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Comments by FergusDuniho

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bugs[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Mar 4, 2022 05:40 PM UTC in reply to Ben Reiniger from Thu Mar 3 05:11 PM:

Okay, that's now fixed.


New Grand Apothecary Chess Error.[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Mar 4, 2022 01:48 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 04:57 AM:

My guess would be that the automatic code generator was never designed to handle imitators.


Hopping Sliders[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Mar 4, 2022 01:35 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 07:41 AM:

In English, skiing is a winter sport that involves sliding on snow with a long plank attached to each foot. The piece name probably refers to a ski jump, in which a skier goes down a ramp that sends him up into the air for a while before touching ground.


bugs[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Mar 1, 2022 05:35 PM UTC:

I was merging the functionality of canonicalURI, which takes an ItemID, into make_link_url, which takes a row, and I didn't do a thorough job of it. That is now fixed. Instead of duplicating functionality, canonicalURI will now use the ItemID to get a row with which it can call make_link_url. Having make_link_url call canonicalURI, as it was doing before, was wasteful, because it queried the database for a row it already had from a previous database query.


Game Courier. PHP script for playing Chess variants online.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 28, 2022 02:51 AM UTC in reply to Bn Em from Sun Feb 27 11:43 PM:

This is now fixed.


🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 26, 2022 10:18 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 07:32 PM:

I speak of the link with the name of the game which is written just below the diagram in the GC page.

Okay, I changed that to use the $rulesurl variable calculated in the header, which can be different than the value stored in $rules. So, it should work now.


🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 26, 2022 05:16 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 02:13 AM:

It seems like the Rules URL is broken for every game.

I tried multiple presets, including Shako and Expanded Chess, and the Rules URL worked fine every time. Instead of saying every game, which obviously you can't confirm without exhaustive work, tell me which particular presets you are seeing this problem in.


🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Feb 25, 2022 11:40 PM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 04:24 PM:

The problem appears to be that you are not updating the value of k or K when the King moves. This gives inaccurate data to both the checked and stalemated subroutines, which results in inaccurate return values. So, it is an instance of garbage in, garbage out.


🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Feb 25, 2022 11:17 PM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 04:24 PM:

In my tests of how intersection works, it will return an associative array when the first array is associative and the second is sequential. It will also treat a variable name as a constant name if there is no variable by that name and there is a constant by that name. So, what I thought were problems with the code might not be.

If the purpose of these intersections is to weed out empty spaces, the same thing can be accomplished more easily with diff noupper @ or diff nolower @.

I notice that your calls to stalemated include two arguments, but only one parameter is defined for the subroutine.


🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Feb 25, 2022 07:47 PM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 04:24 PM:

Also, Daniel Zacharias found that if you enter King moves manually, it works fine.

The King's legal moves were highlighted for the first player, but they were not for the second player. After I moved the King manually, it declared check. Considering how your pieces move, this seems inaccurate. All I did was move each King forward to file 6.

He thinks the problem may be in the stalemated subroutine. When I coded this preset, I removed the checkmated subroutine used in my other presets to simplify the code a bit. so that would make sense.

After the two King moves I mentioned, the only highlighted legal moves are to 5j, the space vacated by the King. After each one of these moves, it declared "Checkmate! Black has won!" When I tried other moves I expected to be legal, I could make them, but then it would declare Checkmate again.

Looking at your Post-Game code, I see lines for enforcing the rule against checkmating with a Pawn drop. Code for this should be handled by the stalemated subroutine, because it has to apply to potential moves, not just to actual moves. However, I don't think that code is responsible for the inaccurate estimates of check and stalemate.

Since it declares checkmate only when checked and stalemated both return true, there may be bugs in both, or there may be a bug in a function called by both, such as the definition of a piece move, or there may be a bug in checked, which is also called by stalemated.

Since the checked subroutine shows problems by itself, and it is also called by the stalemated subroutine, it could well be the problem. It works differently than the checked subroutine I have in the fairychess include file. It sets enemies to an intersection between noupper and #bpieces or nolower and #wpieces. However, there are no variables called bpieces or wpieces. There are only constants by these names, and these two constants are sequential arrays. However, noupper and nolower return associative arrays. So, an intersection would not give you the desired result.

I see the same error in your stalemated subroutine. You are trying to find an intersection between an associative array and a variable that does not exist, and the constant with its name is a sequential array anyway.


🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Feb 25, 2022 03:33 AM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 01:38 AM:

Posting a link would help.


Pychess[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Feb 23, 2022 07:33 PM UTC:

Instead of just listing games that Pychess supports in the description, how about going to our pages for these games (at least those we have), and adding the Pychess tag to them?


