Comments by HGMuller
Centaur. Moves as Knight or Man. Also known as Centaur.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Apr 1 03:32 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 02:35 PM:As crowns and miters are something worn on the head, some other kind of headgear, such as a helmet or a hat would probably be suitable for a piece with the additional powers of a man. While this might not work as easily for rook+man or bishop+man, these are also rook+ferz and bishop+wazir and are known by other names, such as dragon horse and dragon king. So maybe they could be represented in a different manner. Or all three might be represented by human face pieces like in the Superba set.
Even though chess pieces (unlike the pictograms used in 2d diagrams) are more than just the head or head cover, it is true that the head is the distinctive feature, and the bodies all look alike.
To indicate the KN move in a variant that also features the Amazon, you could leave on the cross. It is very unlikely there will be both a royal and non-royal Centaur in the same variant. Or replace the cross by a spike, to distinguish it both from a Queen and a King head.
The Jocly 3d pieces can provide some inspiration; the Crowned Rook there is a Rook with a crossless King head mounted on top. No room for confusion there; a Rook with a Queen's head would make no sense. For the Crowned Bishop I use a pontifical tiara. Both give pieces that distinguish themselves very well from other Staunton pieces.
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 Mon, Apr 1 03:15 PM UTC in reply to Florin Lupusoru from 02:25 PM:the author refuses to further explain his reason for choosing such a number.
You obviously have not read "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe"...
But, no panic!
Centaur. Moves as Knight or Man. Also known as Centaur.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Apr 1 03:13 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 02:58 PM:The S seems to curve in the wrong direction. A prancing horse doesn't bend his back in that direction. E.g. the Ferrari logo:
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Apr 1 09:23 AM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 06:25 AM:If the idea is to represent the move, the logical form in a set where the Amazon is a Staunton Knight with the head of a Staunton Queen mounted on top of it, would be a King's head on a Knight. The cross could be omitted for the non-royal case.
If the idea is to represent an actual centaur, rather than just an arbitrary man-horse chimera, the Staunton style seems to lead to something like this:
That is, omit all upper extremities, and only leave a stylized version of the lowest for support. The one in the middle already breaks Staunton style by abandoning cylindrical symmetry (ellipticity is used in the hind legs and torso, and excentricity in the horse body).
The tail is in fact already dubiously detailed; if the cut in the Bishop's head was deemed enough to represent tusks, the tail should probably be represented by an upward diagonal cut just above the legs...
Of course it would be quite possible to apply further symmetry breaking (rightmost image) to get still further away from Staunton abstraction and closer to realism: the hind legs and torso could be slanted backwards, the horse's body forwards. An indication for the horse's front leges could be added, dangling down like it is prancing.
H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Mar 31 09:16 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 08:20 PM:I think the generally best idea for all situations is "if you cannot do it properly, better not do it at all".
The world will not become a better place by spreading around crappy solutions because these were the best one could think of.
Perhaps representing something that is recognizable as a centaur requires a level of detail that is incompatible with the level of abstraction (no arms, no legs...) of the Staunton design. In that case it would be a mistake to go for a realistic representation. Use something more abstract. Like bowling peg with a horse tail sticking out at 1/3 of the height.
Asymmetric Chess. Chess with alternative units but classical types and mechanics. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Mar 31 07:09 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 04:22 PM:It is a bit difficult to diagnose the problem. By adding the ?nocache=true you bypass the CloudFlare cache, but the browser would also consider it a file that is distinct from the one without that suffix. So it would keep separate copies in the browser cache for each of those, and when you have seen the correct one through the ?nocache=true prefix requesting the file without prefix might still give you the obsolete one.
And the problem is that in the context of pages in articles by others you have no control over whether this suffix is added.
Centaur. Moves as Knight or Man. Also known as Centaur.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Mar 31 09:33 AM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 01:19 AM:It seems we are turning into an art website, now that 75% of the pages is devoted to art, and only a quarter contains actual information. (And that is even discounting the ads...)
Perhaps we should move the website to the domain www.chess-art.com, instead of chessvariants.com?
A figure with a horse head or helmet doesn't remind me of a centaur.
Asymmetric Chess. Chess with alternative units but classical types and mechanics. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Mar 30 10:17 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 07:19 PM:the ferz knight in this interactive diagram is wrongly colored for black
Not for me. Try to flush your browser cache; this problem was already detected and fixed in Herculean Chess, and that fix should be effective here too.
Neohex. 
Chess variant on irregular hexagons. (Cells: 60) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Mar 30 10:11 PM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 07:26 PM:Resegnation is a fact of life that cannot be prevented by any rules. The best rules can do is put a sanction on doing it, and the worst imaginable sanction is an individual game is that you would lose. Which is exactly the idea, and thus has zero value as a deterrent. You will have to find a better solution for when one of the palyers forfeits (e.g. loses on time because he simply walked away).
