Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Well, as most varints are backed by zero-person organizations, one person
seems already a huge leap forward. I would say it doesn't really matter
very much how many persons you throw at this: if people do not like the
game, it will not catch on even if you would throw 100 people at promoting
it. If they do like it, it shoul propagate itself whereever you plant the
seeds, and one person could do that easily.

I checked out the Supechess program at superchess.nl.  Looks nifty, but
I'd better wait for the English instructions, since my Dutch is weaker
than weak.  I have played Superchess via email (with Ben Good) and found
it to be quite a lot of fun.

I am not going to say a one man band, or small group, can work to promote
an abstract strategy game, and make it successful.  If you look at
Othello, that is the case.  A small group market and promote it, and have
had success with it.  They did manage to put in place an organization
(World Othello Federation), to make sure that there would be annual world
championship in the game, and foster community.  This is needed.  Of
course, with Othello, they reworked Reversi with a better set of rules,
but it didn't really match anything else out there.  In the area of
chess-like games, we do have chess, and numbers of variants of it.  This
makes a chess variant much harder to sell than say Othello.  In the case
of where the variant doesn't require people to buy new equipment, then
there is one less revenue stream to the people who would promote it.

I do agree the number of people who would promote is far less relevant
than whether a community will take to a game.  This community is what
makes a game relevant.  And I believe they are the ones who need to find
and adapt whatever form the game and its rules take, to make it viable.

On this community front, an objective of IAGO is to provide a community
for games that may no be able to sustain a community for their survival if
they went it alone.  By also getting people who play multiple games to have
a place to play, the game has a better chance of making it.  In this also
is coordinating the effort of abstract strategy games that do have
communities with them, and also help them grow.  These communities provide
the place for variants and smaller games to be able to find players and
hang around long enough to grow up on their own.

By the way, less-playable Modern was selected with Eurasian and Mastodon
for year 2009 on account of its historical effort at being Next Chess -- and thanks to Hutnik for linking that record. By the same
token, Centennial for year 2010 is my top choice among the first six track
ones. I want to name the next three for 2011. Probably Next Chess as such
will never be a Chess Variant Page project, but CVP is great place to
discuss the idea. Finally Hutnik mentions many CVs besides meager Seirawan chess, as
opposed to frameworks. Hutnik hopefully will take the 500 CVs and try his hand at winnowing --
no small task. (Actually, Rich understands the difficulty, based on look at his extensive work already in Mutators.) What happened in the 1480's and 1490's may be
instructive. We can mostly  only speculate, but probably one form ''felt''
right, and seemed exactly like the Chess they wanted. Now 500 years
later, CVPage did not even call OrthoChess ''Mad Queen Chess'' until
recently; and who knows but that half of 1000 GMs do not know even the name regina rabiosa? So constantly taking  re-learning process. This very Topic of
''NextChess'' makes tacit assumption not evaluated, namely, that there
was a Prior Chess. Once some real next Chess becomes established, one may suppose by
year 2100, then what was done before, small 20th century fide 8x8 OrthoChess, will probably be laughed
at and scoffed as incredibly petty and unsatisfactory. They probably cannot comprehend and come to wonder why so much time was devoted to it.

My understanding of 'Mad Queen Chess' (also went by Queen's Chess way
back when), was they wanted a way to accelerate the game, because they
found the game took too long to play.  In addition to the Mad Queen and
Mad Bishop, castling got added, along with the double pawn move and also
en passant.  Apparently all these modifications worked as evolutionary
additions.  They did make he game more complicated, but they did work.

An interesting thing, assuming Chaturanga in whatever form was the base of
all chess-like games, is that when it went East, the people decided to push
the pawns up, rather than give them extra mobility.  By doing this, none of
all the things we know got into the game.  Apparently, the issue for
speeding up had to do with the pawns.  The west gave them double
movement.

Well, what can we learn here?  Flat out, if a community find something
that is 'good enough' a solution, and enough people get interested and
use it, it becomes standardized.  Look at about anything being adopted,
from Microsoft Operating Systems, to the QWERTY keyboard, to http for web
pages.  They are good enough, and people adopt them and they work. 
Apparently Chess960 and Bughouse also fit into this to.  People see it
meets a need, works, and they go with it.   That is the history of how
technology gets developed.  And, this is why I keep speaking of standards.
 Don't follow this path, and you don't stand much of a chance of having
the NextChess happening.  That is my take.  Please show why it is wrong if
you disagree. 

