Comments by FergusDuniho

What's the Flying General in Xiangqi?

On e.g. a 10‐file board, Miller's reasoning would line up with Nadvorney's.

That's a good point. On a 10-file board, the files would surround the pole in a way that makes diagonal movement more intuitive, and once the board was defined, it would be easy to make spherical adaptations of various 10x8 variants like Grotesque Chess and other related games or 10x10 variants like Grand Chess.

John Leslie noticed some bugs in the previous version, and I found out that the latest version on my computer had already fixed those bugs. So I included it in a new zip file with some changes to the initial comments.

I have updated this page with diagrams and more detailed descriptions.

Are there any former NOST members around with back issues of NOSTalgia that could be scanned and put on the internet? The NOST website had only a few of the latest issues. Pritchard sometimes used it as a source for his Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, but his descriptions of games are often sketchy rather than complete.

I started on adding an introduction, but it's late, and I will have to wait until tomorrow to continue.

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.

I added its code to the end of your Setup section. You can decide how you want to incorporate it into your page.

I still need to understand how to delete a value from an array in order to remove the necessary value from wcastle or bcastle.

You can unset an array element if you know its key. For example:

set ra array a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r;
unset ra.4; // removes e from array

But what if you just know the element you want to delete and not its key? I have now added a diff operator to return an array difference. When an argument isn't already an array, it gets turned into a single element array. So, this code removes j1 from wcastle.

set wcastle d1 c1 j1 k1;
set wcastle diff #wcastle j1;

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.

I do not understand why after I move the rook I can castle with the cannon on the field that was supposed to be used only for the rook.

So far, you have not made it clear that the King moves to a different space when castling with each piece. The rules you have underneath the game do not even mention castling. The castle subroutine was not written with such a rule in mind. You might be able to make it work by adjusting the values of bcastle and wcastle after a Rook moves.

I think I haven't explained that properly but only one castle is aloud.

Castling is allowed only once, which I understand, but what you say next doesn't fit with you trying to say that. Are you trying to say that the King has only once space it can go to when castling with a certain piece?

Regarding your preset, I don't understand why you are using four colors for checkering the board. Also, the dark blue squares do not contrast well with the color used for highlighting legal moves, which makes it hard to see legal moves highlighted on those squares. Additionally, your rules could use images of the pieces, so that someone looking at a piece on the board can more easily tell how it moves. Remember to use the shortcodes for displaying pieces, so that the piece images below match those on the board no matter what piece set is used.

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.

I edited the text to clarify how the Wizard moves and published this page.

This link is old and broken, but it is on the Internet Archive here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20050322075054/http://perso.wanadoo.fr/drouilly/tournois.htm

Since I don't have Word, I can't test whether this macro still works. Would someone who has Word check this out and get back to me on whether we should keep this link page?

I'm marking this as deleted, because I got a 404 error when I checked the link.

Replying from Chrome on my Likebook Mars without being signed in first.

What I still need to do is delete a variable from wcastle or bcastle as the rook gets moved.

That shouldn't be necessary, as other factors will determine that future castling moves are illegal without doing this.

How do I delete a value from an array?

Once the King has castled, it might be a bit of an optimization if you set wcastle or bcastle to an empty array, but it shouldn't be necessary.

Okay, I have added David Paulowich as an inventor of this game.

Okay, I have published this to the site.

The Wizard enters play by exiting a friendly Rook, as if it were the Wizard standing there instead.

I interpret this as saying that the Wizard makes its first move as though it were sharing a space with a friendly Rook, and when it does this, the Rook remains on the space the Wizard made its first move from. Is that interpretation correct?

Your description of Pawn promotion is a bit unintuitive. You describe it in terms of 1st through 4th ranks. Since I presume that promotion would be on the 1st through 4th ranks of the opponent, it would seem to say that a Pawn can move as a Rook on its player's 5th rank, as a Knight on a player's 6th rank, as a Bishop on a player's 7th rank, and as a King on a player's 8th rank. But the other order seems like it might be what you intend, since it allows slower and less powerful types of promotion before allowing quicker and more powerful types. So, please clarify promotion in terms of the ranks of the player who is promoting.

