Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I share that opinion.

I also don't see a link in the footer to return to the general comments listing. Only to the comments for the particulat page.

Please see the thread "The new editcomment.php script" for discussions around the comment input form.

I have enabled the script to allow the choice of WYSIWYG format. This will turn on CKEditor in WYSIWYG mode. Selecting the HTML format will turn it on in Source mode. Selecting Text or Markdown will turn it off. WYSIWYG and HTML display the same as each other, but one is intended for people who don't want to write their own HTML, and the other is intended for people who do. Markdown will still be the default.

For some reason, this did not save my comment in WYSIWYG mode. I'm now doing diagnostics to figure out what went wrong.

It looks like I did not properly update the allowed values for the Format column in the database. Let's see if this works now.

It has worked, and I have now updated the values allowed for the Format column in the Kibbitz table too.

Testing again. I had to add ParentID to the valid_column_name() function in database-funcs.php.

Testing. Again. Again. Okay, it looks like the parent comment to a reply will persist through multiple previews.

I just posted a comment and, after confirming, it said my comment had been posted to the "Shatranj Kamil (64)" page (a hyperlink.) So I clicked on that link to go back to that page but it gives a 404. It added "index/" into the path before "contests/"

Okay, I put a slash before the URI, and I wrote a function to calculate the correct URI, since these are not stored for member submitted pages.

I discovered that the page for Game Courier's Top 50 Games is currently not being allowed to be displayed (I get an error message instead).

I discovered that the page for Game Courier's Top 50 Games is currently not being allowed to be displayed

Okay, that's fixed.

When I try to update the description for my upcoming tutorial on programming variants with multi-move pieces in Game Courier, the description still reads what it originally said when I first posted the article. It seems like the description is refusing to update even after I change the text in the What's New Text field. Any idea as to what's causing this?

The Description field is distinct from What's New; the two are displayed on different index listing pages. The Description is only available to set when you first submit (for now); if you want to change it, let an editor know.

Yes, I would like the description for that article changed to "A tutorial on how to create variants with multi-move pieces in them."

Also, I personally think that the old system where the What's New Text and the article description are the same was a much better system. I have no idea why someone decided to separate them.

Done.

I don't remember the What's New and Description ever being the same...? The What's New is generally not a good description of the page, just pointing out what has changed on the page ("added example" or "modified endgame conditions", for example).

As to why Descriptions historically haven't been easy to edit I can't say, but Fergus seems to have recently expressed interest in changing that.

I would also like to have descriptions changed for the following pages:

Gyaku-sama Shogi - Smaller version of Hanten Shogi. >> Smaller variant of Hanten Shogi on a 13x13 board.

Taishin Shogi - Enoumous variant of Suzumu Shogi based on Tai Shogi. >> Enormous variant of Suzumu Shogi based on Tai Shogi and Taikyoku Shogi.

I would also like to have descriptions changed for the following pages...

done.

Since members submitting new games with names that are already used has become a common problem, I have added a new alert message to the member submission page to make users aware of the issue.

Greg, is Full Cavalry okay? I know there's a "Cavalry Chess" but I thought that Full Cavalry seemed unique enough and appropriate for what it is. Let me know, thanks!

Yes, "Full Cavalry" is just fine. I'll try to review it tonight. On a quick look it appeared fine.

Something seems wrong with the code that displays comments on a game page. This page: https://www.chessvariants.com/41.dir/2pipe.html does not show my most recent comment on the page, but if you view all comments, then it does appear.

It showed up when I looked at it. Since game pages are cached, and scripts are not, there will sometimes be a delay before a new comment shows up on the page it was posted to, but there won't be any delay in it showing up on the comments page. There is no problem with the code. It is simply that the code is not run when displaying a cached page.

This page is 100% going to crash soon due to traffic from SUSD viewers!

What are SUSD viewers?

@HG: How did you convert the Chess Alpha font to SVG? I would like to convert the Chess Utrecht font pieces to SVG also.

I never did that. All these fonts were already available as SVG. We just looked around on the web to see what was there, and renamed the files to teh XBoard naming convention. I remember we found a lot on the LucasChess website. (Probably not Chess Utrecht, though.)

XBoard seems to have its own piece theme, and Arun Persaud converted that to SVG.