I am leaning towards the belief that people don't really believe there
will be a NextChess that will ever come about, because they don't think
they have the resources or means to make it come about.  People in this
thread have thrown ideas out there, and spoke of some sort of rich and
powerful organization able to muscle its will on the world, and end up
causing FIDE chess to go extinct.  I don't think people believe such will
happen, so everyone (everyone being the norm of expectations) is operating
from perfect world perspective of a fantasy dreamland, so they get way
idealistic and plug in their own personal preferences of what they want.

So, on this note, let's say you could have the 'NextChess' appear. 
This is not a perfect world that it does.  There is no powerful
organization to muscle itself, but it happens naturally.  In light of
this, what would you want to see the game accomplish.  I am NOT asking for
the specific form, but what should it accomplish?  What should it do better
than FIDE chess.  As I see it, I would like to see the following (please
suggest your own):
1. An introductory form that is easier to learn than FIDE chess that
people could then go to the next level with.  Go has this with different
sized boards.  The rules are simple enough, but the board varies.  In
Chess like games, having a way to ramp up the complexity is a bonus.
2. A handicapping system that provides novices a shot to compete against
advanced players.  Go has this.
3. An ability to integrate variants into play, without each variant being
seen as entirely different games.  Count in this, a way for the game to
continue to evolve.  NextChess allows you to develop scenarios for it. 
Throw in mutators into here also.  The game is able to handle mutators. 
If the game Advanced Squad Leader were treated as chess, every scenario
for it would be seen as a different game.  And if you go hardcore about
Chess960 the same way, it would end up being treated as 960 different
games.
4. Greatly reduce the chance of the game drawing.  At LEAST have a way for
a draw to score differently for each side in a meaningful way that reflects
play.  Also, in this, might as well throw in a more granular scoring system
for games.  This could also work with handicapping. 
5. Ways to prevent the opening book from becoming stale.... and this I
mean FOREVER.  Ok, if not FOREVER, at least a long time.  The game should
be robust enough that new solutions can arise without causing the
community of players to fragment.
6. Ability to integrate a variety of pieces and new pieces into it.  And
these pieces can be valued properly.
7. Ability to handle more than 2 players, either as teams or individually
(ok, I am on a perfect form here, while I may find this maybe not needed,
it would be nice thugh).
8. Handles shuffles, drops, gating and reserves (ok, I am hinting here at
a way to keep the opening book fresher).

These are features I would like to see from the NextChess, whatever form
it takes in specific rules.  Please list what you would like to see.  I
hope this makes sense.  And please DON'T say you can't do it.  Maybe we
don't get all, but wouldn't it be helpful to list what FIDE Chess could
do better?  Know this, and you then can know what the NextChess could
address in its design.

There are some problems with coming up with standards. 1) If we enforced
them, it would alienate many game designers. 2) Enforcing them would be a
monumental task. 3) There are sometimes good thematic reasons for giving a
piece a new name, such as when I renamed the Vao for Yang Qi and Eurasian
Chess. 4) We wouldn't actually enforce the standards if we had them,
making them nothing more than ineffectual recommendations.

Besides these practical problems, the idea of having standards violates my
moral principle that game designers should be free to choose whatever
terminology they wish for their games. Of course, in a commercial product,
the marketing department might get some say on terminology. But we're not
commercial game publishers. We're an archival project that catalogs the
variety of Chess variants without rewriting them to fit our own
standardization.

Although I am morally opposed to a full-scale standardization project, I
do believe it is good to educate people about the history of pieces and
other concepts, and I believe it is useful to have and advocate a common
vocabulary about some things. For example, I advocate the awareness of
terms like leaper, rider, and hopper to describe certain types of pieces.
I also favor categorization of games. In general, I favor standardization
on a meta-language for discussing Chess variants, but I oppose enforcing
standards on what game designers choose to call things within the context
of their own games.

Rich, as I understand it, you want the Next Chess to be a meta-game of
sorts that incorporates all kinds of different Chess variants into itself. Why? Why not just have a variety of different games, as we have now? Is
there anything to be gained by combining them into a single behemoth of a
Chess variant? This vision of the Next Chess strikes me as being like the Borg (from Star Trek: TNG and Star Trek: Voyager). The Borg tell me that my individuality will become part of the Borg and enhance their collective. What should I do? Should I join the Borg?

