Comments by ChessShogi

I wonder if there is an option in Game Courier somewhere to have pieces rotate 180 degrees when the board is flipped? This is not the $flip variable in the set file, as that swaps the values for lowercase and uppercase keys when the board is flipped Such an option could be quite useful for pieces that use mnemonic symbols to show piece moves, since piece moves are flipped when the board. Maybe the board does this automatically and I am just missing it (I know this is the case when I use my phone). However, as far as I know, there is no option in Game Courier that flips that makes pieces images rotate as the board rotates. If there is, it isn't documented in the developer's guide. Either way, I think the idea is at least worth considering.

Something is wrong with GAME Code. Whenever I try to load one of my large Shogi Variant presets, and by extension any preset that uses a similar stalemated subroutine, the last expression in for/foreach is calculated wrong. It evaluates to a single square, whereas before it would correctly evaluate to the array of board spaces.

I decided to rename Futashikana Shogi to Dai Shosu Shogi. I would like the game's corresponding pages, https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/futashikana-shogi and https://www.chessvariants.com/play/futashikana-shogi changed to https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/dai-shosu-shogi and https://www.chessvariants.com/play/dai-shosu-shogi, respectively. I would also like to have the Game Courier presets for Futashikana shogi deleted. I have already transferred their code to presets for Dai Shosu Shogi.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed Yangsi. I'd love to see a CVP article on your Heavy Shako game - it sounds like a very interesting concept.

The 12x12 Yangsi idea could be interesting, but I think Gross Chess kind of already has that covered.

Also, what is Ai Ai? I've never heard of it before.

My one issue is that the Demon is so weak in the Suzumu family of games that the flavour of Tenjiku is mostly absent; Tenjiku is almost defined by the terrifying presence of the Demon, much like the Lion in Chu Shogi. If the Demon were powered up to something in between the original and this one, I think this game would be even more interesting.

When designing the Suzumu Shogi pieces, I wanted pieces with moves representable in XBetza Notation, less brutal than those in Tenjiku, but in line with the original theme. Also, I wanted to make sure that the piece moves didn't create weaknesses in the start positions of any of these games. It's a difficult balancing act, I know.

All in all, though, I think I did pretty good. The range jumper's moves definitely fit in with the theme while also being sufficiently powerful, even in Taishin Shogi. The Fire Demon was much more difficult to design though. I went through a bunch of iterations with its move before settling on the current one. Giving it the burning ability from Tenjiku Shogi would kind of ruin the theme, not to mention be impossible to describe in XBetza Notation. I did try giving it the ability to burn one neighbor after moving (not when stationary) but that ended up being a mess both in terms of the XBetza move description and the legal moves display in the interactive diagram (which had question marks everywhere, making it kind of difficult to see what was really going on).

Do you think giving the Fire Demon the ability to slide in all eight directions (like a Queen) in addition to its other moves would help?

After thinking about it, I decided to cancel the renaming of Futashikana Shogi. Please delete both presets for Dai Shosu Shogi.

@Eric Silverman @H.G. Muller I think I found a real winner for a new version of the Suzumu Shogi Fire Demon and the games it appears in. The new Fire Demon has a novel burning ability instead of the Lion's double King step. This new moves allows it to optionally shoot (capture without moving) an enemy piece a King's move away from its final destination. This ability only activates when a Fire Demon moves.This makes it much more powerful then the previous iteration, but it's still weaker than the Tenjiku Shogi Fire Demon. This should make these game much more interesting while still being less brutal then Tenjiku Shogi.

This change will also necessitate changes to the starting positions for all games that the Fire Demon appears in to eliminate any exploitable weaknesses to the new ability in the starting positions, some more drastic than others. Each will be designed to protect from normal captures, double captures of all kinds, and the Fire Demon's new burning ability.

Mitsugumi Shogi/Gyaku-sama Shogi will introduce the Horned Falcon and Soaring Eagle from Suzumu Shogi/Hanten Shogi in adittion to rearranging ot some of the original pieces. Suzumu Shogi/Hanten Shogi and Chushin Shogi will rearrange the side/vertical soldiers and side/vertical movers (and in Chushin's case, the side/vertical chariots as well). I am not sure what Taishin Shogi's new starting position will look like, but it will likely be changed drastically.

Now the only question remaining is how to implement the new burning ability in Game Courier.

P.S. In case your wondering what the Fire Demon's XBetza string looks like, it's this:

BympacabBympacabBsRsympacabRsympabcabRKaKaaKmabKmpacabKmpabcabKmampacabKmampabcabKmamampacabKmamampabcabK

I love the new behavior for parentheses. For complex pieces (e.g. Suzumu Shogi's new Fire Demon) it can be a real lifesaver.

The Game Courier presets named Dai Shosu Shogi are still there. They can be deleted as they are basically clones of the Futashikana Shogi presets.

Thanks for catching those typos. They are now fixed. Yes, both the Left General and Right General promote to Shogun.

I noticed that for the PNG, JPG, and GIF image rendering options that the hitboxes for the squares were off center compared to where the image was, with the effect being least at the upper left corner and increasing as you go towards the lower right corner.