I was able to do what I wanted with the truetype font. I wanted to make anti-aliased graphics so that, when updating the early pages, I can improve the look while still maintaining the style. So far, only the 6 primary pieces, but the results are pretty good:

I've been unable to view any of our php pages on my phone (Android, with Firefox, Chrome, and DuckDuckGo) the past couple of days. I can switch to "Desktop site" and it works fine, but the mobile version just displays the off-white background of the site and no content.

I am having this problem as well. The home page comes up but click what's new and I only get the background. Something's different about the mobile site.

I've been unable to view any of our php pages on my phone (Android, with Firefox, Chrome, and DuckDuckGo) the past couple of days. I can switch to "Desktop site" and it works fine, but the mobile version just displays the off-white background of the site and no content.

I just tried Silk on my Kindle Fire, and it had the same problem. So that I could see the source code, I installed an extension for showing the mobile view on my desktop Firefox, and the source stopped very early in the BODY section. It has something to do with showing ads.

In the ads file that got included for mobile, I had recently replaced the AD heredoc identifier with ADZ, but some had used 'AD' instead and so hadn't gotten changed to ADZ. After fixing these, I got it to work in mobile.

Fergus, are you working on the site template now? It seems the left-side column for the ads has gotten a lot wider.

Fergus, are you working on the site template now? It seems the left-side column for the ads has gotten a lot wider.

No, I'm not. How much wider does it look to you?

I'm not sure, I don't remember precisely. And maybe nothing has changed recently and I am just noticing now because I resized my window or something. I did turn off my ad blocker but that doesn't change the width of the columns.

Anyway, what I now see is the left "gutter" (not sure what to call it) is just a hair below 4 inches, so it is eating up what I would call a very significant chunk of the window. The one on the right, on the other hand, is about 2.5 inches, and that seems reasonable. It seems I'm better making my window narrower until the left gutter disappears (which only happens after the right has disappeared). But if I make my window wider, I'm punished with a lot of wasted space. At what I would consider to be a typical width for my browser window, the main (middle) part of the page is about 11 inches, so the two gutters take up over a third of the space.

If I have a new Chess variant, called Mad Chess, where Mermaids, Angels & Dragons are added to chess as extra armies with special units and abilities, how can I add this variant to this database?

For more details, you can look at the steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1551190/Mad_Chess/

The name Mad Chess is already in use by another variant, but maybe you could distinguish yours by calling it M.A.D. Chess or Mermaids, Angels and Dragons Chess. You can create a page for your game. You might want to create a link page to your Steam app page, or you might want to create a page describing the game's rules. See How to Design and Post Your Own Game for further details.

And as long as we are doing requests: I just submitted an article that is an index with internal links to the many interactive diagrams on the CVP that can be used for playing against the AI. Would it be possible to add (a link to) that article in the 'Play' section of the Home Page, just as there is a link to an index page for the Jocly games that are implemented here? We could use this logo:

I also think that a link to the Play-Test Applet article deserves to be in the 'Create column'. I also think the Checkmating Applets should be mentioned, but I am not sure where. My first thought was under 'Explore', but the other items there have a somewhat different character. Perhaps these applets are also 'Play' items? In any case I think they should be mentioned in the 'computer resources' section of the 'topic index' page. The many Jocly games we feature aren't mentioned there either. And the 'diagram editor with scalable graphics' also seems a useful resource worth mentioning.

Thanks for all this!

First, I generally think that these interactive diagrams should be promoted from comments into the articles themselves, unless they are somewhat experimental and would require frequent editing by someone other than the author or an editor.

The list of these can still exist and linked to as "play"ables. But it may work to turn it into an index, rather than you maintaining it. That may work out best with some other structural change though (adding a field to the member submissions e.g.), so I won't push for this in the very near-term.

I'll try to add links to the other resources in appropriate places; thanks for all the thought about where they best fit.

First, I generally think that these interactive diagrams should be promoted from comments into the articles themselves, unless they are somewhat experimental and would require frequent editing by someone other than the author or an editor.

Well, I only have access to articles I authored, and there the diagrams are indeed in the articles, as the main diagram for showing the setup. Some other members have included diagrams in their own articles, usually as a secondary diagram. Greg has used his power as an editor to add diagrams to some of the 'founding articles'.

