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I am trying to do the split now, but in doing this I became aware of some bugs:

The routines cbShortRangeGraph and cbLongRangeGraph in the base model did not enforce brouhaha squares for special moves; moves with FLAG_SPECIAL should also be suppressed. Failing to do so allowed the Fire Dragon in Minjiku Shogi to enter an empty brouhaha square, as all its moves are special because of the burning, and eventually come from cbLongRangeGraph.

What is worse is that the way I implemented the brouhaha squares would suppress storing moves without any mode flags, (assuming that the brouhaha squares would have removed those that would normally be possible), while cbAdvancerGraph tries to generate the entire graph this way (in order to apply the flags later). I could rewrite the latter, but variant implementations we are not aware of might count on the old behavior of cbShort/LongRangeGraph. So I think it is better to change those, and store all-zero flags if this was explicitly requested in the call.

    var janus={ // asymmetric, to b- or i-file
        "4/0": {k:[3,2,1],r:[1,2],n:"O-O"},
        "4/9": {k:[5,6,7,8],r:[8,7],n:"O-O-O"},
        "74/70": {k:[73,72,71],r:[71,72],n:"O-O"},
        "74/79": {k:[75,76,77,78],r:[78,77],n:"O-O-O"},
    } 

Perhaps we should also provide a 'convenience function' in fairy-piece-model for creating such tables, so that we could simply write

var janus = cbCastlingDef(4, 0, 9, 74, 70, 79);

where the first-mentioned Rook would get notation O-O, and the second O-O-O.

It's better to know now.

For my part, I wanted to test the loading from a FEN syntax on a 12x12 board. I was looking for a standard candidate that would be interesting to add. Gross chess?

Yes, it would be easier to understand

OK, I think the split is completed now, and pushed everything to my pullreq branch. The new names are fairy-piece-model.js and locust-move-model.js. (I thought that was a more apt name, and not keeping the same name facilitated tracing which games used it.) I also updated the index.js file to include those in the build; for your games that used fairy-move-model.js I assumed that they would only need the fairy-piece-model.js.

I also added a cbCastlingDef function in fairy-piece-model.js, but it is untested.

I would say there is a there might be a bracket issue in fairy-piece-model.js : Error: unexpected token: '{'

Oops! Forgot to commit the fix for that. I did that now, and pushed it again.

It works with the latest commit.

Concerning castling, I was wondering if cbCastlingDef needs more parameters than that in the case of janus

var janus = this.cbCastlingDef(4, 0, 9, 74, 70, 79);

Ah yes, forgot to report that (but it is in the commit message):

It was also needed to specify the King destinations, as one cannot assume that these are 2 or 3-step away. (And indeed, in Janus they are different left and write.) So the function needs 10 parameters now, 5 for white, 5 for black:

kingOrigin, shortKingDesination, shortRook, longKingDestination, longRook.

Since the introduction of the locust-move-model: chu Shogi has been stabilized and is working very well.

I don't know how you see things going forward, but I have the impression that it would be better to modify a few sprites: tiger instead of buffalo, same lateral mover as minjiku, use of hawk and eagle. We need to check the promotion of silver (keep arrow? or sword), tiger (keep antelope? or giraffe), vertical (ship?).

Once that's done, we could make a doc to explain the promotion lines and how the Lion works. I can help to start if it's useful, but I don't want to go against what you'd like. Let me know if you want help on that or if you prefer to see that later.

The representation of promoted shogi pieces as pictograms is one of the things I am in general unhappy with. It has some advantages to make a promotable piece distinguishable from a non-promotable piece with the same move. But using an entirely different pictogram in a game that already has so many different piece types is hugely confusing. So much that I even wonder if it would not be better to leave the difference invisible. (In over-the-board Bughouse players are used to having to remember whether Queens resulting from promotion revert to Pawns when captured, or just leave the Pawns on the board, having to remember they are Queens...) When I implemented Chu Shogi in pictogram representation if XBoard, I added special pictograms for promoted (Crowned) Rook and Bishop, Vertical and Side Mover, which were slightly less detailed versions of the normal pictograms. (Which for the Movers I took to be (standing or lying) Swords, because their shape is a good reminder for the move. In a similar spirit I took standing and lying narrowed Queen symbols for the Flying Ox and Free Boar.)

