Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

HG, Are you here?

May I ask few questions:

• why is the board checkered with 4 colors instead of 2?

• is the Betza's notation for the Dragon correct? According to the textual description I would say t[FR] and not FyafsF. (I understood the Dragon is a Murray's Gryphon)

• Why is the Vulture so complex? Why not a mere compound jumper Giraffe + Zebra?

It is a matter of taste of course, but to my taste I wonder why making more complex several piece which are basically simple such as Knight (N is not enough?), Elephant (FA not enough?). Thurderbird and Firebird are very complex. I would like to play this game but with simpler rules.

The dragon is indeed a t[FR], in Betza's original notation. However, that part of it was never documented on the Betza Notation page (instead languishing on the Chess on a Really Big Board page, though it turns up elsewhere too), and is arguably a little underspecified, so H. G.'s XBetza (which is what the interactive diagram uses) specifies such multi‐leg moves in its own way. In this extension, FyafsF is indeed equivalent to the original t[FR]

The vulture afaict is mainly a longer‐range relative of George Duke's (and more recently Uli Schwekendiek's) Falcon, whose advantage over the bison (from a game design perspective) is its blockability — presumably the same is sought here. Unfortunately, due to the multiple paths to a given destination, it is quite complex to describe. Idk about the extra knight move though, that's perhaps a little gratuitous (presumably to make up for the basic vutlre's lack of maneuverability?)

I agree the birds are quite complex, if potentially interesting to play with? And whether the knight/elephant enhancements are truly necessary may be worth a playtest as well

I have difficulties to see FyafsF. OK for the 1st F, then yafsF is therefore describing the "rook" sliding part of the move? I understand "fs" in the case of a N. In the case of a F, I don't see what "fs" mean.

And this can really code when the Gryphon is sliding backward?

Finally, I don't know what the modifiers y and a are. I don't see the explanation on our page on CVP. I see on WP, I understand "a" as again, but it is quite difficult what "y" means.

All this is really too complex

The extended betza notation is explained here. The "fs" is understood as specifying a direction relative to the initial step, so it indicates that the gryphon moves, after the first step, forward and sideways relative to the direction it first moves. It is a more complex notation, but it allows for more possibilities.

I notice here that the knight's move in the rules is different from that in the interactive diagram. Which one is correct?

Apparently I forgot to add the link to the XBetza page in my previous comment; I've now added it there.

yafsF is indeed the sliding part. a is as you've found, ‘again’; fs for w's and F's is interpreted as for a king, so for an F it changes to a W direction — and ‘forward’ for anything but the first part of the move is interpreted as ‘outward’ (like Alfonso about the rhinoceros); y is a ‘range toggle’ i.e. it switches from being a leaper/stepper to being a slider. Thus, yafsF is one step diagonally followed by a 45° turn and sliding orthogonally.

Complexity is in the eye of the beholder. It's not immediately obvious (especially compared to t[FR]) but it's apperntly easier to describe to a computer (and easier to generalise), which for the interactive diagrams is a definite plus

@Aurelian: I haven't had time to visit CVP since it came back on line. I will have a look at the shuffling problem you mentioned.

@Jean-Louis: there is an explanation of y and a here. Indeed a means 'again', and y can be used only in combinaton with it, where ya then means 'again with range toggle', i.e. when the move started as a leaper (as is the case with F) the next leg will move as a rider of the same stride. fs means 'forward sideways', but the convention is that this should be interpreted in an orientation where the previous leg defines the forward direction (think of the controversy for the move of the Grant Acedrex Unicorn!). So fs deflects the path by 45 degrees, pure s would deflect by 90 degrees, bs would deflect by 135 degrees. So the ya would turn the F into B (range toggle), but a 45-degree rotated B is an R. So yafsF is an F step followed by an outward R. Without the y (i.e. afsF) there would be no range toggle, and the second leg would be an outward W step. Which would give you a Moa.

Indeed, it seems that either the knight's verbal description or its XBetza move has been exchanged with the one in the Modern game.

@Aurelian?

@ Jean-Louis, Thanks for taking an interest for my games:

1. The board is colored in 4 colors because of the fact that the nightrider is easier to visualize this way.
2. About the XBetza notation HG I think made his point.
3. In falcon chess the falcon is a piece with longer read and more end squares than the leapers (knight). I wanted to do the same, so the Vulture is done. Also over there the falcon piece is rook strength at least. I wanted a rook strength piece so I added the extra just move jumps. They are jumps as the piece would be hard to develop.
4. The knight is enhanced to keep it the same strength as a bishop (who on a 12x12 board has a longer reach). On a 10x10 board those are too much it turns out making the enhanced knight 0.5 pawns stronger than the bishop. Hopefully in the 12x12 case this will be alleviated.
5. I did not want a color bound piece for the modern elephant. Also with the extra trebuchet power it is closer to the other minor pieces.
6. I don't like the camel and zebra because they are too clumsy to use so that in these 3 games so they have short range aid. I had noticed that the short range long range piece deliver quite interesting forks.
7. The thunderbird and firebird are bent riders akin the griffin and manticore. It is just they get the bending later. They also have extra moves in order to keep them in the queen value neighborhood. I like using bend riders because they provide more strategic decisions. That is because their riding property does not allow them to be immediately useful but only in tandem with the clearing of the board.
8. I'm not sure what are you asking by simpler rules, but these games are named apothecary because of the way old pharmacists were tinkering with substances trying to make a cure. As them did I try different ideas from which some admittedly a bit crazy in order to explore many possibilities. These 3 games are my first attempt at 12x12 boards and hopefully from working on them I'll get sufficient experience for my future designs.

