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Comments by benr

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Demi chess. Chess on a 4 by 8 board. (4x8, Cells: 32) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Wed, Jul 7, 2021 04:49 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 08:31 AM:

I used the Play-Test Applet, followed by some editing of the html. Specifically, since the queen doesn't appear in the initial setup, I needed to add it to the promotion choices, which subsequently required adding it to the piece list (hence its appearance last, which I didn't remember indicating royalty).

The Play-Test Applet also produced a more-verbose version of the piece descriptions than necessary, so I pruned those down based on viewing another of your posted diagrams. But then the issue with the knight came up, and it seemed that it needed the explicit id.

It seemed (though I went through many iterations, so perhaps there was some other issue) that the order I listed the promotion choices in mattered for which ones became available.

I've updated my previous comment to fix the royalty, and I cannot recreate the issue with promotion list order.


Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Jul 27, 2021 02:05 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from Thu Jul 15 02:32 AM:

The tag description page-scripts aren't working.


All Out. Members-Only The pieces are dropped one at a time, remaining immobile until the king is dropped.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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Checkmating Applet. Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Aug 16, 2021 05:18 PM UTC:

The playable diagram (but not the statistics) seems to be allowing the defending king two moves each turn now. Chromev0.92 on Windows.


MSsej[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Aug 30, 2021 10:20 PM UTC in reply to Simon Jepps from 07:45 PM:

I don't see a problem updating the page to give the correct probabilities, in percentages if you would prefer. If for some reason you really prefer "1/3", then please add "approximately" (and these comments can serve any curious visitor). I find the "1/3+1/36" part for capturing extremely confusing, because it suggests I am more likely rather than less to roll doubles?

I find the mathematical notation being used as bullet points distracting. I would also suggest moving the ≅ point being moved into a later section as an alternative rule.

I also find the many capitalizations, italicizations, and underlinings distracting; if you could try to minimize those a little I think you would more effectively emphasize fewer points.


Checkmating Applet. Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Aug 31, 2021 08:01 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from Mon Aug 16 05:37 PM:

Could you make the same fix for the EGT.html page (as linked from the piececlopedia articles)?


Pandemonium (Surajang修羅場). Capablanca chess + Crazyhouse.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Sep 27, 2021 08:39 PM UTC:

The red is because the text is now wrapped in an <a> tag, and hovering over that changes the text color.


The Starbound Sliders. A Chess With Different Armies team featuring rook-inspired sliders.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Wed, Sep 29, 2021 02:42 PM UTC in reply to Andrew L Smith from Tue Sep 28 12:39 PM:

Published.

I changed the link Description (which appears in searches and next to the title in the comments, etc.) to be more descriptive, but let me know if you'd like it changed.


Game Courier Settings Files. Keep track of all the settings files you have written for Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Wed, Sep 29, 2021 04:52 PM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 02:54 PM:

@Adam, we normally don't like to rename Items that have been around for a while (your rules page being from 2019); while we can automatically update comments, favorites, index entries, tags, and possibly groups (am I missing anything?), anybody else who has linked to your page would find their link broken.

I'm open to feedback on how best to manage this sort of thing. One possibility is to create a new Item with the new name, we can move over the references in the database I've mentioned, and leave the old page with just a link forwarding to the new page (possibly even an automatic redirect, though I'm not sure if that'd work in a member submission view script).


Changes to PHP Code[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Oct 5, 2021 09:59 PM UTC:

I did occasionally use the "info" page, previously linked to from the icon of an index entry. But I do not consider this worth keeping either. Those pages can still be reached from the "info" link in the footer of the item's actual page (except perhaps for multi-item pages?).


Chess Variants Query. More options for searching in these pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Oct 5, 2021 10:08 PM UTC:

This page currently has an absolute link to the .org version of mainquery.php. For the page to work in both locations, a relative link would be better.

I tried to test that out on the .org site (new better testing practices, yay!), but found that I cannot log on there because the login page has an absolute url to the .com version of the login script.

Burninate all the absolute urls?


Gods on Pluto ZIP file. Plays with extremely weak pieces, no pawns, and drops.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Oct 8, 2021 12:43 AM UTC in reply to Christine Bagley-Jones from 12:27 AM:

The file name did not match the URL; I've fixed that, and can download the zip (but don't have ZoG to test it).


Delta-Nabla Chess. Chess translated to a triangular grid as naturally as possible.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Thu, Oct 21, 2021 02:50 AM UTC:

Do I understand correctly that the edge pawns cannot promote without capturing? Is that a feature or a bug?


Vao. moves like bishop but must jump when taking.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Oct 22, 2021 09:08 PM UTC:

@Jean-Louis, those carved pieces look great! Would you mind sometime adding an article including the images? (You can start it as a Game page, but we'd change the type over to Craft before publishing.)


About Game Courier. Web-based system for playing many different variants by email or in real-time.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Nov 20, 2021 09:59 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 08:10 PM:

@Jean-Louis, you type drawn into the Moves text field (instead of clicking anything).


Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Nov 20, 2021 10:03 PM UTC in reply to Albert Lee from 08:25 AM:

@Albert, if you are logged in, you should see your user id listed at the bottom of the Step 1 form. Do you? (Indeed, there is never an option to select the user id; it only ever pulls from the login session variable.)

It's also possible you got logged out somehow between starting the Step 1 page and submission? (If you are not logged in and you try to navigate to the submission form, it shouldn't populate, instead issuing an error block "You must be signed in...".)


Piececlopeida: Advancer. Moves like a Queen, but captures by approach.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Nov 20, 2021 10:20 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from Sat Nov 13 10:28 PM:

Thanks! I've fixed those too.


Sign in to the Chess Variant Pages. Sign in to the Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Nov 20, 2021 10:22 PM UTC in reply to QIDb602 from Sat Nov 13 09:36 PM:

@QIDb602, please email one of the editors if you haven't already to try to track down what's going wrong.


Koval's Hexagonal Chess. A new way to play chess on hexagonal cells.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Nov 20, 2021 10:42 PM UTC:

Am I correct that pieces all move as in McCooey's hexagonal chess? If it's close enough, maybe stating that together with any exceptions would help frame this variant's place relative the existing art?

(The obvious changes are the board and piece counts. You also allow castling.)


ThreeHex. Hexagonal variant for three players.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Nov 20, 2021 11:01 PM UTC:

I would encourage a more descriptive name. The earlier this is done the less work it involves.

Perhaps for easier comparison, here's a query that lists all hexagonal 3-to-6-player variants:
https://www.chessvariants.com/index/mainquery.php?category=Hexagonal&minnumplayers=3&maxnumplayers=6

(There may be some pages listed as primarily 2-player but with 3-player subvariants that this will not find. Dropping the maximum of 6 doesn't include any additional results.)


Americana chess. Members-Only Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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kings cross. Members-Only Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

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Koval's Hexagonal Chess. A new way to play chess on hexagonal cells.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Nov 22, 2021 03:46 PM UTC in reply to Max Koval from Sun Nov 21 02:15 AM:

As I can understand, you assume that my game seems to be too close to other existing variants, and maybe, it cannot be counted as a fully independent variant...

Ah, sorry, no, that was not my intended message. The board shape is enough IMO to warrant publication, since it limits the sort of "flanking" that rooks and queens gain in the hexagonally-shaped board of Glinsky/McCooey.

Let me try to clarify my intent. Hexagonal cells take some extrapolation from orthochess; the majority of variants (but not all!) agree on the basics (rooks and bishops, knights), and some (Glinsky!) differ on pawns, or sometimes kings. The next major splitting point is orientation (is forward an orthogonal direction or not), but again most variants agree on that. Within the large chunk of forward-oriented diagonal-attacking-pawns variants then, the only real differences are board size/shape, setup, pawn details (initial moves and promotion zone), and castling. So, I think it's nice to clarify quickly where a variant lives: this is one of those variants, not a "quirky" one with horizontally-oriented, or "weird" or "new" piece interpretations.

I'd like to point out that he was not first in creating the game that uses these rules, and I don't fully understand why his variant is mentioned instead of Shafran's version, which stands a little bit closer to my game

That's mostly a historical bias of this site I think: Glinsky's is probably the best-known, and McCooey's was introduced here, and so now the two Recognized/Primary links for the Hexagonal category are those. Perhaps we should add Shafran's game as a Recognized/Primary variant here in the hexagonal category?

I'll also mention that I'm not so familiar with hexagonal chess hierarchies and history, so I'm happy to be corrected on anything. Just to include them here, see also CECV chapter 22 and wikipedia.

Finally, I think the various claims like "the main difference is that my variant is actually playable" need some clarification. What is it about the different shape and setup that make this playable while all other hexagonal variants are not? At some point in your last comment you mention mismatched number of pawns and pieces, but that's hardly a disqualifier for me at least. Protected pawns, good and interesting openings, etc. would be more convincing to me. And yes, all that's subjective, but I think some discussion on the page (Notes section?) would be beneficial.


MSchess-with-different-queens[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Nov 23, 2021 04:36 AM UTC:

Is this meant to be unequal armies, the usual FIDE except swapping pieces for the queen? But some of the candidates are known to be significantly weaker than the queen...how balanced can these be?


Koval's Hexagonal Chess. A new way to play chess on hexagonal cells.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Wed, Nov 24, 2021 03:55 PM UTC in reply to Max Koval from Tue Nov 23 12:40 PM:

I think it'd be worth adding some of that information into the page, the intro and/or notes sections. (E.g., "pieces move as in other standard [is 'standard' OK here?] hexagonal variants" and maybe "the board shape and setup are designed to be better balanced" in the intro, and the comparisons to other variants in the notes.)

The pawns' initial two-step could use a clarification on whether pawns that make an initial one-step but land still in the two-step "zone" are still admitted a subsequent two-step (it seems like yes?).


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