Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Hello,

I am in the process of creating three larger version of apothecary chess. This is one of them - apothecary chess alert.

The purpose of this comment is to get help from the community naming and drawing the pieces.

In the previous comment on this thread I have made a interactive diagram with some preliminary names and pictures from what I could find. They are not very good so do not mind them to much.

In the following I'll name the properties of the new pieces and I expect from who may help a name and a description for the picture.

A piece that moves like a rook or a knight rider. A knight rider in this game will be called crusader.

A piece that moves like a rook a chinesse cannon or a ferz.

A piece that moves like a bishop an wazir or an dabbabah rider.

For RNN: Emperor since it's a very strong piece

For RpcRF: Mortar since it's a strong Cannon

For BWDD: Archbishop Cardinal or Pope since it's a strong Bishop

Thanks Zhedric!

Aurelian, the RNN is called Waran or Varan by problemists. (Source Giffard/Bienabe, 1993)

For the different bent riders, I suggest you take inspiration from different mythical monsters.

Please resist to use Aanca/Anka, I cry when I see that. It is not because the mistake was done once that we are obliged to perpetuate the mistake. Once we know, we are no more ignorant. Aanca is the word used in Alfonso X codex for the F^R. It was the medieval Spanish rendering of the Arabic word Anka. That word designated a mythical giant bird preying elephants like in Persian tales. Murray thought that giant bird was a Gryphon (which was a different monster). OK, Gryphon is too much installed in the CV word to change it, but calling Aanca something else is a mistake.

Especially if it is to designate the N^B which was an Unicorn (meaning a Rhino) in the same Spanish old text!

Look for Hydra, Basilisk, or a full list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_by_type

For the Rook/Nightrider, you could use Teutonic Knight. It is related to the crusader, which you have already for the Nightrider. (Templar or Templar Knight is also possible, since it's also semantically related; but this name is already used for the augmented Knight in Omega Chess Advanced).

For one of the two first pieces (the Rook/Nightrider or the Rook/Cannon/Ferz), I also thought of Dragoon. The Dragoon is an mounted infantryman who uses horses for mobility, but fights on foot. Since this name is derived from the handgun 'dragon', it can refer to a Cannon-related as well to a Knight-related piece. (And you can obviously use a dragon picture for this piece.)

I used 'Dragoon' in the Daring Dragons army for Chess with Different Armies, for a piece that moved like a King, but had an extra initial non-capture of a Knight to facilitate its development. This seemed a very fitting name for such a piece.

Dragoon and Teutonic knight seem inappropriate to me for such strong pieces.

So I am choosing Emperor, Mortar and Pope here!

So which pictures could I use for the Emperror(RNN), Mortar (I think the tank picture is close enough) and pope. Also the is a piece (WZ in Betza) named warlock. Can anyone help me with drawing and uploading the pictures as I don't have any skills with the draw part and I do not have upload rights?

What sort of draw I can find for a warlock. I remember one similar to wizard/mage but I don't know where.

 As I'm not able to draw Allfarie pieces I have decided to create my own piece set. Here are the first attemps. What do you guys think about this?

I think you can draw Allfarie pieces, with something like mspaint. Once drawn I think you need to work with the admins at this site to get the graphics installed into a particular web directory. Fergus has written a How-to on this. (I think). Your icons above look like Knight, Camel, Zebra, rook, bishop, ???, Gryphon. They are well done, but have a look/feel that is not as satisfying as an Allfarie piece. What got me interested in chess as a child was the pieces them selves, and the wood carvings. For your game, I love the introduction of the joker. It is a very interesting piece. If your game is showing legal moves I personally feel the arrow design is not needed. If you are making a commercial board game that is not a computer program, I admit your arrow piece set would be very useful.

This is just my opinion, and your piece set is well designed.

What do you guys think about this?

I dislike movement diagram pieces and would not want to use them myself. They're harder to quickly tell apart, and they can be hard to read. For example, I thought the third piece in your lineup was a Knight until I noticed the first piece, which is more clearly a Knight in a comparison between the two. So, I would hope that a pictorial option remains available for any games you would use these for.

They're harder to quickly tell apart, and they can be hard to read. For example, I thought the third piece in your lineup was a Knight until I noticed the first piece, which is more clearly a Knight in a comparison between the two.

I thought so, too, but I cannot add a grid as there is not enought room on the 50x50 picture. Also it seems to me difficult to imagine pictoreals. For this game a rook+knightrider was already drawn by Greg. It has to be here somewhere. This will be called varan. Then I need a gnu, this is also on the website. And for now I'm using cobra for a piece that moves and captures like a rook and ferz and moreover captures like a cannon. Someone called it a mortar which sonds good enough, although I prefer something more mithical. These should go with both gamecode and interactive diagram, so I'll have to do some drawing, and it is easier to do these simbolic pieces.

If all your pieces have symmetrical moves, you could just include one direction in the image. Then you wouldn't need so many squares on a grid.

Also I do not know how to make the difference between white and black pieces.

If all your pieces have symmetrical moves, you could just include one direction in the image. Then you wouldn't need so many squares on a grid.

I think this way things will look more ugly. The bishop for example will have the arrows finished at half board!

