Comments by benr

This page currently has an absolute link to the .org version of mainquery.php. For the page to work in both locations, a relative link would be better.

I tried to test that out on the .org site (new better testing practices, yay!), but found that I cannot log on there because the login page has an absolute url to the .com version of the login script.

Burninate all the absolute urls?

The file name did not match the URL; I've fixed that, and can download the zip (but don't have ZoG to test it).

Do I understand correctly that the edge pawns cannot promote without capturing? Is that a feature or a bug?

@Jean-Louis, those carved pieces look great! Would you mind sometime adding an article including the images? (You can start it as a Game page, but we'd change the type over to Craft before publishing.)

@Jean-Louis, you type drawn into the Moves text field (instead of clicking anything).

@Albert, if you are logged in, you should see your user id listed at the bottom of the Step 1 form. Do you? (Indeed, there is never an option to select the user id; it only ever pulls from the login session variable.)

It's also possible you got logged out somehow between starting the Step 1 page and submission? (If you are not logged in and you try to navigate to the submission form, it shouldn't populate, instead issuing an error block "You must be signed in...".)

Thanks! I've fixed those too.

@QIDb602, please email one of the editors if you haven't already to try to track down what's going wrong.

Am I correct that pieces all move as in McCooey's hexagonal chess? If it's close enough, maybe stating that together with any exceptions would help frame this variant's place relative the existing art?

(The obvious changes are the board and piece counts. You also allow castling.)

I would encourage a more descriptive name. The earlier this is done the less work it involves.

Perhaps for easier comparison, here's a query that lists all hexagonal 3-to-6-player variants:
https://www.chessvariants.com/index/mainquery.php?category=Hexagonal&minnumplayers=3&maxnumplayers=6

(There may be some pages listed as primarily 2-player but with 3-player subvariants that this will not find. Dropping the maximum of 6 doesn't include any additional results.)

As I can understand, you assume that my game seems to be too close to other existing variants, and maybe, it cannot be counted as a fully independent variant...

Ah, sorry, no, that was not my intended message. The board shape is enough IMO to warrant publication, since it limits the sort of "flanking" that rooks and queens gain in the hexagonally-shaped board of Glinsky/McCooey.

Let me try to clarify my intent. Hexagonal cells take some extrapolation from orthochess; the majority of variants (but not all!) agree on the basics (rooks and bishops, knights), and some (Glinsky!) differ on pawns, or sometimes kings. The next major splitting point is orientation (is forward an orthogonal direction or not), but again most variants agree on that. Within the large chunk of forward-oriented diagonal-attacking-pawns variants then, the only real differences are board size/shape, setup, pawn details (initial moves and promotion zone), and castling. So, I think it's nice to clarify quickly where a variant lives: this is one of those variants, not a "quirky" one with horizontally-oriented, or "weird" or "new" piece interpretations.

I'd like to point out that he was not first in creating the game that uses these rules, and I don't fully understand why his variant is mentioned instead of Shafran's version, which stands a little bit closer to my game

That's mostly a historical bias of this site I think: Glinsky's is probably the best-known, and McCooey's was introduced here, and so now the two Recognized/Primary links for the Hexagonal category are those. Perhaps we should add Shafran's game as a Recognized/Primary variant here in the hexagonal category?

I'll also mention that I'm not so familiar with hexagonal chess hierarchies and history, so I'm happy to be corrected on anything. Just to include them here, see also CECV chapter 22 and wikipedia.

Finally, I think the various claims like "the main difference is that my variant is actually playable" need some clarification. What is it about the different shape and setup that make this playable while all other hexagonal variants are not? At some point in your last comment you mention mismatched number of pawns and pieces, but that's hardly a disqualifier for me at least. Protected pawns, good and interesting openings, etc. would be more convincing to me. And yes, all that's subjective, but I think some discussion on the page (Notes section?) would be beneficial.

Is this meant to be unequal armies, the usual FIDE except swapping pieces for the queen? But some of the candidates are known to be significantly weaker than the queen...how balanced can these be?

I think it'd be worth adding some of that information into the page, the intro and/or notes sections. (E.g., "pieces move as in other standard [is 'standard' OK here?] hexagonal variants" and maybe "the board shape and setup are designed to be better balanced" in the intro, and the comparisons to other variants in the notes.)

The pawns' initial two-step could use a clarification on whether pawns that make an initial one-step but land still in the two-step "zone" are still admitted a subsequent two-step (it seems like yes?).

I enjoy variants whose only point is to explore some weird idea, but I don't think this brings enough to the table to publish. Only rooks and queens can cross the board (without adding some rules for facilitating automatic advancement of other pieces) and will get slaughtered by the opponent's remaining army.

I think I've seen a similar variant where the space between armies is actually infinite, but I can't immediately find it, and I don't know if there was a serious attempt at making it playable?

Since large primes are all odd, you're guaranteed to need an additional row to get the square coloring you're after.

The diagram with all the diagonal lines is too busy to be helpful, I think.

The notation would probably be better off without repeating the names of rows; I don't think the benefit of giving the consistent name to the orthogonal line is worth making the cell names non-unique.

The third bishop move diagram seems to be missing a marker at g9. If a bishop is on a6, does it move through b5(6?), c4(6?), d3(6?), then chooses between e7-f8-g9 or e2-f1-g0?

Your castling diagrams use black pieces the same color as the board, making it hard to see.

I don't think saying "knight moves one hippogonally" is enough. "Hippogonal" literally means knightwise, but that needs description for a new board.

Pawns can capture backwards? Please add that to the diagram then. What about diagonally "sideways", as in the triangular cells? En passant is allowed for triple and quadruple initial steps, in "the obvious" way?

I'm always a little wary about large piece-packed variants. Have you played this?

Not every visitor will understand the Betza notation; and while the interactive diagram helps, you should additionally include plain english descriptions for pieces.

The full-file rule seems clunky, but I guess it won't come into effect often. Maybe just allow no pawn creation in those rare cases, instead of making it an illegal move?

I would move all the "represented using ... from the second chess set" to the equipment section, leaving the Pieces section cleaner.

A couple of descriptions could use clarification. The "cannot be placed in check" description for the commoner might be misread to mean the opponent can't move to attack it. The knightrider's consecutive moves require empty intermediate square.

You can certainly edit the html file and send it to an editor to re-upload. To migrate it to a member submission would be nicer, but harder; if we created a member submission page and could attach the current itemID I think it would correctly assign favorites, comments, etc., but I'm not sure if lacking the MS prefix of a member submission would break anything? There are surely also absolute links to this page, so we'd need a redirect, but that's no problem.

Hi Daniel, sorry, those had slipped beyond my radar. I'll make another pass through the list when I can.

Hi Joe, this page's index entry got created but content was never written. Will you come back to it, or should we delete the index entry, or ...?