I think we should give Chu Shogi its own set of pictogram sprites. We could then take pictograms with red outlines or details for the non-promotable equivalents, like the kanji pieces do. And add a horizontal sword to it for the Side Mover. That set should then also made to be optimal for Tenjiku and Minjiku Shogi. (So the flying pieces should be in there too, some also in red.) Most pictograms can simply be copied from the wikipedia-fairy-sprites, and then reoriented or recolored as needed.

If we can make a tenjiku-set-view that can be used for chu shogi, it will have an important impact on the existing chu shogi model, but it's probably the right solution. At this stage, I don't know enough about tenjiku shogi to propose a sprites file in the right order (easier to manage promotions). But I've made a few attempts with icons  that could be used as a complement of yours.

sample 1 : chu shogi in bad order

sample 2 : chu seireigi in the right order

I like the duck, what was it used for?

Tenjiku Shogi is basically an extension of Chu Shogi. Some pieces that in Chu Shogi are only available as promoted pieces, already are present in the initial setup, and promote further. There are also many new pieces in the initial setup, most with their own, entirely new promotions. But all Chu Shogi pieces participate except the Go Between.

This is why I called the kanji piece set tenjiku-set-view rather than chu-set-view; the idea was that it would at some point be extended with all remaining Tenjiku pieces. The kanji tiles only differ in diffusemap anyway, and the diffusemaps for all Tenjiku kanji tiles already exist, used in the Jocly Tenjiku implementation here on CVP. (But under different names from how we would want them.) They would just have to be committed (in a directory chessbase/res/shogi/tenjiku-diffusemaps, using the naming system also used for the chu-diffusemaps).

I added the Duck as a quasi-mnemonic representation for a diagonal hook mover (Long-Nosed Goblin or Capricorn) from the large Shogi variants, and in particular my shrunken version Macadamia Shogi. But I also used in for the Half Duck in Chess with Different Armies.

Sounds good to me.

Do you have time to initialize the sprites file to make your icon choices at the moment? Is there any way I can help?

I should be able to make a pictogram sprites set for in the tenjiku-set-view, on short term. From looking at your sample1 it appears coloring the eyes is enough distinction for indicating non-promotability. On pieces that never promote (such as Queen and Lion in Chu Shogi) I would prefer not make that distinction. But that would work only if we also do not do it in the kanji tiles. For Tenjiku we would also have promotable Queens and Lions. In the case of the Queen I would color the dots at the tips of the crown rather than a band near the bottom; these look more like eyes. The new 2d images for the crowned pieces look better than the old, (I thought in particular the old Crowned Rook was bad), and also have an 'eye' in their crown, which can be colored.

I would not work with upside-down pieces. These cause problems in flip view, and this isn't really a mnemonic piece set. I like the General symbols I made better than those in sample1, which remind me too much on something a Jester would hold. I also think my Phoenix better fits in with the Wikipedia set than any of the possibilities shown in sample1. The two pieces just before Leopard would make very nice Kirins, though; the leftmost probably fits better with the set (but the outline would have to be fattened).The other is too detailed. The 'pumpkin' is a Fire Demon? The Lance gives too much suggestion of a diagonal move, IMO.

I very much like the symbol for Go Between, and perhaps something similar should be used for Reverse Chariot. Was this the idea of having it in two sizes? There is not much risk of confusion, as they can never leave their file. Perhaps vertical stretching would give a better distinction; the eye is more sensitive to shape than to size.

