Comments by benr

This should now be fixed.

(The important part of that message was "contributor"; you need that elevated status granted by an editor before uploading files to the site.)

The 'tag' column was set for unique entries; I have fixed this.

I'm guessing that while Fergus was fixing scripts, the new comments that were written had their subjects corrupted. I will push all the recent comments under the "something is off" subject.

wdtr's image still has some (monster) code in the source, which is also throwing off the "View" (and perhaps also wdtr's "Edit") link. I'll try to fix that while I'm in the database. BTW, for "subjects" like this (as opposed to comments attached to a page/ItemID) the scripts generate the hex code as the identifier, in addition to the subject title given by the user.

EDIT: done (but I edited wdtr's image link out using the site's scripts rather than directly in the database).

I've heard similar ideas for bigger versions of Bughouse chess, but I don't think I've heard it in connection to tournament design.  I guess you could just do one trio and the rest usual Basque doubles, allowing any odd number of players?

I'm not entirely sure that a longer cycle like this would balance things as well; it makes it easy to balance the number of games played as black/white, but not against each player...

I would think the "one copy" thing is so common as homage (whether conscious or not) to having just one queen in FIDE.

The promotion of pawns to pieces you've captured is a really interesting idea.  I also like the guard (does that piece appear elsewhere?), and the graphics are very pretty.

I've reformatted the submission to better fit our template, and picked 2011 as the invention date.

Edit: Oh, and added to the LinkText. Let me know if you don't like it.

(The first couple of remarks below reference Fergus's old comment here.)

The errors are indeed quite troubling.  Perhaps you can reach out to John Beasley; he has a list of errata/omissions included as "Toward ECV3" on his site.

As for brevity, I've found many of the game descriptions lacking; I suspect that was mostly to keep the overall length short.  (I'll also note, though I don't think this applies to any of your games, that some games seem to be included light-heartedly, and incomplete descriptions of these do not bother me.)

Evidently, Beasley cut out some examples of play from the first edition, assuming the reader would already own the first edition (not true of me, nor I suspect of most readers who have access only to the freely shared version now on Beasley's website), which would be nicer to have.

But overall, I find the CECV to be an excellent resource.  Pritchard (and occasionally Beasley) go into detail on games he (they) find particularly interesting, and list references for most of the games (though many of those have since become difficult to obtain).  Many games appear in both CVP and CECV, while many reside only in one or the other; but I doubt many "serious" variants lie in neither.

That's me, I was about to email about some things. I've moved these two comments to the old thread.

chess+compounds was working before; taginfo.php was already decoding urls.

Suggest that semantic URLs use underscores for spaces instead?  They seem easy to understand as replacing a space, less likely to be actually used in a tag name, and easy to replace in taginfo after decoding.

I think we need to come to a decision on tag relationships.  I think three things have been floated:

1. using TagParent in the database to build a treelike hierarchy
2. allowing tags to have tags via their taginfo page (this gets away from the idea that only games will have tags)
3. no formal relationship, just using the tag names (as I've done so far, with the colon-separated tag names)
4. no relationships

I agree with Fergus that 3 isn't great.  Is 1 flexible enough for what we'd want to do?  Any other ideas?

Originally 1 was my intent (hence the database column TagParent).  If we go that way (or something similar), how should the list of games with a parent tag be displayed?  Just those with the parent tag, not any of the descendents?  Or all games with the parent or descendent tags in one list?  Or several lists, one for each descendent tag?  (I think a list of games with the parent tag but none of the descendents could be useful, e.g. to find "unique" applications of the tag's description.  Having all the lists on the one page is redundant, but perhaps useful?)

@Greg: it looks like GameSettings wants your userID, not your PersonID.

Something has broken the Random Game script recently; I always get sent to the same Betza game, "csipgs Chess."  I can't think of any recent changes that should have affected this; that game lands somewhere around 600th out of 3000.  Are others experiencing the same issue?

(As an aside, concerning the first randomization query: removing the LIMIT 1 and running, I sometimes get no results and sometimes many.  I think the use of RAND() generates a different random number for each row, contrary to Fergus's comment in an earlier thread.  Maybe since then we've changed some setting on the database?  Anyway, while this could clean things up, I don't expect it's responsible for my always-Betza problem.)

I came across this page and the comments about initial setup.  I agree, and have updated the images.  While I was at it, I changed the first image to use the Diagram Designer.  (I left the second; I guess I have a soft spot for those ffen->diagram scripts.)

For the record, the old diagrams put bishops on file b rather than c.  It may be worth mentioning, that setup does guard the vulnerable c pawns, so it might be a worthwhile alternative setup, if same-color bishops don't bother you or if you adopt a bishop conversion rule.

I've just now looked into the missing log that Kevin mentioned in the last post here.  The log still exists:
http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/play.php?game=TessChess&log=panther-benr-2016-364-346
but there is no entry for it in the database in either of the relevant tables

Do you mean in your current Game Courier game?  It doesn't appear to be your turn yet.

You should request aid in just one place; this one seems the most reasonable, so I'll remove your other comments.

(By the way, I'm relying on Google translate for your messages, so apologies if I misunderstand.)

We have three round+hexagonal variants listed here (at least that are categorized as such):
https://www.chessvariants.com/index/mainquery.php?category=Hexagonal,Round
and all three of them opt for drawing the board round—stretching the hexagons as necessary—rather than just drawing the hexagonal board and including the rule for wrapping from one side to the other.  I suppose some of the wraparound moves might be harder to see; but I think the knight moves in the last image here are also a little difficult, maybe because of the warping of the outer hexes.

This falls into the "non-chess game played with chess pieces" outskirts of the chess variant spectrum.  Being single-player pushes it all the further out, but is interesting and unusual.

This page could really use a diagram, but at the very least the location and sizes of the landmasses and temple gates need to be specified.  (Is the temple itself an obstruction to movement?)

I remember reviewing this page.  I don't have the mentioned email record (maybe I was using the chessvariants@yahoo address back then?).  We had some problems around then with submissions defaulting to "Freederick" as their submitter, hence the comments from Mariano.  I have no idea how the author would have been changed again to erik; Mariano is still a user here, so it's not like some weird thing connected to deletion of users...

Actually, I don't know why the title of the page has "(hidden)" appended either.

2:35, he came so close to defining the unicorn ('triagonal' slider), then just kinda went "nah".

8:18, looks like probably the best shot of the starting position.  That one pawn on the backmost rank is odd.  It also looks a little different to me, so maybe it's a replacement queen?

I like the "projected" 3D boards, shrinking as the levels go up, for ease of reaching the pieces inside, though I wonder whether it makes seeing moves harder.

The board notation is available elsewhere in the game's pages:  notation page

I agree that the presentation is unclear in this case.  My impression is that the author just used a standard definition for knight, not recognizing the problem caused by the gaps (or assuming the diagram made it clear).

Sorry for the confusion.  That page is under the "Related Pages" menu, but maybe the different name muddies things.  I'll try to add a link to the page contents when I get home.

I've also reformatted your comments to visually separate the rulebook quotes from your remarks.

Re: modest variants:

The "official" definition is here:
https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/modest.html

But I think the term is often used more flexibly outside of our category system, where it is also useful as a (subjective) measure of distance-from-chess.