Comments by HGMuller
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Apr 13 01:33 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 01:13 PM:It would probably have been clearer if I had used a hyphen or slash instead of an a. But it all started as aaK for the area move of Tenjiku Shogi, and caK for the Chu-Shogi Lion. But the hyphens seem to group the atoms in the wrong way, when you don't also use brackets around the individual moves.
In (not-yet-implemented) bracket notation the Betza Rhino would be [W(?fzK)], shorthand for [W?fzK?fzK?fzK?fzK?fzK?fzK?fzK...], a W leg followed by any number of alternating fl and fr K steps.
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Apr 13 01:02 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 11:52 AM:You should consider the a as a chaining symbol, separating the modifiers for the legs of a multi-leg move. So in afsafzafzW you see 3 a, which means the move has 4 legs. The modifiers for these legs are none, fs, fz and fz, respectively. So the first leg is a W move in all directions (no modifier). From there it continues forward-left or forward-right (because s = l or r), i.e. a diagonal step in the second leg. Then for the third leg it again deflects 45 degrees, but in the opposit direction as in the second leg, as this is what z means. Etc. So afsafzafzW is a shorthand for aflafraflWafraflafrW, two crooked trajectories that are each other's mirror image.
Haru's notation (afz)W is shorthand for WafzWafzafzWafzafzafzW..., a set of ever longer crooked trajectories. Every additional afz adds a new leg, which deflects in the opposite fl or fr (relative) direction as the previous leg did. (Which is the hallmark of a crooked move; if they would all deflect in the same direction, which you could do with fq, you would get a circular piece.)
The second leg in every sequence should really have been specified as fs, however, to indicate it can deflect in both directions, rather than only in one that is specified relative to the previous one. The first z or q occurring in such a sequence (i.e. before it is clear what 'opposit' or 'the same' direction means for the deflection, because there was no previous deflection) is always interpreted as s. You could see this as a special rule for expanding the parentheses into paths with different lengths.
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Apr 13 08:51 AM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 07:26 AM:I did know about Betza's t[FR] proposal for Griffon, but I had never seen this z(FW) notation. XBetza is only upward compatible with the Betza notation for simple ('single leg') moves, and has its own system for combining these to multi-leg moves, which is more general than any of the suggestions that Betza coined in various scattered places.
The z modifier applied to a slider atom is original Betza notation for a crooked version of the piece, and is still supported in XBetza. On a leaper, such as zW, it never had any meaning.
The role of parentheses has completely changed; in XBeza these indicate zero or more repetitions of the enclosed group. So z(FW) would mean zzFWzFWFWzFWFWFW..., which doesn't really mean anything.
Brackets originally were not used in XBetza, but legs of a move were 'chained' by using an a as separator between the modifiers of each leg. This does the job of unambiguously defining very complex moves, but often leads to a very obfuscated description unsuitable for human digestion. A much clearer notation is possible by using brackets (but in a way that somewhat is different from Betza's t[...] construct). The brackets still enclose a sequence of simple Betza moves, which are supposed to be played in that order. But there is no t prefix (which was redundant, because the brackets are never used for any other purpose than chaining the contained moves), and separates the enclosed moves by hyphens (if continuation is mandatory) or question marks (if the move could also end there). This notation is already supported in the Interactive Diagram for simple cases like the Griffon ([F?R]). Supporting it in its full glory is a desire for the future.
The meaning of z in a multi-leg move has also changed; it now means l or r, but the opposit of what the previous leg did. (So that it can be used to specify crooked paths, while q means l or r in the same direction, and can be used to define curved paths.)
Camelopard Chess. 
Game with Camelopards. (12x12, Cells: 144) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Apr 13 06:03 AM UTC in reply to Christine Bagley-Jones from 12:47 AM:The Zerdinal has mating potential, and it might be useful to give a link to a pre-programmed checkmating applet for it. (E.g. in the Notes section.)
/membergraphics/MSinteractive-diagrams/EGT.html?betza=ZB&name=zerdinal&img=zebrabishop
That also applies to the Half Duck, which does not have its own Piececlopaedia page where such a link can be found. There is no checkmating applet that can do crooked sliders like the Snake, but the non-lame sub-set FN easily forces checkmate, even on 16x16 boards. Forcing checkmate for a piece that has FR3 moves, such as the Tetrarch, is trivial (even on a quarter infinite board), and probably does not need an applet: the piece alone can drive the bare King to a corner.