I think movement-diagram-inspired piece symbols can work, when you don't try to reproduce the movement diagram too literally. After all, the purpose of a piece representation in a game position is not to teach a completely unintiated player how the piece moves. Perhaps only to give him a hint for that. But he can be expected to know how these hints are encoded in the shape. The most important is that the shapes are strikingly different. Then the palyer will identify them at first glance, just like he would be able to distinguis the picture of a camel and a horse in a pictorial representation, or the various kanji in an oriental representation. In the end these are all just shapes that have to be distinguished from each other; camel or horse heads mean just as little to a person who has never seen an animal in his life as kanji do to a westerner.

Your Knight, Camel and Zebra representations fail the criterion of easy distinction. They are 'topologically similar', and the distinction has to come from carefully examining the distances. It would be much better to indicate smaller distances by making those touch, as touching / non-touching is an absolute difference. Like:

People that would no longer be able to recognize it as the move diagram can simply memorize "this shape is a Camel, and that shape is a Zebra", which still doesn't make them off any worse then whether they had to memorize which kanji stands for Gold and which for Silver.

I also would not make the arow you use to indicate sliding too long; it causes too much disparity in the size of symbols, and also makes the symbols for Rooks and Bishops have too little 'body'. Much better to indicate infinite-range sliding by something in the width of the lines. E.g. like making it extra thick.

I also would not make the arow you use to indicate sliding too long; it causes too much disparity in the size of symbols, and also makes the symbols for Rooks and Bishops have too little 'body'. Much better to indicate infinite-range sliding by something in the width of the lines. E.g. like making it extra thick.

I have made the arrows long in order to fit all the bend riders I want to build. Look at the next succesions:

and

The reason for the arrows to be that long is that the last 2 bent riders in each lineup should fit. I'm not sure if that is the best solution but it is a first attemp.

Your Knight, Camel and Zebra representations fail the criterion of easy distinction. They are 'topologically similar', and the distinction has to come from carefully examining the distances. It would be much better to indicate smaller distances by making those touch, as touching / non-touching is an absolute difference. 

 If that was the case I would not be able to properly represend the vulture (name you had chosen for the 43&41 falcon - good one).

I am considering using a tileset with 2 english letters per picture. Maybe this will make things clearer.

All that because remember I have 0 tallent for this. But I am open to any suggestions.

In the following is what I did for images and names for this game. I had tried a diagram representation. Unfortunately the 50x50 pixels of the images need to be split in a 9x9 grid leaving little room for things to happen in one grid cell. That is because the longest path mover moves 43&41 and some bent riders bend after the 3rd step. The excepting for that is the joker. The joker is represented by a big J. That got me thinking about making instead images with 2 letters from the English alphabet. What do you think about this? Also if you have any suggestion on how to improve the images I'm listening gladly. I am not talented at this nor imaginative.

 Just the bishop.

 The rook.

 The queen.

 The king.

 The pawn.

 The berolina.

The knightrider.

 The chinesse cannon.

 The joker(imitator).

The vulture (a 41&43  falcon).

 The knight of this game(NmL).

 The warlock (WZ).

 The lyon (FDH).

 The osprey bent rider that jumps as a dabbabah and then moves towards outside like a bishop.

Valkyrae-  Vulture and bishop compound

 The unicorn (BNN).

 The Varan (RNN).

The mortar (RpcRF)

Thanks for reading all this! I await your reactions.

@HG, Can the alfaerie pieces be used (from a different directory of course) by the interactive diagram?

Sure, the Interactive Diagram can use any piece set, including piece sets supplied by uploading. The Diagram definition created by the Play-Test Applet even uses the Alfaerie set (the anti-aliased one) by default.

This can be controlled by the Diagram parameters grapicsDir, graphicsType, whitePrefix and blackPrefix. These are all text parameters, and the names of the piece images are build from them by concatenating the graphicsDir, a whitePrefix or a blackPrefix, the name of the image as given in the piece-definition lines, a period, and the graphics type. So if you set graphicsDir to the URL of the directory (e.g. /membergraphics/MSelven-chess/ , make sure it ends with / ), the prefixes to w and b, and the graphics type to pgn, jpg, gif, you can use any set of piece images of any type.

@Fergus,

I require your help once again.

In the preset below:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Default&submit=Edit

I get this error: Syntax Error on line 150

The last expression is 1. In for or foreach, it must evaluate to an array.

149 for (from piece) fn friends

150 for to fn join const alias #piece "-Range" #from

151 if fn const alias #piece #from #to and not fn friend space #to and onboard #to

152 move #from #to

153 if isupper #piece

154 if != const alias #piece White_Joker

155 if != const alias #piece White_Pawn

156 set last_type_moved const alias #piece

157 else

158 set last_type_moved Black_Barren_Pawn

159 endif

160 endif

161 elseif != const alias #piece Black_Joker

162 if != const alias #piece Black_Pawn

163 set last_type_moved const alias #piece

164 else

165 set last_type_moved White_Barren_Pawn

166 endif

167 endif

168 if not sub checked cond == #from #kingpos #to #kingpos

169 setlegal #from #to

170 endif

171 endif

172 restore

173 set last_type_moved #ltm

174 next

175 next

I get this error: Syntax Error on line 150

The last expression is 1. In for or foreach, it must evaluate to an array.

You have incorrectly defined your Mortar-Range function as follows:

def Mortar-Range leaps #0 1 1 or rays #0 1 0;

The or operator cannot be used to merge two arrays. It returns a Boolean value. That's why it gave a value of 1 where an array was expected. Use the merge operator to merge two arrays:

def Mortar-Range merge leaps #0 1 1 rays #0 1 0;