Comments by benr

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.

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?)

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.

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.)

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

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.

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.)

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

If we're going with long tag names, I'm not sure if tagSentences will be necessary.

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

(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.

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.

I would think the "one copy" thing is so common as homage (whether conscious or not) to having just one queen in FIDE.

I've heard similar ideas for bigger versions of Bughouse chess, but I don't think I've heard it in connection to tournament design.  I guess you could just do one trio and the rest usual Basque doubles, allowing any odd number of players?

I'm not entirely sure that a longer cycle like this would balance things as well; it makes it easy to balance the number of games played as black/white, but not against each player...

I'm guessing that while Fergus was fixing scripts, the new comments that were written had their subjects corrupted. I will push all the recent comments under the "something is off" subject.

wdtr's image still has some (monster) code in the source, which is also throwing off the "View" (and perhaps also wdtr's "Edit") link. I'll try to fix that while I'm in the database. BTW, for "subjects" like this (as opposed to comments attached to a page/ItemID) the scripts generate the hex code as the identifier, in addition to the subject title given by the user.

EDIT: done (but I edited wdtr's image link out using the site's scripts rather than directly in the database).

In the database, there was a "unique index" on the Tag column, so the same tag couldn't be used on two different pages or by two different people.  I deleted the index, and was able to give the tag "trigonal" to a couple of pages.

(Your intention, that the three columns together form a "composite primary key," seems to be working.)

This should now be fixed.

(The important part of that message was "contributor"; you need that elevated status granted by an editor before uploading files to the site.)

While we do fairly frequently bring up the question of what exactly qualifies something as a "chess variant," we acknowledge that there are different definitions.  For this reason I think we try to be inclusive rather than exclusive in allowed items.  (At least, that is my justification, and I suspect that may have been the case historically as well.  Also, it is helpful that this is a website and not a book: if I were writing another Encyclopedia of CV's, I would be more inclined to be exclusive for space considerations.)

Specifically here, we have a game played with a chess board and chess pieces (well, pieces with chess movement plus arrow-firing), but the goal and some mechanics have been completely changed.  (Somewhere, I can't find it now, this group of games is described.  Joust is another example, and maybe even puzzles like the 8 Queens and similar things qualify.)

I've generally thought of Crossovers differently: they are specifically a blending of Chess with some other established game.  E.g., I wouldn't consider this game or Joust crossovers.  Cheskers is a crossover with checkers, and For the Crown is a crossover with deck-building games.

Cheskers actually does seem to meet the royalty condition, though in a different way than standard chess (starting with more than one, and allowing the addition of new ones).

This has some interesting ideas.  I would strongly encourage you to add the information directly to this site; external links have a habit of disappearing.  Adding a writeup directly here would be ideal, but even just uploading the pdf onto this server would be helpful.  [I don't think our image upload script will allow a pdf, but I can do the upload manually if you want; of course, then you can't edit it without resending to me or another editor...]

When will you be adding the other 8 factions?

How much have you playtested these armies against each other? I guess it is harder to gauge balance here, with the hidden information...

(I've moved this thread under the Favorites page.)

The vast majority of people favorite only a small handful of games; these are the "gold hearts" games for those users.  For more granularity, there's the rating system in the comments, though we've mostly dropped support for that as a recommendation system due to disuse. (edited; see Kevin's next comment)

The more complicated we make the process, the more there is to quibble about specifics of implementation.  I like the Favorites list (mostly) as it stands.  I would consider developing a more complicated system, but would want it to be separate from this page.

A bit of information: at present, here's a table of how many favorites people have:

The average number of favorites (among those with a positive number) is 7.2.

Yes, that's right.  That fact (and that kings cannot reach corners, and that K+R cannot force mate against k) is pointed out in Pritchard's Classified Encyclopedia.  Also mentioned there are some variants, which are available here under the Related menu as Friedlander's Java applets: Displaced Grid Chess, wherein the grids are moved one rank and one file resulting in the left- and right-most grids being only one wide and fixing the pawn problem; and Berolina Grid Chess, using Berolina pawns instead of ordinary ones.

(I'll fix the link description, which currently says grids are "4 by 4" squares.)