Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Much time passed, but still. On dark theme.

Indigo font on brown/dark-grey/purple background is hardly readable. Blue is just slightly better.

It's not like I've known this to be a problem and have just done nothing about it. Different browsers have different capabilities, and if what seems like an obvious problem to you goes on for a long time without being fixed, this could be because I am not experiencing the same problem as you are.

This particular problem is probably because I am using color-mix for the link colors instead of custom properties like I am for all the other color changes, and custom properties have better support than color-mix. So there may be an occasional browser that supports custom properties without supporting color-mix. However, I have not been able to locate one. While I have some old devices with old browsers that do not even support dark mode, every browser I have found to support dark mode supports it fully with both custom properties and color-mix.

So, first, I would like you to report to me which version of which browser on which operating system or device has this problem. Then I would like you to make sure everything is up-to-date. Make sure that your device is fully updated and that your browser is the latest version. After doing this, let me know whether the problem persists.

Much time passed, but still. On dark theme.

Indigo font on brown/dark-grey/purple background is hardly readable. Blue is just slightly better.

I suggest dividing font colors for light and dark modes further. Links’ colors in info boxes are possible solution.

What I know is that Fairy chess is a term that we use in // to chess variant or non orthodox chess, etc. It doesn't mean a chess with fairies. I know plenty chess variants, I know none with fairies.

As a fairy, it's a symbolic representation of fairy chess in general, not a literal representation of a particular fairy piece. As a princess, though, it is a literal representation of a particular fairy piece, and the fairy wings help indicate that this is the princess of fairy chess rather than the princess of Jetan or some other game with a princess. They also serve the purpose of distinguishing this piece from a queen, since the pieces flanking the logo should resemble usual Chess pieces without being mistaken for them.

Fairies or princesses, I'm not going to spend time to discuss Disney movies. Everyone has got what I meant, the rough idea. When my daughter was <8 years she was playing with little fairies or princesses some wings.

One thing I appreciate about this logo is how it balances the masculine and the feminine. The dragon horse is fiercely masculine, and the princess is gently feminine in a way that helps tame the ferocity of the dragon horse. While it is natural for little girls to be more into feminine things like princesses and fairies than boys are, it is also natural for men to appreciate what is feminine. It has become a cliche for both knights and dragons to be into princesses, and John Carter, a masculine pulp fiction hero, is known for his devotion to Dejah Thoris, a princess of Mars. As a straight male, I find that femininity is something I like about women, and it is something I want to see in the portrayal of a female Chess variant piece. Also, perhaps because I grew up with Brian Froud's Faeries book, I have long had an appreciation for fairies that has nothing to do with Tinkerbell. Disney may do what it can to capitalize on the love little girls have for fairies and princesses, but it does not have a monopoly on either concept, and I have not drawn on Disney representations to create this piece image.

And I know what a centaur is.

I never meant to imply otherwise. I was just pointing out the difficulty in portraying one in something short of a figurine piece.

I even took the challenge to represent one in 3D with the bottom of a knight and the top of warrior. My result is not a cute as your figurine but at least it looks like a chess piece in the same manner that a Staunton knight looks as a chess piece and not as a horseman figurine.

I look forward to seeing what is looks like when you create a page for your pieces. Things are now set up that you should now be able to do so. But let me know if you need to upload file formats that are not currently supported, as I remain unfamiliar with file formats for 3D printers and have not yet included support for uploading them in the File Manager.

you never change your mind

I do change my mind, and you even helped persuade me to remove the frog and an earlier fairy princess. But there are also matters on which I will stand my ground.

Awesome! Good job!

I think it might be helpful to have a form specifically designed for these more "generic" pages.

I have updated the submission scripts to handle other types of pages. This can be done with the Type field, which now includes all types. When its value is something other than Game, it provides only the first text field, which is normally used for the Introduction of a game. This field now has the database type of LONGTEXT instead of TEXT, which should be more than enough space for any file.

Well, I don't learn all past comments by heart, and I confess I often don't understand what you write here or there.

What I know is that Fairy chess is a term that we use in // to chess variant or non orthodox chess, etc. It doesn't mean a chess with fairies. I know plenty chess variants, I know none with fairies.

Fairies or princesses, I'm not going to spend time to discuss Disney movies. Everyone has got what I meant, the rough idea. When my daughter was <8 years she was playing with little fairies or princesses some wings. That is not a symbol I was expecting to see on this site. But you never change your mind, you prefer to argue like a lawyer and I don't have the skills in English to sustain this discussion.

And I know what a centaur is. I have some education. I even took the challenge to represent one in 3D with the bottom of a knight and the top of warrior. My result is not a cute as your figurine but at least it looks like a chess piece in the same manner that a Staunton knight looks as a chess piece and not as a horseman figurine.