Gross Chess. A big variant with a small learning curve. (12x12, Cells: 144) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Feb 22, 2022 06:36 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 07:37 AM:

I understand your points. If there was 1 BN on b1/b12 and 1 RN on k1/k12 only, all your specs would be respected: all pieces can move behind the lines, all pawns are protected, the Cannons keep their mobility.

This setup leaves an empty space on a1 without any piece able to move to it, which adds an element of arbitrariness to the setup that I don't like. It also reduces the usefulness of the Cannon and Vao by giving them fewer valuable pieces to potentially pick off, and it removes the chance of a Vao threatening to eventually capture a Rook or Marshall along a diagonal.

Just there is no symmetry for BN and RN, but there is no symmetry for Queen either and this is not illogical.

It increases the asymmetry in the game, which I prefer to avoid.

I have understood that the reason why you had 2 BNs,2 RNs is because you owned 2 physical Gothic chess sets. An option to play with a single BN/RN set would be worth to consider maybe.

If we did that, it might work better to put the Archbishop by the King and to put the Queen and Marshall in the corners. Since the Queen is more powerful, it could go on the Kingside corner. This would take care of some of the objections I had. However, I would otherwise prefer to keep the Queen by the King, which is the more traditional position for this piece, and having two Marshalls and Archbishops better accommodates this.


🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Feb 22, 2022 02:08 AM UTC in reply to Kevin Pacey from Mon Feb 21 11:59 PM:

What might a concrete advantage of every piece (except Vaos) being able to move behind the pawn line in the setup be? [edit: closest thing to that I can think of, so far, is that a player sometimes just might be able to evade an attack/skewer by an enemy Vao or Cannon, in a way he couldn't otherwise]

Along the lines you imagined, it makes valuable pieces less prone to capture by pieces that can hop or leap over the Pawn lines. Since the Vao is the least valuable piece, it is the piece least in need of having an escape route. Notably, Chinese Chess, which introduced the Cannon, leaves more space around the pieces than Chess does.


🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 21, 2022 11:25 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from Sun Feb 20 12:13 PM:

I have noticed that several games of Gross Chess end up with some Marshalls and/or Archbishops unmoved. Maybe the presence of two Marshalls and two Archbishops is somewhat excessive.

Even if a piece doesn't move, it influences the moves of other pieces by protecting or threatening other spaces on the board. So, not moving these pieces isn't evidence that they are playing no role in the game. This may rather be a sign that because of differences in playing ability, one player is having an easy time defeating another player. In the endgames I can recall from Gross Chess, both players got down to very little material and had to employ whatever pieces they had left.

I wonder if a variant with a single Marshall on g1 and Archbishop on f1 with empty a1, b1, k1, l1 would be worth to be investigated.

One problem with this is that it destroys the symmetry of the setup. Another problem is that it leaves the King, Queen, Bishops and Cannons without any empty spaces to move to behind the Pawn line, and a game with this setup may as well be played on a 10x10 board, since it doesn't make effective use of the greater space provided on a 12x12 board.


🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 21, 2022 11:12 PM UTC in reply to Kevin Pacey from 09:45 PM:

An experiment might be to switch all the Kts with the Champions AND switch all the Wizards with the Archbishops, in the setup - play testing could proceed from there, if anyone thinks this may be a good idea to try.

One of the deliberate features of the setup is that every piece except the Vaos has an empty space it can move to behind the Pawn line. If you made these changes to the setup, the Knights, Champions, and Archbishops would no longer have any empty spaces they could move to behind the Pawn line.


About Game Courier. Web-based system for playing many different variants by email or in real-time.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 21, 2022 11:02 PM UTC in reply to Armin Liebhart from 08:20 PM:

Okay, I fixed the error, and the King can capture the piece on b2 now.


🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 21, 2022 05:51 PM UTC in reply to Armin Liebhart from 11:12 AM:

Can you give me a link or a series of moves in which this error comes up?


MPtencubed-chess[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 20, 2022 03:04 AM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from 02:42 AM:

I'll delete it, then. This wasn't actually updated. I was adding IndexEntry rows for Items that didn't have any, and this was one of them.


Rules of Chess. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 19, 2022 08:53 PM UTC in reply to Bn Em from 05:02 PM:

The note does also say that one “Cherry X.Z.”, who even had an email address linked in Wayback's copy, ‘modified’ it, which may mean it has had some human input to make it sensible Chinese.

I'll keep it on that basis. Hopefully, we'll eventually get some input from someone who can read Chinese.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 19, 2022 05:41 PM UTC:

Since my conversion to Unicode didn't match the previous version at all, I restored the original version from a copy on archive.org. While I don't know much Chinese, I do now recognize some characters in appropriate places. However, since this translation was done by Babelfish in 1996, it may not be such a good translation.


