Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

If nobody has any comments on this by tomorrow, I'll go ahead and upload the PDFs, then move on to the next variant in my head (and/or a couple of expansion sets for this one).

Since you more‐or‐less explicitly requested a comment on this from me… :‌p

It's certainly an interesting take on Random setups, quite different from the in some ways superficially similar Universal Chess due to Carlos Cetina. The main potential weakness compared to sth with a bit more player agency such as Pick‐the‐Team is that you're relying on statistics to yield a more‐or‐less balanced setup; sometimes it'll work, sometimes it really won't. And ofc especially with Different Pawns and Kings it's probably hard for any but the most experienced(!) players to tell in advaance how balanced a given piece selection will be. Obviously the usual strategies (two games, switching armies; optional Pie rule, ⁊c.) can help w/ this to an extent, but it's sth to bear in mind.

I'm not totally sure the ‘Introductory Rule’ is likely to be much help; defending against unfamiliar pieces is at least as difficult as handling them oneself (as I learned playing Metamachy)

Is the Arrow Pawn described as intended? As written it's a superset (which I recognise from JWB's Meta‐Chess, though idr the name and I don't have the PDF to hand) of the steward (which is not denoted as a pawn — though it's of comparable strength to — indeed in some cases perhaps weaker than — some of the other pawns)

Ngl upon reading ‘Gold Pawn’ and ‘Silver Pawn’ I was half‐expecting the Gilman pieces :‌p Also I like the Zombie Pawn — it's contageon as in Maka Dai Dai (and H.G.'s several spinoffs) but for the opposite purpose

Is there a special rule for castling with a colourbound corner piece, à la CwDA?

It's a small detail, but whilst I'm not normally a fan of the promotion‐only‐to‐captured‐pieces rule, the way it's done here is a nice touch :‌)

The idea of expansions is pleasant, and perhaps with physical sets (and to a degree with software) even makes sense, but in practice is there any reason not just to pick pieces from e.g. one of the existing Cetina UC lists? At least for regular pieces, since the Royal and Pawn lists for those games are perhaps a little anæmic (though again, one could simply merge the lists). Especially since the main point of this (in common with UC, and arguably Pick‐the‐Piece, among others) is afaict less the actual set of available pieces and more the way they're employed (although ofc the obvious counterargument regarding trying to compile a Canonical List of Pieces is always a thing)

It's certainly an interesting take on Random setups, quite different from the in some ways superficially similar Universal Chess due to Carlos Cetina. The main potential weakness compared to sth with a bit more player agency such as Pick‐the‐Team is that you're relying on statistics to yield a more‐or‐less balanced setup; sometimes it'll work, sometimes it really won't. And ofc especially with Different Pawns and Kings it's probably hard for any but the most experienced(!) players to tell in advaance how balanced a given piece selection will be. Obviously the usual strategies (two games, switching armies; optional Pie rule, ⁊c.) can help w/ this to an extent, but it's sth to bear in mind.

Yes, I do think that probability will keep the two sides from being too overbalanced against each other, though of course the worst can always happen (especially if I'm one of the players). Perhaps a "redeal" rule is in order.

Still, as you mention later, it's not the pieces themselves that make the difference, but how one uses them. ("It's not the size that matters; it's how you use it.")

I'm not totally sure the ‘Introductory Rule’ is likely to be much help; defending against unfamiliar pieces is at least as difficult as handling them oneself (as I learned playing Metamachy)

After an offline conversation about this game, I think you're right about the Introductory thing (though that conversation yielded different reasons); I'll delete it.

Is the Arrow Pawn described as intended? As written it's a superset (which I recognise from JWB's Meta‐Chess, though idr the name and I don't have the PDF to hand) of the steward (which is not denoted as a pawn — though it's of comparable strength to — indeed in some cases perhaps weaker than — some of the other pawns)

Yes, the Arrow Pawn is described as intended; that's how I found it (Arrow Pawn Chess c/o Wikiipedia). And I'm aware that its move is a superset of the Steward; I almost deleted one or the other, then realized that it's not entirely a bad thing. The Arrow Pawn is about as powerful as a Pawn can get, and still be a Pawn; it promotes, and is both capable of and subject to en passant. (I should make explicit the rule that Pawns with permanent double moves are still subject to en passant.)

