Comments by William Wragg

Thank you for your kind words, and glad you're enjoying it as much as I do. Your comment pretty much sums up this chess variant perfectly. I especially enjoy the way that control of the available squares, and freeing up more squares through sacrifice, plays more of a role in this variant than in traditional chess.

I'm having difficulty working out how to use the correct "0-0" notation for castling. I can't find any references to input and output notation options for castling in Game Code. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm not even sure the "0-0" notation is even valid notation for Game Code, as when I test the settings file for Mischia, castling is just notated algebraically as a two space move of the king. So perhaps this isn't actually an issue?

I'm trying to work out if it's possible, with the extended XBetza notation, to allow capture as normal, but allow swapping with only friendly pieces that aren't the same as the swapping piece. As an example, for a Bishop I have mudBcB, which allows capturing as normal, and swapping with any friendly piece, but that also allows swapping with another friendly Bishop, which I don't want to allow. Any help appreciated.

I'm working on a variant of Mischia, a small 6x6 chess variant where the pieces can swap with their own pieces, but take opponent pieces as normal. If I use betza.js the pieces are allowed to swap with the King, which is what I want and expected, but the AI falls over with an error when the opponent moves. I assume this is due to betza.js not being fully compatible with the ud extended Xbetza notation. I switched to trying it with betzaNew.js, and while the AI now works, I cannot swap with the King anymore, it flags it as an illegal move. I'm assuming that betzaNew.js is a testing script, I was just using it to test my new variant to see if it's interesting and fun enough to create a variant page for. If it is I'll use the betza.js script on the variant page and disable the AI. I'm wondering if there is some change in defaults that I missed which would make the betzaNew.js diagram able to swap with a King? I can't seem to embed a working diagram in the comment section, but here is the diagram code I am using:

files=6
ranks=6
promoZone=1
promoChoice=*Q*R*N*B
holdingsType=1
symmetry=mirror
graphicsDir=/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG/
squareSize=50
lightShade=#E0E0E0
darkShade=#FFFFFF
graphicsType=png
royal=K
captureMatrix=.=.!...../.=/.=...!...
swapping shatranj pawn:P:mfudWfudFcfF:pawn:a2-f2
swapping knight:N:mudNcN:knight:f1
swapping bishop:B:mudBcB:bishop:b1,e1
swapping rook:R:mudRcR:rook:a1
swapping queen:Q:mudQcQ:queen:c1
king:K:K:king:d1
firstRank=1
rimColor=#C1C1C1
useMarkers=0
borders=1
enforceRules=1

I've simplified the interactive diagram setup (view it by clicking the "here" link twice and then clicking the "source code" button) so that only one king is defined, which should make the diagram a little clearer when viewing the pieces.

Thank you for fixing this, it works as expected now, cheers.

The fonts are all over the place for me on my iPad at the moment. Sometimes small, sometimes large, sometimes serif sometimes san serif, even within the same page the font sizes seem to change. Like right now typing this in markdown mode in the comments, the font is tiny, used to be fine. Another example, the main page shows the menu bar with a bold san serif font, if I switch to another page, like the Interactive Diagram page, the menu bar switches to a normal weight serif font. I'm not sure what I can do to get it back to how it used to be

There are a few errors in the console, but I don't think they are relevant (How do I post images in the comments i.e. upload an image?) It all looks fine in the preview, and even if I look at it in the comments list (https://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?order=DESC) all looks fine, it's just on the Interactive Diagram page. Other peoples diagrams look fine as well, except for the large gap at the top of the diagrams using betzaNew.js, but I assume that's normal (seems related to the aspect ratio calculation, perhaps it doesn't play well with the iPad Safari)

Yep that did the trick, thank you

Ah, my apologies, I didn't realize I could mess up the page, but thanks for clearing it up, and explaining the issue.

Just a heads up, for me on my iPad (iPadOS 18.3) the Diagram Designer page looks different, fontwise, to the other pages on the site.

Just to add a few points, having gone through the same process with swapping pieces for a variant I'm working on:

• There is a difference between a piece swapping a pawn into promotion, and a pawn swapping with another piece into promotion. In the first case, it's intuitively the piece doing the swapping whose move it is and not the pawn's, so I don't promote the pawn, as it's not its move. In the second case, intuitively it's the pawn's move, so I follow the normal pawn promotion rules. If you don't want to make the above distinction between the two cases, you should make that clear in the rules, as intuitively a player will make the distinction.

• If you hold with the "not moved before" rules from normal chess, when introducing swapping moves, it can be very difficult to keep track of which pawns have or haven't already moved, as pawn's can reappear on their starting squares, or other pawns can end up on other pawns starting squares, so can get very confusing.

As an additional note: When introducing swapping moves into a variant, it can lead to too much change on the board when playing the game, removing any chance of strategical thinking, and limiting tactical thinking to only a few moves ahead. I'd try to limit the extent of the swapping rules, i.e. don't allow swapping with the royal (King) piece, and perhaps limit the swapping rules to only a handful of pieces.