My comment about a large organization and a large advert budget had to do
with 'in the short run'. This is only if the developer is determined to
achieve world acceptance within their lifetime.

Of course, allowing the normal evolution of Chess is best. Unfortunately,
FIDE is actually hindering at this point in history. Remember that the
group is less than a century old.

Do I actually know what the 'Next Chess' will be? At this point it is a
toss-up. There are a large number of potentials.

Do I have a preference for the 'Next Chess'? Well, of course, but since
this may be a highly subjective opinion I am reluctant to climb out on
that limb. I am more interested in what others think.

But, as I stated earlier, simply 'fixing' the Mad Queen variant is only
a stop-gap solution. The 'Next Chess' should be an 'evolutionary
leap'.

I want to add a few comments for the night, before I end up going to sleep
here:
1. Any 'large organization with a large budget' that proposes to wrestle
away the chess community into something new, is one that wants to
completely take over the community itself, and have it for itself.  You
can see this in what happened with the Capablanca variant that began with
G, and another that is a chess variant I know with a movable board (the guy thinks he will own the chess world, and his board is the future) and others.  Such an individual or organization doing it is doing it either out of some power trip for personal glory, or the belief there is so much money in it, that they are going to stomp out the competition.  Is this something people here want to deal with, or would you rather input into the process collectively and hit some middle ground that all stakeholders can buy into.   This would be an open-source project.
2. As for 'why not just have a collection of variants like we have now,
and no do some NextChess'.  Well, how is this working?  Is what we have
now here nothing more than just an monsterously large collection of
discrete games?  Is it resulting in the building up of anything?  Is such
resulting in us getting any commercial equipment to buy?  Is it viable? 
Or, do people want to rationalize how it is GREAT to end up making your
own pieces, cutting off pieces here and there, and gluing them back
together?  Or, how about using Seirawan Chess pieces in ways the designer
of the game objects to, because they don't make elephant pieces?  In a
nutshell, is this working.  Anyhow what I am saying with 'NextChess' is
NOT that it should replace all these variants out there, but it could be a
way to act as a way for all these variants to work together and enhance one
another.
3. On a practical level, IAGO wants to have tournaments in physical
locations using actual pieces.  At this point, pieces to do chess variants
are not available really anywhere in a way that people can acquire them.  I
have practical reasons for standards.  Also, there will be an interest in
holding chess variants tournament, and working towards having a world
champion of chess variants.  The idea of just picking a single game and
doing that way isn't as effective then taking chess variants as a
category unto itself, and enabling a champion to emerge.
4. It has been shown that standards are how you get anything to take off. 
Now, you can end up having these standards shoved down the throats of
people by some power on high, who has bucks, or you can agree to reach
them.  The former is the Borg, and the later is the Federation.  If you
don't want to work to having standards, then you will get stuff shoved
down your throat.  Who here wants the Knight+Rook combo piece to be an
elephant, and a Knight+Bishop to be a hawk?  Well, unless you care to work
on this and agree, it is entirely possible that, because they are the only
pieces for sale that have this, the pieces would get that name.  Expect
that to happen if the Seirawan group decides, for financial reasons,
people can use their pieces in variants.  From an IAGO perspective, it
wouldn't mind that happening, because at least there is SOMETHING for
sale out there.  Well, let me say from my take on what I feel IAGO needs
to do, it makes sense.  Boards and committees would formally decide this.
5. The standards should always be between games and for translation
purposes and when you decide to have two different designs mash together,
for example.  It also enables people to understand what the heck one is
talking about in their game, when describing it.  When wanting to discuss
and compare pieces, then you need standards for this.
6. I do understand that designers can call something anything they like.  However, a game being viable is no only designers creating, but also a community of players who play.  It is a dialog between the two.  Standards help with the communications.  Also, when you get standards, you allow people to specialize.  You get people who are good at designing pieces types just working on those.  You also get people who are good at combining pieces together in games to do that, and so on.  
7. What was stated about FIDE is what I have been looking to address. 
Unless there is some way to enable to have the FIDE Chess crowd and
variant community be able to communicate, you aren't going to get much
recognized here, and possible expansions to take place.  Both sides need
to recognize and work together, then you may have something.

One of the positive things about the computer is the ability to present an
extremely large variety of games in a single package. And with the proper
programming, it can 'prove' the playability of such games(or at least
the non-triviality of the game).

With a printer, a player can run off the necessary graphics for the
real-world. The set can be kept simply paper, or with a little more effort
these can be affixed to more durable material.

