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Comments by FergusDuniho
Game Courier Tournament #1. A multi-variant tournament played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I remember getting an email of that nature, and I forwarded it to David Howe to answer. I no longer have any record of the address, but David should, because it is his address.
Game Courier. PHP script for playing Chess variants online.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Kriegspiel cannot be supported by Game Courier, because Game Courier cannot handle the kind of hidden information used in Kriegspiel. To add a game, write a preset for it, then contact an editor. Details on writing presets are given in the Developer's Guide. It is now possible to write presets that enforce rules, but it requires programming.
Rules of Chess FAQ. Frequently asked chess questions.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Let me reiterate and add to what Michael Nelson has said. The Web is full of forums on nearly any conceivable topic you can think of. If you want to discuss subjects unrelated to this site, go to the appropriate site and discuss them there. This site's comment areas are for discussions of Chess variants and for comments specific to the contents of individual pages. It is not for general discussion of any and every topic. Let me add that some forums on the web have become cesspools of trolling, baiting, flaming, and other nonsense. This site is an oasis of reasonable, peaceful discussion, and that is mainly because we limit our discussions to Chess variants and closely related subjects. If we started discussing controversial subjects here, this site could turn into a place of factions, fighting, and hostility. But that's not what this site is about. It is about bringing together people who share a common interest in a mutual spirit of good will and friendship. Let's keep it that way. With that said, I'll add that there is nothing wrong, per se, with discussing controversial subjects. If you want to discuss such issues, feel free to go to a forum where they are being discussed. My main concern is that doing it here would get in the way of what this site is really all about. The ozone layer and Walmart may not seem like such controversial subjects, but inviting discussion of them here would open the door to even more controversial subjects.
Shogi 
. Optimized ZRFs for Japanese Chess and some recent variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since I don't have Windows XP, I cannot investigate this matter myself. But you can help me out. First, download this file: http://www.chessvariants.com/programs.dir/zillions/Shogi-test.zrf This file is just like the official Shogi.zrf except that only the alldrops tuning is available, which eliminates the need to define two sets of pieces, and the piecelist macro is no longer used to list the images for each piece. Instead, each piece has its images listed separately. After you download this file, follow this procedure: Open the ZRF with Zillions. When it complains about a specific graphic file, add the complete name of that file (directory + file name) to a list. Then edit the ZRF by replacing the image that doesn't work with one that does. It doesn't matter what image you use here. It could be the same piece everytime. Any piece you already know works will do. Repeat this procedure until Zillions no longer complains about any graphic files. Then send me the list of images that would not work under Windows XP. This list will help me figure out what is wrong with the files that don't work. I may then send you some test files to see if I'm on the right track.
Yes, I think it has helped. XNView revealed to me a significant difference between those you can view and those you can't. You can view the regular bitmaps, but you can't view the RLE bitmaps. RLE is a form of compression used for bitmap images, but if I remember correctly, whether you can view RLE bitmaps depends upon whether your graphics card supports RLE. I will put together a new zip file later using only regular bitmaps.
Rhengin, Your requests are too vague for me to know what you want, and your tone is too hostile for me to care. Learn to make polite, specific requests, or learn to go without what you want. I know nothing of this Chinese gambling game that is supposedly the same as Nuclear Chess, and I am highly skeptical of your claims that they are the same. Nuclear Chess is based on Western Chess, and it is not a gambling game. And if Chi Zode is so popular, why did I get zero hits when I typed it into Google?
Yes, a King may take another piece to get out of check, so long as the piece taken is an enemy piece, the King does not move into check by taking the piece, and the piece was on a space the King could otherwise legally move to.
Index page of The Chess Variant Pages. Our main index page.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Historical Variants covers regional variants only partially. Oriental Variants should cover the rest.
Fischer Random Chess. Play from a random setup. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]No, Larry, you are mistaken. I have them right. a-side castling is Queen-side, and h-side is King side. The a-side is the side closer to file d, where the Queen begins in Chess, and the h-side is the side closer to file e, which is where the King begins in Chess. Also, item f of Fischer's own description of the rules matches what I have said.
Game Courier Logs. View the logs of games played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Tonight, I discovered that the Logs page was giving incorrect links for game rules whose presets used the new method of storing the full settings in a separate file. This is because all it was reading was the log file, which didn't have any assignment for $rules. I fixed this, so that the value of $rules is taken from the settings file when there is one.
Because logs have been accumulating, I changed the default behavior of this page to list only the logs from the last seven days instead of logs from anytime. It is still possible to view any log from the very beginning by specifically selecting 'Anytime' in the form.