Ngl upon reading ‘Gold Pawn’ and ‘Silver Pawn’ I was half‐expecting the Gilman pieces :‌p Also I like the Zombie Pawn — it's contageon as in Maka Dai Dai (and H.G.'s several spinoffs) but for the opposite purpose

The Gold and Silver Pawns are, of course, actually the Gold and Silver Generals from Shogi, seriously demoted. (It seems they went out drinking one night....)

I actually created the Zombie Pawn for something else entirely, and needed something to fill the ranks here. (The Left End and Right End Pawns should show you how desperate I was to get a full set!)

Is there a special rule for castling with a colourbound corner piece, à la CwDA?

Good point; I should look into that. Since CwDA uses symmetrical armies and this doesn't, though, it may not be as necessary.

It's a small detail, but whilst I'm not normally a fan of the promotion‐only‐to‐captured‐pieces rule, the way it's done here is a nice touch :‌)

Yeah, I'm not real fond of "promote only to pieces you've captured," but it just seemed right for this game. It's a further way to make use of the fact that you have to bring one of each color.

The idea of expansions is pleasant, and perhaps with physical sets (and to a degree with software) even makes sense, but in practice is there any reason not just to pick pieces from e.g. one of the existing Cetina UC lists? At least for regular pieces, since the Royal and Pawn lists for those games are perhaps a little anæmic (though again, one could simply merge the lists). Especially since the main point of this (in common with UC, and arguably Pick‐the‐Piece, among others) is afaict less the actual set of available pieces and more the way they're employed (although ofc the obvious counterargument regarding trying to compile a Canonical List of Pieces is always a thing)

I hadn't looked at Universal Chess before now, but most of the pieces there are certainly fitting for this game. In fact, I already had my eye on the Chainsaw (which, if you've been paying attention, should come as no surprise at all).

It certainly should show that this ruleset assumes that it's a physical-set game, with one or both players either 3D printing the pieces or building them in some other way. I've made sure that I've properly designed the pieces as much as possible, since the cards have the preview pictures from Thingiverse. (After I finish this, but before it goes "live," I'll be arranging things on Thingiverse so all the pieces are in one place, or at least all from each type are in one place. The same will hold for expansions.)

And indeed, the initial set (at least, the set of regular Pieces) is, as much as I could manage, made up of pieces that are relatively common and familiar to fairy chess fans, or at least not difficult to comprehend given a decent description and diagram. (IMO all 40 of those pieces, except for the Turtle, should have Piececlopedia entries same with the regional Pawns, and maybe the Rex as well.)

I'm ready to upload the PDFs, but I've realized that they exceed the 2MB storage limit (two of them are bigger than that all by themselves). I'm wondering if I shouldn't just put them on this game's Thingiverse page (once I create it) and link to there.

Addendum: I'm referring to linking directly to the PDFs, as opposed to just linking to the respective pages and letting the reader find the PDFs there.

I've now (out of necessity) put all of the downloads on Thingiverse, and linked there from here.

Besides providing a larger volume of storage for the big PDFs, that will make changing anything much simpler (the "upload a new file with the same name" doesn't work for me here, for some reason).

So, I'm still open to notes if (for example) any of the move descriptions seem confusing, vague, incomplete, etc.

Otherwise, I think this game is good for posting.

I now have Expansion Set #1 in place, with various edits to reflect the fact (though I probably missed a spot or two).

Expansion Set #2 is up (in case anyone cares).

I've now completed an Expansion Set for Pawns (because I've hit my limit for open submissions again, so I can't work on new games).

I have most all of the graphics uploaded for the "outlier" set, and tried to put up a Comment with a test display for the pieces, but somehow I have an error in there (a wrong number of colons on a line, I'm guessing) so it's not ready yet. But I'm getting there.