As an aside, some of these piece names are really strange; the Reverse Chariot is not really reverse but bidirectional. Non-Japanese Chu-Shogi players have shown very little imagination in making English names. They don't hesitate to replace Fragrant Chariot and Angle mover by Lance and Bishop, (no doubt western regular Shogi players must be credited for that), but then they insist in calling an obvious Queen 'Free King' instead. I would have called the Reverse Chariot a Streetcar (which is something confined to its track). And the Vertical and Side Mover a Climber and a Sweeper. (The latter as a soccer analogy, where this is the term for the last defender.)

The Ox and Boar are nice (although the latter needs some fattening), but I still wonder whether it would not be better to use pieces with mnemonic value like a narrowed Queen's crown. People need to be reminded of the move, not so much of the name. And I think in a huge game like Chu Shogi they need all the help they can get; it really overwhelms the orthodox-Chess player. For 4-fold-symmetric pieces mnemonic value does not need flipping of the symbols. Perhaps we should reserve the Ox/Bull and Boar symbols for Dai Shogi, where there are a Violent Ox and Angry Boar.

I am not sure if there is any particular way in which I should order the pieces. I have not yet studied these dual-skin examples. Is it essential that all the alternative skins use the same ordering of sprites? I don't think we already have a 'bare kanji' sprites file for Chu/Tenjiku Shogi like we have for regular Shogi. So I suppose we can use any order of the pieces in teh sprite file, as long as the tenjiku-set-view points to the correct cutouts. Problem is that I forgot how I did make this shogi-sprites file. I suppose it must have been with GIMP on Linux, as MS Paint doesn't support transparency.

I agree :

-In the case of the Queen I would color the dots at the tips of the crown rather than a band near the -bottom; these look more like eyes.
-I would not work with upside-down pieces.
-I also think my Phoenix better fits in with the Wikipedia set than any of the possibilities shown in sample1.

The two pieces just before Leopard would make very nice Kirins, though; the leftmost probably fits better with the set (but the outline would have to be fattened).

→ May be we should keep the giraffe (the 1st is the dragon king of a skin in lishogi, the second was an attempt to make a kirin but not good enough)

The other is too detailed. The 'pumpkin' is a Fire Demon? The Lance gives too much suggestion of a diagonal move, IMO.

→We can keep the icones oj minjiku for consistency

I very much like the symbol for Go Between, and perhaps something similar should be used for Reverse Chariot. Was this the idea of having it in two sizes?
→ We could keep one the two (I didn‘t know which size was the best)

The Ox and Boar are nice (although the latter needs some fattening), but I still wonder whether it would not be better to use pieces with mnemonic value like a narrowed Queen's crown.

-->the idea is appealing, we can give it a try

OK, I pushed a new commit to pullreq, which uses tenjiku-shogi-picto-sprites.png in tenjiku-set-view.js. I limited the indication for promoted pieces to a single red dot. In case of the Queen it is perhaps better to put it in the center of the crown, like it were a ruby. I made narrow crowns by cutting away the central spike from the Queen symbol, in two orientations, and also a rotated sword.

I am reasonably happy with the representation, but some images still need some work; the white Tiger needs fatter lines in the jaw, and the Whale has to be redone completely. Perhaps the white Go Between as well.

Perhaps the Reverse Chariot could use another symbol; it now uses the pictogram that normally represents the War Machine. (Well, what can I say, it it had wheels...). We could change it to a real chariot.

As to harmonizing this with Minjiku Shogi, the problem is that the latter uses the fairy-set-view to have western-style 3d pieces, and that a horizontal Sword is not in the 2d sprites set there. So in 3d I used the War Machine. (Which is an orthogonal piece, like the Side Mover, which in Minjiku even has a two-step vertical move initially.) But I think it is much better to have the sword symbol in Chu/Tenjiku, since the Vertical mover is also a Sword, and they are identical, albeit rotated pieces. We could replace the sword sprite in the fairy-sprites file by a horizontal one, and let Minjiku use the 3d Sword that I made. There are no western variants I am aware of that use a Vertical Mover, or in fact any kind of sword.

bravo, that's really convincing. Of course, there are still some small details to be improved, but that can probably be done easily in a second phase (whale, some red dots ... ).