Since I have no access to other people's articles, I always posted diagrams in the comments section for variants that I thought deserved one. I usually tried to stick to the 'theme' of the main diagram in those articles (coloring of the board, piece images). Any editor can copy the diagrams to the main article, as far as I am concerned. (In some cases I accompanied the diagram in the comment with an explanation on the features of the diagram script that I had to add to make it possible to do that variant; I would appreciate it if these comments could stay, or perhaps be moved to the comments on the Interactive diagram itself.)

Having the diagram in a comment does have an upside, though: when accessed from the index page I made, I always linked to the page you get when using the 'View' link to view the comment in isolation. Which means they immediately get the diagram in view. A link to the main article might have the diagram hidden somewhere at the bottom, after many other diagrams for showing setup and piece moves.

I don't think any of the diagrams needs any maintenance. They all link to the same JavaScript file, and most maintenance is done there.

Even if it would be a special index page, someone would have to maintain it, I suppose. I don't see how this could be automated. Any author could at any time decide to add a diagram to an article of his, and how would we know? If the index page formally is an article of mine, at least I can update it myself for diagrams I create. Editors can update it anyway.

BTW, I did some more thinking on the 'computer resources'  section of the home pages. Wouldn't it be better to split the graphics stuff from that, to put it in a separate section?

Some other members have included diagrams in their own articles, usually as a secondary diagram. Greg has used his power as an editor to add diagrams to some of the 'founding articles'.

Yes, I've been slowly incorporating them into pages in the notes section, like I did with this page.  I don't typically make it the primary diagram because different pages have different presentation styles (colors, etc) and I don't want them to all look the same.  Updating more pages (both with interactive diagrams and in general) is something I will hopefully get back to soon.  It's pretty tedious work, but we have a lot of pages for good games that could use an update.

Having the diagram in a comment does have an upside, though: when accessed from the index page I made, I always linked to the page you get when using the 'View' link to view the comment in isolation. Which means they immediately get the diagram in view. A link to the main article might have the diagram hidden somewhere at the bottom, after many other diagrams for showing setup and piece moves.

This is a good point.  I could place an anchor tag on the page right before the I.D. so you could link directly to that part of the page.  That's probably worth doing.

I don't typically make it the primary diagram because different pages have different presentation styles (colors, etc) and I don't want them to all look the same.

I fully agree that the pages should keep their current character. But in many cases it should be possible to make an Interactive Diagram that looks exactly the same as the static diagrams they have now. These are often also based on piece themes like Alfaerie, Utrecht, etc. These can be used in the diagram too, and the square shades can be arbitrarily configured. This is what I usually do when I post diagrams in the comments. E.g. the three diagrams I posted below for Courier, Shatranj, and Makruk all use Utrecht, and the same piece representations as the original images in those articles, (even though I consider the use of a Queen symbol for the General in Courier rather dubious), and the latter two use an uncheckered, white board, while Courier uses the 'CVP orange' for the dark squares.

Of course in cases where the original setup 'image' consists of ascii art, it becomes a bit questionable whether it deserves to be preserved.

A more important concern is that we want the pages to be presentable (even if not fully functional) for people that have switched JavaScript off. To achieve that for my own articles (e.g. the recently submited Pink Chess), I use the following method: After I created the Interactive Diagram, I take screenshot of it, and upload that as 'membergraphics' for the article. I then include that image in the article within <noscript> tags, so that it would only be shown when JavaScript is off. To prevent the user gets to see the unprocessed definition of the Interactive Diagram, I give the <div> tag that contains this definition a style="display:none". The Diagram script will change this style so the section gets visible for each definition it processes.

I fully agree that the pages should keep their current character. But in many cases it should be possible to make an Interactive Diagram that looks exactly the same as the static diagrams they have now.

Indeed.  And I see you've added additional features to make this possible.  Thank you!  I think having the "primary diagram" be one of your interactive diagrams is a worthy goal, for multiple reasons.

Of course in cases where the original setup 'image' consists of ascii art, it becomes a bit questionable whether it deserves to be preserved.

