Comments by benr

The promotion of pawns to pieces you've captured is a really interesting idea.  I also like the guard (does that piece appear elsewhere?), and the graphics are very pretty.

I've reformatted the submission to better fit our template, and picked 2011 as the invention date.

Edit: Oh, and added to the LinkText. Let me know if you don't like it.

(The first couple of remarks below reference Fergus's old comment here.)

The errors are indeed quite troubling.  Perhaps you can reach out to John Beasley; he has a list of errata/omissions included as "Toward ECV3" on his site.

As for brevity, I've found many of the game descriptions lacking; I suspect that was mostly to keep the overall length short.  (I'll also note, though I don't think this applies to any of your games, that some games seem to be included light-heartedly, and incomplete descriptions of these do not bother me.)

Evidently, Beasley cut out some examples of play from the first edition, assuming the reader would already own the first edition (not true of me, nor I suspect of most readers who have access only to the freely shared version now on Beasley's website), which would be nicer to have.

But overall, I find the CECV to be an excellent resource.  Pritchard (and occasionally Beasley) go into detail on games he (they) find particularly interesting, and list references for most of the games (though many of those have since become difficult to obtain).  Many games appear in both CVP and CECV, while many reside only in one or the other; but I doubt many "serious" variants lie in neither.

That's me, I was about to email about some things. I've moved these two comments to the old thread.

chess+compounds was working before; taginfo.php was already decoding urls.

Suggest that semantic URLs use underscores for spaces instead?  They seem easy to understand as replacing a space, less likely to be actually used in a tag name, and easy to replace in taginfo after decoding.

I think we need to come to a decision on tag relationships.  I think three things have been floated:

1. using TagParent in the database to build a treelike hierarchy
2. allowing tags to have tags via their taginfo page (this gets away from the idea that only games will have tags)
3. no formal relationship, just using the tag names (as I've done so far, with the colon-separated tag names)
4. no relationships

I agree with Fergus that 3 isn't great.  Is 1 flexible enough for what we'd want to do?  Any other ideas?

Originally 1 was my intent (hence the database column TagParent).  If we go that way (or something similar), how should the list of games with a parent tag be displayed?  Just those with the parent tag, not any of the descendents?  Or all games with the parent or descendent tags in one list?  Or several lists, one for each descendent tag?  (I think a list of games with the parent tag but none of the descendents could be useful, e.g. to find "unique" applications of the tag's description.  Having all the lists on the one page is redundant, but perhaps useful?)

@Greg: it looks like GameSettings wants your userID, not your PersonID.

Something has broken the Random Game script recently; I always get sent to the same Betza game, "csipgs Chess."  I can't think of any recent changes that should have affected this; that game lands somewhere around 600th out of 3000.  Are others experiencing the same issue?

(As an aside, concerning the first randomization query: removing the LIMIT 1 and running, I sometimes get no results and sometimes many.  I think the use of RAND() generates a different random number for each row, contrary to Fergus's comment in an earlier thread.  Maybe since then we've changed some setting on the database?  Anyway, while this could clean things up, I don't expect it's responsible for my always-Betza problem.)

I came across this page and the comments about initial setup.  I agree, and have updated the images.  While I was at it, I changed the first image to use the Diagram Designer.  (I left the second; I guess I have a soft spot for those ffen->diagram scripts.)

For the record, the old diagrams put bishops on file b rather than c.  It may be worth mentioning, that setup does guard the vulnerable c pawns, so it might be a worthwhile alternative setup, if same-color bishops don't bother you or if you adopt a bishop conversion rule.

I've just now looked into the missing log that Kevin mentioned in the last post here.  The log still exists:
/play/pbm/play.php?game=TessChess&log=panther-benr-2016-364-346
but there is no entry for it in the database in either of the relevant tables

Do you mean in your current Game Courier game?  It doesn't appear to be your turn yet.

You should request aid in just one place; this one seems the most reasonable, so I'll remove your other comments.

(By the way, I'm relying on Google translate for your messages, so apologies if I misunderstand.)

We have three round+hexagonal variants listed here (at least that are categorized as such):
https://www.chessvariants.com/index/mainquery.php?category=Hexagonal,Round
and all three of them opt for drawing the board round—stretching the hexagons as necessary—rather than just drawing the hexagonal board and including the rule for wrapping from one side to the other.  I suppose some of the wraparound moves might be harder to see; but I think the knight moves in the last image here are also a little difficult, maybe because of the warping of the outer hexes.

