Comments by A. M. DeWitt

I intend to keep all pieces that appear in Chu as they appear in that game, with the exception that the Lion-trading rules would be applied to the new power piece (PP for short). I was considering including a Lion Dog and Hook Movers. The 2-out-1-in move can be pretty easily defended against by placing a ranging piece behind the victim. But since that piece is pretty similar to the Lion and Tengu Dai Shogi already had that, I wanted something new.

I was initially thinking about doing some sort of short-range Ko Shogi-like rifle capture where the normal move cannot capture and the capturing move is an igui move, but also allowing both to be done once per move in any order. This creates the desired power gap between the Lion and the PP (power piece) when the non-capturing move is mKmNmAmD (Full Betza: KmNmScafmFcaba(mpa)1mK(mpa)1mpacabmK).

However, that raises a question: For locust movers that capture only once, do you need a bridge-capture-threshold exception like the Lion does in Chu Shogi?

Francois,

Sorry for not responding to your email with the chess icons earlier. It was in my spam folder.

These images are really good. Seriously, great work with your SVGs.

I did find one flaw in your mnemonic SVGs though. The ranging pieces don't have the radial lines where their ranging bulges are, which isn't a huge deal, but can cause confusion if you are used to H. G. Muller's mnemonic system for Shogi pieces. This problem is much more pronounced with the bfree-tiger and heavenly-horse SVGs though, where no white lines will show up at all, making the piece just look like one big mass of black. My guess is that the program you are using couldn't perceive the white lines due to them being at a pixel wide or less.

I used Tinkercad (https://www.tinkercad.com/) to create my Chu Shogi SVGs. Tinkercad is a free online 3D tool that has an Export to SVG tool which works on all Shapes intersecting the Design Plane. It can be a bit tedious when you need to make a lot of SVGs but can save a lot of time and result in high quality SVGs.

Other than that, great work with these.

@H. G. Muller,

I am making a new chess variant, Reiwa Dai Shogi, that is basically Dai Shogi with better piece balancing, replacing the weak pieces with stronger ones with stronger promotions.

However, I am struggling to make a good power piece for the game. Ideally, I want something that is stronger than the Lion but still has difficulty mating.

I figured it would be a good idea to have you weigh in on this, since you know a fair deal about Chu Shogi and the historical variants.

Here's a diagram of my first in-dev version. Lion is currently subject to trading rules due to lack of a stronger power piece ATM. The only new pieces are the Ram's-Head Soldiers on c1 and m1.

So far Tinkercad + Inkscape is working beautifully. A bit tedious to be sure, but that was a given by default.

I'm taking a break from inventing Chess variants to work on some other things and myself. I'm currently finishing up my Chu Shogi Applet with Assorted Tsumeshogis by adding in the remaining workable tsumeshogis from H. G. Muller's MSM Errata (only one left is D63). It's kind of a prelude to a stand-alone program I plan on making that allows you to play Chu Shogi (based on historical rules of course).

I'll still be around from time to time, mostly to review submissions.

 

I have some svg (mnemonic or jocly style). If you need, I can share.

A sample would be interesting to see. Maybe we could even include a Jocly graphics directory.

For now though, I'm taking a break from inventing Chess variants to work on some other things and myself. I'm currently finishing up my Chu Shogi Applet with Assorted Tsumeshogis by adding in the remaining workable tsumeshogis from H. G. Muller's MSM Errata (only one left is D63). It's kind of a prelude to a stand-alone program I plan on making that allows you to play Chu Shogi.

I'll still be around to review submissions from time to time.

Such improvements aren't necessary now that it is published, unless another Editor decides to un-publish it (though we do try to avoid having to do that) or you feel that they need to be made.

Also, just so you know, you can put an Interactive Diagram directly into the page if you set the Format field at the top of the Edit this Page form to "HTML," but that does require you to keep the page in HTML in order to not lose the diagram to the text editors' formatting. Or if you don't feel like doing that, a link to a Comment with the appropriate diagram works too.

I use Tinkercad for the basic generation, and Inkscape to make them site-compliant.

Thanks. I was thinking about making some Chu Shogi SVGs.

I can list off the specification numbers, if you need them.

Shouldn't be too important unless you are using features that are known to be deprecated.

Thanks.

B45 was the only MSM problem from your Errata where I couldn't get a solution from HaChu that satisfied the line provided before now. But now that I have the MSM solution, it will be a piece of cake. In hindsight, I feel kinda silly for not considering 1... K-6d, though the actual first 10 moves of the solution was quite different from what HaChu thought.

I have approved this page, as it does its job well enough to be eligible. Sure, some improvements could be made, but for now it is good enough.

Managed to make a tsumeshogi (mate in 5) involving a Kirin promotion deferral due to the bridge-capture rule.

lishogi.org/analysis/chushogi/lk10/r1n9/3iX7/3c8/1O1v8/1+A+L9/12/2+t9/12/12/12/12_b_-_1

It appears that this Jocly preset for Chu Shogi is not invoking the counter-strike rule in the following cases:

• for the first part of a non-Lion multi-move after any type of Lion capture.
• if a Lion is captured only on the first part of a non-Lion multi-move

Actually every move should be marked as illegal for a player that has no royal in a game where royals are defined. It is just that the absence of royalty is only tested when a piece with special (royalty, baring, anti-trading) properties is captured, as the AI assumes royalty still exists before the move, or the search branch would already have been terminated earlier. So it only tests it when it could have changed.

[Edit] For the purpose of highlighting the legality test now assumes a royaltyCount of 1 in the current position when in reality royaltyCount <= 0. In terms of scoring this fakes a single royal for the side that has none.

Technically you are right about that first point. I guess it was less of a visual bug and more of an inconvenience for tsume diagrams that would cause confusion for the solver, especially for large libraries of tsume problems like what I have in my Applet. Thanks for fixing it anyway, though.