Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Where is the new Alibaba symbol? can't find it in this jungle.

I meant in XBetza. We now use S (from 'second') for AD and T (from 'third') for GH.

Ah, OK, I had seen this. I thought that you had a new icon/symbol for the Alibaba.

Not sure that these S and T are a real progress at a second thought. Well, K and Q are also two "bi-atom", FW and BR, but in these cases those "shortcuts" are related to well known pieces, standard moreover, King and Queen. Writing K instead of FW is clearer.

Second and Third are not pieces, so there is no added clarity. Second could be also understood as a leap to any second square as a Squirrel, ADN, which, coincidence, also starts with an S. So, adding another convention to be learnt just to save 1 letter is arguable.

In other contexts, it can save a lot more than that. [K?SS], the example already shown, is a lot shorter (and a lot simpler) than [F?AA][W?DD].

S does end up representing a known piece, the Alibaba. There's currently no named piece (that I know of) related to T, but that doesn't mean that it's never going to be useful; someone might even find a reason to use [cTX-bsFX] (though I doubt I'd try anything more extreme than [cT-bN] even if it was currently supported).

There's currently no named piece (that I know of) related to T

there's Troll

qQ

So simple? whoah!…)))))

So, adding another convention to be learnt just to save 1 letter is arguable.

This is certainly a valid concern, and I would not have done it just for saving one letter. But, as Bob already showed, it can save a lot more in descriptions of multi-leg moves through the bracket notation. There it was a constant annoyance that trajectories involving larger leaps had to be split up in separate orthogonal and a diagonal parts. E.g. the compound of Griffon and Manticore can be written as [K?fsQ], but the compound of Osprey and its pseudo-rotated counterpart A-then-R would have to be written as [D?fsB][A?fsR] this can now become [S?fsQ]. So these new shorthands are mainly intended for use in the bracket notation, I would not recommend writing the Squirrel as NS or the Lion as KNS. The A was already taken, so I could not really find a natural abbreviation for the Alibaba move; not so many letters are left anyway, and it was pure coincidence that there was one that could be associated with a verbal description that at least has some mnemonic value. That this then also worked for the GH compound, in exactly the same way, was in fact an incredible coincidence, which I could not resist. (Although I don't think any piece that is already in use would actually need this.)

S does end up representing a known piece, the Alibaba.

Spider!

S does end up representing a known piece, the Alibaba.

Spider!

Indeed, and that's what it's represented as in the Abstract set.

If the T piece moves three spaces in any radial direction, then the name Tarantula, which is a very big spider, might be appropriate.

Trilby.

Indeed, 'Spider' would be a very fitting alternative name for the Alibaba. So AD = S = Spider and GH = T = Tarantula.

So these new shorthands are mainly intended for use in the bracket notation, I would not recommend writing the Squirrel as NS or the Lion as KNS.

I do it anyway. It still works. And as prone as I am to challenge file-size limits, every little bit helps. :)

Indeed, 'Spider' would be a very fitting alternative name for the Alibaba. So AD = S = Spider and GH = T = Tarantula.

That sounds good to me!

The Tarantula would probably be mainly a problemist's piece, or something to use in something like Dealer's Chess, though of course it can be a handy compound (as with the Troll).

Trilby.

Well, I've created a piece named for a piece of furniture (Gerfod -- though that's also my own invention), so why not a piece named for a hat? Still, I like Tarantula better.

...(though I doubt I'd try anything more extreme than [cT-bN] even if it was currently supported).

That looked interesting to me as I reviewed the comments here, and while that doesn't work, writing out the latter part as bmpafsK does work, and quite nicely. The whole move, in non-bracket form, becomes mpafmpafcabmpafsK, and since the landing squares are the same as FN, a full description as mFmNmpafmpafcabmpafsmK now lacks only a good name. While I'd tend to lean toward something military, somehow the name Dodgeball seems right.

qQ

Argh... undocumented features! Now I'll go fix a few entries in things, with qR, qB, and qQ.

H.G., this really needs to be included on the XBetza page.

I had completely forgotten this is possible. But looking at the code it seems intentional. It must be from before I started to (somewhat) support bracket notation.

Notably, that application of the q only works on the single-letter sliders B, R, and Q. There's no way to apply it to a Nightrider or even Wazirrider; such a thing would have to be done manually (which is OK, because they'd be pretty rare and it's not super hard).

That could actually be unintended.

Intentional or not, that's how it currently works (according to my experimentation).

Could you please check your Vanguard Chess game courier preset? The black sergeants do not move correctly.

I had a similar problem with the Black Soldiers in the one game I played. I was going to take tomorrow to ask H.G. to take a look at what's up with it.

I suspect it's an out-of-place pointer, or some such.

I had a similar problem with the Black Soldiers in the one game I played. I was going to take tomorrow to ask H.G. to take a look at what's up with it.

This appears to be a bug in the betza.js script itself, albeit in something it does only for the benefit of generating GAME code: when it reads the XBetza descripttors it determines whether a piece is symmetric or not, and stores that info in an array. The PTA uses that array to see if it should create different versions of the piece for white and black in the legdefs move table.

The bug was that it would only base this on the last atom in the XBetza descriptor. For the Sergeant this was sW, which is symmetric. So it decided white and black could use the same Sergeant. Which for black of course means it now moves in teh wrong direction. I now changed it such that it pays attention to the symmetry of all atoms in the descriptor, and if one of those is asymmetric, it will create an extra flipped version for black.

After refreshing the browser cache the PTA should now generate the correct GAME code.

Can anything be done for the existing preset? Or will I need to make a new one?

Well, if you know what you are doing, and do it carefully, you can add new pieces to a preset. You would have to make a copy of the moves of the Sergeant:

1  1  1  1     3 // sergeant(5616)
1  1 -1  1     3
1  3  0  1     3
1  1  1  0     1
1  1 -1  0     1
0

and copy that to the end of the legdefs table, behind the King moves. Then you would have to change all the y steps there (the 4th number on each line) from 1 to -1, to make it move in the other direction. Finally you would have to calculate where this appended section starts, which is 8 lines of 5 numbers plus the terminating zero (i.e. 41) places behind the King (which starts at 5703, as the comment indicates). So it starts at 5744.

Finally you replace the 5616 in the line

def sg cond #0 5616 0;

by this 5744, to let the GAME code know where the moves of the black sergeant (sg) start. That should do it.