This falls into the "non-chess game played with chess pieces" outskirts of the chess variant spectrum.  Being single-player pushes it all the further out, but is interesting and unusual.

This page could really use a diagram, but at the very least the location and sizes of the landmasses and temple gates need to be specified.  (Is the temple itself an obstruction to movement?)

I remember reviewing this page.  I don't have the mentioned email record (maybe I was using the chessvariants@yahoo address back then?).  We had some problems around then with submissions defaulting to "Freederick" as their submitter, hence the comments from Mariano.  I have no idea how the author would have been changed again to erik; Mariano is still a user here, so it's not like some weird thing connected to deletion of users...

Actually, I don't know why the title of the page has "(hidden)" appended either.

2:35, he came so close to defining the unicorn ('triagonal' slider), then just kinda went "nah".

8:18, looks like probably the best shot of the starting position.  That one pawn on the backmost rank is odd.  It also looks a little different to me, so maybe it's a replacement queen?

I like the "projected" 3D boards, shrinking as the levels go up, for ease of reaching the pieces inside, though I wonder whether it makes seeing moves harder.

The board notation is available elsewhere in the game's pages:  notation page

I agree that the presentation is unclear in this case.  My impression is that the author just used a standard definition for knight, not recognizing the problem caused by the gaps (or assuming the diagram made it clear).

Sorry for the confusion.  That page is under the "Related Pages" menu, but maybe the different name muddies things.  I'll try to add a link to the page contents when I get home.

I've also reformatted your comments to visually separate the rulebook quotes from your remarks.

Re: modest variants:

The "official" definition is here:
https://www.chessvariants.com/other.dir/modest.html

But I think the term is often used more flexibly outside of our category system, where it is also useful as a (subjective) measure of distance-from-chess.

Initial thoughts (mostly the ones I had but didn't post a couple of months ago; sorry):

I like the tool a lot; thanks for creating and sharing.  For individual piece(clopedia) pages, I wonder whether something static would be better.  I think the whole table is a lot more in-depth than many of our piece pages, so maybe a summarized version (if necessary for a couple of board sizes?) would be a better fit for those.  (On that note though, I have at various times wanted to expand on and standardize piece(clopedia) pages...)  I think the entire tool itself would work well as its own page, maybe listed as Primary (so displayed at the top of searches) in the Piece(clopedia) page type?

That depends on the meta-information you provide when you submit the game.  I think I've fixed them both.  (This game was listed as 8x10, but with 96 cells, and WAD Chess was listed as 8x8.  I added both to the Large category.)

You should address Aurelian's question, here and on the rest of your batch of preset submissions.  (I added such links to one of your submissions and approved it, before another editor approved the rest.  You may want to consider creating Game pages for them, unless they are still in testing?)

That's all pretty much how I was thinking of how to implement it too.  Since the Piececlopedia is fairly small, I'm inclined to just edit by hand.

I've been wanting to database-ify some Piece information; maybe linking to the applet page with piece Betza notation, drawn from such a table, would be a good starting point.

(Further comments, made during the creation of this tool, can be found in this Subject thread.)

The BN piececlopedia page now has a blurb (in the Notes section) as suggested by H.G., passing the appropriate information to the limited EGT page.  If it looks and works fine, I will try to include similar links in the other Piececlopedia pages.

I currently have this page set as a Piececlopedia page, but that seems somehow unsatisfactory.  It strikes me as best categorized as Reference or Problem/puzzle/1-player, but those are not highly publicized.  Maybe the link from the minimal tool (from Piececlopedia pages) is enough?  Or perhaps a direct link from Topic Index is warranted?

I agree with Greg.  Since this is derived from your Yangsi, maybe the name could reference that.  "DeWitt's Decimal" would work, but it seems like you like your other decimal game better.

You needn't bother moving the content to another page just for the naming.  Since the page is pretty young, we can modify the relevant references without too much trouble.

I don't see the "either side can move first" as being particularly noteworthy.  You've eliminated the white/black advantage, but the first/second player advantage isn't changed.

Personally, this seems to just be a decimal subvariant of Fergus's Gross Chess; the rule adjustments seem to just be conforming to the smaller board.  The further piece reduction to your other game (in particular using the Leo in place of the Pao and Vao) seems a more separate variant (while still clearly inspired by Gross, with the compounds and Omega pieces and hopper[s]).