I would avoid the use of yy in the move description of the Aviaanca, as this is really an undocumented feature of XBetza, to make recognition of some bent riders in the bracket notation possible as long as the latter is still implemented through pre-processing. It will be abandoned when the bracket notation will be parsed directly. Better use [W?AA].
H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Apr 13 04:57 AM UTC:W and F instead of R and B. And afaf(afafaf)W can be written as nHH, a non-jumping Threerider. [W?nHH] for the other move does not work yet. (It ignores the n.) Eventually it should be possible to write this as [W(?nD?W)].
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Apr 12 07:26 PM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 07:08 PM:/play/pbm/sets/*.php
Bob Greenwade's SVG Library. Private The SVG files used in Bob's library of pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Thunderstruck Server Chess. {This game seems broken…}. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Apr 9 10:57 AM UTC in reply to HaruN Y from 09:21 AM:I don't think combining brackets with parentheses is implemented at the moment. I guess some special treatment would be needed there. Currently parentheses are expanded by including mutliple copies of the move they appear in, with 0, 1, 2, ... copies of the parenthesized group. But if the leading or trailing character of the group would be a question mark in bracket notation, the maximum number of repeats already stands for any smaller number of repeats as well.
So it seems the meaning of parentheses in the bracket notation should be changed, to only indicate the maximum number of repeats. (I.e that indicated as a number behind the parentheses, or a default depending on board size.) The repeat group can then be chained by question marks if less repetitive versions of the move were also desired.
H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Apr 9 08:35 AM UTC in reply to HaruN Y from 01:25 AM:afs(afzafq)W(afqafz)W
No, that is not it; there is no step on the main orthogonals. The repeating unit involves three steps, not two (afzafqaz), and the repeat of it would thus only visit one of ever three squares in the path. So that you would need three moves to cover the entire path. And the plain W would have to be mentioned separately:
Wafs(afzafqaz)Wafsafz(afqazafz)Wafsafzafq(azafzafq)W
I suppose a bracket notation for this could be a lot simpler
[W?fF(?fzW?fqF?fzF)]
The option to terminate the move at the question marks allows collapsing the three different 'phases' into one.
Short Sliders. Pieces are initially limited to 4 spaces (if that), and promote to longer moves. (12x16, Cells: 192) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Apr 9 06:19 AM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from Mon Apr 8 06:38 PM:I think it should be possible to use multi-character IDs in morph and captureMatrix by using comma separation in the rows these occur. This is untested, though. And the Play-Test Applet won't generate this format, but just concatenates the IDs, even if these are multi-character. So you would have to insert the commas by hand.
Betza notation (extended). The powerful XBetza extension to Betza's funny notation.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Apr 6 03:39 PM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from 01:48 PM:You would forbid the capture of all non-pawns by pawns in the captureMatrix, and then exempt the pawn's normal captures from this restriction by suffixing it with an apostrophe.
What would not be possible is having some moves that can only capture pawns and others that can capture only knights. (So you cannot implement an Ultima Chamelion with this method.)
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Apr 6 05:00 AM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from 01:06 AM:Type selectivity is provided by means of the captureMatrix, possibly in combination with the apostrophy in the XBetza to restrict it to a subset of the moves. I haven't encountered any case yet that could not be handled this way.
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Apr 5 06:53 AM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from Thu Apr 4 06:38 PM:And I do hope, one day, to get some of my simpler variants on there.
Your variants are typically more 'regular' than Gerd's, in the sense that they could draw on existing chess-variants infrastructure of Jocly. For example, there is support for rectangular and hexagonal boards of any size and shape, but not for boards with switches, which would have to be programmed from scratch. There is support for normal, and even single locust captures, but not for 'recruiting' moves that make captured pieces appear elsewhere, or for neutral pieces.
For your variants the programming would be limited to indicating the piece moves.
Alfaerie SVG Piece Graphics. The Alfaerie set of piece graphics in scalable SVG format.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Apr 5 06:10 AM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from Thu Apr 4 11:21 PM:In principle, yes. If these are not too different in style.
Maka Dai Dai Shogi. Pieces promote on capture, some to multi-capturing monsters. (19x19, Cells: 361) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]📝H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Apr 4 03:54 PM UTC in reply to Vighnesh Jadhav from 03:43 PM:Western sources are usually wrong. Of course on can question if there actually is something like THE original historic rules, as different manuscripts not always agree. So rules might have changed with time and place, like they did for medieval Chess. But since a Teaching King is described as Queen plus Lion Dog, and its move diagram is drawn as that of the Queen with three perpendicular line elements on each move close to the origin, it is pretty certain the LD was more than Q3.
The FF should probably be changed here to conform to this.