Agreed.  I think the ASCII diagrams need to go.  And, for the record, for a long, long time I felt that all pages throughout the Internet should be fully-available to text browsers, and that formatting decisions should come from the client side, etc.  As such, I opposed the direction web development was taking for a long time ... kind of like an old-school Catholic, bitter that mass was no longer recited in Latin.  But slowly I decided this paradigm shift was inevitable, whatever my personal inclinations were.  And now, I think, overall, it is probably for the better.  (Although there are still unfortunate trade-offs, such as handicapped accessibility and support for personal tastes, such as dark-mode.)  Ideally, maybe it's possible to make the ASCII description the "alt text" to the image, but that would be a TON of work that is almost certainly not the best use of my time.  As this website grows, the number of things that should be done grows faster than my time to do them, and I'm not even sure that ASCII diagrams as alt-text serves any real purpose.  (Can blind people get any value out of an ascii diagram?)

Regarding substituting interactive diagrams for main diagrams, I have a couple of questions... Is it possible to have some custom text float to the right of the diagram?  I'd still like to have the location of pieces and initial FEN displayed to the right of the diagram as in this page for example.  Also, can we do 3 square colors for games with nightriders, such as shown here?  (Only one light-square color, but the dark colors alternate per row.)  I'm not saying that either of these things is essential, but, in my mind, if we could do both of these things, replacing the primary images with interactive diagrams would be a "no brainer" (as we say in English - sorry if it doesn't translate well.  It means of course we should do it.)

Is it possible to have some custom text float to the right of the diagram?

Well, you have to make the diagram float left. The diagram design wizard already proposes that, by putting a style="float:left; margin: 0 10px 10px 0" with the <div> element used to package the diagram parameters. Any following text will then wrap nicely around it.

BTW, it is possible to have the diagram script generate a the list of pieces (plus squares coordinates) that you like to go there as a 'satellite', by putting a <ul id="xxxList"></ul> where you want the list to appear. The advantage is that the list is clickable, and then brings up the move diagram of the clicked piece. (As in the CwdA diagram, after you select an army.) But I guess that for replacing images in existing articles the lists will already exist.

Also, can we do 3 square colors for games with nightriders

The diagram can already do that (e.g. see the Caissa Britannia diagram I made), but currently it can be switched on only through embedded extra JavaScript (<script>oddShade = "#E04040";</script>). It will be totally trivial to make a 'regular' diagram parameter oddShade for it, though.

I am looking to delete my account and potentially create a new account as my current account is cluttered with a large amount of garbage from a couple years ago. Additionally, I created my account without understanding the user ID system, so my user ID is just random nonsense. However, I seem to have a glitched page linked to my account that prevents me from deleting it. Is there any way to resolve this, or should I just abandon the account altogether?

Greetings, Thanks for doing this website. I don't see Commander Chess or Cờ Tư Lệnh in Vietnamese. This is not to be confused with the Vietnamese Chess listed here for zillions of games. Commander Chess was designed By Colonel Hải Nguyễn Quí and released in 2010. I think it's been adopted as the official Chess of Vietnam.

It's a modern warfare, sort of XianQi variant. Uses tanks, aircraft, a navy. Here's a link to the BGG for it:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/191203/commander-chess

The Colonel has been trying to share his game with the world and I know for a fact they are about to release a new Commander Chess game set and online/mobile platforms to play online as well.

This game was once considered to be included in the book "A World of Chess". When you say that it has been adopted as the official chess of Vietnam, what source or element do you have to support this statement? I am interested to know.

The other co-author of "A World of Chess", Rick, gave me Colonel Hải Nguyễn Quí's email address upon my inquiry. I've been having an ongoing dialog with the Colonel and another associate of his over the past week and a half. They shared a lot of relevant info with me into the current state of the game and their future plans.

I posted pictures of their new game set on BGG (different username) with their permission as well as an updated English rulebook.

I am attempting to verify my email for my account, but it seems that whenever I click on the link in the email, it just sends me to a change email form that doesn't verify the email. How can I fix this?

I am attempting to verify my email for my account, but it seems that whenever I click on the link in the email, it just sends me to a change email form that doesn't verify the email. How can I fix this?

Your profile says your email is verified.

Your profile says your email is verified.

I sent him an email to confirm identity and then marked it as verified manually.

I noticed that there also are links to various methods of computer play from the Play menu in the main menu bar. Shouldn't we also link to the Jocly overview page and the index page for the interactive diagrams there?