While it's easy enough to guess your intention by looking at the Shako and Balbo pages, this page should mention the powers of the elephant and cannon, pawn starts and promotions.  (I guess castling is pretty obviously out.)

John, please feel free to email me with any questions about the submission process.  I'd be happy to help you, and even happier to know of any pain points we might be able to simplify.

I might be able to play...

Since I cannot imagine anyone actually voting to play TessChess, maybe I'll put forward Tim's 3D Chess; it's 3D, so may tempt folks to try other 3+ dim games like Tess, it's not 4D itself, and it's a little slicker IMO than Raumschach with the two kings.  I should be able to adapt my Raumschach rules-enforcing preset for this, if someone can help me figure out how the two royal pieces should be done.  [If not, maybe I'll just pick another from my Favorites or Recognized.]

@Aurelian, the list of games is on this page we're commenting on.
I think if both players miss an illegal move, then that's still "fair"; however, it sounds like there are several people ready to work on rule enforcement on presets, so hopefully this will be moot anyway.

Inventor changed.

I've unhidden, but the movements need to be made clearer.  At first, I thought this was just a different visualization of hexagonal chess; but the game is included in the Classified Encyclopedia, apparently with different bishop and knight movements.

From how long ago do you mean?  What pages/items do you have a hard time finding?  What is going wrong with GC?  "Alfaerie: Many" is still around.  (I'm less likely to be able to help with GC issues...)

@Kevin:

The icon for page types correspond to the Item Type (see the query forms to get a list of them).  The submission form doesn't currently give you all those choices, but an editor can change the page Type later.  I could look into adding other Types to the scripts; the main issue is whether the page layout and database information would need to be highly customized for any of them.

That reminds me, you posted earlier about pages' item Types and I forgot to respond.  Unlike game Categories, a page can only have one Type, so sometimes we just have to pick the subjective best fit.

The "New" and "Updated" icons are generated automatically, when the content's creation date or modification date are relatively recent.  (But the rest of your comment makes me think you meant something else, that I don't understand?)

It wouldn't take long to compile the list of image icons and their associated Types.  On the other hand, some of the Types are so infrequently used, and possibly are better off being deprecated.  There are other oddities of the site, arising throughout our history (like pages with multiple games, and attempts to index each game therein) that would be difficult to remedy but should probably remain obscure.

That's just the default behavior for a new submission, since most user-submitted pages are their own inventions.  I've updated the information.  Thanks!

Neat!

Checkmating with the Dragon fly

Play with the Wyvern (The checkmating applet doesn't seem to like the jumping sideways rook component, putting the black king in check by that move.)

@sxg: Oh no!  I wasn't aware of any such problem, but I also don't know how to look into such local connection issues.  (We were down for about a week a little while ago, but nowhere near the months you're reporting.)

@wody: Many of our Piece articles describe many pieces, and our single-piece Piececlopedia articles are few enough that a random link doesn't seem useful.  But I have been wanting to expand on our piece decscriptions, including some new database tables; if and when I get around to that such a random link would be nice, and I'll be sure to add that.

@softburritoz: Your personal information page has you registered 4/19, but your comment dated 4/18.  Does that mean your problem is resolved (or maybe the dates are relative to different time zones)?

We've had some difficulties getting emails sent to certain domains in the past; have you checked your spam box?

Background images work for the "Custom Grid" Shape.

The menu-generated links to Ratings should be updated to include `/play/`, but inserting that myself still doesn't seem to pass the game parameter to the rating script.  I can try to fix this later if no one else gets to it.

On the other hand, directly entering 'Chess' in the form produces what seem to be reasonable numbers...?

I've fixed the header menu to point Ratings and Logs of a game to the correct locations.

The script here used `gamewcp` ("wild-card pattern", I assume), but at least some links are using `game` as request variables.  For now, rather than track down all usages, I've just allowed `game` to override `gamewcp`.

I've also changed the default Status Filter to Only Rated Games.

(This is in response to a few messages here.)

Also, @Kevin, I still can't recreate the problem with including all logs.  Using the game filter Chess shows only a few games per person, with Carlos at the high 40 and a few others in the teens.  Are you removing the wildcard (`%`)?