I think I accidentally deleted a comment while deleting some test comments.

1.The castling moves are not shown although they work.

The code for this goes in the stalemated subroutine, and here is what you have in that subroutine:

// Castling code removed, since Apothecary Chess does not include castling.

So you need to add some code for it there. You can probably borrow some from the one in the fairychess include file. I'm not sure if it will require any modification. Try it without modification first and see how it works.

The author of the preset had accidentally reversed the alias with the actual piece label in his alias definition. I corrected that, and now when you click on that piece, it will use the Y alias for it and accept your move.

Okay, I dropped it.

I have begun migrating our early link pages to the database. This provides the following advantages:

• It makes broken links easier to fix.
• It makes link pages easier to edit.
• It gives link pages a more uniform URL.
• It gives me the opportunity to find broken links and fix them, or to delete link pages that are no longer useful.
• Having all links in the database will make it easier to write and deploy a site-wide link checker.

As I migrate old link pages to the database, I am adding the old url and the new itemid to a table called RelocatedPages. This table will be used by the 404 script to point visitors toward the new link pages. It may also be used for any other HTML pages we eventually migrate to the database. But for now, I'm making link pages the first priority.

It can be deleted then?

I added links to the mentioned games, and I added the name of the game that is not simply named for its inventor. For those who might be familiar with Capablanca's Chess but not with Capablanca Random Chess, it may be worth mentioning that castling works as it does in Fisher Random Chess, not as it does in Capablanca's Chess. As those without any familiarity with Capablanca's Chess may expect, castling works by moving the King two spaces toward the Rook, not three spaces, which is the rule in Capablanca's Chess.

It's name is that: "Apothecary Chess Tournament 1st Edition" . But I do not know it's ID!

I believe that's also its id, though you have to enter plus signs for the spaces. I corrected the link placed in the Related Pages menu. It was missing the play directory, because it was originally on the play subdomain. If you check the "This Tournament" link in the menu, it should now list the games in the tournament.

Do we have histories on tag descriptions to restore?

They have begun showing up on archive.org, but this particular tag didn't have a description.

I expect this was from the same script glitch or user error as the parent tag.

It appears to be the same user. I have no idea what this tag is for. Do you?

Does anyone get alerted to comments on tag pages?

No, but if you check the latest comments regularly, you will see them.

The tag description has been overwritten; not sure if there's a crossed wire in the scripts, or if it was a user error.

I'm guessing it's a user error. You can go correct it.

I made a few modifications and published this.

I made a few small changes and published this. I corrected the spelling of default, mentioned that the ChessCraft app is for Android, and used an H3 heading for the smaller variant.

It looks fine. I've now published it.

With so many pieces, the game could be easier to learn if you used piece names that were already in common usage rather than making up a bunch of new ones.

I cannot find the matches in the Apothecary Chess Tournament 1st Edition anymore.

What is the tournament id?

I see, well it's already in PNG format so no issue there

So it is. That probably happened when you added file and rank markings to it. I reduced the filesize from 231116 bytes to 65655 bytes by changing it from a true color image to a 32 color image.

This page might benefit from including the full rules, but I'll accept it as is, since the remaining rules can be found in Orda Chess, which it links to.

Since I have now made the headings more distinct from each other, I quickly noticed that you were using H2 headings where you should be using H3 headings, and I moved all headings down one level. I also added a Pychess tag.

This looks like an interesting game, and the page is well-written and presented. I moved the headings down one level, because the script handles the H1 and H2 headings, and author-entered headings should normally begin with H3.

The Pychess link did not work. I left it up in case this is temporary. If Pychess is no longer around, I hope someone will let me know.

While not mentioned so much explicitly, it seems that Kingdom Pawns do get double moves, and Dynasty Pawns may not capture them en passant, though they may still capture them sideways.

I added this game to the Unequal Armies category, and I removed it from the Usual Equipment categories, since it cannot be played with nothing but the usual equipment.

I replaced the original diagram with the interactive diagram H. G. Muller made.

This page is missing the Game Courier preset it is supposed to have on it. I changed the H1 tag to a P tag for the body text, and I edited the English for some of the text. But since the Game Courier preset is not here yet, and I am unfamiliar with the game and don't know French, I did not complete the job.