I follow exactly the same path when I create 3D pieces or, even, when I write. I do, change, re-do, re-change, re-write, re-draw until I get satisfied. And we are probably tens of people here doing that in our hobbies, painting, sculpting, composing music, etc. Call it creation, call it art, what matters is the result. Appreciating the result is certainly personal also. Here we are talking about the representation of chess variant pieces, not about getting a nice-looking images. My opinion is that you got very nice results in some cases:

Thanks, I appreciate that you understand that.

The Dragon on the Dark Welcome Page is very sophisticated, but it does look as a very nice chess piece.

It's a Dragon Horse, not simply a Dragon, and it is probably based on a Japanese work of art representing one. I have seen a similar, though simpler, version of this image used in an iconographic Shogi set.

Now, I don't like at all the Princess on the Dark Page. First not sure that a Princess is a good target, a name that we rarely use nowadays for CV

Does fairy chess ring any bells? As I've mentioned on this page and in an earlier comment to you, this piece represents fairy chess. That's why it's a fairy. It could have been an empress as easily as a princess, as each is a fairy chess piece that could be made to resemble a queen. In fact, I have an earlier comment that shows one possible logo with an empress instead of a princess. These two fairy pieces were my main choices, as fairies are usually represented as girls or women with butterfly wings.

it won't stand on a board

I think you're imagining that the piece is uniformly made of a single material like a 3D printed piece might be. With a heavy base and light wings, there is no reason it shouldn't stand on a board.

Princess with wings, this is a Disney cartoon cliché.

Can you name a single Disney princess with wings? Tinkerbell and the Blue Fairy may have wings, but they are not princesses. Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Jasmine, Rapunzel, the one from The Princess and the Frog, and the two from Frozen are all humans without wings.

The Centaur just looks as a female centaur on a base.

The Centaur is male. I think you're making the same mistake you made before of confusing the source image with the final result. I explicitly explained that the female image I posted in a comment was a source image I used to begin a series of generations that resulted in the male centaur used on the page.

A nice female centaur maybe but this is not a chess piece. Similar critic for some other pieces.

There are figurine Chess pieces, and it is hard to represent a centaur with a piece that does not show its lower body, as a centaur's distinguishing feature is the difference between its upper and lower body.

Fairy.

@Fergus: your answer is so personal, I have no doubt that you find a great satisfaction in making those images. The "approach of creation" you describe is very natural in fact. I'm surprised by your self-estimate.

I follow exactly the same path when I create 3D pieces or, even, when I write. I do, change, re-do, re-change, re-write, re-draw until I get satisfied. And we are probably tens of people here doing that in our hobbies, painting, sculpting, composing music, etc. Call it creation, call it art, what matters is the result. Appreciating the result is certainly personal also. Here we are talking about the representation of chess variant pieces, not about getting a nice-looking images. My opinion is that you got very nice results in some cases:

The Dragon on the Dark Welcome Page is very sophisticated, but it does look as a very nice chess piece. The Advancer in the Piececlopedia is excellent. As well as the Antelope. The Camel, the Wildebeest are OK.

Now, I don't like at all the Princess on the Dark Page. First not sure that a Princess is a good target, a name that we rarely use nowadays for CV, second the shape, it won't stand on a board, and last not least, why representing a princess with wings? Princess with wings, this is a Disney cartoon cliché.

The Centaur just looks as a female centaur on a base. A nice female centaur maybe but this is not a chess piece. Similar critic for some other pieces.

Well, I completely disagree with you Fergus. AI art is not art at all.

To an extent it is not, sort of like evolution by natural selection is not design, yet both get results. I approach the creation of AI art like evolution. I have an idea of what I want, and I use AI art as a tool to produce the kind of image I want to create. If it doesn't give me what I want right away, then I try again, sometimes changing the text prompt, or the model, or the source image I give it to tell it what to draw, or other parameters. Evolution by natural selection gets results, because despite the randomness of mutation, it applies a strict selection process to the mutations that get passed on and those that don't. Like mutation, the results of AI art are not entirely in my control. But like natural selection, I apply a strict selection process to what I get. And unlike natural selection, I actually have creative visions behind what I'm doing. So, while it is not the traditional creative process of an artist exercising total control, it is a creative process in which I do exercise control. Besides making images of Chess variant pieces, I have used AI art to produce album covers for playlists I have made featuring covers of tracks from particular albums. On my Pinterest board for My Spotify Playlists, I made every cover except the two collage covers with AI art.

Well, I completely disagree with you Fergus. AI art is not art at all.

I don't think it is a good idea (to put it mildly) to have computer-generated images of pieces in the piececlopedia. Photographs of actual 3d-printed designs might be another thing; if we would also publish a link to a file people could use to 3d-print those themselves these would serve a purpose.