Here are a few links from lishogi if you need :

Chariot  Tiger  Rook-chariot

Regarding minjiku, I think the idea of having the same sword for the piece is a good one. It'll help you find your way around when you switch from one game to another.

attempt for a cart and whale :

While I was at it, I thought I might as well extend the tenjiku sprites with the the pieces for Tenjiku Shogi. My first attempt is here. The Wolf and Bull are good enough for Dog and Water Buffalo, the Griffon seems a logical choice for Lion Hawk. I used a Star for the Free Eagle, which moves as Queen with some close-range locust capture, in the hope that a star would cause the association with 'all directions'.

I am least happy with the various kinds of Soldiers. I represented the Chariot Soldier by a Cannon, because it is also associated with war, and has wheels. For the Vertical and Side Soldier I picked two warrior helmets, but there is no vertical or sideway aspect to those. Perhaps they should be represented by Bows in two different orientations? Then all Soldiers would be represented by shooting equipment.

I also included sprites for the not-yet-implemented Dai Shogi (the third shogi variant strongly related to Chu Shogi). The Wolf can be used there for Evil Wolf, (There is no Dog there), and I left in the Wazir, Ferz and small Bishop and Rook sprites for representing Angry Boar, Cat Sword, Flying Dragon, and Violent Ox (since the latter two are B2 and R2); it seems better to represent these by move than by name. That only leaves the Stone, General, for which there unfortunally is no logical continuation of the Generals series. So I took the Scout symbol for that. We can worry about this more when we would actually implement Dai Shogi.

[Edit] Strange thing: when I was trying it out it appeared to have lost its opening book, and I got error messages in the console about requesting Zobrist keys for invalid board squares. This turned out to be associated with this strange mode Jocly sometimes gets in, where white is at the far end of the board despite "View as player A" having been selected, but the white pieces still all look away from you, and thus have the wrong orientation w.r.t. the board. I usually solve that by firest viewing as player B, and then again as A. This then also granted it access to its book again.

I don't know enough about the game to have an opinion on these choices, but it sure becomes a lot more accessible this way. Note that there are several dogs available in the musketerchess editor if needed. I don’t know if you saw it : I posted yesterday a whale on a comment that may be a little better than the previous one.
Concerning the initialization bug of the selected player, I've noticed it too, not reproduced yet, I'll have to look in the code to see what's going on. A problem loading preferences?

I get the impression it has something to do with the state Jocly had when you left it in the previous session. But I still have not figured out what.

I decided to go for the Bows. I pushed the lot to pullreq; tenjiku-set-view should now contain all the 3d pieces for Chu and Tenjiku Shogi; only 6 pieces for Dai Shogi are still missing. The 2d sprites should already be able to handle all three shogi variants.

I saw your improved Whale, but I decided to remake it anyway in SVG, to get a properly anti-aliased image  The fact that the sprites are 100x100, and usually rendered at smaller size already mimics some antialiasing, but for certain demagnifications it can still come out poorly. So I decided to take no risks.

Now that we've fixed the icons, we're ready for the next big step.

To finalize the pull request, we need to add game rules, and this is necessary for shogis anyway, especially for chu shogi.

I have made a draft of the rules for shogi, mini shogi and chu shogi which can be consulted here (select the game / buton rules on the top)

This could be a starting point for you if you find it useful, you can take them, rework them and put them on the pull request if needed.

The sources are here, it assumes though that you also use the same kind of sprites for shogis

By the way I saw this icon, I wondered if it could be used for the whale and the white horse :

.

It is a very nice trident, which allows a good distinction between the white and the black piece. A very good mnemonic for the White Horse and Whale move. With the image of a Whale I can live (and in XBoard I tried to draw a Dolphin in a shape that resembled the move), but the use of a horse image for a piece that moves so very differently from an orthodox Knight has always bugged me. Currently I use the Nightrider, but I thinkt this trident would be much better.