I removed the extra links to the website inserted into the text, because link pages automatically include the link, and if the link is ever broken, all we should have to fix is the one link the link page is supposed to have. I changed the link to Don Green's website to a link to his profile on our site, and I added a link to our page on his game. That page includes a link to a link page for his website.

The dark center squares appear to be the same color as the border, which makes it look like these squares have been removed from the board. Yet I saw no mention of this. If the board has no squares missing, it would be less confusing if you used a different color for the dark center squares than you do for the border.

I changed H2 tags to H3 tags, because H2 tags are automatically used for each major section, and headings entered by the author should normally begin with H3. I didn't change anything else. I didn't read all the way through, because it's long, and Adam pays enough attention to detail that I don't have to comb through every detail myself.

Additionally, I cannot find any mention of Kronschild Publishing that is not associated with this book. As far as I can tell, this is the only book ever published by Kronschild Publishing. It was located in Lewisville, AR, which is also where JWB is said to have lived. The book has no ISBN, and all indications are that it was self-published.

Furthermore, it looks like John William Brown was old and has died. In his Preface, he mentions a trip to the Computer Science Department of Rutgers University in 1975. He was presumably an adult at the time, which would make him 64 or older. I don't recognize any name in his Acknowledgements except Hans Bodlaender. A few that I looked up gave me obituaries of old people. He mentions one in more detail, an old friend named Lewis Chessner who was a minister with a degree in physics. I found the obituary of a Rev. Lewis Chessner from Arkansas, and it did mention that he had a degree in physics. This old friend of Brown's was born in 1933. The only John William Brown I can find who lived in Lewisville is listed as 77. This person was related to Edith Brown, which is the name of "the foremost contributor" mentioned in the Acknowledgements. Finally, when I did a search for "Edith Brown Lewisville", the top result was an obituary for Johnny William Brown. Edith was his mother, and he was born in 1944. I expect this is him, and he is no longer with us.

The Classified Encyclopedia has an entry for Quantum Chess, but it's a different game (seemingly the one described in Variant Chess 17);

Yes, it's a different game. It is a proprietary game by Quantum Development Corp from 1993.

did this game appear in the original Encyclopedia and get replaced/removed in the new one?

The original Encyclopedia did have an entry for "QUANTUM C", but it described a different game, one invented by Douglas A. Engel in 1968 and played on a 6x8 board.

However, the game described on this page is the game described in Variant Chess 25, and that issue credits it to the author of this page.

But, are we allowed to post this here? Do we have the appropriate permissions?

I have emailed John William Brown at the email address we have on record for him and at the address listed in the book. Let's see if I get a response.

1. This could be better written.
2. You're using the Knight image for the Cavalier. The Abstract set has a separate Cavalier image.
3. You're using the Berolina Pawn image for the Man. The Abstract set does have images for the Man piece, though it's called Centurion in that set.
4. From the descriptions, your Unicorn and Varan seem to be different than the pieces whose images you have used for them. It is hard to follow the descriptions to understand how these pieces move.
5. Your piece descriptions mention values, but these seem to have no bearing on the rules of the game. If what you mean are the exchange values of the pieces, these cannot actually be known without some degree of analysis. Guessing at piece values is usually not helpful. So, I expect it is best to leave out any mention of piece values.
6. The page would be easier to follow if you included an image of each piece with its description and used an H3 heading before each piece description.
7. A major piece is any piece that can checkmate a King on an empty board with assistance only from one's own King. By this definition, the Rook and Man both count as major pieces.

I have published this, but I would recommend replacing your diagram with a GIF or PNG image that uses fewer colors, has a smaller file size, and is cropped on the sides. I removed the CSS code that set the height and width of the image, since these values have to adapt to the space available, and with these values set, it was not keeping its original aspect ratio.

The URL included only the domain and was not in the form of a complete URL. After I fixed that, it worked.

According to the comments preceding the castle subroutine, you need to flag the spaces of pieces that may legally castle. The subroutine does not care what the pieces are. If you flag both the rook and the cannon, it will, once other conditions pertain, initially allow castling with the rook, but if the rook moves out of the way, it will allow castling with the cannon.