菲舍爾任意制象棋(Fischer Random Chess). 费舍尔的随机国际象棋变体 (Chinese Language)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 19, 2022 02:34 PM UTC in reply to Bn Em from 11:55 AM:

The note at the end looks a little odd (It literally reads, as far as my Chinese gets me: “This is our English page's translation Fischer Random Chess”;

I could write it entirely in English, since it will be of interest mainly to people who can read English.

incidentally what software did you use to convert it to CP1252?

I used PHP's mb_convert_encoding() function. I then viewed the page source and copied from that.


波斯象棋(Shatranj). 廣泛出現在波斯的遊戲,國際象棋的前身 (Chinese Language)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 19, 2022 02:30 PM UTC in reply to Bn Em from 12:28 PM:

The link in the introduction is broken; it should probably point to the author's translation of the Chaturanga page 

Okay, done.

note that the latter, as well as the Courier Chess page still need converting

Done.

(the Shogi page oþoh seems intact — it was last edited in 2018 though so perhaps it escaped the corruption

No, I fixed it earlier using a cached copy from archive.org.

Also is there an old backup of the Chinese page on FIDE?

I could check one of the CD-ROM backups David sent me, but I doubt it will be any different. It wasn't affected by the database changes that affected the other pages. I see at the bottom of that page a note saying that it was translated by Altavista's Babelfish. We should probably get rid of it, since it didn't have a human translator, and modern translation tools are probably better than Babelfish was in 1996.

I don't see anything wrong with having pages in multiple languages here

There's nothing wrong with it, but we need translators to make them and foreign language editors to edit them.


信使象棋(Courier chess). Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 19, 2022 02:16 PM UTC:

This page got messed up when it got converted to UTF-8 one too many times, but converting it back to Windows-1252 fixed that. I then copied it here, so that it will be stored properly as UTF-8. While I can't read much Chinese, the piece names I'm familiar with are all correct. Links are now relative, and everything is in the introduction section to avoid English headings for each section.


恰圖蘭卡(Chaturanga). 第一種已知的象棋類遊戲 (Chinese Language)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 19, 2022 02:07 PM UTC:

This was gobbledegook before, thanks to being converted to UTF-8 one too many times. I converted it back to Windows-1252, which restored the Chinese. I don't know much Chinese, but I can tell that the piece names are correct.


波斯象棋(Shatranj). 廣泛出現在波斯的遊戲,國際象棋的前身 (Chinese Language)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 19, 2022 03:34 AM UTC:

I converted this back from a bad UTF-8 conversion to Windows-1252, then cut and pasted it here, so that it will show up correctly as UTF-8. While I don't read a lot of Chinese, I could tell it got all the characters right for the piece names. I put everything in the introduction section to avoid English headings, and I made links relative.


菲舍爾任意制象棋(Fischer Random Chess). 费舍尔的随机国际象棋变体 (Chinese Language)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 19, 2022 03:19 AM UTC:

It looks like the cause of the corruption was converting to UTF-8. When UTF-8 was converted back to Windows-1252, it turned Chinese again. Although I can read very little Chinese, this looks correct. 象棋 gets used in the Chinese word for western Chess, and in the table describing castling, 王 gets used for the King, and 車 gets used for the Rook. So, I converted the text from a backup into Windows-1252, then cut and pasted it here, so that it is stored correctly as UTF-8. I also made local links relative, fixed some links that were incorrect, put everything in the introduction section to avoid English headings, and added a last note at the end in Chinese, thanks to an online translation tool, about this being a translation of our English Fischer Random Chess page. Finally, I deleted my previous revisions.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 19, 2022 12:33 AM UTC in reply to Bn Em from Fri Feb 18 01:58 PM:

I then converted the introduction from every encoding to Windows-1252, and I got this as a conversion from UTF-8:

Bobby Fischer,前世界國際象棋冠軍,提出一種國際象棋 的變體,其中棋子的初始配置是隨機選擇的。Fischer從而加入了如Capablanca等,提出國際象棋變體的前世界冠軍之列,然而其他的變體都沒有被成功推行過。 菲舍爾任意制象棋與更古老的Shuffle Chess、Prechess(或其他有關的變體)有些類似,但是有自己獨特的風格。這個遊戲廣泛的介紹和歷史 由Eric van Reem所寫。

This looks like a clean conversion to Chinese, and I even see 象棋 repeated a few times. Does this look accurate to you, Bn?


