Ratings & Comments

Hello Fergus, I have posted my game "Dice Landing Chess". Please have a review and let me know if any additional changes are needed.

Thank you! Jishan Zhang

Is it possible to program games on unusually shaped boards if these can be translated into square ones

Game Courier will let you program games on unusually shaped boards with either the Custom Grid or the Custom shape. Custom Grid is designed for games that can fit onto a grid-like structure whereby each space is at the intersection of two axes even if the spaces do not have even sides or right angles.

and movements can be coded with alternating through morph,

The morph feature you mention is part of Interactive Diagrams, not part of Game Courier. But since GAME Code is Turing-complete, I expect the same feature could be programmed for Game Courier. However, Game Courier can also more easily handle location-dependent powers of movement if that is what you actually need.

There hasn't been a new featured variant in a bit and it's worrying me a little.

There is none for this month, and I have now disabled the notice in the header. There was not sufficient interest in choosing one this month, and the ones currently nominated and seconded appeared to be ineligible.

So far Tinkercad + Inkscape is working beautifully. A bit tedious to be sure, but that was a given by default.

Twelve years ago I posted about my new computer. That computer lasted twelve years. For a while, I was having difficulty getting it to turn on. Finally, I could not get it to turn on at all. I ordered a new one on July 15 and got it on July 19. Unlike the previous one, which was custom designed, this one was a refurbished Dell that cost me less than half as much.

Here's a screenshot I took soon after getting it:

And here is one I took today with Rainmeter and HWiNFO open.

I'll now compare the specs of the two computers. The new one has six cores instead of four, but each core is 3.2 GHz - 4.3 GHz instead of 3.6 - 3.8 GHz. The new CPU is Intel rather than AMD, and it supports Secure Boot. The new one has 32 GB of RAM instead of 8 GB, though the old one had each RAM card in its own heatsink sleeve, and the new one leaves the RAM bare. The old one had a more powerful PSU, a better heatsink, and a better ventilated case. While I got an adapter for connecting a SATA drive through a USB 3 port, the old one had an integrated external SATA port I could plug a drive into and boot from. Unfortunately, I have not gotten this new computer to boot from anything except its C: drive. Its drive is an NVME SSD, which is smaller and faster than any SSD drive I have had before, which helps speed up boot time, and it has more space than the one that originally came with my previous computer. The new one uses onboard graphics instead of a graphics card, though its graphics capacity is probably equivalent. Both have onboard audio instead of a soundcard.

The new one is Windows 11, because I wanted the OS on a new computer to be up-to-date and not lose support in the near future. However, Windows 11 was not a reason for upgrading, and it does not seem to have any advantages over Windows 10. It mainly differs in design from Windows 10, but as you can see from the screenshots, I have made it look more like earlier versions of Windows anyway. One of the disadvantages has been that one of my gamepads is not being recognized by the new computer. At least I've been able to dig out another gamepad that does work with it. Another disadvantage is how it is displaying the retro video game Warblade. My previous computer would stretch it out to fit the width of the monitor, but the new computer does not stretch it out and displays black on each side. This is more a matter of preference, though. Because I could not boot my previous computer's C drive, I could not retrieve the passwords I had stored in Vivaldi. At least most of my passwords were already in Firefox or Edge, which I could transfer, and I was able to change passwords I could not retrieve.

While there have been some slight problems with the new computer, I have not found it unable to run software I could run with Windows 10. In particular, Zillions-of-Games, Ultimate Paint, and Warblade, which are all old programs no longer being developed, are all working. I have not tried all the software I used in Windows 10, but the programs I regularly use are working fine, and programs that are still kept up-to-date should still work with it.

Although there can be multiple dice associated with different opening setups and reserve-pile compositions, each game only uses a single die. Let me modify the game rules to make it clearer.

I have printable high-resolution DLchess dice symbols in a pdf file. Will upload it to my space.

I also have about 20k sheets of self-adhesive-labels, each has 5 repeats of the 6 DLchess dice symbols (smiley-face, ♔ ♖ ♗ ♘ ♙). They are NOT available to the general public yet - I'm using them as rewards to my Kickstarter backers.

Sea Chess by Giuseppe Brogi

But 960.

I second CwDA to hang out for more than a month if that's allowed.

Glad to "hear" it! I find the Inkscape part a little less tedious if I make several Tinkercad SVGs in a row, and run them through Inkscape as a sort of batch. If nothing else, it saves me from entering most of the specifications more than once.

I think @arx is the owner of Skica. I am playing a game right now. When the other player did a castle move, the king disappeared. So I think the code needs a tweak to fix that. Also, can you add "pass" as a valid move? This way it is possible for people to communicate without making moves.

@arx, I think I tried that, and it did not work. I'm putting the code down for a while, so I don't get frustrated.

(This reminds me: I still need to upload a small batch of new ones that I made just before my desktop 'puter went silent....)

Can you please spoil if there are my pieces also?

I have updated my DLchess (Dice Landing Chess), Introduction, Rules, Notes, by replacing 'dice' with 'die', to emphasize that in each game, only one die is used.

I have also uploaded printable high-resolution DLchess dice symbols: /membergraphics/MSdice-landing-chess/DLchess-6-symbols_x5_repeats.pdf

I hope it doesn't take as long as with my Vivarta Chess. Let me remind you that my Vivart Chess submission was considered for almost three years. However, here, Minishogi Gold and Silver / 5五将棋金銀 is already recognized by Japanese masters as a separate variant of Minishogi. I have to give a link to Japanese sources where this version of my Minishogi was published, which, of course, is not entirely suitable for the English-speaking public. I would like to be able to redirect interested players to this resource, where everything would be clear and understandable for them. Let me repeat it again: My submission is ready for publication.

Can you please spoil if there are my pieces also?

Right now, all I have in the set are four half-Walls, an unbroken Chain, and At-Sign and Hashtag symbols.

I have now published this. I reduced the categories to Dice and Setup, because I don't think the others apply. I would recommend including a link to your PDF on the page.

The elephant to me is a diagonal mover. It may leap 1 or two squares. I want to make a variant of the elephant that has the ability to change its diagonal color (checkered board). The changing of color is a special move.

I think the original suggestions I gave were mistaken.

def White_Elephant checkaleap #0 #1 0 -1 and cond empty #0 capture empty #1 or checkleap #0 #1 2 2;

def White_Elephant checkaleap #0 #1 0 -1 and cond empty #0 not capture empty #1 or checkleap #0 #1 2 2 or checkleap #0 #1 1 1;

def Black_Elephant checkaleap #0 #1 0 1 and cond empty #0 capture empty #1 or checkleap #0 #1 2 2;

def Black_Elephant checkaleap #0 #1 0 1 and cond empty #0 not capture empty #1 or checkleap #0 #1 2 2 or checkleap #0 #1 1 1;

So each one first checks whether the move is a diagonal leap of one or two spaces. If it is not, it checks the condition "cond empty #0 not capture empty #1". If the origin space is empty, it is checking an actual move. So it checks whether a capture has already been made. If the origin space is not empty, it is checking a potential move. So it checks whether the destination space is still empty. If it turns out to be a capturing move, the function immediately returns false. Otherwise, it evaluates whether it is a one-space move vertically backwards.

This game is showing a problem with castling. The king disappears. The same problem happens in other presets I made using the same castling. I'm sure it was working before

This looks like a problem with betza.txt, so you'll have to wait till H G Muller looks at it

Not Sphinx Chess 960

Edit: What should I call this chess variant I invented because I misinterpreted the rules?

8 of my 9 unpublished submissions are ready to be published.

My submission is ready for publication.