Ratings & Comments

The author, HaruN Y, has updated this page.

The author, HaruN Y, has updated this page.

Fuller's Proposal1320

If black has 1 Persian King and 1 Spartan King, is there duple-check for them?

The editor A. M. DeWitt has revised this page.

The author, A. M. DeWitt, has updated this page.

@HGMuller

The first problem to solve is that the square coloring doesn't alternate properly. If there's a way to set colors more manually, I'll do that. I think the coloring is important to see the bishop bindings and rook's alternation, so I'm not willing to just leave it as is. I can't put just one hole between little boards, or the knights will be afforded an incorrect move. I could put three holes between little boards, but that'll have quite a bit too much empty space (can you thin specific ranks+columns?).

Skimming the documentation page for the interactive diagram, I think I can do this, but just by creating a background image and setting the background parameter (keeping two spaces between boards)? That's a little obnoxious, and something like Game Courier's method for specifying custom coloring patterns would be nice, but also not a big deal.

Ideally I could override the coordinates

This doesn't seem possible besides setting a starting rank number, but I can suppress coordinates altogether. A new parameter with comma-separated rank/file names would be really nice.

New month started………

You can embed a JavaScript function xxxShade(x,y) on the page, which returns a color (like '#ffc080'). (Where xxx is the value of the satellite parameter.) Which will then be used for the square with internal coordinates (x,y). (Where the lower-left corner is (0,0).)

The problem with coordinates is that these are not just for dressing up the image, but are used in notation. By allowing arbitrary coordinate labels it would be possible to define coordinates for which SAN can no longer be unambiguously parsed.

Army of tencubed

Random Army of tencubed

I second Atomic Chess.

@H. G. Muller,

I am making a new chess variant, Reiwa Dai Shogi, that is basically Dai Shogi with better piece balancing, replacing the weak pieces with stronger ones with stronger promotions.

However, I am struggling to make a good power piece for the game. Ideally, I want something that is stronger than the Lion but still has difficulty mating.

I figured it would be a good idea to have you weigh in on this, since you know a fair deal about Chu Shogi and the historical variants.

Here's a diagram of my first in-dev version. Lion is currently subject to trading rules due to lack of a stronger power piece ATM. The only new pieces are the Ram's-Head Soldiers on c1 and m1.

Francois,

Sorry for not responding to your email with the chess icons earlier. It was in my spam folder.

These images are really good. Seriously, great work with your SVGs.

I did find one flaw in your mnemonic SVGs though. The ranging pieces don't have the radial lines where their ranging bulges are, which isn't a huge deal, but can cause confusion if you are used to H. G. Muller's mnemonic system for Shogi pieces. This problem is much more pronounced with the bfree-tiger and heavenly-horse SVGs though, where no white lines will show up at all, making the piece just look like one big mass of black. My guess is that the program you are using couldn't perceive the white lines due to them being at a pixel wide or less.

I used Tinkercad (https://www.tinkercad.com/) to create my Chu Shogi SVGs. Tinkercad is a free online 3D tool that has an Export to SVG tool which works on all Shapes intersecting the Design Plane. It can be a bit tedious when you need to make a lot of SVGs but can save a lot of time and result in high quality SVGs.

Other than that, great work with these.

Duke of Rutland's Chess

Dropped Shinobi

Random Dropped Shinobi

Thanks! Colors look good, so the 2-square separation will work, and I've now entered the main "round" initial setup. Next up is adding the higher-dimensional moves! Done! Oh, and I notice that your diagram on the ID page has the Move Diagram with pieces on a non-central square: how do I do that?

Well, I suppose that part of the reason a Lion is so valuable is that it can so easily checkmate on its own. That makes it hard to predict the value relative to pieces that cannot. The most obvious method for taking away the mating potential would be to keep the piece devoid of Knight moves.

The Lion Dog in the interpretation where it can do 2-out-1-in locust captures might be more valuable. (But I don't really like that piece, as there seems no defense against this.) The Tenjiku Free Eagle might qualify on 15x15 (where the Lion loses importance due to its slowness, and the ability to move as Queen is worth quite a lot). You could even beef it up to a 'Super Eagle' by allowing also two Wazir moves per turn (QcaWcaFcabK, possibly also adding DA). Even QcabK could be pretty strong.

It would be hard to achieve the desired value without locust captures. Perhaps with hook moves (diagonal to avoid lone mating), but Tengu Dai Shogi already exists. If you plan to allow entirely new moves, AD rifle captures could be a useful building block. Unlike the Lion's igui these can attack steppers with impunity. And unlike the Lion Dog, you can defend against the igui forks by attacking the square it is on, as all igui moves end on the same square.