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A. M. DeWitt wrote on Wed, Feb 7 04:39 PM UTC in reply to Florin Lupusoru from Mon Feb 5 03:22 PM:

I have revised all the rules and they look fine to me. I don't know what else to add. Please let me know if there is anything else. I know, the rules of this game seem to be out of this world, but please give it a chance.

I think the problem here isn't so much that the game is bad. I think it's a brilliant concept that mixes the randomness of something like Banqi with the rules of Chess.

The main problem I have with this submission, more than anything else, is that at least some of the rules are poorly communicated. From what I have seen, this is easily the number one reason new submissions don't get approved.

To (hopefully) make your life easier, I will give you the following advice:

  • Make use of the Help menu at the top of the page. It is there for a reason!
  • Listen to the Editors. The Editors have a lot of experience with Chess variants, oftentimes much more so than the average author. Its the reason Fergus gives the Editors these powers in the first place - he trusts us to use them as well as our expertise to help other authors get their pages published, and not abuse them in the process. So please, don't discount an Editor's opinion just because you think it is wrong.
  • Study published pages made other authors. This will give you a benchmark to work from, so you have a better idea of what your submissions should do, which will be helpful not just for this submission, but for all your future submissions as well.
    • Learning the basics of technical writing helps. That's technical, not creative writing.
  • Keep it simple, where possible. If you complicate your description of rules too much, you will eventually hit a tipping point where the act of understanding the rules becomes more trouble than its worth. I'm not really sure what to say to fix this...just stop trying so hard.
  • Keep your terminology consistent. This allows players to quickly refer to something they need help with. If there is any deviations, these should be hammered out.
  • Make use of graphics. There's a reason the best pages on this site make use of graphics all over the place. For piece graphics, you should have at least one distinct image for each distinct piece that appears in the game somewhere on the page.
    • A good idea would be to add an image of a solid white or black circle for the Black Swan on this page, so players have an idea of what it looks like.
  • Learn some HTML/CSS/JS. Even a basic understanding of the way HTML works will benefit you greatly here, as it will give you way more control over how your page looks. There are guidelines on what you should do when using HTML, see HTML Dos and Don'ts for more details on this.

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