I have done some research into the viability of manufacturing material for
chess variants, and have come to the following conclusions:

1. Playing fields and pieces should be made available as individual units,
allowing a player to pick and choose the needed material for their
particular variant.

2. The cost of designing and manufacturing, not to mention maintaining a
stockpile for sale, of all the potential piece types is nearly prohibitive
if applied to the Staunton-style appearance.  Thus the use of simple
colored discs with either letters or symbols embossed or painted.

3. Playing fields could be simply printed on light-weight durable
material. I am leaning toward cloth, mainly for its compact nature(a
player could literally carry a set around in their pocket).

The start-up cost of such a project could be in the thousands of dollars.
Does anyone around here have the disposable income that allows for such an
investment? And the manufacturer would be hard-pressed to realize a simple
return on their investment, much less realize a substantial profit. In
other words, they would be doing all this for the love of Chess variants.

The best direction would be to simply inform players about how they can
create their own sets. Instructions, graphics and a list of sources for
raw materials would be all that is necessary to assist in the
dissemination of real-world Chess variants.

| 2. The cost of designing and manufacturing, not to mention maintaining a
| stockpile for sale, of all the potential piece types is nearly prohibitive
| if applied to the Staunton-style appearance. Thus the use of simple
| colored discs with either letters or symbols embossed or painted.

Yet this is exactly what some people do:

OK, €89,95 for this entire set of 32 pieces (16 white, 16 black) is not extremely
cheap. It amounts to €2,81 a piece. (For more pictures, look here.)

But do they provide the pieces to cover all the possible types(or at least
a large percentage of them)? I do agree that they supply a fair number
which can be applied to most variants.

It would be interesting to see their sales figures in regards to this
particular line of pieces. What is their volume of sales on this
particular line? Exactly what is their profit margin? Sale price minus
cost.

Well, the person selling these does not do it for profit (he is retired),
so my guess is this is close to manufacturing cost.

I am not sure what you mean by 'cover all piece types'. What is 'all'?
The number of possible piece types is unlimited, but except for the
orthodox Chess pieces no Staunton shape is defined for any of them. People
do not even agree about how they should be called, so taking a shape that
could be considered a logical representation for that name is already a
hopeless task.

So any unorthodox piece can represent what you want it to represent. If
there are enough different models, you won't have too much trouble
picking a subset for playing any given variant.

Btw, about the Superchess software: I have instructions available in
English for that, on my website:
http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/superE.html .

Harm, according to your Superchess note I ask, whether the implementation
of those four piece types: Amazon (Q+N), Empress (R+N), Princess (B+N) and
Veteran (K+N) would be suffcient. It presume that it would not be
important, to name those piece types differently in SMIRF/Octopus:
Archangel (A = B+N), Centaur (C = R+N), Giant (G = Q+N) and Hydra (H =
K+N) thus defining new unique letter symbols for those types.

But still I see some problems in defining a compatibly extended X-FEN
because of the differing promotion behaviour, which could be derived from
the whole game only. Additionally it is unclear to me, how those first
PRELUDE moves have to be encoded (PGN/algebraic). Moreover it is not
clear, whether castling rights would be occupied by super-piece
replacements or not.

According to 'Superchess and Monarch: The Laws', section 10.3, 'A
castling is a move of (i) a King or Emperor and exclusively (ii) a Rook of
the same colour...'  There's more about how it's done on a 10-file
board, but otherwise it's normal castling.
As part of his entire Superchess 'system', Henk van Haeringen defines 50 different piece types, so it would be impossible to define single letter abreviations for all of them, and stick with the Roman alphabet.

Reinhard:

When I rigged WinBoard and Fairy-Max to play Superchess, I interpreted the
rules that are given on the superchess website rather liberally, in order to
have a quick result. (The Dutch Championship takes place Oct 12!)

I did not feel like implementing the prelude as it is described in the
rules. The prelude in my eyes is merely a way to randomize the opening
array without the aid of any external equipment, so that it can be used in
Human over-the-board play. No strategical advantage can be derived from it,
as one is forced to symmetrize after every choice by the opponent, undoing
every advantage the choice could have had. It is just a clever way of
making sure both players have an effect on the opening position, so that
neither of them can be sure what he gets to play, and derive opening
theory for it.

