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I have prepared :

timurid

wild timurid

wild babur

babur

I would be glad if you can deploy one of these in your jocly :

You can test from here :

http://biscandine.fr/variantes/echecs/examples/browser/control.html?game=timurid-chess

source :

http://biscandine.fr/variantes/echecs/src-timurids.zip

deployed distribution :

http://biscandine.fr/variantes/echecs/dist-timurid.zip

The dist-timurid.zip turns out to provide a very easy way for incorporating the games. I have tried that for Timurid Chess now. I simply copied all the files to the dist/browser/games/chessbase directory. Then all I have to do is add one line to teh dist/broawser/jocly-allgames.js file:

"timurid-chess":{title:"Timurid Chess",thumbnail:"timurid-thumb.png",module:"chessbase"},

to let Jocly know the game exists, and load these files if it gets selected.

It is a bit of a battle, though, to make Jocly actually use the modified file, rather than the one that is cached. I could achieve that by accessing this jocly-allgames.js file directly, and then (in FireFox) reload while pressing Shift to bypass the cache. Starting Jocly after that made the game show up.

I'll incorporate the other 3 games here later. And then I will try to push the sources to the hgm branch of my on-line Jocly git repository.

Hello,

Would you have a moment to check if the variant can be published? Note that it is already in the jocly of CVP.

@Editors: if you have time, the page is ready for publication. I would like the link of the rules since I have pushed a contribution to jocly : https://github.com/fhoudebert/jocly/tree/timourid Let me know if it needs to be modified.

Hmm, quite interesting.

I'm glad that some of my CVs seem to have inspired yours. If I update my latest book More Chess and More Than Chess, I will probably include this one in it.

This game deserves to be soon publish into the CVP (you have been waiting long long time), and many thanks for your big efforts to revive Jocly!

The Setup section is not clear.

1. None of the diagrams have Cannons. Are there Cannons or not?

2. The introduction suggests 8 different variants but only 4 are shown with diagrams. Although they all could be guessed, I think that showing all of them would avoid any ambiguity.

For the succession, I suppose you mean the King can swap location with an unthreatened Prince, which is not what I would understand when you write 'move to'.

Perhaps it would be better to just show the white armies, instead of complete diagrams, for the alternative setups. That makes it easier to compare them.

I've taken your suggestions into account to improve the rules.

Note that I finally retained the name of Emir for the piece playing FNC, it fits well with the timurid theme and has a name generic enough to be stand next to a king.

Perhaps it is better to show the full 12x12 board once, for the first variant (Timurid). Note that the statement that "strong pieces can only appear through promotion" becomes a bit dubious when you have a Queen in the initial setup. Only Mirza really starts without any pieces better than Rook, here.

I've reworded the sentence and added a full 12x12 setup

Illogical: where’s the Rhino diagram?

It is the Wild Mirza variant : Ships are replaced by Griffons and the Snake by a Rhino

@HG maybe: I was trying the optional promotion of the Prince with the ID. When I move a Prince to last row, I get the table to choose between Q and Prince. Good. But if I take Prince, which means that I don't promote or I promote the Prince into a Prince, then the piece cannot move anymore. I don't see why.

@François: no Lev is right, you forgot to include a Rhino diagram.

@Jean-Louis: You mean the Diagram on the Timurid page? For me the Prince can move after I 'promote' to it.

@HG: yes I mean this diagram on this page. If I promote the Prince to Queen, I can move it at his turn. But if I choose the promotion to Prince, then I do see a Prince on the diagram, at its turn I do see the red losanges and the yellow dots but I can't move the piece. The Prince remains stuck on its square on the last rank. This with Firefox, I'm going to check with Safari.

I've got it, I'm adding a rhino movement diagram

@HG: same with Safari. A Prince "promoted" to Prince remains immobile.

OK, I see it now. I unjustly assumed that the appearence of the target highlights meant it could move. But the problem manifests itself only after selecting the destination. It seems to think that leaving the rank is another promotion opportunity, because again the 'click on piece of choice' message appears, and Prince and Queen get highlighted in the table. But it is halfhearted about it; if I click in the table nothing happens.

This is a bug in the Diagram script, but it also raises the question how a fix would have to look. If this were Shogi, leaving the zone would llow the promotion, and if it were Chu Shogi leaving it with a capture would allow it. But Diagrams for those would have a promoOffset defined for calculating the promoted type. I suppose that for Chesslike promotions it should only promote when entering the zone? Not when moving inside it, or leaving it?

yes, it would be logical for the promotion to be triggered when entering the zone only.

I don't understand really the question in that case where a Prince is promotted to a Prince, meaning it actually refuses the promotion. In this case, it doesn't mind if this (non)promotion is obtained when entering, staying or leaving the zone as the piece is unchanged. What matters is that the piece should not be immobile!

Now look this unfinished page (the GC is not set yet). For the ID, I have used the morph instruction instead, and in this case it seems to work, the Prince can be promotted to either a Queen or remain a Prince, and it can move afterwards.

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/timurid-samarkand

On the Timurid page there is custom JavaScript for handling the promotion, and I suspect the problem is in there. But it is already late now, so I will look at it tomorrow.

The morph method would probably allow promotion for every move that ends in the zone, also if it started inside of it.

Note that not even the succession would need custom script anymore; originally I used a custom routine BadZone to veto all moves where a King would swap with another pice than a Prince. But the captureMatrix can now do that too.

@HG: no need to look at, the morph instruction did the job.

By the way, your PTA is pretty convenient. It didn't translate the morph instructions though, so I had to add them manually in the GC preset file. But it is easy. Also, I had a small issue when a piece was only available on promotion and not present on the starting lineup. So, I cheated by momentarily placing this piece on a void square in order to create the needed lines for the preset, making sure of course I was not adding this extra piece on the FEN.

I am interested by what you say on the K's succession. I have to look deeper into that possibility.

The author, François Houdebert, has updated this page.