@ Bn Em & @ Daniel Zacharias

Thanks for pointing out the mistake with the knight. They were the result of bad copy pasting. The correct knight here is NmZ and in the modern variantion is NmHmA.

And by the way guys, I have some self criticism on my own regarding the three games. The non-pawn pieces, pawns ratio needs to be closer to one as there are many jumping pieces and strong pieces that easily cut through regular pawn chains. Also it felt naturally to have a cannon-rook battery on the edge, with berolina pawn ahead. But after a few tests I'm afraid that the player that moves the berolina first gets an advantage. Try it with the interactive diagram.

The board is colored in 4 colors because of the fact that the nightrider is easier to visualize this way.

But why not three colors instead of four? When I created Cavalier Chess, I tried a four color board, but I found that three colors works better.

@Fergus,

We have discussed this before. I like it better this way. Anyway when the preset is down I'll make a customization. Probably many would prefer 3 colors.

About the colors, have you considered something more like this?

Thanks to everyone for the explanations on the use of Betza's notation: I didn't suspect those refinements.

Above all, thanks to Aurelian for his answer and explaining his motivations. I understand that the priority is balancing the different powers on the board.

I still have to understand why a 3 or 4 colors is helping to visualise the path of a Nightrider, in any case I think I'm kind of blind for Nighriders, I just can't see their paths, I smile.

So, no critics from my side, this game has many interesting features and this is why I am interested

Thanks Jean-Louis for your interest.

@HG, In the context of my before the previous example I think the ":" symbol does not influence the preset although it works fine in the interactive diagram!

I finally had time to look at this. The preset as it was indeed ordered completely random shuffling of Y and W. Which means that YY-WW or YW-YW is also a possible outcome. The way the shufflespecs work in the preset is that the second element of the triplet specidies the set of pieces that have to remain symmetrically located, and the third element specifies the set of pieces that must be equidistributed over square shades. A 0 there means there are no such pieces (and if both are non-zero, the third element is ignored). The first element then contains the remaining pieces, and must be non-empty.

By putting (W Y) in the first element, you asked for an unrestricted shuffle. Because the first element must not be empty, you have to put one of the two there (say Y). The other (W) can then go into the second element, and will be symmetrically shuffled (either as W.-.W or as .W-W.). The Y will then be 'shuffled' over the remaining open spaces, which in this case is just placement there as there is nothing left to choose.

I am not sure why the automatic generation did not work; I haven't looked yet what shuffle string you specified there. Perhaps it failed to put one of the Y, W in the first element, and put them both in the second. Anyway, try if this works:

set shufflespecs (
  (Q V U) // shuffleset
   0
   0
  (I M) // shuffleset
   0
   0
  (Y) // shuffleset
  (W)
   0
   0 // mirror to get black
);

HG, There are four areas where pieces get randomized. And they work in the diagram. The code you had given me yesterday only has 3.

Ah, I did not really look at the Diagram, just at the preset. You can just add the fourth group to the shufflespecs array, as another triplet. You have to put one piece (e.g. Bishop) in the first element of the triplet, and all the others in the second.

I took your Diagram definition from the page source of your article, and pasted it into the Play-Test Applet to generate GAME code. Indeed it turned out that the two groups for which you wanted symmetric shuffling were not put into the shufflespecs array. The reason appears to be that you put the colon (:) to request symmetric shuffling on all pieces of the group. The GAME-code generation apparently cannot handle that. And I never noticed that, because I tend to mark all the pieces but one with a colon. The last piece then must be placed symmetrically as well, as the only open spaces that are left will be symmetrically positioned. If I removed the colon on one of the pieces in each group in the Diagram's shuffle parameter

      shuffle=:B:N:EF,QUT,DI,:LY

then the GAME code gets properly generated:

set shufflespecs (
  (F) // shuffleset
  (B N E) // symmetrized
   0
  (Q T U) // shuffleset
   0
   0
  (D I) // shuffleset
   0
   0
  (Y) // shuffleset
  (L) // symmetrized
   0
   0 // mirror to get black
);

(beware the Diagram uses other piece IDs than your preset!). I will fix the JavaScript for GAME-code generation in the Play-Test Applet such that it can also handle the case where all pieces in a shuffle group have a colon prefix. (As the Diagram itself doesn't seem to have any trouble with that.)

HG, When I try nothing gets shuffled!

When you try what? I see no change in the preset.

BTW, the GAME-code generation should now also work properly when all pieces in a shuffle groep have a colon prefix.

I had copied the code you've obtained in the preset. Isn't that supposed to work?

Well, I did not see it in the preset (link you gave earlier in this comment thread).

And no, that is not supposed to work, because it seems to use other piece IDs than the preset.

I don't understand what you mean by the fact that the diagram uses different pieces ID than the preset. I thought we had passed that. Maybe take another look and tell me what is there do be done: https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+3&settings=Applet Thanks for your help!