Comments by arx
Apothecary Chess-Modern. Large board variant obtained through tinkering with known games.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The diagrams on this and the Apothecary Chess-Classic page are missing white's brouhaha squares, and so are both corresponding game courier presets.
Tags Listing. A listing of the tags used on our pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]What would be an appropriate tag for hexagonal boards?
How to Enforce Rules in Game Courier. A tutorial on programming a rule-enforcing preset in the GAME Code language.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Is there a reason not to have stalemated just use the pawn subroutine? I ask because I'm trying to figure out how to implement pieces with non-displacement capture. Is it possible for a function to relocate a piece after it captures?
Tenjiku Shogi. Fire Demons burn surrounding enemies, Generals capture jumping many pieces. (16x16, Cells: 256) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I am tempted to submit the following variant ('Minjiku Shogi'):
Is it intended that the Fire Dragon doesn't burn when capturing another Fire Dragon?
The Fairychess Include File Tutorial. How to use the fairychess include file to program games for Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I'm trying to use the fairychess include file to enforce rules with this preset and it's giving an error I can't figure out.
The fn built-in function has not been given a valid function name or lambda function.
As well as I can tell, I have provided the proper functions for every piece.
About Game Courier. Web-based system for playing many different variants by email or in real-time.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Games with a rank label of 0 don't display correctly, as can be seen in Apothecary Chess Modern. It looks right if the rank label 0 is replaced with something else
Another game with this problem is Rococo
The Duke of Rutland's Chess. Large variant from 18th century England. (14x10, Cells: 140) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This is a nice game. It seems to have a theme of rook + weaker piece compounds. I wonder why the board isn't 15x10 to make room for another knight, and have a nice 3:2 shape like Courier Chess. An alternative enhancement would be a pair of camels on d1 and k1 and a camel-rook on i1. That would make more sense of the 10 rank board.
Interactive diagrams. 
Diagrams that interactively show piece moves.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Is there any chance of having interactive diagrams for hexagonal or 45° rotated square boards?
Expanded Chess. An attempt at a logical expansion of Chess to a 10x10 board.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I value thematic consistency, which is the only reason I added Zebras at all. Maybe I go too far with it at times. I do think they serve a functional role too by protecting the edge pawns. An Alfil-Zebra might be an interesting piece, but I wouldn't use it here because that would break the theme, unless the knights were made FN. I also don't want to have only very strong pieces; there are plenty of those already. I used zebras for aesthetic reasons; whether that choice makes for the best game, I cannot say.
Line Chess. Members-Only Every pieces move along the board lines, but capture in different ways. Each side has two moves per turn. (5x6, Cells: 50) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Sky. Brilliant original game by Christine Bagley-Jones. Pieces promote through a succession of odd leapers eventually to a rooks.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The preset for this game is broken because every game is that has a rank labelled 0.
Borderline. Without pawns, with only one king, capturing opponent's pieces is omitted. (7x7, Cells: 49) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]It's a very different game. It's hard to know what to think without having played it. Making it playable with Game Courier would be a good idea.
ChessV. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I've noticed ChessV making some obviously bad moves in endgames. Could that be due to the variation setting?
Stone Garden Chess. The animal statues in the stone garden came to life and attacked the two rival kings! With the help of a policeman each, they…. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I made this game playable with game courier if anyone's interested in trying it.
Game Courier Logs. View the logs of games played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I tried looking at the finished logs for Duke of Rutland's Chess and most of them give an error like this
Error: The logfile at ../pbmlogs/duke_of_rutlands_chess/cavalier-cvgameroom-2006-127-561.php is missing, or something is misspelled.
Featured Chess Variants. Chess Variants Featured in our Page Headers.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]To me, Recognized suggests games that have achieved some notable popularity at some time, while Featured would include games that are considered to be deserving of recognition.
Game Courier Developer's Guide. Learn how to design and program Chess variants for Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I have this code I'm trying, but it's not producing the result I expect.
map nw -1 1 n 0 1 w -1 0 e 1 0 s 0 -1 se 1 -1;
def nextstep
cond and samecase space #1 space #0 onboard #1 (fn nextstep #1 where #1 direction #0 #1) #1;
def TEST mergeall
fn nextstep #0 where #0 nw
fn nextstep #0 where #0 n
fn nextstep #0 where #0 w
fn nextstep #0 where #0 e
fn nextstep #0 where #0 s
fn nextstep #0 where #0 se;
print fn TEST d4;
print fn nextstep d4 where d4 s;I thought fn TEST d4 would return an array of coordinates, but instead it seems to produce an empty array. The bottom print command works as expected, so the problem has to be with TEST, but I can't figure it out.
Thank you, that helps. I think there might be another problem with what I was trying also.
map nw -1 1 n 0 1 w -1 0 e 1 0 s 0 -1 se 1 -1;
print mergeall where #0 n where #0 e;
print mergeall where #0 0 1 where #0 1 0;When I run this, the output is
Array
(
)
Array
(
[0] => b1
[1] => a2
)so it seems like the logical directions don't work in this context. I've also noticed that there are several "logical directions" links on this page that don't go anywhere.
I also have an unrelated question. Is there any way to control which space is highlighted after a move is made?
I don't see a difference. Is that the right image?
Shatranj. The widely played Arabian predecessor of modern chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I tried making some SVGs from the Alfonso-X font. Is there somewhere to upload them here?
I hadn't actually thought of an exact re-arrangement of the back ranks to my liking, but at least the way some of the diagonal-capable pieces of each army were pointing may not have been ideal possibly (don't know what new setup to suggest/try for sure yet, unless I think of some things that are specific).
I recall your caption for the diagram said 'Just for fun', but in the past I've dreamt up some pretty wide CV invention ideas with 8 ranks myself.
If you come up with a setup that's satisfactory I'd be interested in playing it.
Shatranj. The widely played Arabian predecessor of modern chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Interactive diagrams. Diagrams that interactively show piece moves.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]When I try to view this page, or the play-test-applet page or others by H. G. Muller, I get a TOO MANY REDIRECTS error.
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I'm not quite sure whether I want to rate this Good or Excellent so I'll go with the higher rating. This is a great way to enhance weaker pieces without making them too strong. An interesting variation of this idea might be to have all the pieces except the king and queen start without their non-capturing king moves and gain them by promoting on the last two ranks.