Ratings & Comments
If you have Telegram, I invite you to my channel themed on chess variants: https://t.me/DeepVariantExplorers
Testing an interactive diagram (huge thanks to HaruN Y for doing most of the work on a Sphinx Chess diagram):
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?).
Other known issues: Ideally I could override the coordinates, but if not it'll be fine, I just won't use it as the main setup diagram. The knight is still a Centauri, none of the pieces have their triagonal or quadragonal components yet, and obviously the layout isn't set yet; I expect I can fix those once the layout is settled.
If I can fix up those issues (and any others that arise), I'll include it on the page, along with a separate game (maybe this should be a separate page) that features the raw orthogonal/diagonal/triagonal/quadragonal sliders, just to help demonstrate.
Yours still seems to overprescribe movements (but this has been wonderful as a start to more-symmetric 4d games like my own TessChess, for which I'm dabbling with expanding your diagram here). Here's my attempt. Let me know if you have questions about the rules, or if I seem to have Betza'ed incorrectly (likely).
Oh, I see.
I thought there would be no AYY because I thought "they change either the letter or number (but not both)" meant no moving diagonally between the boards & somehow I missed that moving diagonally doesn't change the number.
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Fuller's Proposal1320
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If black has 1 Persian King and 1 Spartan King, is there duple-check for them?
Since Spartan Kings behave as if they are promoted Hoplites, and thus demote on capture, this situation would require promoting a passed Hoplite. The rule description does not specify whether this is allowed. In Spartan Chess there is a restriction on when you can promote to King, and it is not obvious how this rule should be extended to the case where Hoplites fight in an army headed by a Persian King. One possible extention would be that a Persian King already counts as a pair in itself, and that its presence thus suppresses the King option on promotion. Then the situation could never occur.
@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.
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.
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Hi, I found your very nice svg versions of piece variants for a lot of pieces here on chessvariants.com - I'm referring to http://winboard.nl/alpha/
I have played on Yucata.de for some time, and they recently released Grand Chess with a lot of pieces (81 extra) which originated from chessvariants.com. Then I had the idea to do a print-and-play for myself with the same graphics as on Yucata.
Unfortunately their piece images were very small gifs, so that's why I was happy to find your svg files. Anyway, I have started to do an AI file using the same color for the black pieces as on Yucata, mostly I can use your svg files and some extra work is needed.
I just wanted to thank you for making your work downloadable, and if you have any use of the extra work I did just tell me. I might want to do an online version on futureskill.com at some point, please tell me if this is ok for you.
/Henrik