Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I wonder if it would be possible to split the difference, and make the off-direction moves into regular moves and rifle captures? Or move-without-capture and rifle, perhaps? That would take care of the colorbinding problem, at least, while preserving these snakes' uniqueness.

Well, they would be unique anyway. But this is a good suggestion. I have to be a bit careful not making them too strong. Otherwise no one would promote them. But I think move plus rifle capture would still keep them much below the flying pieces they promote to.

Personally, I like it as it is, partly because I've published my own versions including featuring them in the Piece of the Day, and partly because my own feelings on asymmetry are similar to yours. Still, what you say about it is quite valid, as well as the point about the Viper being colorbound.

I wonder if it would be possible to split the difference, and make the off-direction moves into regular moves and rifle captures? Or move-without-capture and rifle, perhaps? That would take care of the colorbinding problem, at least, while preserving these snakes' uniqueness.

I am wondering if it wouldn't be better to restrict the rifle capture of Viper and Cobra to the forward directions, and give it a normal move+capture in the other directions. This makes them more similar to Chu Shogi's Horned Falcon and Soaring Eagle, which they are caricatures of. These would then have exactly the same  rifle captures.

Originally I wanted to avoid asymmetry, but there is really no reason for that. As this is a shogi variant, and Gold and Silver already participate as asymmetric pieces. With all its orthogonal steps rifle captures the Viper would be color bound, which is a bit strange for a piece of which you have only one. Making some of those normal moves would lift the color binding. It would allow Bishops (which promote to Viper) to promote to a piece that is not color bound, while the Silver, which promotes to Bishop, is not color bound, so that you can choose on which color you promote it. So you would not easily end up with two color-bound pieces on the same color.

This should be ready for publication now.

Since you're an editor, I just took you at your word. You can do it youself by clicking [edit] near the bottom of the page and unchecking "Hidden" before clicking send.

This should be ready for publication now.

Indeed, for now this burn highlighting works only for one piece. (Since the Fire Demon does not promote it would be possible to define Tenjiku Shogi with just a single burning piece, if you abandon the meaningless distinction by color of FD vs +WB.) Initially I used that marker only in the move diagrams (i.e. through the old highlighting routine rather than NewClick), where the situation is even more vague, as the captureMatrix can define burning dependent on victim piece type.

Anyway, now that I also use it in NewClick, and actually test whether there are enemies in the burn zone, I might as well also test whether the captureMatrix specifies burning at all for the particular occupant of the destination. This is still on the to-do list.

Sheherazade made me realize it would be useful to define a new symbol in the morph parameters as well. These can now be used to ban moves for a given piece type to certain squares. But it could be useful to diversify that per move type (non-capture / capture / friendly capture). In particular, the merging of pieces is forbidden there on the first three ranks, and if = there would mean ban friendly capture this can conveniently be specified with morph=///////=/=/= for all pieces that have moves with d modifier.

And you are right about the move of the Orthogonal Jumper. Thanks!

I updated the Tenjiku Shogi Interactive Diagram to use captureMatrix, and I noticed that the burn marker was only being used on the last piece that had burning abilities from captureMatrix. You can see it in action by clicking the link and promoting a Water Buffalo and clicking the newly gained Fire Demon, and then compare it to one of the original Fire Demons.

Edit: Also, the orthogonal jumper has the XBetza R(paf)8R. Did you mean R(paf)8cR?

It s hot!

It seems the Diagram tries to display a piece beyond the range of defined pieces at some point; such piece codes are interpreted as fusion pieces (a remnant of Paco Shako support). No idea why and when it does this; I will look into it.

[Edit] OK, got it. It happened when you click on an 'hole' square, as if you want to move with it. The piece that you last selected gets displayed in the one-line piece table, but the hole has an encoding outside the range of normal pieces, and so it was resulting in a request for a fusion piece.

One image on this page has reported a 404 error:

[15-Feb-2023 13:11:15 UTC] 404: https://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG/WhiteLS.png
[15-Feb-2023 13:11:15 UTC] Referred by https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/minjikushogi