Assimilation Fusion Chess. A hybrid of Assimilation Chess and Fusion Chess. Pieces combine and split apart. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Yes, these compound royal pieces may move through check. I created this game before I created British Chess, whose royal Queen is not allowed to move through check. Allowing a Dragon King or a Pope to move through check never seemed as much of a problem as allowing a royal Queen, which is a more powerful piece, to move through check. So the need for such a rule never arose, and I didn't think of including such a rule in a game until British Chess.
En Passant Chess. All pieces
can be taken en passant. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]When a Pawn makes a double move that takes it past a square under attack by an enemy Pawn, the enemy Pawn may move to that square on the next turn, capturing the Pawn that just passed over it. That is called an en passant capture, which is French for in passing. The right to capture a Pawn by en passant may be used only on the turn immediately following that Pawn's double move. If not used immediately, it is lost. What I don't understand is how the concept of en passant translates to other pieces. Some examples would help.
Game Courier Tournament #1. A multi-variant tournament played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The clocks will not be stopped for anyone under any circumstances. They were not designed to be stopped, and stopping them would defeat the purpose of using them. If I were to stop clocks, we may as well not use clocks at all and just play untimed games. The purpose behind timing games in the tournament is to keep the tournament as a whole from dragging on too long. This affects everyone in the tournament, not just those who can't play for a while and their opponents. Besides this, I designed the time controls to allow for the very sort of thing that has come up with Mark Thompson. He has already accumulated a good amount of reserve time in his remaining two games, and the very purpose of giving reserve time is to give a player the freedom to stop playing when emergency situations like this arise.
Mitregi. Shogi variant with more powerful diagonal pieces. (10x9, Cells: 90) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I don't know how much slang Britain and America share in common, but over on this side of the Atlantic, hump is a synonym of the f-word. It means to have sex, particularly with reference to fornication between animals. Therefore, Humpmitregi, whatever it is supposed to mean, strikes me as an obscene name. Besides this, I regard Mitregi and Humpmitregi to both be ugly, awkward names. I previously rated this webpage as poor, because it lacks a diagram, individual descriptions of each piece, a clear presentation of the rules, and a clear separation between the two games discussed. I removed the rating because it wasn't for the game.
<P>I'm on the western side of the Atlantic.</P>
<P>Having looked more closely at this page, I see that the hump part of the
name comes from a piece called a Hump. Unlike the f-word, hump does have
nonobscene uses, but the only one I use is one I rarely use, because I
rarely talk or think about camels or hunchbacks. Except for this rare context, the word is nothing to me but a synonym for fornicate. Although I can see how you might use it as a synonym for bump, I just say bump. I have never heard of Wednesday being called hump day.</P>
Although '12-file Mitregi' is better for losing 'Hump', '10-file Mitregi' is not any kind of improvement over Mitregi. Mitregi is just an ugly name. Mitre Shogi would work better.
Rules of Chess: En passant capture FAQ. Answers to some questions about the en passant capture rule.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]No, it's not true. After a Pawn has made its double move, En passant lets you capture it as though it had moved only one space. If a piece was in front of your Pawn, and your opponent moved his Pawn one space to a space attacked by your Pawn, your Pawn could capture it. So, if your opponent moved the same Pawn two spaces, you could capture it by en passant.
The diagrams should be replaced by single image diagrams, because the current diagrams are wrapping the ranks in this browser (Mozilla).
Canyon Chess. Small variant with Marshalls and Archbishops and some new rules. (8x8, Cells: 44) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]It should be standard practice to ask people who submit games to include diagrams. With Game Courier available, it doesn't even take any special software to make a diagram. You don't need Zillions of Games and a graphics program that you can cut a screen shot out of. With nothing but a browser that can display images, anyone can use Game Courier to make a PNG or JPG diagram that can be saved to one's own harddrive, then included with one's submission.
Why is there a gap between each rank in the diagram?
That ought to count as a good reason against ever using ffen2diag. I have never used it myself and never intend to. It's better to just generate and use a graphic image, which has the benefit of never varying in its appearance. At the time ffen2diag was written, it was useful to have, because there weren't readily available means for generating diagrams. But now there are. Let's stop using ffen2diag and use the better methods of diagram generation that are now available.
Having looked at the code for ffen2diag, the problem seems to be that it generates a diagram as a series of linebreak-terminated lists of images. If it generated a diagram as a table, CELLSPACING and CELLPADDING could be set to zero, thereby allowing the diagrams to look right on Mozilla and Netscape. This would also fix the problem of wrapping ranks, which I saw one page.
Janggi - 장기 - Korean Chess. The variant of chess played in Korea. (9x10, Cells: 90) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I'm looking for a webpage that lists in the Korean language the characters used for both sides of the pieces in Korean Chess. My intention is to use the Korean font displayed on my web browser to make pieces for Game Courier without stealing pieces someone else has already made. The closest I've found to what I'm looking for is this page: http://210.150.246.43/game.hp/changi/2.html It lists most of the characters used but not all of them.
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