I agree that this looks interesting.

I've moved the discussion over from the homepage to comments here.  I've made the link description more descriptive, and corrected some of the categories (your choices were understandable, but most of them mean something different here; something we should clarify).  The formatting of this page should be cleaned up; I can do it later if you're not up to it.

I agree that this is getting pretty far from chess.  It has the same wargame/chess crossover feel of some other games here, but this is probably further out.  But, I've always thought this site should be pretty inclusive.  And the tactical portion of this game is fairly chesslike (in fact, it almost would work as a standalone variant).

I'll work on some more formatting here in a minute.

I haven't read all of the details, so maybe I've missed it, but: what does the terrain "strengthening" and "weakening" actually do?  How are they located?
Edit: Oh, I see, "strengthen" and "weaken" are not separate effects, just a note about how the terrain affects pieces differently.

(And I might as well mention again that I don't particularly like publishing variants without the inventors' real names, but that ship has sailed.)

The diagrams no longer work as intended because of a change in the diagram designer:
https://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?id=36723

I'll make the necessary changes when I have a chance.

Edit: done, although using the !-markers rather than the ./#-markers.

The change of interpretation of the period from movement-marker to single empty square has affected a few pages.  (The changes were documented in this comment thread; a bug report was made at https://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?id=37820 .) 

I have added the new functionality's description to the introduction here.

I've identified 25 affected pages, all but one of them by Charles Gilman.  (I only ran the search on member-submitted pages' Pieces section.  There were 4 false positives in the regex [from another author], so perhaps not all of these actually have problems.  The other affected page is an old never-published submission.)

ItemID    
MSaltorth-hex-chess    
MSnearlydouble-wildebeest    
MSnimrod-chess    
MSbachelor-nimrod    
MSman-and-beast-01-constitutional-characters    
MSman-and-beast-03-from-ungulates-outward    
MSman-and-beast-04-generalised-generals    
MSman-and-beast-06-the-heavy-brigade    
MShunterbeest    
MSman-and-beast-07-when-beasts-collide    
MSman-and-beast-08-diverse-directions    
MSman-and-beast-09-mighty-like-a-rose    
MSman-and-beast-11-long-nosed-generals    
MSman-and-beast-12-alternative-fronts    
MSman-and-beast-13-straight-and-crooked-moving    
MSman-and-beast-14-oddly-oblique    
MSman-and-beast-15-strengthened-across-the-board    
MSman-and-beast-19-the-vice-squad    
MSwestfield-chess    
MSman-and-beast-21-lords-high-everything-else    
MSfragnurasian-qi    
MSbachelor-hunterbeest    
MSaltorth-with-further-piece-types    
MSknavish-chess    

There might be a regex solution to fixing all of these pages, which seems superior to doing them by hand or splitting off a version of this script for the old period-markers, but I don't want to accidentally break anything more.  I think the periods that need to be replaced can be described as those following `drawdiagram.php`...`code=`, before any closing `>` or argument-separating `&`.  I'll think/look at it more later, but comments are eagerly solicited.

The contents are here, just hidden pending editorial review.  But Greg's point does stand that this should have a different name to differentiate it from the existing Flip Chess.  Maybe something that indicates the hidden information aspect?

@Kelvin, I think these are equivalent, because of the current text's requirement "always in the same coordinate plane," or from the later "never step through the corner of a cell."

Also equivalent, I think, is the one-orthogonal one-diagonal-outward if this page treated the unicorn's "triagonal" as non-diagonal.  I think maybe the easiest description would be "like a knight in any of the coordinate planes," but that's probably pretty subjective.

If you disagree with any of these equivalences, could you point out an example move that one has that the other doesn't?

@Prussia,

1) We (an editor) will need to change the name; let us know when you're settled on one.  (Also, to me, Undercover seems like the player should know their own pieces' identities.  "Reveal" or something, but that suffers the same problem and hints at existing Revelation.  Hmm.)

2) You should be able to upload images from your computer using the "upload files" link just after the bottom of the game description -- the part that begins with the 'm' icon and "This 'user submitted' page ...".  The editing links for you (including the image upload) will only display when you are logged in.  If you want to use the diagram designer, there should be some suitable modified-pawn images that would work, or maybe using the dotted modifier recently described there.  (A black dot over pieces that are technically unknown to the players, but which you want to show the reader?)