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 19, 2022 12:26 AM UTC in reply to Bn Em from Fri Feb 18 01:58 PM:

I converted the introduction from every encoding available for mb_convert_encoding() to UTF-8. Some included Chinese characters, but many of these mixed in Korean or Japanese characters. The conversion most densely packed with Chinese characters was BIG-5, which I know is a Chinese encoding. But I can't tell if it says anything intelligible. Here is what I got:

Bobby Fischer簿翹?疇?兜?瓣繡??癟?〣?疇??嘔怵﹦€疑阬授 ̄汕?€嘔乒€??癡罈?簿翹?疆??疇?¯疑刈詹?珍岑阬員a href="http://www.chessvariants.org/d.chess/chess.html">疇??嘔怵﹦€疑阬授 ̄汕?€較/a> 癟禳??癡簧?矇竄??簿翹?疇?汕亂刈蜃倥汕?€嘔氐倦?癟禳??疇??疇禮?嘔抽€汕?癟翻簧疆?簪矇禳穡疆穢顫矇?繡疆??? ̄巫﹦€?瓊?砂€?Fischer疇職鱉癡?玳?疇??疇?汕永刈算€?疇礎??Capablanca癟簫?冕純敷?疆??疇?¯疑汀??嘔怵﹦€疑阬授 ̄汕?€嘔阬敉?矇竄??癟禳??疇?兜?瓣繡??癟?〣?疇???癡罈?瓣繒?嘔瓦???簿翹?癟??繞癡?玳?疇?汕亂刈領€?癟禳??癡簧?矇竄??矇?翻疆簡??疆??冕阬Ⅹ姻竹??疇?顫疆鬚穡癡癒?矇?鬚瓊?砂€? 癡?簡癡??癟?職瓣罈罈疆???疇?繞癡簣癒疆瞿?嘔佯?? ̄色€甄棺氐?瞻癡?玲?癟禳??Shuffle Chess瓊?玲?Prechess(疆???疇?汕亂刈領€?疆??冕抽€??癟禳??癡簧?矇竄??)疆??冕刈算€疑怏ˍ壅刈撢撳純敷?瓣翻??疆?簪疆??冕兩€¯秉氐溘掙岑?穡癟?兜嘔巫﹦€?矇瞽穡疆?翹瓊?砂€?矇?砂?〡乒?砂€嘔怏??疆?簡疇罈瞿疆糧?疑巫﹦€?瓣罈?嘔岑朝嘔乒€??疆簫繚疇?簡 癟??簣Eric van Reem疆?售?珍氐純姻??砂€?


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Feb 18, 2022 06:28 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 03:33 AM:

I made the script to display from a backup database, but it didn't help. To prevent it from trying to use UTF-8, I even ran it on a different domain to avoid the .htaccess file on this site. But that didn't help. It appears that the corruption is in the earliest backup of the database, which is from 2017.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Feb 18, 2022 03:33 AM UTC in reply to Bn Em from Thu Feb 17 11:48 PM:

Older pages were generally written in Latin-1, and when I tried to enforce a site-wide use of UTF-8, some things didn't convert correctly. I have some backups of the database from when the columns in MemberSubmissions were still using the latin1_swedish_ci collation instead of the utf8_general_ci collation. I'll try to put together a script that will read from a backup database and not enforce UTF-8 to see if it will display properly. But that's for tomorrow, as it is time to shut down my computer for the night.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Feb 17, 2022 06:51 PM UTC:

This page was displaying as gobbledegook, because it was not written in UTF-8. Using Notepad++, I converted it into Chinese characters. Since I cannot read Chinese, though, I cannot tell if I fixed anything. Although many characters are now Chinese, there are some suspicious characters, such as one that looks like a gamepad, the Japanese letter Ru, and the female/Venus symbol. So, I think I'll try a different approach on the backup site.


Apothecary Chess-Classic. Large Board variant obtained trough tinkering with known games.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Feb 17, 2022 06:04 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 03:39 AM:

It looks like it is working correctly now. I had to include a line in the invitation form with the settings value. Once I did that, the invitation I sent to myself was for the correct settings file.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Feb 17, 2022 03:08 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 02:43 AM:

Put the name of the settings file you want to use in the Redirect field for the deprecated preset. Then, when someone tries to invite someone to play with the deprecated preset, the new one will be used instead.


Primary Links[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Feb 16, 2022 09:46 PM UTC:

I have finished removing multiple primary links for the same ItemID from IndexEntry. In some cases, I made only one link primary, and in some cases, I deleted links.

I also updated deletelink.php to delete all the links for an ItemID when an ItemID is given instead of an ItemNumber. So that this is not misused, the form for it shows up only if an ItemID is not in the database.


Apothecary Chess-Classic. Large Board variant obtained trough tinkering with known games.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Feb 16, 2022 09:40 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 09:06 PM:

Perhaps he was just using the list of all games, where it's not clear at all which version is the right one.