I wonder if there is an option in Game Courier somewhere to have pieces rotate 180 degrees when the board is flipped? This is not the $flip variable in the set file, as that swaps the values for lowercase and uppercase keys when the board is flipped Such an option could be quite useful for pieces that use mnemonic symbols to show piece moves, since piece moves are flipped when the board. Maybe the board does this automatically and I am just missing it (I know this is the case when I use my phone). However, as far as I know, there is no option in Game Courier that flips that makes pieces images rotate as the board rotates. If there is, it isn't documented in the developer's guide. Either way, I think the idea is at least worth considering.

I don't know enough about Game Courier to help you, but I experienced the same concern when putting one of my variant ideas onto tabletopia.com (8-Piece Chess) I eventually just decided to make piece designs that were symmetrical, because that site treats it all like a "camera" view ;)

I wonder if there is an option in Game Courier somewhere to have pieces rotate 180 degrees when the board is flipped?

There is no option for rotating piece images.

This is not the $flip variable in the set file, as that swaps the values for lowercase and uppercase keys when the board is flipped

That is not quite what it does. What is actually does is use the piece images in the $flipped array instead of those in the $pieces array. In case any piece labels have not been assigned to piece images in the $flipped array, it completes the $flipped array with this code:

if ($flip == true) {
    foreach ($pieces as $key => $val) {
        if (empty($flipped[$key]))
            $flipped[$key] = $pieces[flipcase($key)];
    }
}

This is useful for Shogi variants, in which the pieces on one side are usually 180° rotated images of the pieces on the other side. Note that some Shogi sets assign specific images to k and K for $flipped, because each side uses a different Kanji character for the piece, and they use the default values for the rest. Here's an example of such code:

$flipped = array (
    "K" => "WKing.gif", "k" => "flip/BKing.gif"
);

I made a new logo for the home page, and I updated the smaller logo to use some of the same fonts. The word "CHESS" is in Noto Serif, the word "vArIanT" (or "VArIaNT") in Spin Cycle 3D OT, and the other words in Noto Sans. In the smaller logo, I left those words in the original font, which I think is one of the Segoe UI fonts. The Elephant and Unicorn are Musketeer Chess pieces I took a photo of together to keep them at the same scale. The Elephant is a historical piece that goes back to Chaturanga and is found in various Asian regional variants, while the Unicorn is a fairy chess piece that looks an awful lot like a certain Chess piece. Since the black Elephant appeared too dark, I tried a color gradient on the image of the two pieces and liked the result. The varying colors looked psychedelic and seemed appropriate for a site about variants. Above the word "CHESS" are the pieces of Chess. Below the word "vArIanT" are a selection of Chess variant pieces in different styles.

I made mass edits to most pages on the site today using sed. I added a line to all .html pages up to five or six levels deep and to all the .php files in /index/ to include the /g/headcode.php script after the HEAD tag. This is for being able to insert common code into the head section of each page. While I expect the .html files are all okay, the scripts were not all uniform in how they handled the head section. Some would include it as HTML, and some would write it with PHP code. For example, msdisplay.php was broken until I fixed it earlier this evening. So, if you come across any other script that is not working right, let me know so that I can fix it.

Since the old ebay ads were no longer showing up, I have started replacing them with new ones. I liked that the old ones could be script-generated with different search terms plugged in. For the new ones, I have to manually create each ad on ebay. So, except for the United States, which is my own country and has the most visitors to this site, I am creating fewer types of ebay ads. I have mainly been working on the large ones that go on the left side on a desktop. I generally made four ads per country, the search terms being Chess, Chess Variant, and that country's own language's words for Chess and Chess Books. The Chess ads may also show items matching the recent activity of CVP visitors on ebay. Countries with more than one language got more. I made ads for Australia (AU), Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Canada (CA), France (FR), Germany (DE), Ireland (IE), Italy (IT), the Netherlands (NL), Spain (ES), Switzerland (CH), the United Kingdom (UK), and the United State (US). That's the whole set of countries I can make ebay ads for. Just in case I left out a semicolon or something, let me know if you are having trouble viewing pages from your country.

Fergus, in my case it's annoying.

For every page I get a long vertical strip on e-bay announcements, 36 on this page, which oblige me to scroll down a lot before I get the text I want to see.

I use Safari on a Macbook.

From what you're saying, it is going wrong for you in two ways.

1. It is showing the full 36 items. But it should only show a box that fits on the screen, and you should be able to see all 36 items only by scrolling this box.

