Comments by nelk114

smpyasW […] looks like "sympa"

Well the ship is certainly a sympathic piece ;‌)

FvmpasyazW: doesn't work. Strange pattern: B+incomplete Manticore

Sounds like a Crooked Rook (=Girlscout) move to me, which would make sense in the old/non‐continuation‐leg interpretation of z. It gives me a Ship when I try it; maybe try refreshing your Cache? (Ctrl–Shift–R)

I think Betza suggested also other uses for the brackets, like z[F,W] for a slider that alternats W and F steps in a crooked way, but this distinction could also have been made by using other separators than comma for that, e.g. [W/F].

He did indeed. The alternation modifier was in fact a, contrasting q which alternated circularly if followed by a set of brackets; t is also defined there, as is g (for ‘go’ — equivalent to the proposed [X-Y] to t[]'s [X~Y]) which covers the mao case (though conflicts with the Grasshopper usage).

writing the Griffon as F&fR or [F-fR] assumes the move can also be terminated without making all its legs, after just the F step.

There is technically another interpretation which would not conflict with the mao (and would obviate the need for Betzan g[] in the common case — though the original rhino (mao+wazir) would still need either the distinction or expliit compounding), which you've mentioned before: consider slider legs to move 0 or more rather than 1 or more, while leapers are still exactly 1. The arguably more complex piece that follows a gryphon's path but must move at least two spaces then gets a suitably more complex notation (e.g. Betza‐style t[FWR] or the like). This would also allow e.g. Tim Stiles' doubly‐bent Fox to be trivially t[WBW]. Of course with still more complex paths (t[WFR]?) the same considerations apply, though counting to 3 or more starts to be complicated for humans too so more specific notations of the likes of what are being discussed here are probably in order anyway.

What if doubling a direction made it absolute instead of relative?

As HG points out, duplication is already in use for other things; but in principle one could add a punctuation mark (maybe an apostrophe or an exclemation mark) to mark a direction as absolute rather than relative, which would be roughly equivalent

considering a certain grouped sequence of directional modifiers plus atoms as a 'crooked atom'

This is the interpretation I've been coming to for most chess‐variant pieces in general. Some kind of (for me, radial‐step — Nightriders have more in common with Dabbabariders than with Rooks imo) path and, independently, a set of constraints on that path, be it leaping, limited range, skipping squares, hopping, etc. And modality (movement, capture, or other special effects such as relaying or rifle‐capture) as a third factor on top of that. Works for most of the pieces people actually use afaict.

So the Ship would be the 'Narrow Griffon', like vN is the Narrow Knight.

I second this and the v[F-R]‐or‐equivalent notation, if a bracket‐style notation is being adopted, and if it's easy p[F‐R] and the like look nice too.

Worth noting as well that Betza also made a similar extrapolation in defining the a[WF]4 on the above page (just above the Two Sets, Four Boards heading)

But the F and D moves of the Fox are a rather non-intuitive consequence of the general description, so I would not consider it bad if it needed to be mentioned separately. (As the textual description indeed does!)

Imo the explicit mention in the description (which is also erroneous as it omits the nD move — though the diagram includes it) is only because humans aren't used to counting to (or from) 0(!) — after all he does call it a length‐0 bishop move, so from the piece design POV it probably is the more intuitive.

(and perhaps after C and Z?)

At that point surely it's not much harder just to support an arbitrary leaper atom as the first stage?

For Q after N we would have a problem, as it is not clear anymore whether the most-outward direction is the adjacent diagonal or orthogonal slide.

Since both Rook and Bishop each have an outwardmost move after N, wouldn't it make sense at that point to just treat Q as a compound of R and B? So that [N?fQ] (I quite like the question mark too) would be a slip‐gorgon (slip‐gryphon + GA Unicorn=slip‌‐manticore). Presumably the diagram would have to do the dissociation ‘by hand’ and oddities like [K-fC-fQ] stop behaving intuitively unless one preserves state from the K step by also decomposing C (differently depending on how the K starts — though a human would probably be confused by this one too!)

(N and B are not 'commensurate' atoms, and it would use NN in the second leg)

I'm guessing the likes of [W-NN] are out of scope for now? :P let alone [W-CC] which camel moves can't emulate at all…

True, but isn't 'intuitiveness' all about catering to human peculiarities?

