Comments by joejoyce

I'm playing 2 games with Kevin Pacey, and I accessed one of them, but I have the same problem with the other Kevin did in his games with Carlos, I only see a little box in the upper left of the screen that says Black and underneath that, Kevin Pacey. Hope this game can be retrieved as it's the one I'm not losing in!

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Modern+Shatranj&log=panther-joejoyce-2022-123-929&userid=joejoyce

While I'm pretty inactive these days, I do play the occasional game, and when I check for moves, I check what's new. First, thank you Kevin for pointing out names I've already used for pieces.

For your tentative 'high priestess', I think "grande prêtresse" is possibly a good choice.

Similarly, for 'hero' I think "héros" with both the accent and ending "s" is a decent choice.

The accents in the names mark them as non-English, and the spellings maintain the separation of your and my pieces without really changing the names you wished. I admit that I am naming deficient and no one except me may actually like the alternates, so feel free to ignore or delete this post.

Are any of the ideas here: http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/joe-s-strange-notation of any value to extended Betza notation or piece icon design, or are they too divergent? My iconology attempt was to define the move of the piece with the icon without using actual footprints or numbers, and I haven't seen any other attempts to do so, although I haven't been very active recently.

Belated thanks, HG, for the playable interactive diagram. I appreciate it and it may actually get a few more games of Lemurian played. I still greatly prefer David Paulowich's Opulent Lemurian. When I started designing new shatranj pieces I decided to stick very closely to standard chess formats because the pieces were so very different I felt I couldn't get fancy with the set-ups or the games would never get played. That the FIDE (Modern Shatranj) and Carrera/Capablanca (Great Shatranj) variants actually do get played seems to indicate I was at least partially right. And I would be remiss if I did not thank Christine Bagley-Jones here, because she designed several games right along with me, did her own designs, and put them in Zillions of Games, which got more played. And it was a blast collaborating with her! Collaborations are rare in any sort of artistic design and that collaboration was seamless!

Semi-Simultaneous Step Chess

This is a mutator. It should work across a broad range of variants.

Movement

Players make 1 standard move per turn. However, the pieces only make the smallest step possible each turn but turn after turn, each piece continues making the smallest step possible until it reaches its destination, where it stops and is once again available for movement. Sliders move 1 square/turn. Leapers make 1 leap/turn, so a knight gets to its destination in 1 turn, but a knight rider will advance only 1 knight’s leap/turn until it gets to its destination.

Who Moves First?

At the end of each player turn, each currently-stepping piece is moved in the same time order in which the moves were originally made. An alternate possibility is at the end of each player-turn, only that player’s pieces move, in time order. This change affects captures, see below.

Capture

During the stepping of the pieces, when a piece lands on another piece, the piece landed on is considered stepped on – it is captured and removed from the game immediately. Clearly the question of whether white and black interleave all their current steps, or if each side does all its own steps only, after its current move, has a huge effect on the game.

Discussion

Yes, the rules allow for players to capture their own pieces. And the rules allow players to see things coming and move out of the way just before the attacks will strike their pieces. And they can schedule an attack on the square just after the opponent piece gets there.

So why do any distance moves? Well, the more distance moves you do, the more pieces you can have moving at the same time. So the more attacks you can make in any given turn. You can try “time on target” attacks where you launch attacks over the course of several turns that all land in the same area at or near the same turn.

And that brings up another point. Why not have indeterminate moves? A slider may keep going in the same direction turn after turn until it captures a piece, hits the edge of the board, or is ordered to stop. It is given only a direction in which to move, not a destination.

Comments welcome.

Actually, I agree with the idea that one page more or less per person makes a noticeable difference. I meant literally 1 page, kept for the specific comments and discussion, done by the few people who do wind up with a separate revised version. And it's kept for the discussion.

It's a personal thing with me. I hate seeing information lost. I argued with everyone from John Smith to Derek Nalls about deleting games. I lost both those particular arguments, and lament it. Both had interesting stuff that they later decided didn't live up to their standards.

But I admit to being surprised at how many game courier settings files I have. Some of them can go, being early attempts at something I did better or gave up on. Some are non-chess prototype designs used for playtests of other people's games. Game Courier can handle a lot of abstracts besides chess variants. Should they go, too?

This game has been anticipated. David Paulowich posted this in 1997: https://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/newchan.html

This place needs a historian. Where is George Duke when you need him? Or Jeremy Good?

HG, I initially thought the Shooters were too strong. Dropping the Shooters' queen analog to a DWAF should do much to reduce the Shooters' total value.

Question: Are you giving the Shooters' pawns an initial double step? If so, try taking that away for the Shooters and see what that does. That alone might cause a big reduction in Shooter overall value.

Fwiw, the symbology of the pieces 'describes' how they move, and it's at least internally consistent.

HG, Christine, Greg, Fergus, I can't thank you enough. You all have made me and a lot of other people look good. It's a privilege to be associated with you.

I'm seeing the sort of activity this site needs. There are new people playing, and there is new software for playing that even dinosaurs like me can not only appreciate but use. This site needs both. There are a lot of people making variants online. One place is the ChessCraft Discord, where Stuart, the programmer, has created a very active design space for people who like creating chess variants. I found the site by accident, searching for shatranj variants. A member there credited a shatranj design of mine for inspiration, so I joined that discord to see what was there. It's an active site, and there have to be others around. If anyone knows about any such sites, I'd like to hear about them, although they should get their own comment thread, maybe just "Other Chess Variant SItes". It might be worthwhile to poll our members about other sites, and if not partner with some, at least we should share each others information.

Thank you, Christine, for all the work you've done on these games.

Thank you, Greg!

Very nice work, Christine, on the update!

Hey, Christine. The original piece set had the "+" on the wazir, but not the "x" on the high priestess. You did the H.P. icon with the "x", and I believe I at one time substituted that into the piece set, but if so, it fell out again. I have no idea whatsoever how the wazir lost its "+". All I can figure is someone went into the GtS piece set and changed that piece. I did not!

Good grief! I walked right into that, didn't I! Thanks for the information. The short video was informative.

Any more comments or suggestions?

There is a free seminar online on the origins of chess tomorrow, Friday, February 19th from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. eastern standard time (GMT -5)

https://www.facebook.com/events/2791172177802041

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/opening-moves-the-extraordinary-origins-of-chess-tickets-129749394933

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191126140413.htm

Thank you. I appreciate it