The ii modifier (or something similar meaning the same thing) is a genius idea. For the burning, there may be some merit to having something to determine certain specifics of the burning move (i.e. whether the move is passive as well as active, and if it is, which piece has priority in a conflict b/w the burning pieces) with diagram parameters. XBetza wouldn't necessarily be able to handle those specifics on its own.

The hitbox positioning is much better. The images may be slightly off center, but that isn't much of a problem.

Is there a way to detect suicide moves in Game Courier (form XY- or @-XY)? I'm trying to figure out how to implement the new burning ability for the Fire Demons, and I think suicide move are the best option to keep things simple. But I'll need to know how to do the following in order to use suicide moves to execute burns:

• Detect a suicide move on the board
• Detect whether the value of thismove is a suicide move

Once I successfully implement the new burning moves I can carry that over to the other games in the Suzumu family.

I guess I worded that wrong. What I meant to say was the the highlights for empty squares are slightly off center.

I've added the implementation in the Interactive Diagram. Still need to add it in Game Courier though.

Edit: Apparently by happy accident, the Game Courier preset had this implemented already without me realizing it.

This game was a bit neglected on my part for a while, partly because of my interest in large Shogi variants and the long process of experimentation with the Suzumu Fire Demon's move. Now that those are out of the way, I have decided to give this page a facelift. I have added an interactive diagram to this page and updated its images to keep its style in line with the rules pages for Yangsi and Ryugi, and I did some double-checking to make sure the rules were in line with those of Yangsi and Ryugi. I also fixed a few typos in the ruleset references for the Hectochess and Ryugi presets.

Now all that is left is the difficult tasks of implementing the Suzumu Fire Demon's burning move in Game Courier, implementing the Lion Dog in Game Courier (for the larger games in the Suzumu family), and figuring out how to implement Cannon Shosu Shogi in Game Courier (The hopping moves make it impossible to use the code I used for Shosu Shogi and Futashikana Shogi).

Since it sounds like your Fire Demon piece is making a multi-part move, you may want to break down the whole move and analyze it step-by-step. You will find examples of this in multi-move variants like Marseillais Chess and Extra Move Chess.

Hmm. Perhaps the step-by-step approach would be better. After all, the Suzumu Shogi preset is essentially on a more restrictive form of the other multi-move presets with more pieces.

So the tentative process would then be the folowing

Do a regular move

• Normal move
• Normal capture
• King step (capture)
• King step (non-capture), pass (double move)
• Single King step (non-capture), return to origin square (double move)

Then I would need to assess whether or not there are pieces available to burn (which should be easy thanks to the burn subroutine in my Tenjiku Shogi preset). If so, after the move, do an igui capture or pass.

Or it may be simpler to simply always give the player to optionally shoot any enemy piece a King step away after moving.

Another possibility for detecting a suicide move is to store the board position before the move into a variable, then compare the new position after the move to the stored position and see what differences there are.

This could potentially solve the problems of detecting a suicide move if I knew how to do it.

Since I am already writing this, would the system used for the multi-move variants be able to handle moves with three or more parts (i.e. that of the Lion Dog in Maka Dai Dai Shogi)? This will be important for my larger games with Lion Dogs, Furious Fiends, Kirin Masters, and Phoenix Masters, as well as if I use the move breakdown method for the Fire Demon's burns.

Should be fixed now.

This preset of yours for detecting captures is huge. The fact that it reliably detects where the suicide occured means that I can use it to test whether the suicide is a King's move away from the moving Fire Demon and ensure that no suicides are done when a non-Fire Demon moves, which should solve the majority of problems with coding the burning move. If something similar could be used to detect the type of piece affected by the suicide, that should be everything I need to enforce the burning rules using suicides, at least in theory. Best of all, I can just ask players that haven't made a burn after moving a Fire Demon rather than worry about displaying legal moves on the board.

You could adapt it. For the multi-move variants, there are usually the same number of move parts each turn. So, it makes sense for these games to do the multi-part analysis globally for all pieces. But for games that include pieces with multi-part moves, you may want to reserve the multi-part analysis for specific pieces and tailor it to each piece that needs it.

This is what the original Suzumu Shogi preset (and all presets using the same general codebase) does, which is largely thanks to its isdoublemove subroutine. So, I guess I could use integers instead of booleans and sub ismultimove instead of sub isdoublemove to keep track of which part of the move suffices. The only major problem is that I'm not exactly sure how to enforce rules for the third part of a three-part move. Perhaps I am overthinking it though. Perhaps just copy-pasting and tweaking the code for the second part of multi-moves will be enough. This requires testing, but thankfully, the Taishin Shogi preset (which is fully coded, at least for enforcing the old rules) affords just such an opportunity.

Edit: I figured out how to detect the type of piece that committed the suicide. Now we should be all good.

I finally have the new Fire Demon fully and correctly implemented. Now I just need to carry the changes over to the other presets that use it.

Bugfixes for all Suzumu family GC Presets: The Fire Demon's double move option now only triggers if the piece moved to an adjacent square or there are enemy pieces adjacent to its destination, making it more user friendly. I also fixed some bugs with the Queen and Reverse Chariot not being able to promote and the promoted Queen not being given the option to make a double move when it was able to.

The Edit Comment scripts aren't working properly. Whenever I try to edit a comment it fails. Posting comments still works though.