When a computer participates, there is no need for this. Even if the
engine cannot be trusted not to cheat, one can have the GUI set up a
shuffled array, and transmit it as a FEN to the engine(s). So this is what
I do. The GUI creates a random setup according to the rules, by starting
with the FIDE array, and then randomly deleting 2 pieces from a1-d1, and
two pieces from f1-h1, and then randomly filling the holes with the four
'exo-pieces'. If people object that this gives them less influence on
the opening array than with te prelude method, they are in fact wrong:
when playing a computer, they can click 'new game' until they get a
position that they like, and if they are patient enough, they could even
get exactly what they want. (There are 6 x 3 x 24 = 432 arays possible.)

This avoids the problem of having to design a protocol for exchanging the
pieces. (These are basically drop moves to occupied squares, so I could
have used the WinBoard crazyhouse syntax for drop moves, e.g. A@d1. But it just did not seem worth it.)

You are right about the FEN complication. In implementing Superchess, I
leaned strongly on the WinBoard Crazyhouse capabilities: in Crazyhouse
captured pieces are also put next to the board. And of course there you
also have the problem that these 'holdings' are part of the game state.

WinBoard uses for Crazyhouse, Bughouse and Shogi (the three variants with
holdings it supports) a FEN format that contains between board and stm field an optional holdings field. This field contains all pieces in the holdings (indicated by the same letter as they woud be on the board), enclosed in brackets []. So a FEN for an opening position could look like this:

rnavkser/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNAVKSER[NBBQnbbq] w KQkq - 0 1

(I used A=Amazon=QN, E=Empress=RN, S=Princess=BN and V=Veteran=KN, but in
WinBoard this is user-adjustable.) On input WinBoard also understands the
b-FEN standard, which encodes the holdings as an extra rank of the board.

Castling in Superchess is possible only with a Rook; the fact that all
Rooks are still on the board in the FEN I gave is accidental. You might
have no Rooks at all, and then there is no castling.

It would be great if you could make SMIRF play Superchess. If it would
play through Smirfoglot uder WinBoard, it would just be a matter of
implementing the two new pieces, and adapting the promotion choice.
(Something I haven't fixed in Fairy-Max yet. It is a bit hard to fix
this, as Fairy-Max / micro-Max used to be an 'always-promote-to-Queen
engine'.) WinBoard already takes care of shuffling the opening array.

Thank you, Harm, for your explanations. Concerning X-FEN I would prefer to
have piece letters being unique and compatible to nearly established
Archbishop and Chancellor. I do not want to change used letters with the
variants playing them.

Smirf unfortunately cannot be extended to handle all those four super
pieces because of its piece codes' bit encoding their properies. But in
Octopus there will be a more flexible bit encoding, so that a lot more of
gait combinations might be possible in Octopus, e.g.: Q+N, K+N, K+B, K+R.

When I read Superchess documents correctly, a promotion to Q+N is not
permitted. The union of all usable pieces seems to be constant, thus it
might be unnecessary to have the unused pieces listed seperately inside of
an X-FEN. Nevertheless it is not obvious, that it would be a notation from
Superchess. To have a unique X-FEN method I intend to do following:
instead of a []-list of captured pieces (which I am not yet able to
support, but maybe later ...) there could be an optional separated tag '
:' followed directly by forbidden pieces' symbols (if any). By default
at 8x8 NBRQ and at 10x8 NBRACQ are promotable pieces. For e.g. Janus Chess
thus ' :C' would symbolize, that a Chancellor would not be allowed to be
selected for promotion in this situation. Extending this to Superchess'
piece set there could be a representing symbol '*'. So ':*G' could
symbolize that any available castling piece has to be selected within the
unused super pieces set and that the (G = Giant) Q+N piece is not allowed
to be promoted in.

Well, I am not very happy either about the renaming of quite common pieces
in Superchess. But when in Rome, one does like the Romans...

The use of the [] came more or less automatic, as I started defining
Superchess in WinBoard as a form of Crazyhouse. I am not entirely happy
with that either, as the 'holdings' here have a different meaning than
in Crazyhouse (promotion pieces in stead of drop pieces).

OTOH, and this we discussed before, I am skeptical about your desire to be
able to encode the rules of the game in the FEN. Even requiring that each
piece has a unique letter, which is universally valid over all variants,
is doomed: as John remarked below, there are more pieces than letters. So
whatever system you devised, it would necessarily be limited to a subset
of the variants. While other variants would still need FENs.

For the sub-variant of Superchess played at the Dutch Championship, it
would be feasible to unify it with Capablanca-type variants.