The preceding represents the current state of the diagram showing the icons I've uploaded here. Some notes:

• Right now they're just in the piece overview. I'd hoped to have them in a scrolling menu at the side, in the manner of the playtest applet. Fixed.
• Only about a third of the pieces I've uploaded are shown; I'd also hoped that the rest would appear appended to the end, also like in the playtest applet.
• The moves shown on this list are either "official," common, or recommended.
• The piece name on the list isn't necessariliy the name on the graphic. Do an "open image in new tab" (or some other trick) to see the image name. (Or ask for a recommendation!)
• I wish I'd gone through them all before uploading, and made sure they were all the same size instead of ranging from 35 to 48 pixels. You have my apologies for that negligence. If may go through at some later date and create a page dedicated to the collection, in which case I'll make sure they're all equally sized (maybe even in a variety of sizes).
• There's more to explain and discuss, but that can wait for another time.

The separate table is easy to do, by putting a HTML <table> tag at the desired location on the page, with id="xxxTable" (and you probably also would want border="1"), where xxx is the value of the satellite parameter in the Diagram definition. To make it scrollable just put HTML <div> tags around it, with style="overflow:auto".

You would need to use a smaller square size for the board if you want to display its side by side with the table, though. And when you want to make it possible to move pieces from table to board, you should define the initial position with pieces 'in hand', behind an extra colon on the piece line.

Automatically extending the table with other pieces in the graphics directory is not a Diagram function; it is the opposit from what one would normally want when using a standard piece set. So this is done by JavaScript embedded in the page of the Play-Test Applet (the function DirList).

I've appended this to the table:

Clearly I'm doing something wrong with the style parameter.

(I also changed the hand number from 0 to 99; I'll wait until later to look at the DirList thing.)

Update: I got the style thing worked out.

PS: The box is so wide because of the Berserker move. It's supposed to be a three-step version of the Japanese Lioin, and I'm not sure KANDGCZHcaKmcabKcacaKcaaK is the shortest (or even correct) way to express it. I might even need to add mpafaFmpafsaFmpafaW ([A-aK][N-aK][D-aK]).

Now getting a look at the DirList function, and confirming that I understand everything (which is unlikely, as this is my first time working with Javascript).

I started with <script type="text/javascript">, followed by the variable declarations for theme, lDef, dDef, wDef, bDef, and def; then copied the entire DirList function. I changed the root and list variables to /membergraphics/ and MSdealerschess/ respectively, and also changed the graphicsDir reference later in the listing.

I'm not sure what to do with the if(type == lines near the end: edit, remove, or leave alone? (Right now it's the last.)

It's not in the dialog yet; for now, I just have it in a word processing file.

I'm also still a bit unsure about the Berserker move; I may delete it from the "established" list.

Well, I ripped this DirList function out of the Diagram Editor with Scalable Graphics, which I made before the Play-Test Applet (which only became useful after I had equiped the ID with a generic AI). The 'type' and xDef stuff are a legacy from that, because it did have inputs to select the piece set (e.g. alfaerie or xboard), piece and board colors. The Play-Test Applet always uses the alfaeriePNG35 set, and fixed colors, so I probably replaced the use of 'type' by a hard-coded directory name, and the xDef parameters are never used. (The were used in the URL to an off-site rendering engine to request the colors it should use in rendering the pieces and their background. This currently does not work unless you disable the feauter of your browser that forbids access to http sites from https pages.)

OK, I'll take those parts out and give it a whirl. If this isn't edited with the results in a half hour, something went horribly, horribly wrong....

Update: Well, not horribly wrong. I strongly suspect that the line that's hanging me up is:

Probably I should either delete it, or hardcode the directory to the SVG graphics.

Update #2: Neither of those two things worked. The only effect of having the javascript in place is that the scroll bar disappears from the piece summary.

The script currently looks like this:

I feel like I missed a line, or something similarly important and obvious.