That makes sense. This is why you should forward invitations from a deprecated preset to the official preset.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Feb 16, 2022 05:38 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 04:46 PM:

I don't use a Mac, though I don't think the computer one is using would make a difference. The preset for this page is

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Apothecary+Chess-Modern&settings=ApothecaryChess-Modern

The preset for the open invitation Richard Milner made and the games he is playing is this:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Apothecary+Chess-Modern&settings=ApothecaryChess-Modern

These are the same. So, I don't know what the problem is.


Silver Anniversary[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Feb 16, 2022 03:02 PM UTC in reply to KelvinFox from 12:16 PM:

It looks like I had incorrect information on the page I consulted last night. So, the Silver Anniversary was two years ago in 2020.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Feb 16, 2022 03:24 AM UTC:

Since the Chess Variant Pages was founded in 1997, 2022 marks the Silver Anniversary of the site. Any thoughts on what we should do to mark this occasion?


Primary Links[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Feb 15, 2022 11:01 PM UTC:

I have now modified insertlink.php to enforce the same rules.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Feb 15, 2022 07:35 PM UTC:

For a while, I thought Primary Links were the same thing as Items marked IsPrimary, and changes I made to queryinc.php reflected this. I now realize that they are completely different things with similar names. A primary link is the index entry that should be used for an Item when primarylinksonly is selected. I have now modified queryinc.php to work this way.

Since the IndexEntry table has multiple rows with the same ItemID having PrimaryLink set to 1, I have begun to work on selecting a single Primary Link for each Item. To help with that, I am using this script, which lists all primary links for items with multiple primary links.

https://www.chessvariants.com/index/finddupprime.php

If you're an editor, and you have some time to help, you can go to a page on this list, then go to its Links link at the bottom and choose which link should be primary.

To avoid having multiple primary links to the same Item in the future, I have modified modifylink.php to enforce some rules. These are that there must be one primary link, and there may not be more than one primary link. So, if you select one link to be primary, all other links to the same item will be made non-primary. If you select a link to be non-primary, but there is no other primary link to the same item, it will be made primary.


Continental Chess. Continental Chess is Chess Variations with many types of pieces such as stepper, leaper, hopper and rider. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 14, 2022 05:21 PM UTC in reply to Bn Em from 01:57 AM:

I think (Siwakorn may feel free, of course, to correct me) that it means that once no more unpromoted Soldiers remain, if 64 moves pass without any captures the game is declared a draw, but a capture, rather than resetting the count, adds 16 instead.

He says you're right, but I still don't understand it. What is 16 added to? If 16 is added to the move count, a capture would bring on the end of the game even quicker, which is counterintuitive to the intent of the usual 50 moves rule. Or is 16 added to the number of moves that must pass before a draw may be declared?


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 13, 2022 08:10 PM UTC in reply to Siwakorn Songrag from 10:22 AM:

I updated the grammar and some spelling on most of the page, rewording some things to make them clearer.

Since I don't understand the 64+16 rule, I left the text for it alone.

It looks like you're trying to describe moves using conventions from Chinese Chess. The moves would be more clearly described to a western audience if you used algebraic notation.

If you mean for Guard Soldiers to look different than Soldiers, I would recommend using a different piece set for your piece images. The one you're using has only Chinese Chess pieces in it.


Manticore. (Updated!) Moves one space orthogonally, then slides outward as a Bishop.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 13, 2022 07:25 PM UTC in reply to KelvinFox from 04:09 PM:

the comment search is broken

Yes, and it won't be fixed anytime soon. It requires MariaDB 10, but because of some problems this site was having with MariaDB 10, I downgraded to MariaDB 5 and manually edited the database to remove features exclusive to MariaDB 10. So, even though we are running MariaDB 10 on the backup site, it lacks support for comment search, because its database is just a backup of the one here. For the present, I don't dare update the Linux software on this site, because if the server shuts down, which it sometimes does to complete some updates, I cannot reboot it. Also, the backup server is using Rocky Linux, while the main server is stuck with CentOS 7 for the time being. Since I paid for this server for a year, I plan to keep it until near the time to renew. And if the hosting service doesn't shape up soon, I may jump ship to the backup site and find another host for a new backup site.


Baseball Chess. Missing description (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Feb 8, 2022 05:16 PM UTC in reply to Baseball Chess Baseball Chess Set from 11:43 AM:

great article , this is definitely one of the best for young chess players to read and learn strategy.

This page describes the rules of a Chess variant. It is not about Chess strategy.

If you intend on writing more similar content on this site be sure to check out our page with more inspiration for future posts

The author of this page hasn't been around for a while. The page you linked to is for a Baseball-themed Chess set. Although this page has no diagram, the game is apparently played on a 9x9 board. So, it could not be played with a regular Chess set, though perhaps the pieces from a Baseball-themed Chess set could be used with it.


Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2022 06:21 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 11:31 AM:

Isn't it possible to do some syntax checking on the GAME code (e.g. when it gets submitted) to prevent such erratic behavior?

I have added some error messages to make it easier to spot this kind of error in the future. See comment 43913 on the Game Courier History page.


Game Courier History. History of the Chess Variants Game Courier PBM system.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2022 06:18 PM UTC:

I made a correction to the handling of case statements. If multiple case labels were in the same case statement, it would previously check only if the first one was already assigned. It will now check whether every single case label has been assigned. If a case label has already been assigned in a switch, it will give an error message.

If a case label includes whitespace, it will now report an error message. This is in case a colon is left off a case statement, and a new line character gets included in the case label.

If a switch statement is passed a value that does not match any of its cases, and it has no default case, it will report an error message that neither the expected case nor a default case exist.

The print statement can now be used to print the value of an array, which will make it more useful for debugging.


Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2022 02:15 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 01:38 PM:

Are these the correct instructions at the end of the presets?

setsystem pieces #mypieces; setsystem flipped #mypieces;

Since the first one worked, the second should too. I think using var instead of the # prefix would be a bit quicker for an array, but it is probably negligible.


History of the Chess Variant pages. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 10:49 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 10:35 PM:

There is the more recent page Who is behind the Chess Variant Pages?.


Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 10:23 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 10:01 PM:

It sounds like something in your code is producing an unwanted goto to the beginning of the program when the E piece is moved.

This bit of code in the pregame section might be the problem:

        case I E 
          set choice intersection #choice (O #piece);
          break;

Notice that there is no colon after the E in the case statement.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 09:41 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 09:12 PM:

In a short game in which I was moving Pawns out of the way to move the E piece, I tried each E piece, and it gave the error "g4 is empty" each time. Since g4 was in fact empty, I did a quicker game in which I just moved Pawns near the E and e piece before moving the E piece. This gave the error:

ILLEGAL: P i4-i5 on turn 1:

There was no P on i4. The piece on i4 is a E.

Go back with your browser's BACK button, reload the page, and try again.

For diagnostic purposes, here is the full movelist:

1. P i4-i5 
1... p i9-i8 
2. E j3-i4

I then took back the last move, cleared a space for the other E piece to move, moved an e piece, then moved the other E piece. This time, I got the error "i4 is empty".

So, it's looking like there is something wrong with the E piece.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 08:53 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 07:35 PM:

When I entered that sequence of moves all at once, I got the same error. Then I entered each move separately and still got the same error. So, I took back the last move and found another legal move, which worked out. A little later, I tested other moves by the E and e pieces, and when I moved the other E piece, though not an e piece, I got the same error. Taking back that move and trying E again later, I got the error "g4 is empty". There seems to be something wrong with the E piece, but I am too unfamiliar with the workings of this generated code to debug it.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 07:14 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 06:53 PM:

What was that problem, specifically? What doesn't work?


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 06:31 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 06:12 PM:

@Fergus: please also have a look at the problem reported here.

Do you mean the problem reported by Daniel Zacharias, which I just gave the solution to? Or were you describing an independent problem? If so, I would need a link.


A Wizard for GAME-Code Generation. A tutorial on using the Play-Test Applet for automating Game Courier presets.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 06:27 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from Fri Jan 14 11:58 PM:

I'm having some problems with this game. First, I can't seem to get the piece images to show correctly. Right now it looks ok at first, but when viewing a game from black's perspective it's all wrong again.

Because you're using the Alfaerie:Many set, which includes some flipped pieces, you need to include a value for $flipped. Since you are not using any flipped pieces in your game, you should set it to the same value as you are setting $pieces to.


Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 05:30 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 03:12 PM:

These 3 presets work fine but the shuffling algorithm produces different initial setups for white and black.

I'm testing with this clone:

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

I see that Black and White have different opening positions. Is that what you mean?

If you want them to be the same, then you need to create a random opening position for only one side and copy it to the other side. This might be an issue for H. G. to deal with, as the buggy code might be his.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 05:10 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 03:12 PM:

It will be easier to look into this if you first fix the display of pieces on Black's turn. You need to set $flipped to the same value as $pieces, because Alfaerie:Many includes some flipped pieces, but your game does not.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 02:39 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 08:35 AM:

I introduced a general problem last night regarding the parsing of $_POST values, and I have now fixed it.


What is a Chess variant?. An essay on what distinguishes a Chess variant from other games.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 12:25 AM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from Thu Dec 9 2021 05:36 PM:

Is "heterdox" an English word valid in this context or just a typo here?

It's a typo. I've now made corrections.


