Comments by arx

Thank you. At first I thought I could just override GameEnd and have it check for check before mate, but then it was announcing Check! every move.

This e.p. trick for detecting moving out of check after the fact unfortunately does not work in general

If I understand this correctly, it should work as long as the game doesn't include hoppers. It does seem reasonable to assume that King cannot normally make special moves to escape check.

Is there a way I could add en passant to a leaping move?

Edit I found another solution that seems to work—setting checked to 1 before GameEnd both post game sections.

Is it timed games not ending properly? I like that it's possible to start games without any time limits.

I'm not great with Game Code, so I might not have the best advice. I don't think there's any way to have real-time movement. Maybe you could approximate it by letting players take turns making any number of moves until a capture occurs.

I added a link to play in the notes. It's good to see some interest in this!

Does the Alfaerie-Many set affect the time it takes to process a move? I've been working on a large preset and whenever I tried it using alfaerie-many it never even finished running the pre-game code.

Some time ago I tried using the game code wizard to make a preset for a large (18x18) game using a few crooked sliding pieces. Now I notice that one of them, the Hornet from Seenschach, works in the applet but not in the generated code. The way I defined it was Wafs(alar)7Wafsal(aral)7WzB. Part of the move works, but the zB seems to be ignored, even though the generated code appears to include those moves as well.

This looks interesting, but I wonder how well it works allowing the maggots to move backwards.

You could just use O-O for everything along with the king's destination square, like O-O b1. If you want to preserve O-O-O, it could be understood as referring to the left half of the board from White's perspective, while O-O refers to the right half.

I'm interested in this game. I never got very familiar with the previous version so I'm wondering, what exactly is different here, and why? Also, is the game courier preset up-to-date?

I can't create new game invitations. The full invitation page isn't showing up, only the top part with the game board.

They do hop

I'm seeing a problem with move highlighting for certain pieces in games using the fairychess include file. This tiger chess preset is an example. All the pieces that have a jump-then-slide move only have move highlighting for the jumping part of the move, although legal moves are still accepted.

Richard Milner suggested to me the names Bicycle (ski-bishop) Bireme (ski-rook) and Biplane (ski-queen) for these pieces.

I think the gold and silver descriptions are too ambiguous, since 'forward' and 'straight ahead' could be read as referring to both the orthogonal and diagonal moves. It would be clearer to switch the order of those parts of the descriptions.

Gold: steps one square diagonally forward or orthogonally
Silver: steps one square straight ahead or diagonally

The idea behind 'bi' is that the piece jumps to the 2nd square before sliding. I still like 'ski' for describing such pieces because it's more general. You could describe the Tiger Chess astrologer as a ski-osprey, for example.

For represeting these pieces, I've been thinking of something like this gryphon.

The central X could be replaced with a small dabbabah/alfil/knight/whatever to indicate the first stage of the move, while the rooks or bishops in the corners show the second stage. That might not work so well for the ski-queen though.

Not to nit-pick, but I think it is even a little more clear like this:
Gold: steps one square orthogonally or diagonally forward

That's what it says already. The reason I think that's unclear is that 'forward' could be taken as referring to the whole of 'orthogonally or diagonally' rather than just the latter part.

Have you made a GC to play this game?

Yes, here it is.

A comma does seem like a better solution

That link is not in the Skica page and is not in the Alphabetical Index.

I've added a link to the preset in the Notes section. There's already a submission to include it in the index, which hasn't been accepted yet.

Fwiw, I tend to agree with Gilman's conflation of jumping ski‐bishop with Tamerlane's non‐jumping Talia/Vanguard/Scout/Picket (he selects the latter term), on the grounds that they reach the same squares, like leaping and non‐leaping elephants

In that case, would you also want to use the same term for Knight, Mao, and Moa? What about 'Rook' for a piece that leaps to any square on the same rank or file? I think the jumping ability makes a big difference in how the piece feels to play with. I wish I could understand more of those Man and Beast articles. They quickly get hard to follow due to the dense paragraphs and broken diagrams.

Right now I have a more limited contagious promotion rule in place which only affects direct captures of a Fire Demon or Heavenly Tetrarch from pieces that are not (potential) royals.

To me, who doesn't know much, that sounds like a good solution.

I think there's a problem with the current preset. The knights aren't able to move sideways or backwards.