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Comments by benr

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8-Piece Chess. (Queen's Army chess, all 8 Back Rank Pieces different).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Sep 16, 2019 07:24 PM UTC:

Nice!


About Game Courier. Web-based system for playing many different variants by email or in real-time.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Sep 16, 2019 02:41 AM UTC:

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


Game Courier. PHP script for playing Chess variants online.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Sep 9, 2019 02:47 PM UTC:

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


MZmegamix[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Aug 19, 2019 04:38 PM UTC:

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.)


SacriliChess. Members-Only A point-buy chess format that allows promotions for all 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.

Hidden Random Chess. This is a two-player game that incorporates the element of chance in chess.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Jul 19, 2019 03:39 AM UTC:

@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.


Raumschach. The classical variant of three-dimensional chess: 5 by 5 by 5. (5x(5x5), Cells: 125) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Jul 15, 2019 09:26 PM UTC:

@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?


Hidden Random Chess. This is a two-player game that incorporates the element of chance in chess.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Jul 13, 2019 05:20 PM UTC:

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?


Diagram Designer. Lets you display diagrams without uploading any graphics.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Jul 8, 2019 03:23 AM UTC:

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.


Hunterbeest. Large variant with one each of distinctive Nimrod pieces, and of similar set of oblique pieces. (11x10, Cells: 110) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sun, Jul 7, 2019 04:28 PM UTC:

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.


StrataChess v1.0. separate Strategic and Tactical gameplay. 2-6 players. Element of Chance. Terrain. Build your own armies.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Sun, Jul 7, 2019 04:13 PM UTC:

(Er, I hadn't thought about how "that ship has sailed" would be interpreted:  I hadn't meant it for this variant, as a criticism of Greg for publishing it; rather, I was trying to indicate the last few years during which a few new anonymous inventors have had material published here.  And as Greg noted, this does include great community members like wtdr2, so I don't hold this position firmly; I would just like to encourage inventors to attach their names to their variants.)


Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, Jul 6, 2019 01:05 AM UTC:

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.)


Turnover. Three ring sizes fit into each other, combining and splitting into different pieces, sometimes taking over your opponent's.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Jun 25, 2019 01:39 AM UTC:

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.


Game Courier Ratings. Calculates ratings for players from Game Courier logs. Experimental.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Jun 18, 2019 04:19 PM UTC:

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 (`%`)?


Game Courier. PHP script for playing Chess variants online.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Jun 17, 2019 02:16 PM UTC:

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...?


Diagram Designer. Lets you display diagrams without uploading any graphics.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, May 28, 2019 01:54 AM UTC:

Background images work for the "Custom Grid" Shape.


Sign in to the Chess Variant Pages. Sign in to the Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Apr 22, 2019 06:07 PM UTC:

@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?


Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Apr 12, 2019 01:40 PM UTC:

@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.


Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Thu, Apr 11, 2019 09:19 PM UTC:

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.)


Onitama. Cards decide how pieces move, perfect information with no chance beyond setup.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Mar 11, 2019 11:44 AM UTC:

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!


Hexagonal Chess Notation. Article discussing Hexagonal Chess notation.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Wed, Feb 20, 2019 03:48 PM UTC:

@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.


Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Feb 1, 2019 09:14 PM UTC:

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...)


Masonic Chess. Game played on a Masonic tile board.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Tue, Jan 29, 2019 09:51 PM UTC:

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.


Game Courier Tournament 2019. Chess Variant Tournament to be played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 12:51 PM UTC:

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.


Hectochess. 10x10 variant that can be played with 2 mismatched Chess sets.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Jan 14, 2019 07:44 PM UTC:

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.


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