History of the Chess Variant pages. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 12:21 AM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from Thu Dec 9 2021 10:31 PM:

I have the feeling that this page is not the latest version.

You may have this page confused with The History of Chess Variants, which is an independent page, unrelated to this one.


Game Courier. PHP script for playing Chess variants online.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2022 12:16 AM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from Sat Dec 11 2021 09:40 PM:

The problem occurs when I make a triple move with a piece with Lion Dog powers where all three parts move the piece to different squares and the third square is empty. The preset will exit with an error message stating that the promotion is illegal when it should be legal.

After a triple move, you would need a fourth move for the promotion, but your allow statement does not include any allowances for fourth moves.


Ads in French[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 5, 2022 11:54 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from Tue Jan 25 12:06 PM:

Being based in France, I see ads from e-bay in French. But many are not related to chess. The reason is that "chess" is "échecs" in French, always at plural, with an "s" at the end. The word in singular, "échec" means "failure" in English. (It also means "check" which may complicate).

So, there several ads for books dealing with the failure of something, failure of education, failure of economy, whatever, but no relation at all with chess.

The search term has in fact been "echecs", but since you pointed it out, I did see some books in the preview for the books ad that used the world echec, such as L'ECHEC DE L'ISLAM. To fix this, I changed the search terms to "echecs -echec", and only books with "echecs" in the title showed up.


Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 5, 2022 11:24 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 10:09 PM:

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

Yes, adding this line fixed it:

setsystem flipped var mypieces;

The reason this was necessary is because this preset used the Alfaerie:Many set, which does include some flipped pieces even though most of the set is not flipped.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 5, 2022 08:14 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 07:57 PM:

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.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 5, 2022 07:57 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Thu Dec 2 2021 07:10 AM:

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.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Dec 2, 2021 01:40 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Tue Nov 30 05:38 AM:

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


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Nov 24, 2021 10:08 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 06:53 PM:

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.


Game Courier Settings Files. Keep track of all the settings files you have written for Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Nov 24, 2021 05:38 PM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 05:02 PM:

Okay, those are deleted.


Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Nov 24, 2021 05:32 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 07:34 AM:

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;

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Nov 24, 2021 02:07 AM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 01:26 AM:

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.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Nov 24, 2021 02:05 AM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from Tue Nov 23 10:37 PM:

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.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Nov 23, 2021 10:00 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 06:50 AM:

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.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Nov 23, 2021 02:10 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Mon Nov 22 06:50 AM:

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.


Simple Mideast Chess. Members-Only Game with simple rules, no promotion, no nonstandard move or capture, no asymetric pieces, and no check, checkmate or stalemate.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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Janggi - 장기 - Korean Chess. The variant of chess played in Korea. (9x10, Cells: 90) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Oct 31, 2021 09:06 PM UTC in reply to Jeyoon Jung from 08:59 AM:

One more thing. I am a relatively new person to the CVP, and I believe I saw some articles detailing some strategies in oriental games. However, I cannot find an option to do that.

To do what?


New Submissions for Review. A listing of all submissions still awaiting editorial approval.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Oct 29, 2021 03:01 PM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 02:07 AM:

Okay.


Grand Apothecary Chess-Classic. Very large Board variant obtained trough tinkering with known games.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Oct 26, 2021 03:20 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 07:35 AM:

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.


Rollerball. Chess race fight on board formed by removing 3 by 3 square from center of 7 by 7 square. (7x7, Cells: 40) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Oct 23, 2021 08:10 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 07:07 PM:

Fixed.


Vao. moves like bishop but must jump when taking.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Oct 22, 2021 06:02 PM UTC in reply to Bn Em from 02:08 PM:

I have moved this discussion to the Vao page.

I assume JL means this one?

Okay, I missed that, because I was looking for an illustration of the piece itself and didn't realize he meant the illustration of the board. The piece in the Bishops's position has four legs and the general shape of a crocodile. So, crocodile may be a fair translation. But my other point still stands. Since the piece that could be translated as crocodile was a Bishop and not a Vao, it doesn't set any precedent or provide a good enough reason for using that name for the Vao.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Oct 22, 2021 01:21 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from Thu Oct 21 07:32 PM:

Originally posted on Pemba, where this piece is called a Crocodile.

The depiction I was talking about, and S.Musser is talking about, is the unique illustration that is known of this game, the one on the codex

Link, please. I already hunted for a picture yesterday and came up with nothing. Your website included a link to another site, but that site was down, and archive.org wasn't very helpful.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Oct 21, 2021 05:43 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 09:41 AM:

Originally posted on Pemba, where this piece is called a Crocodile.

this is my variant. I name the pieces as I like. Plenty of other chessvariants have names for their pieces that I don't like. I beg you to respect my choice

Agreed. I respect the right of game creators to use the piece names they wish to.