I am happy to include 3D printable pieces. However, I am not going to dismiss AI art because it can't be fed into a 3D printer to produce physical pieces. Production is not the only purpose of art. It also serves the purpose of stirring the imagination and helping people think about what is possible.

Many of the virtual pieces I have seen here are unacceptably ugly, fragile, or unsuitable.

You're welcome to criticize individual images, but I will not consider a broad, subjective opinion like this as a reason to give up on a new artistic tool. It's not as if I just give it a prompt and upload whatever it draws. I carefully select the best images I get from AI, and of late I have been fine-tuning images by using altered images to give it a better idea of what I want.

I do think that would be a good idea. If I can get my 3D printer working again, I may do the same.

I think it'd be done as an "other" kind of page -- create it like a game page, with a note to the Editors.

Aside for the Editors: I think it might be helpful to have a form specifically designed for these more "generic" pages.

I am on the same line than HG. I was thinking of creating a page for a "catalog" of the pieces I have designed for 3D-printing. I have printed all of them, some several times in order to be fully satisfied.

Would that be useful?

If yes, I imagine I have to follow the same process than when creating a page for a new variant?

I don't think it is a good idea (to put it mildly) to have computer-generated images of pieces in the piececlopedia. Photographs of actual 3d-printed designs might be another thing; if we would also publish a link to a file people could use to 3d-print those themselves these would serve a purpose. Many of the virtual pieces I have seen here are unacceptably ugly, fragile, or unsuitable.

I don't think he is interested. Would you be interested in doing that? As the person who has made the most pieces for 3D printing, you would be more qualified than the rest of us to handle this. If you're familiar enough with HTML, I could set you up as an editor and give you the ability to update pages.

I mostly was kidding re: Jean-Louis.

As for me doing it, I might be willing, but I'll need to look into what I can find in the way of zero-cost tools. (Now pardon me while I run off to search.)

Or we are several people designing Staunton-like 3D pieces for printing. Importing a .stl into Meshmixer we could make very nice 2D images.

Those are suitable for going on individual Piececlopedia pages if someone would like to take charge of that. I'm not the one to do that, since I don't have a 3D printer or know anything about the image formats.

I nominate Jean-Louis. ;)

I don't think he is interested. Would you be interested in doing that? As the person who has made the most pieces for 3D printing, you would be more qualified than the rest of us to handle this. If you're familiar enough with HTML, I could set you up as an editor and give you the ability to update pages.

I made a couple changes to the dark theme logo.

1. I replaced the Knight/Camel piece, which had represented the Pushmi-Pullyu, with the new Ram/Ox image for that piece.
2. I removed the stuff hanging around the waist of the fairy princess. In an earlier version of the image, this had been long hair. Thanks to some changes I made to a source image I used to produce new images, she became short-haired. The stuff around her waist could be interpreted as cloth hanging from her sleeves, but it seemed a bit weird and out-of-place.

Hi Fergus

Those links both worked. Even better, at this time tonight I can get to the CVP homepage now. I shall try to explain what I think might have caused the whole problem with my iphone, regarding CVP site at least:

Earlier tonight I went to my usual local bar. A friend with an Android phone was there and he got to the CVP homepage no problem, When my iphone still failed to get there without a crash, he suggested I check my phone for updates. He then started one that was waiting on my iphone for me, just by getting me to agree to the update terms (hopefully it's completely free of any new $ charges to me).

That apparently started to make my iphone into a version 17.something (cannot recall exact decimal number of version), finishing up by soon after I got home, when I took my phone out of my pocket. Then, unlike a previous time I had a similar update done to my phone's version, my phone asked me for my house's Wifi's password (don't know if that's unusual or just new with this iphone update version - hopefully I won't need to bother to re-enter Wifi passwords, for use in the two bars I go out to). After that I soon had my iphone seeming to look about the same as before on its screen - except now I seem to be able to get anything on CVP site, so far, no problem, at least with Safari or Google search.

I found another point where I could divide global.css into two files. So now "Point Count Chess" has front4.css, and "Quantum of Advantage" has tail4.css.

The link chessvariants dot com again resulted in a crash (I did it on Brave as well as Safari on my iphone, in case I didn't refresh my cache properly on Safari).

The 'Personal Variations' link (from Betza article) caused a white page plus crash, when I clicked on it while using Safari.

Okay, I removed the only other CSS that could be causing the problem from global.css and globalindex.css, and I created a new copy of global.css called globaltest2.css, which I linked to in "Personal Variations". Try the homepage again, refreshing the cache if you need to, and this page.

The link 'References' caused a white page and crash on my iphone. However, the 'Thought Experiment' link worked for me.