Ratings & Comments

305. Senator. and 306. Governor. These are two pieces whose names are given indirectly from their Betza notation. The first leaps two spaces orthogonally, or (1,3) like a Camel, and -- at least, to an American -- Senator seemed like a natural name. (DC)

Less obvious was the name for the piece that leaps two spaces diagonally, or (1,3) like a Zebra; in the context of the Senator, though, the only thing that seemed natural was Governor. (AZ)*

I'd originally just looked at these the DC and AZ moves for the novelty, but couldn't find any existing pieces** with those moves.

The crossed spears are from the symbols used by the Roman Empire; the wedge on the Senator recalls the eagle that was used in the Senate's symbol. The five stars on the Governor piece are just a decision based on desperation (I couldn't think of anything else!).

*For those outside the United States, AZ is the postal abbreviation for the state of Arizona, which is adjacent to the lower end of California. DC, of course, is the District of Columbia.

*Outside of Gilman's Man & Beast articles, that is. And I'm sure that if something exists anywhere to show that I'm wrong, someone will graciously point it out.

one of the viewing button becomes a "@". There is an info message: "Lacking data to view this position. To view whole game, load in last move.".

This means you loaded the game from an earlier position instead of from the latest position. You might have done this accidentally by clicking the View button, which used to be the only way to navigate through the moves of a game. You should follow the instructions and load it from the latest position. Click on the >| button, then click on the View button. This will load the game at the last move, making all past moves accessible without the need to reload any of them.

@HG: thank you very much for adding the icons I was missing for the ID of Obento. And thanks also to Daniel for their initial design.

Ok. I'm ready to declare a winner. In the 8x8 the fairy piece that delivers mate (major) on the most moves is: fWbrFfD2lfNfrblA with 159 moves from the most difficult position. I tried may other combinations and could not improve it.

@Fergus OK, I wanted to review a past game of Xhess. I picked Wed dec 13 2017. 23 moves, the last move was a resgin. so far so good. I click orentation 2nd palyer on the drop down list box. I click go back to starting position. OK so far so good. Now the view buttons contain a ">" go to next move button. I click that. next move. good. I click again next move. good. I do this four times and one of the viewing button becomes a "@". There is an info message: "Lacking data to view this position. To view whole game, load in last move.". From that point on viewing moves becomes difficult. Can you view a prior past game of xhess and see if the view functionality is working as you like? thanks. Jim.

There was indeed a fatal bug that would cause an immediate crash. I don't know how this crept into the betza.txt include file; I had seen that bug before, and fixed it, and when I tested Megalomachy it worked.Which would not have been possible with this bug. It must have reverted somehow, by the version I have on my PC and the version here on CVP being out of sync.

Anyway, I applied the fix again, and that seems to make it work. (I am not sure it would work if the King only makes a single step, though, as this is ambiguous.)

Random Omega Amazon

Attack on the Castles by Grandmaster Chessbloon, AKA a little narwhal's little brother

Of course, makes sense that Eric would've already been using such images; I haven't got round to trying Ai Ai yet so I hadn't seen them.

Though in any case I should maybe try my hand at doing some of these SVG conversions one of these days; there's still a few images (particularly these and the move‐based Bent Rider ones) that I quite like and haven't yet made it into SVG

304. Three-Toed Box Turtle. As (semi-)promised, here's the mirror counterpart to the Three-Toed Sloth from a week and a half ago. It shares the same history, except for the extra step of making it as a mirror. (And a special salute to HaruNY for the name.)

To recap: This piece moves one step directly forward, or diagonally backward and to the left; or leaps two spaces diagonally forward and to the left, or backward and to the right; or leaps two spaces forward and one to the right; or makes one or two leaps of two spaces directly forward. (fWblFfD2rfNflbrA)

This isn't necessarily the end of it, either; the fun thing about completely asymmetrical moves like this, as well as the Blue Gecko and related pieces,* is that mirroring and rotating allows for up to eight members of the move family -- sixteen, if you allow for turns of 45° as well as 90°.

Aside from an unwanted rendering artifact or two, this came out somewhat better than I expected. It's the same size as the Three-Toed Sloth piece, and thus much smaller than the full-fledged Turtle, and is pretty easily distinctive.

*Besides the Blue Gecko, I've created the Purple Finch as a left-to-right mirror, and Adrian King's original Jupiter game has a near-match front-to-back in the White Fox (if I were to use it in a game, I'd make a full front-to-back mirror of the Blue Gecko).

I'm going to keep the old one, I'm not sure I'll be able to change the black stag properly. These images may be useful one day for something else.

I think that the table diagrams I use show the morphing possibilities quite well. But I readily admit that there can be different forms of presentation. I have opted for these and would welcome it if it could stay that way.

very nice Stag

@Bn Em: thank you for this indication. For the riders, I prefer those with arrows which are derived from the Gold and Silver G. with 1 point, at least in this Obento C. context. They have been used in AI AI by E Silverman for a long time and are also available in the Musketeer's board painter tool. Same thing for the Pashtuns with 2 points.

This one looks good now

As for Morphomania:

I'll have to think about that again, because I haven't really understood it yet. A little more time would be nice.