I think here it depends strongly on which humans and in which context; after all most multi‐leg movers with slider components do have the option of zero‐length stages — GraTiA's gryphon/anchorite and Mideast/Rennchess' duke/cavalier are very much the exception afaik, so from a design (and usage) perspective the 0‐step leg option seems to be the more intuitive. The case with reading descriptions is slightly different, because you have to say both stages of the move and consciously we count starting from 1 (unless we're mathematicians or programmers), so it often requires being explicit in the verbal description.

[…] that in all kind of other cases people will get extra moves because they did not count on a slider leg also eliminating itself by taking 0 steps.

Oþoh I can see the other case where someone expects to simply be able to write e.g. [B-fW] for a transcendental prelate/contramanticore, and is confused by the fact that it disallows the W squares; ofc in this case it's simple to add them by hand (the ? notation doesn't handle this case) but with more complex moves it may not be. Whereas imo in the opposite case, where the contramanticore has to make at least a knight's move, it's likely to be more readliy apparent that an extra F step is needed at the beginning to force that (or indeed two or three extra such steps if necessary). And surely it's more intuitive to specify three initial W steps (after the F one ofc) for the Tamerlane giraffe (“one diagonal and then after that at least three straight”) than only two?

Reminds me a bit of regexps; the Kleene star * there does explicitly specify 0 or more and if you want a minimum n^r of repetitions you have to specify them explicitly (or use syntax extensions like +)

that initial legs would behave differently from only legs.

The behaviour is the same if you stipulate that all slider legs are potentially 0‐length but null moves are disallowed unless explicitly specified

Perhaps we have different intuition

May well be :) And fwiw I'm fine with either system in practice

When 0 steps is allowed, you would need [F-fF-fB] for the Tamerlane Picket

Or simply [nA-fB], which to me looks more natural as an alfil extension (istr Gilman classes it that way too). [F-fB] is ofc a bit odd as a Bishop description, but there are always going to be strange ways of notating things

BTW, [W?sfNN], and even [W?sfCC] work now. All through using a new, undocumented (and quite horrible) extension of XBetza.

That's pretty cool :) (and agreed, the repeating ys are… not pretty). I can even get an offset giraffe‐rider (or even zemel‐rider — presumably longer ones work too, if they'd fit on the board), even though normal giraffe‐riders (FXFX?) are apparently unsupported!

But the y extension still fails for e.g. [W?sfZZ] (also shouldn't that be fsNN ⁊c?), let alone pathological things like [C?fsZZ], so if we're making an effort to support direction‐type changes it probably deserves to be more general.

Also speaking of the Z, [Z?sfB] currently gives me Zebra‐then‐Rook, and vice‐versa

Chu does have quite a few short‐range pieces, like (Sho) Shōgi; it's not exactly devoid of longer‐range ones though: Rook, Bishop, Queen, as well as Dragon Horse and ‐King are the more conventional ones (and all but the queen in pairs), and it even has, to Western eyes, weird things like side‐/vertical movers and their promotions. And even with the short‐range ones, at first sight the variety of very similar moves might seem confusing just as several long‐range pieces might.

Gross Chess is popular here among CV fans; that speaks, no doubt, to its playability and potential popularity — and may well indicate it as a good candidate for a successor — but says very little imo about how 12×12 might fare among a more lay audience — while Chu demonstrates that it's possible for it to hold that status.

The point about game length is potentially a concern once the board gets bigger (and is almost certainly, alongside tractability, once of the limiting factors for going to e.g. 14×14 and beyond as anything ore than a novelty), though I'd've expected at least games with plenty of long‐range pieces to balance that somewhat. I wonder how long the average game of Gross or Metamachy (of which I've been playing a fair bit against Jocly's AI recently) is, esp. compared to Chu.

‘Idk’ and the others are indeed abbreviations: ‘Idk’ itself is ‘I don't know’; ‘Afaik’ ‘as far as I know’; ‘Ofc’ ‘Of course’; and ‘Iirc’ ‘if I recall correctly’.

As for trivially making up, a pawn on the central rank stops the opponent's pawn from making the same move (as that space is now occupied) and the opponent can't immediately do anything equivalent, and so has won a (potentially) better position with little effort — and since White can force this more easily than Black, the argument goes that normal pawns of an odd‐file board might give White more of an advantage. Here is the formal write‐up of Hutnik's idea, which he first proposed here, and the first few comments on Elven Chess(/Elven Shogi) also touch on it.

I seem to remember the old versions of some of your larger games (Gigachess ⁊c.) had the Ship, before you updated them. And ofc I wasn't accusing you of ‘stealing’ the ship ;) just noting that it also exists where the snaketongue was first named (I expect Eric probably got it from there, though it's certainly possible he came up with it independently).