If you want a FEN format which uniquely specifies the variant, which is
usable over a wide range of variants, I think you should build in a way to
specify exotic pieces (for which no standard letter exists). What I would
do is to allow replacement of a single piece letter by a description of
the piece in parentheses. E.g. in stead of G for Giant/Amazon you could
use (QN). 

So you would get FENs like:

3k4/6(QN)1/8/8/8/8/8/3KN w - - 0 1

Then you would only need a fairly limited set of move-descriptor
letters for use within the parentheses. You could use B,R,Q to indicate
sliders (where Q would be shorthand for RB), and the Betza system ( http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/betzanot.html ) built on F, W, A, D, N, H, L, J, G for leapers. Repetition of a leaper symbol would indicate a slider with that step (i.e. (NN) would be Nightrider, B would be shorthand for (FF)).

For compactness, you could allow definition of shorthand letters within
the FEN: (NN=H) would mean that subsequent H or h (without parentheses)
would indicate white and black Nightriders, respectively. This would be
especially important for Pawns, of which there usually are a lot. And
promotion rules are a property of a Pawn, so Pawns with non-standard
promotion rules would need to be described. A Pawn that could promote only
to Ferz (like in Shatranj) could be designated as (P:F). I would use an
explicit negation character for excluding pieces, like (P:!C) in Janus.
And of course define a shorthand letter for it, as there are likely to be
many Pawns in most Janus positions, (P:!C=P), so all subsequent Pawns
would be simply P or p. (P:*) could mean promotable to every captured
piece. Superchess positions would allow promotion to some pieces that were
replaced in the prelude as well as to captured pieces, which could be
written as (P:*qbbn=P), where lower-case indicates the piece is in finite
supply.

Well, Harm, I intend to seperate the variant depending renaming of piece
types from FEN, because this should be a feature of the GUI and maybe
become customizable at least. It might be accompanied by a commenting PGN
token like: [Variant='Janus Chess, J:=A']. That would give to it an
importance like a kind of comment. But the X-FEN as a communication
vehicle for engines should use merely unified and thus constant piece
letters. This should also be true for move notations (in PGN / Algebraic),
where protocols e.g. like UCI demand for one-char-letter piece symbols.

Of course this approach is not at all able to cover all piece types. But
that goal would need a much bigger approach than what I intend this
moment. (Octopus would not be able to cover every piece type, too.) And a
later extension e.g. done as proposed in your posting would not at all be
made impossible by my idea. But it would be a simple and compatible ad hoc
extension into the right direction.

Promoting possibilities should not differ through different incarnations
of the same piece type. Thus having pawns with different promotion
abilities does not make sense to me. Thus it has to be related to a given
board situation in total.

Muller, you should really read my entire message rather than responding
only to those portions which you find argumentative. I did state, 'I do
agree that they supply a fair number which can be applied to most
variants.' Could this simply be a mis-understanding caused by the
language barrier?

The number of potential pieces can be doubled simply with a little model
paint. I have found that coloring the 'crown' of pieces, Red on White
and Yellow on Black, can make them distinct. In fact, I use a Bishop
marked thus to represent a Cardinal, a marked Rook as a Marshal and a
marked Queen as a Amazon. This can also be used to denote pieces in games
with more than two opponents.

Also, some standardization of their application could prove helpful,
though not absolutely necessary. If a player has become familiar with the
use of a particular piece representing a particular movement type, they
may find it difficult to transfer that value to another. Especially if
they have used one piece to represent two distinct move types in seperate
games and are confronted with both of these move types in a single game.
Of course, this is a totally subjective condition which many may not have
difficulty.

When I was young, I had a set in which the Bishop and Pawns had similar shapes. They often became confused during the game. In frustration, I got rid of that set. Though nowadays I would simply mark the Bishop to differentiate it.

Reinhard, I am not sure what you are trying to say. How can you separate
variant-dependent naming from the FEN standard? The FEN is one of the few
places where pieces are named in the first place.

In PGN the problems are far smaller, as these have a variant tag. So a PGN
game always unambiguously specifies the variant it is for. And indeed I
exploit that in WinBoard: if you paste a OGN game into WinBoard, it
automatically switches to the variant the PGN is for. FENs encountered in
this context can benifit from the fact that the variant is known as well.

