection (though to be fair most of those pieces are fairly obscure).
All of the new pieces used appear somewhere in Taikyoku Shogi, but have different moves and promotions here.
I have changed the Heavenly Horse's move to so that it is a bit stronger, as I thought it was too similar to the Tokin's move.
I have also changed the Running Wolf so that it slides vertically, rather than just straight forward.
Chu Seireigi and Dai Seireigi are temporarily offline, as I am working on a new version of these two games.
And now I'm really liking that Heavenly Horse... ;)
It's definitely better, and it's unique 2-step leaps also pay homage to the Knight's uniqueness among standard Shogi pieces.
The only problem is, this now throws off the carefully constructed balance of piece moves in Chu Seireigi and Dai Seireigi, as all three are in the same family. I have a rule for myself that if a piece appears in multiple games within the same family, it's move must be consistent across all games within that family. The main problem is that the original promoted Copper General (Great Leopard) could only leap, and was very similar to the current Heavenly Horse (it had a sideways 2-step leap instead of a backward Knight leap). I do have a version where it slides sideways or steps one square directly backward or diagonally forward, but I am worried that this is too similar to the Free Tiger.
To be fair, sometimes I think so deeply about things that I end up overthinking them. I think I will keep the new version of the Great Leopard (promoted Copper) for the larger variants, despite its similarities to the Free Tiger. Both are distinct enough that players shouldn't have too much difficulty telling them apart, especially since the new versions have a Great Leopard appearing in the inital setup (promoting to Flying Ox).
Shogi is perhaps one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. It's drop rule lets players come back much more easily, while the forward bias negates the advantage to defense such a rule would normall imbue. However, it is not without it's problems. The biggest one is easily the fact that the vast of the pieces promote to a Gold equivalent. Although this is a very rare situation, when a lot of Gold/Gold equivalents appear on thee board, it can easily turn Shogi into a very drawish Checkers game, and if an impasse occurs, this amplifies the problem even more.
Seireigi fixes the aforementioned problem to an extent by making all promotions unique. This also helps mitigate impasse situations, as more pieces are capable of stopping a King from reaching the opponent's camp. However, this comes at the cost of having more moves to remember (14 in total).
In H. G. Muller's system, a range 2 slider just has an empty bulge. for sliders with range 3 or more, this is typically denoted by a plus sign or a shortened radial line, with the plus getting closer to the center the longer the range gets if that option is used. If you wanted a better system, you could have line perpendicular to the bulge for every square after the second square in that direction.
The nifu rule only applies for pawn drops. It does not change in this game.
Hectochess also fits these requirements quite well.
1. The game has a history of being played, especially since it was featured in 2019's CV tournament.
2. It is playable on Game Courier, and playable on the board, with two mismatched Chess sets and an appropriately sized International Draughts board.
3. The page shows what a good CV page should look like.
4. (Bonus) This game is one of only two of my games as of the writing of this coment to have 5 favorites, alongside Seireigi.
I have added the ability to use entirely custom piece sets in a game. These are defined in GAME Code and do not use an external PHP file. Here is some sample code I wrote:
// A demo of using multiple internal sets that do not match any set file. // Name the sets you will use by assigning them to the $groupsets array. // Use capitalized names for the sets. These do not match any file names. setsystem groupsets array Abstract Alfaerie AlfaeriePNG Magnetic Motif; // Define pieces in an array variable called mypieces. // Start by creating an associative array of all pieces shared in common. // The key should be a label, and the value should be a filename. // A single line of code is broken into multiple lines of text for legibility. set mypieces assoc K "WKing.gif" k "BKing.gif" Q "WQueen.gif" q "BQueen.gif" R "WRook.gif" r "BRook.gif" B "WBishop.gif" b "BBishop.gif" N "WKnight.gif" n "BKnight.gif" P "WPawn.gif" p "BPawn.gif"; // Set the $dir system variable to match the set, and modify filenames as needed. if == pieceset Alfaerie: setsystem dir "/graphics.dir/alfaerie/"; foreach (k v) #mypieces: setelem mypieces #k tolower #v; next; elseif == pieceset AlfaeriePNG: setsystem dir "/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG/"; foreach (k v) #mypieces: setelem mypieces #k tolower str_replace .gif .png #v; next; elseif == pieceset Magnetic: setsystem dir "/graphics.dir/magnetic/"; elseif == pieceset Motif: setsystem dir "/graphics.dir/motif/"; else: // Have a default set for when the set does not match any allowed set. // The default is Abstract. setsystem dir "/graphics.dir/abstract/"; endif; // Now that the pieces are defined, copy the #mypieces array to $pieces setsystem pieces #mypieces;
It seems that this feature is not working. Whenever I try to make a move in the sample preset, GC responds by saying that the selected set does not exist.
While we're at it, the Chushin Shogi and Taishin Shogi sets (as well as their corresponding set files) can be deleted from the sets.php file, as the corresponding games no longer exist.
I noticed a bug with the matedbypawn subroutine in the fairyshogi include file.
Specifically, if the King is unable to move anywhere (due to moving into check or otherwise), the subroutine thinks that a Pawn cannot be dropped to check the King, even if this does not actually result in mate.
Here's an example of the bug from Shogi:
1. p 5g-5f
1... P 5c-5d
2. g 4i-4h
2... G 6a-6b
3. g 4h-5g
3... G 6b-5c
4. g 5g-4f
4... G 5c-6d
5. g 4f-4e
5... G 6d-6e
6. g 4e-5d
6... G 6e-5f
7. g 5d-5c
7... G 5f-5g
8. s 3i-3h
8... S 7a-7b
9. s 3h-4i
9... S 7b-6a // After this move, Pawn drop checks are not marked as legal, even though 3 pieces can capture the checking Pawn afterward.
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Nice spot. Turns out it was also in Dai Seireigi. I fixed both.