The function depends on the lines

  var mboard = document.getElementById('mboard');
  var original = mboard.innerHTML;
  mboard.innerHTML = DirList('alfaerie');

for calling it, and writing the expanded Diagram definition back to where it originally came from (before the betza.js script uses it to create the interactive image). Which is supposed to be an HTML element with id="mboard". Are you sure this is OK in your case?

You could debug by using alert(list); to see what the variable 'list' contains after the attempt to fill it through the access to the URL. Or make sure there is a <p id="debug"></p> on the page, and call the routine Debug(...); (which is defined in the betza.js script) to add a line with text ... to that paragraph.

It should also help if I put </script> at the end! #DepartmentOfDuh

With the addition of those four lines (your three plus </script>)  I got it working almost perfectly. The only issue now is that the list at the end includes all the pieces, along with the default moves for established ones. But at least now people can see the whole collection! I'll feel OK putting what I have onto the main page (notwithstanding the page editor's tendency to screw up these things in WYSIWIG mode).

This also does seem to have a habit of sporadically skipping pieces on the list; for example, it can go directly from Alfil to Bison, skipping the Camel, Zebra, Giraffe, Antelope, Wildebeest, and Okapi. Then it skips the Jackal, but includes the Kirin and Phoenix, then skips Frog, Kangaroo, Squirrel, Cheetah, Sabretooth, and Raccoon to go straight to the Aurochs and Hawk, then skips the Mammoth, Bongo, Rabbit, and Owl to get to the Pussycat... you get the idea.

It's not all of the time, either. Sometimes the full list shows up; but when it does, sometimes the move preview doesn't work. And the list of extras is sometimes there, sometimes not.

Addendum: I'll go add the debug code this afternoon, and try to see what's going on.

Addendum #2: What the skipped pieces all have in common is that I don't specify the filename in the listing; even the orthodox pieces are skipped until later (as I hadn't noticed before). The ones that are listed earlier, don't show up later. If I add the piece filenames, then all should be fine; I hope there's a quicker way to that, though.

The general appearance and behavior of the Icon Clearinghouse is now basically where I want it. I kind of wish it was possible to put headers in there to separate them by type, but I can understand why that might be impractical.

The only thing stopping me from putting it into the main part of the page is how the editor tends to screw up these things when something is edited in WYSIWIG, and this is a page where I'll be doing that rather frequently (though not as frequently as I was before I put the IC together).

There are a few pieces in the lower part (the "unassigned" ones) that piqued my curiosity, but I couldn't find any further information on them. I'd appreciate anything people can tell me about them -- especially how they're supposed to move! In descending order of my level of curiosity:

• Moose Pawn
• Unipawn
• Shield Archer
• O Magnifier (and related pieces)
• Carronade
• Winged Cardinal
• Hydra
• Midbrother
• Buzy King

I swear I've seen the moose pawn used, but I am at a loss as to where; I'll definitely keep an eye out.

I did accidentally (on a tangent after looking in vain at Universal Chess as the obvious candidate) find the Hydra though, in Mutatis Mutandis. It just moves as a knight here though (albeit one that transfoms into a variety of NN's); there may well be a more prototypical use.

I may or may not recognise the Shield Archer — certainly UC uses its components for the Fugue pieces; I'm about 50% on the Winged Cardinal (again no idea where though — maybe Charles Daniel??), and I don't recognise tha rest at all

EDIT: Raptor Chess's eponymous piece has an icon similar enough to the WC that I wouldn't want to play a game with both if it could be avoided, even if the different shape of the cross might be considered graphemic

Thanks for looking, Bn Em. That Hydra in MM is pretty unusable in trying to build moves for an Interactive Diagram type of chart, but it's interesting nonetheless. Maybe some other game has a more easily-diagrammed Hydra.

And yes, the Raptor and the WC do appear to be by the same maker using the same base icon.

It may be that the Shield Archer is just an Archer that renders adjacent friendly pieces uncapturable, like a Shield.