The board is drawn in an unnecessarily much distorted way; many cells are very narrow, without reason. The 'arms' of the board could be made much wider, and all cells could be approximately circular. All edge cells could be of the same, minimal size, and then increase in size towards the center, the three heptagons being largest of all.
Fairy-Max: an AI for playing user-defined Chess variants. A chess engine configurable for playing a wide variety of chess variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Mar 30 09:54 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 08:30 PM:Is the Sissa possible in fairy-max?
No.:-(
I am planning to create an engine similar in strength to Fairy-Max which can do anything the Interactive Diagram can do. But it is in a very early stage of inception, and the project was interrupted by the necessity to rescue the TalkChess forum.
Territorial Chess (Go-King!). Members-Only "Territorial Chess," a revolutionary fusion of two timeless strategic games: Chess and Go. (21x21, Cells: 441) [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.
Play-test applet for chess variants. Applet you can play your own variant against.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Mar 29 05:26 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 04:30 PM:Is the Paste Diagram description here: input broken?
Not that I know; for me it still works. What are you trying to paste?
Hundred Acre Chess. Members-Only Game Courier preset for Hundred Acre Chess. (10x10, Cells: 100) [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.
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Territorial Chess (Go-King!). Members-Only "Territorial Chess," a revolutionary fusion of two timeless strategic games: Chess and Go. (21x21, Cells: 441) [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.
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Gaugamela Chess. Members-Only Asymmetric warfare that mirrors the famous battle of Gaugamela. (8x8, Cells: 64) [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.
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Diagram Editor with scalable graphics. An easy-to-use tool for drawing boards and pieces of any size and color.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Mar 28 06:44 AM UTC in reply to Florin Lupusoru from 04:09 AM:Have you flushed the browser cache? The none-pre-defined pieces are sorted alphabetically after the pre-programmed ones (with move), and I see the Stone after the Squirrel.
Herculean Chess. 12 x 12 version of chess featuring 4 Rooks, 4 Bishops, 4 Leapers and 22 pawns. (12x12, Cells: 144) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Mar 27 09:31 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 05:59 PM:The re-rendering of the SVGs at 50x50 appears to have created quite some errors. In this case the SVG fill color was #ffffff rather than #f9f9f9, and thus not recognized as something that should be recolored. I fixed it now, but since the faulty image is still cached by CloudFlare the fix doesn't show up.
Diagram Editor with scalable graphics. An easy-to-use tool for drawing boards and pieces of any size and color.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Mar 27 09:03 PM UTC in reply to Florin Lupusoru from 07:47 PM:Ah, of course, the PTA is using the PNG pieces, not the SVG, and in particular the 35x35 set. I now have added the stone there too.
As I said below, I am using this as a game simulation for Territorial Chess, a combination of Chess and Go.
OK, I see. You want to have Go-like capture. One way would be to define the move of the Stone as cU (Universal Leaper). Then you can use a stone to capture the entire chain you want to remove one by one, and finally move it back to where it came from.
💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Mar 27 07:23 PM UTC in reply to Florin Lupusoru from 06:49 PM:Make sure to flush your browser cache. Otherwise it won't see the new images, because it uses the cached directory listing for seeing what pieces are there.
Well if you have a piece that does have a defined move, you could move any piece you want to get rid of in its path, (through an illegal move to an empty square, which is always accepted), capture it with that, and then move it back. I agree this is more cumbersome, but I don't know how often thise works.
I don't know what variant you are using this for, but when you want Alfaerie pieces, you could also use the Play-Test Applet, which uses these by default. There you can define the correct moves, and if you want whole-board images, you can just take screenshots of it.
Play Chess Variants with Jocly. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Mar 27 06:22 PM UTC in reply to François Houdebert from 06:14 PM:Well, this is a bit tricky, since the webspace I use there is not really my own, but is hosted by someone I cooperated with long ago for the development of XBoard. And the problem appears to be that someone (not that person, so presumably someone from the hosting company itself with root access) renamed the gitweb.cgi script to 'gitweb.cgi_disabled_by_HL'. Now I could of course rename it back, but I suppose they intervened with the private files of their customers for a good reason (probably to do with security), and don't want to anger the hosting company and create trouble for the person that allows me to use his webspace. So I am still trying to figure out what to do that would keep everybody happy.
BTW, that gitweb.cgi is no longer there should not prevent you from pulling from the repository.
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Resigning in a 3-player game is a serious problem, though. I think the rule that is currently stated is very unsatisfactory. In fact most games are expected to enter a phase where one of the players has no hope at all to win, and would likely lose interest at that point. If one of the players was obviously winning, resegnation at that point, resulting in a 3/4-3/4-0 score, would rob him of the deserved victory. Preferably resignation of one of the players would not disturb the balance of power between the other two, and desiding upon a result immediately would almost always do that.