Comments by FergusDuniho

The server never crashed. I was simply unable to boot it back up after attempting a reboot. For those who don't know, this is because the host's website was down, which left me without the ability to access the control panel for the VPS. The host is now back online, and I now have a second VPS with a different company, which has been assigned to the chessvariants.org domain. I will now work on backing up my websites to the other server.

The labels w and W are using paths that do not exist. The value for $dir should be an absolute relative path, not one whose value depends on another path value already being set. The value "/graphics.dir/alfaerie/" specifies a specific directory, but "../graphics.dir/alfaerie/" does not, or it specifies the wrong one, such as "/play/graphics.dir/alfaerie/". While "../" should not be used in $dir, it may be used in the location of a specific piece, because this will be relative to the absolute value in $dir. For example, w may be "../alfaeriemisc/compounds/%zebrawazir.gif".

I don't understand what means "the available includes files" ?

An include file is a file containing programming code that is available for including in larger programs. The purpose behind this is to avoid rewriting code for different programs. Instead of writing each program from scratch, you can include include files to handle things that someone has already written code for. When writing GAME Code, you can use the include command to include the code in a particular include file. These are written as text files and have the .txt extension, which is the default extension for text files. But they are normally included without including the extension in the file name. The include files I have written are all in the /play/pbm/includes/ directory. To include one with the include command, just give its base name, which is the part before the .txt extension. H. G. Muller has written some include files in a different location, and these, I believe, are included by giving its full path and file name.

Where can I find this include file?

It's in the includes directory. So, you just include it by name.

BTW, I did stumble on the method for defining a piece set through assigning to $pieces. Perhaps this is the best method to convert Interactive Diagrams to GAME code, as these Diagrams do specify the filenames of the piece images, the directory where these images are to be found, and the piece IDs (which can be used as labels). So it would just be a matter of dumping this internally held info in the form of a GAME-code associative array, in the code generated for the Pre-Game section.

Yes, that could work, though there is one caveat. When Game Courier is in Edit mode, it does not run any code unless someone clicks Run. This is a safety precaution to allow someone to edit buggy code that would otherwise disable the preset. Consequently, the board may not look right in Edit mode until someone clicks Run. If you use a set file in conjunction with the update-piece-set subroutine, though, it will avoid that problem. However, there could be a discrepancy between the labels used for the FEN code and the notation used in the preset.

To avoid that discrepancy, I was thinking of letting custom piece sets be stored as constants. However, constants are stored in logs, not in settings files. So, I'm not sure I have a good solution for this yet.

I think the unexpected result is due to a space missing between * and 2 in the .dog definition.

Yes, when I corrected that, .dog gave me the correct result.

If I understood the 'new method' correctly, it would require help of an editor to define a new piece set in a PHP file.

No, the new method was provided to eliminate the need to make new set files. I have now written a subroutine that will do the job once you feed it the data. It is in the include file update-piece-set, and the subroutine is called update-piece-set. Just feed it the notation you will use. To make preparation of data easier, you may feed it all the data it needs in a single array. Each array element should be a single piece label or an array including the piece label first and the new notation second. Where a piece label is by itself, it will reuse the same label for the same piece. Where it comes paired with new notation, it will use the new notation for the piece and discard the old piece label.

This method allows the designer to write the FEN code using the original labels, but within the code, it will change the piece labels to the desired notation, and it will strip the $pieces array of all pieces not being used.

You may get data on what notation to use from the user. For each piece, just include an extra field on what notation to use for the piece. When it's left empty, use the original piece label.

@Fergus: can there be a problem with functions that have a name starting with a period?

It would appear so. I ran this code to test this:

def cat * 2 #0;
def .dog *2 #0;
set p fn cat 8;
set q fn .dog 8;
dump;

And the result I got was this:

array(1) {
  [0]=>
  array(1) {
    ["main"]=>
    array(2) {
      ["p"]=>
      int(16)
      ["q"]=>
      array(2) {
        [0]=>
        string(1) "8"
        [1]=>
        string(2) "*2"
      }
    }
  }
}

This may be because GAME Code uses the period to separate array elements from arrays. I would recommend using aliases (old way) or rewriting the $piece array (new way) to avoid the need for writing functions with names that start with a period.

I added a photograph, edited some text, and approved this page. Although my magnetic set folds the wrong way for this game, I put the board on its side, placed the pieces on in reverse along the side files, and reversed the image, so that everything looks correct for this game. I'm not sure this game truly counts as a 3D game, because it does not have a third dimension of movement. Instead, it is a flat surface wrapped around a 3D object, such that there are connections between spaces on the edges that don't normally exist in Chess.