The problem is isolated FENs, in particular isolated FENs for non-starting
positions. I have not found a way to deduce the vriant from looking at the
FEN string. So FENs that obviously must belong to a different variant as
the current one, because they use non-valid piece letters or wrong board
size, are simply rejected when ou paste them into WinBoard.

It seems to me you want the variant (and by inference the rules) to be
recognizable from the FEN, without prefixing the FEN with an explicit
variant name. Otherwise there would be no reason, for instance, to specify
the type of castling in the FEN.

I think predefining many pieces in a standard is self-defeating, as you
would be forced to pick letters for pieces that are unacceptable to those
playing the particular variant, even long before you would run out of
letters. So the only thing universal in such a 'standard' would be that
it is universally not used...

The major variants (Xiangqi, Chess, Shogi, Capablanca) are fortunately
recognizable from their board size, and this could be used to define a
default piece encoding acceptable to that variant. You will never get
(Western) Shogi players to have the Gold general represented by anything
like G, or Xiangqi players to represent the Cannon by anything else but
C...

A suggestion: when developers post a game to this site they might also
include instructions on how to create a real-world model. Keeping in mind
that many may not have the funds to spend on expensive materials, and such
should be easily obtained.

I have found a nice source. The Dollar Store carries both Chess and
Checker sets(for just a dollar). I obtained a number of these for use when
creating games. A little cutting and pasting makes for practical any size
field(as long as it utilizes square cells).

And as stated in a previous message, pieces can be marked to differentiate
them. Checkers make excellent foundations for the application of letters
and symbols. Graphics supplied with Zillions addons can be printed out for
this purpose(if the designer has no problem with this application).

I wholeheartedly give my permission for anyone who wishes to use my
graphics in their personal games. Of course, if they intend to use them
for commercial purposes we will need to talk. ;-)

Indeed, I am always trying to separate variant- and piece naming from FEN
representation. In SMIRF I made a first approach to that using X-FEN as
published. But including Janus or Optimized Chess produced a lot of
encoding problems, just by having different piece type letters. I learned,
that this was an unnecessary complication, which should be avoided. Think
on different piece names and abbreviating letters in different countries
for traditional chess. Those are part of the PRESENTATION of the game,
thus belonging to the GUI. Piece letters on the surface simply are a
comment to the underlying pieces, thus not being absolute. But a
calculating engine has no need to communicate multi language wise, it
simply has to use well introduced unique international (english) letters
PNBRQK. That is, why I have not yet included SMIRF's current
representation of Janus or Optimized Chess into the X-FEN concept, because
that has been the wrong approach. X-FEN has to be extended to include a lot
of variants in a generic and universal way. Variant names are only
comments, even though I know, that Winboard handles it as a definition.
But have a look at Chess, Chess960 and castlingless random chess. Having
X-FEN will cover all of them doubtlessly, thus avoiding any need to
explain more than X-FEN to fully describe a position. Chess960 as a
variant title then therefore merely is a comment. A lot of variants
include each other, e.g. think of CRC. Sometimes it is not to be decided
to which variant a position belongs, and there is in fact no need to.
Moreover this would not make any sense, as in Shredder FEN that is
creating confusion encoding identical positions by different FEN strings.
All Chess positions e.g. could be regarded as Chess960 positions.

Indeed, unifying Chess960 and Chess this way is a nice concept. But it only
works because these games nearly are the same variant. You acknowledge
yourself that you already run into problems with Janus vs CRC, which,seen
from the viewpoint of a Xiangqi or Shogi player are practically the same
game. But the promotion rules are slightly different, as are the castling
rules.

The promotion rules could be attributed as a property of the Pawn, and in
this view a CRC Pawn and a Janus Pawn are different pieces. This becomes
more obtuse in Chaturanga, where the promotion is determined by the board
square you promote on, and thus can no longer be considered a property of
the Pawn.

And how about Losers Chess vs normal Chess? How could you recognize that a
FEN represents a poition from Loser Chess rather than normal Chess. How
would you see it from the PGN if the variant tag was merely a comment? The
game might end with a resign, so the absence of checkmate might not be
apparent.

Your unified approach simply does not work when the variants differ more
than a trifle, or becomes exceedingly cumbersome. WinBoard aims at
supporting a wide variety of variants. A really universal FEN standard
should be able to handle variants the designer of the standard did not
even know. This is why X-FEN is unacceptable for use in WinBoard, both in
communication with the user and with the engine. It does a lousy job
representing Xiangqi and Shogi positons....