2. It is showing the ad above the content instead of to its left.

I went to test the ad for France by setting my IP's adlocale to "fr-FR", and when I went to preview this comment, an ad showed up at the top of the page. What I did yesterday was accidentally put the ad code for the left side ads in the script for banner ads that go up top. So, that accounts for #2. I have fixed that by copying the code to the correct file and deleting it from the wrong one. Were you also describing #1, or was it only #2?

It was #2, ads above all text, in a vertical column, on top of the page and on right side. But it doesn't show anymore this morning, I tried few pages, no more problem. You probably fixed it. I see no e-bay adds anymore at all. Thank you.

I see no e-bay adds anymore at all.

Since the Macbook is a laptop, it may not provide as wide a screen as my desktop monitor does. On my own 14.1 inch laptop, there are no ads on the left side, because the CSS is set to not display them unless the browser window is wide enough.

To avoid making multiple sets of ebay ads, I changed the ones I had made to custom sized, then reused the same ads at different sizes. In the left sidebar, they may appear as a full-sized vertical column or up to two may appear half-sized. In the footer, ebay ads may appear as a horizontal strip. I have not put any at the top of the page or on the right sidebar, because ebay ads must be taller than the horizontal banner ads at the top, and they must be wider than the space allocated for ads on the right. I have also added code to prevent the same ebay ad from appearing multiple times on the same page.

The tag description page-scripts aren't working.

The tag description page-scripts aren't working.

That had to do with how I mass-edited many scripts to include the headcode.php script in the HEAD section. I have now corrected it for this script.

The Edit Comment scripts aren't working properly. Whenever I try to edit a comment it fails. Posting comments still works though.

The Edit Comment scripts aren't working properly. Whenever I try to edit a comment it fails. Posting comments still works though.

Until I'm feeling better, I have simply reverted this to Sunday's version. I have been having fever symptoms. I had chills last night, and now I'm feeling too warm. I will continue debugging code when I'm feeling better.

@ Fergus D, HG M, Kevin P, Zied H, Greg S, Daniel Z.

I have sent you an e-mail concerning my on-going project. Please check your e-mail box and warn me if you don't have it. I am not sure of your address. Thank you very much.

I can't seem to submit a new game. I received the error below and could not proceed to Step 2:

Error: You must specify a User ID. Please press the 'Back' button and enter your user id.

I could not select anything under "Your user id". There is nothing for me to select. So, until this issue is resolved, I am not able to submit any new chess variant.

@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...".)

Fergus, Are you here?

Fergus, Are you here?

Yes, I've been slacking. I'm also trying to catch up on my reading, as I am still ten books away from my reading goal of 52 books for the year, and I have less than six weeks to complete it.

Good luck with the reading, Fergus. The trouble is that when I invite someone on any Grand Apothecary chess games, and that person accepts, the person in question receives a message that I won. So we can't play. Here are the presets in question:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Applet

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+2&settings=Applet

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+3&settings=Applet

Some additional info: the preset is automated through code generated by the Play-Test Applet, but in 'Play' mode this code appears to work fine. In particular there is no spurious declaration of game end by the Post-Game code sections. I don't know whether it is possible that the provided GAME-code would use a variable name that is also in use by Game Courier for other purposes, and confuses the system.

These are all using code from H. G. Muller's code generator. So, he would be the one to ask about this unless the problem is more universal.

Doesn't the fact that the code work perfectly in Play mode prove that the problem is not in this code, then?

I have no way to debug other code than what the one the user can provide. As far as I understand GC the only way that after accepting an invitation GC declares a loss would be when the GAME-code executes a resign command without getting any input. I am pretty sure my code doesn't do that. It definitely does not do that when you press Play in the preset menu. How does what happens when pressing Play differ from accepting an invitation?

The games all say "White lost by absence of royalty!" and the board is filled with the same piece every time, which seems to always be whatever piece is labelled 's'

Doesn't the fact that the code work perfectly in Play mode prove that the problem is not in this code, then?

No, it doesn't. There are sometimes differences in how a game works in Solitaire or Play mode and how it works between two players.

The games all say "White lost by absence of royalty!" and the board is filled with the same piece every time, which seems to always be whatever piece is labelled 's'

Since that error message is not from the PHP code, it must be from the GAME Code.