I use the name of Crocodile for the Vao for several of my variants already published here and on my site. So, I wish to be consistent in the tree of my variants. See Zanzibar-S, Zanzibar-L, Maasai Chess, Teramachy, Gigachess II, Terachess II, etc.

While consistency makes sense, it is only consistency with yourself, and you retain the right to rename the piece in all your variants if you desire to.

Saying it has no sense is wrong and upsetting.

It would be wrong to say that you had no reason for the name, because of course you did. I can't speak for Theresa, but I was aware, more or less, of your reason for the name Crocodile. I just don't think it is a good one.

In Grant Acedrex (from 1283) there is a Crocodile, named Cocatrice to be precise in medieval Spanish but which is depicted as a crocodile in that codex. This piece plays as a modern Bishop. The diagonal move is the inspiration for the name of Crocodile in my variants. You can estimate that this reason is weak but it is not "no sense".

Okay, it is weak, and I will now back that up. First of all, I disagree with the principal that it is a good idea to intentionally name a piece after a different piece that moves similarly to it. To be clear, this is different than accidentally giving a piece the same name as another piece or intentionally giving a piece the same name as another piece despite that name already being in use. I consider a name already being used for another piece a prima facie reason against using the name. But as long as you have other good reasons for using a name, these reasons may override this reason against using the name and independently justify the use of the name. In this case, though, you have no independent reasons for using the name Crocodile. Your only reason is that the name was used for the Bishop, which moves in the same directions as the Vao. Since I would count this as a reason against using the name rather than as a reason for using it, I do not consider this a good reason for using the name.

Second, you are using a translation of the original name, and I do not trust your translation. Cocatrice (or cocatriz as I actually found it spelled in the text of the Grant Acedrex) is not the Spanish word for crocodile, which is actually cocodrilo. Both spellings, cocatrice and cocatriz, are suspiciously close to cockatrice, which is a mythical serpentine beast or dragon with two legs and the head of a rooster, and when I search for either term, that is what I get articles on. Although you claim that the Grant Acedrex depicts the cocatrice as a crocodile, I did not find any depiction of it in the images we have of it on this site. But if you have images we don't have, I would be happy to see them. Additionally, the Grant Acedrex has included the names of other mythical animals that you have translated into the names of real animals, such as AAnca and Vnicornio. I am suspicious of those translations as well. Naming pieces after mythical animals has not been uncommon. So, if a name in a historic text looks like the name of a mythical animal, that may well be what it is.

Finally, I did have very good reasons for selecting the name Arrow. My first idea for a name was the punny name of Canon, which is a kind of cleric whose name sounds like Cannon. But it's not really a good name for the piece in a game that already includes a Cannon, and I also decided to give it a Chinese name. For that, I chose the character , whose meanings include both arrow and vow. The idea of an arrow fits with the idea of a cannon as a long-range projectile weapon that can go over the heads of others, and vow is a homonym for Vao, the name that the piece goes by in fairy chess.


🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Oct 21, 2021 02:33 AM UTC in reply to dead dead from Wed Oct 20 11:25 PM:

Originally posted on Pemba, where this piece is called a Crocodile.

Calling the diagonal Cannon a “Crocodile” makes zero sense. I prefer Gilman’s term for the piece: Arrow.

Agreed, except that I introduced the name of Arrow in Yang Qi, and Gilman copied it. See Comment 14476 on the Yang Qi page.


About Game Courier. Web-based system for playing many different variants by email or in real-time.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Oct 20, 2021 01:55 AM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from Tue Oct 19 09:18 PM:

Is it just me, or is the latest version of my Taishin Shogi GC preset overloading this whole site? Whenever I click on my settings file to play it, I get nothing but 524 errors for a while.

When I first tried loading it, I checked the error log and got

PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/chessvariants/public_html/play/pbm/gamecode.php on line 2524

I fixed some of the errors above it, but I still get a maximum execution time exceeded error. There is one persisting and multiply-repeating warning that I think is due to your own code:

PHP Warning: Undefined array key 897 in /home/chessvariants/public_html/play/pbm/gamecode.php on line 1122

The line in question, line 1122, is part of the code for the "sub" command, which indicates the beginning of a subroutine definition, and it says:

$linenum = $links[$linenum];

This refers to an array that is calculated before any line of GAME Code is executed. This comes from analyzing the structure of the code. So, I would recommend looking for a structural problem in one of your subroutines. Perhaps a block of code wasn't closed off properly, causing endsub to not be expected yet when it appeared. The problem might be around line 897 of your code, since that was the value for $linenum in the warning that kept repeating.


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