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Apr 4 03:41 PM UTC in reply to Gerd Degens from 03:11 PM:GitHub is a website where programmers publish the source code of the programs they develop. It is not a site where you can play anything. But of course some of the programs published there are games. Those could be downloaded and compiled to run on people's own computers, and often the programmers already offer a compiled executable for download. To offer something there that others could use, you would have to write a program that plays it.
Jocly is one such program available on GitHub. It is a gaming platform for use on websites through a web browser, or running on your own PC through JoclyBoard. It is mainly a user interface, but is designed in such a way that it can easily extended with new games, with already a lot of supports for the tasks most chess variants have in common. So you would only have to program the part that is unique to your variant, in JavaScript.
We have a version of Jocly installed on CVP, and there is also one on my website, where people could browse to, and play the games they support.
Scirocco. Play this decimal variant with several weak fairy pieces on Jocly.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]📝H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Apr 3 09:18 AM UTC in reply to François Houdebert from 08:59 AM:Indeed, the names of the promoted versions are swapped.
📝H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Apr 3 08:50 AM UTC in reply to François Houdebert from 06:57 AM:Wagon promotes to Rhino = W-then-B Spider. Chariot (R4) promotes to Griffon (on CVP still represented by a dragon) = Octopus = F-then-R.
This is as it should be.
Life, the Universe and Everything. 42-square double-move variant with unusual pieces, inspired by Douglas Adams' fiction. (6x7, Cells: 42) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Apr 3 05:36 AM UTC:How about this one, then: "it would be a miracle if there weren't any genuine coincidences".
Centaur. Moves as Knight or Man. Also known as Centaur.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Apr 2 06:59 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 06:47 PM:Well, the knight-on-a-shaped-base is a move-oriented solution, so it ignores the name entirely.
H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Apr 2 06:44 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 06:22 PM:That is how I represented the ferz-knight and wazir-knight in Jocly (e.g. in Scirocco): A Knight on a somewhat taller base (so it is not so easily confused with a normal Knight) in the shape of a cross, oriented along the F or W move.
H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Apr 2 10:20 AM UTC in reply to Florin Lupusoru from 10:18 AM:The date no doubt has something to do with it. :-)))
Play Chess Variants with Jocly. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Apr 2 09:49 AM UTC in reply to François Houdebert from 09:37 AM:What do you think about switching to the Lance picto-sprite for the Hoplit in Spartan Chess? Then it would have a different symbol from the FIDE Pawns. And I doubt that any western variant will ever want to use a piece that moves as the Shogi Lance. (But they might of course want to use it for a piece with another move for which there is no dedicated representation available.)
H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Apr 2 09:20 AM UTC in reply to François Houdebert from 08:29 AM:Does Jocly currently support any variant that uses Berolina Pawns at all? The 3d realization was made mostly as a test case for the initial version of the Tube tool (it is a purely cylindrical design). In that sense the committing of it was a bit premature, like for the Flamingo.
The design you have here looks a lot like the Alfaerie design, which is a variation on the Alfaerie normal Pawn. But the Wikipedia set uses an entirely different Pawn design. If we want to add new Pawn types, I think we should use that as basis.
Spartan Chess is an implemented variant that uses a different Pawn type, for the Spartans. These 'Hoplits' are very close to a Berolina Pawn, but not exactly equal, because their initial double push can jump, and isn't subject to e.p. capture. They do have their own 3d image, (a Pawn modified to carry a lance), but also use the normal Pawn image in 2d. If we want to distinguish the Pawns in 2d it seems more urgent to do find a symbol for those. In the WinBoard implementation I use the Lance pictogram for those. We could also do that in Jocly (now that we added the Lance). But it would still not have its own picto-sprite in that case. (But who would want to use a Lance and a Hoplit in the same variant...)
I am not sure we should go for a double-head design in 2d if we did not also do that in 3d. An alternative would be to write a V on their breast, to symbolize their non-capturing move.
And what about the Asian Pawn, for the western skins of the Shogi variants? These now also use the normal Pawn symbol.
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Well, the bracket notation is simpler. This is why I would like to switch to it.
But when chaining moves into a single path it cannot be avoided that you would have to specify the bending angle at each point where two legs connect with the aid of directional modifiers (if f is assumed to be default).
And there is the more fundamental problem that oblique paths occur as pairs of mirror images, and that this mirroring swaps the meaning of l and r. To avoid having to specify complex oblique paths twice, there must be a way to encode sideway deflections not as an absolute direction, but in a relative way. And this is what z and q do.