Yes, it is from the GAME code. But is seems the GAME code is right about this: Daniel says below that the initial position is all wrong, and indeed contains no royal.

This is a shuffle game, so it calls the general shuffle code in the Pre-Game section. This performs the shuffling, and stores the result in a constant. So that later invocations of the preset will use that same shuffle. A new shuffle is only made when the constant is not defined. This works fine in Play mode.

Can it be that the constant for remembering the initial position gets corrupted when an invitation is accepted?

For reference, below is the basic principle of the shuffling, by the routine ShuffleSetup called from the Pre-Game code:

sub ShuffleSetup:
  // performs the shuffles described in the above arrays
  if isconst startshuffle:        // shuffle has already been determined
    setsystem space startshuffle; // retrieve it
  else:                           // new game; must shuffle
    ... // shuffle the initial setup in $space
    setconst startshuffle $space;        // save the shuffle for persistent use
  endif;
endsub;

It looks like you are not retrieving the value of the constant properly. The line

setsystem space startshuffle;

should be either

setsystem space const startshuffle;

or

setsystem space @startshuffle;

OK, I changed the shuffle.txt file accordingly. Perhaps Aurelian can try whether the problem is now solved.

Pretty amazing that this did not appear to cause any problems in Play mode.

Pretty amazing that this did not appear to cause any problems in Play mode.

I ran a simple test in Solitaire mode, and it kept running the code for when the constant is not already set. I'll now look into why that is.

It works well now!

At the second move of a game of Apothecary Chess Alert the pieces are not shown properly. Any idea why?

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+1&log=catugo-arx-2021-327-838&userid=catugo

This is a preset where the piece images are redefined through assignment to the system variable $pieces, at the end of the Pre-Game section. Apparently the image displayed on the page is generated before this assignment is processed.

It does not seem to be that as in play mode it works ok, HG. Also trouble begins with ply 2 which is quite weird!

@HG, I don't see the problem. To me it seems that this preset should work like the other 2!

@HG, I don't see the problem.

I don't understand what problem you don't see. You wouldn't be posting this here if you did not see some problem.

@HG The problem is that the piece pictures are not properly displayed. But I cannot see any bug as the end of the pregame section is the same to my two other presets that work fine. This is what I meant

@Daniel Do you see the same problem ?

@Ben, thanks. It works now. I've posted a new chess variant already.

@HG, Have you had time to take a look at my preset?

Well, like you said, there is nothing for me to see. The GAME code looks OK  as far as chanģing the piece set is concerned, and does work on the first ply. It was not changed between the first and second ply. This is a general Game Courier problem that only Fergus can shed light on.

Ok, thanks HG! Fergus if you can help?

Fergus, Are you here?

I have been busy with other things. What is the specific issue you are having, and how can I duplicate it?

@Fergus, Thanks for taking the time!

In the following preset:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Applet

the pictures are not shown properly.when playing in online mode. In the local play mode things are fine.

In two other very similar presets:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+2&settings=Applet https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+3&settings=Applet

things work properly. Nor I or HG could figure it out. Maybe you can! I don't know how to reproduce it besides looking at the proper preset.

The re-definition of the piece images is at the bottom of the Pre-Game section in all these presets. Somewhat further down in this discussion Aurelian posted a link to an ongoing game with this preset, where the problem manifests itself.

@Fergus,

Could you please take a look at problem described bellow by me an HG?

In the following preset:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Applet

the pictures are not shown properly.when playing in online mode. In the local play mode things are fine.

In my testing, images show up fine on White's turn but not on Black's. On Black's turn, the pieces for I, U, and Y do not show up. In the HTML, no piece file is provided for these pieces. It also gets some pieces wrong. It shows a Zebra for the Cannon, a Camel for the Jester, a Gold General for the Kangaroo, an Amazon for the Bird, and a Marshall for the Tank. Another thing happening on Black's turn is that it displays the entire Alfaerie:Many piece set at the bottom of the page. But when it is White's turn, it does not. So, I'm thinking that $pieces is being set to #mypieces only on White's turn and not on Black's.

When I tested the value of $pieces at the very end of the code, it matched the value for #mypieces on Black's turn. So, the problem might not be in the GAME Code but in the PHP that operates after the GAME Code is run.

Isn't that because $flipped needs to be set for black?