I also wanted to mention that this reminds me a little of V.R. Parton's Identific Chess (here currently only as a Friedlander applet; I'll have to write an article later), which led me also to David Howe's Potential Chess.

The relevant file seems to be missing.  (Also, I don't have Zillions, so another editor would need to verify that the file works should it be uploaded.)

What game/preset?  (This comment thread is the general Game Courier one, not attached to a particular preset.)

@Luigi, Can you give an example?  I've not encountered this.

Nice!

We don't generally allow users to completely delete an index entry.  I will remove this manually in a few days if you don't want it.

The diagrams need some work (they have various additional markers?), and you don't need to include diagrams for FIDE pieces.

Yes, graphics are present now, and I've unhidden the page.

You might consider renaming the Chimera Rider, since "rider" is a common variant piece descriptor.

Last time it was just because there were no published submissions in the time period.  It's probably the same this time, but I'll check (and I'll check the pending-approval queue).

An interesting in-development single-player game:
https://j4nw.itch.io/pawnbarian

"A quick-playing roguelike puzzler" incorporating minor deck-building components, a small-board one-v-rest similar to Maharajah, and (new and old(?)) fairy pieces.  Pretty entertaining already, I'll be interested to see how it develops.

This still needs diagrams, or at the very least starting positions specified.

Clicking the download link takes me to a 404 missing page.  I'm not sure if the relevant file is actually just somewhere else, or wasn't uploaded?

This game was also invented in 1970 by C. G. Lewin under the name Knights Chess.  It appears in Chapter 14 of the CECV, and Ed Friedlander made a java applet here (though we don't seem to have a Game page for it).

Thanks Armin!

I've added links to the settings files on the respective Preset pages:
https://www.chessvariants.com/play/minishogi
https://www.chessvariants.com/play/judkins-shogi

(I've forgotten the convention about Inventors of Preset pages...the preset author or the game inventor?  Fergus, Greg, Joe?)

Judkin's original settings file doesn't appear to actually be different from the Chess one, so perhaps it should be deleted.

I've just tested on my own account, and the email was received, though sorted into the spam folder.  Have you double-checked your spam folder?  (My target account is administrated by google, though it's not a `gmail.com` address; I know we've had problems with gmail addresses in the past.)

@Amy, I've reduced the repetition of material in each section, and some other light editing.  Please check that it reads alright to you.

Does the RF-checkmate mean any checkmate in which the RF takes some part, or must the RF be delivering check?  What about when the RF "contributes" but is redundant (other pieces cover its attack squares)?  (Maybe these questions don't actually matter, given the RF's restrictions; I haven't thought about any specific position yet.)

You say the RF prioritizes "safe" squares, but from the subsequent discussion it sounds like perhaps you meant "empty"?

Odd, I can't log in from this login page either, but I can log in through the menu on other pages.  Trying to log in from this page (/login/login.php) takes me to /login/cvplogin.php which hangs.

I don't receive a cookies message on this page, but I can confirm the same adblocker message behavior.

gmail addresses have had problems receiving emails from us, but that shouldn't affect your login, especially not abruptly like this.

I've just realized I don't actually know when the red fool moves from the text.  I'd assume it doesn't have its own turn, but instead acts as a piece that one of the players can move during their turn?  Must it be moved if it is attacked, and (especially if so) does the player get to move the RF in addition to or just instead of one of their own pieces?  Does "attacked" depend on whose turn it is (i.e., if the RF is attacked only by a black piece, can black move the RF)?

I still don't completely understand "safe"/"either empty or undefended": is there a priority among the three options (an empty and unthreatened square, an empty but threatened square, and an occupied but unthreatened square)?  I guess here "threatened" doesn't depend on piece colors?

@KelvinFox, for a Piececlopedia article (and useful advice even for ordinary Piece articles), see
https://www.chessvariants.com/piececlopedia.dir/guidelines.html

You can use the Post Your Own Game scripts, using only the Introduction field, to have a more flexible header system.  (When the fields other than Introduction are empty, the headers are suppressed, and you can include your own.)  You can't select Piece or Piececlopedia, but we (the editors) can change that after.  (But if you want to put it in the Piececlopedia, you'll need to ask Fergus whether he'd prefer/insist on a static html file instead of script submission.)

Happy 25th anniversary, Chess Variant Pages!

Thanks for following up.  I checked with Firefox (v66), removing cookies and then logging in, and didn't have a problem.  The cookie whose presence determines that message (I think) is cvpuser, which ought to get populated when you first try to log in.  Is that one of the five that got stored for you?

...and the overzealous use of caching seems to be the browser, not our site.  I don't know what changed, or if there's an easy thing for us to do to override that browser behavior.  (On some pages we've been appending dummy unique ids as part of the query in URLs, which fixes the caching but is not ideal.)

In the intervening time, we've had submissions from strong community members who do not have their real names displayed on these pages.  I (and I think we?) still have a slight preference for real names, for the encyclopedic nature of the site, but there are many sites now where site-famous people are later referred to as "user xyz of site abc," so maybe it's fine.

Another thing that changed in the time since your submission: the Diagram Designer.  The use of a period to denote a dot on the board (for movement diagrams) has been deprecated; you can replace them with a pound symbol (#), or a few other options.

I've made a few grammatical and layout edits, and Reviewed the page.  For now it is a Piece article, pending Fergus's review for the Piececlopedia.  I listed Betza as the inventor.

When I click the button, it also displays the old graphics and the message that rules are not enforced; however, when I enter the URL directly or click on Move, it brings up the new rules-enforcing settings.  Another weird cache effect?

@fergus, this page is just a copy of https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/chess-on-an-infinite-plane with different graphics.  (Although now I see that that page has some issues with characters as well.)

The most obvious difference with Cheshire Cat Chess is when n>1.  But also the elimination of draw rules makes it interesting, IMO.  An insufficient material endgame, for example, becomes a puzzle similar to Joust Chess.

I've added a tag square-removal to track similar games.

I agree that this is really very far out on the chess variant spectrum.  I don't think I'd say it's more a poker variant than a chess variant though.  I tend to err on the side of inclusiveness; Greg?

Actually, I think it would be a better game with more poker elements; a matching pair/triple, or flush/straight (but only three cards) should confer some bonus in the chess phase?

And, if the game is to stay, the page needs a fair bit of formatting work.

Welcome, Zied and Ola!

The page is no longer empty, but the images are external, and do not work.  (The links do work, interestingly.)

I see you've also included some attempts at local image inclusion, but they point to nonexistant files here.  I've edited the first one to point to the location I would expect your images to be hosted (@Fergus, is this documented somewhere for users?), but I don't find any files there either; have you uploaded any images yet (there's a link near the bottom of the page when you are logged in)?

I did not understand it from the text on this page, but reading the linked description of Bushi Shogi, I think I now understand it.  I don't think the cannons actually play any role, except to denote the two sides.  A sample game on this page would be helpful.

It would be very hard to call this a chess variant, or even a shogi variant, IMO.

I've added the checkmating potential note to this page.

I wanted to call out that the "vocabulary" section here seems to disagree with our current definition of adjacent in the glossary, when referring to hexagonal variants.  I think such sections in the Piececlopedia should generally be replaced to a link to the glossary, but we should consider whether we like the glossary definition of "adjacent" for hexagonal boards.

While I don't get the author information block displayed on this page, I assume (based on the link on my own page and the itemID of this page) that the link is 
https://www.chessvariants.com/index/managefiles.php?itemid=MSphantom
which gives me the error:

The directory  /membergraphics/MSphantom/  does not exist.

Trying to navigate directly to the folder also fails.

and if you'll allow the humble 8x8, you can test out that endgame:
https://www.chessvariants.com/membergraphics/MSinteractive-diagrams/EGT.html?betza=WAD&name=Champion&img=champion
(I really like this thing; thanks H.G.!)

I noticed that the Champion's Piececlopedia page has an incorrect diagram (due to the new marker code).  I'll fix that and add a link to the 8x8 checkmating practice after work today.

I don't understand the phrase "Draws are possible; stalemates are not."  But in the addendum, point 3 is pretty clear:  

If you cannot make a move during your turn, you lose.

So the Vf1xf7 move H.G. brings up is actually a winning move.

I get that the Templar is a knight plus captureless-ox, but the other pieces that move like a "Templar but not as an Ox" should instead just say they move like a knight or <whatever>; I think that would be substantially clearer.

The Giraffe's description wasn't clear to me, but the movement diagram mostly fixes that.  But, is the Giraffe blocked by a piece diagonally adjacent?