Comments by catugo

@Fergus,

We have discussed this before. I like it better this way. Anyway when the preset is down I'll make a customization. Probably many would prefer 3 colors.

And by the way guys, I have some self criticism on my own regarding the three games. The non-pawn pieces, pawns ratio needs to be closer to one as there are many jumping pieces and strong pieces that easily cut through regular pawn chains. Also it felt naturally to have a cannon-rook battery on the edge, with berolina pawn ahead. But after a few tests I'm afraid that the player that moves the berolina first gets an advantage. Try it with the interactive diagram.

@ Bn Em & @ Daniel Zacharias

Thanks for pointing out the mistake with the knight. They were the result of bad copy pasting. The correct knight here is NmZ and in the modern variantion is NmHmA.

@ Jean-Louis, Thanks for taking an interest for my games:

1. The board is colored in 4 colors because of the fact that the nightrider is easier to visualize this way.
2. About the XBetza notation HG I think made his point.
3. In falcon chess the falcon is a piece with longer read and more end squares than the leapers (knight). I wanted to do the same, so the Vulture is done. Also over there the falcon piece is rook strength at least. I wanted a rook strength piece so I added the extra just move jumps. They are jumps as the piece would be hard to develop.
4. The knight is enhanced to keep it the same strength as a bishop (who on a 12x12 board has a longer reach). On a 10x10 board those are too much it turns out making the enhanced knight 0.5 pawns stronger than the bishop. Hopefully in the 12x12 case this will be alleviated.
5. I did not want a color bound piece for the modern elephant. Also with the extra trebuchet power it is closer to the other minor pieces.
6. I don't like the camel and zebra because they are too clumsy to use so that in these 3 games so they have short range aid. I had noticed that the short range long range piece deliver quite interesting forks.
7. The thunderbird and firebird are bent riders akin the griffin and manticore. It is just they get the bending later. They also have extra moves in order to keep them in the queen value neighborhood. I like using bend riders because they provide more strategic decisions. That is because their riding property does not allow them to be immediately useful but only in tandem with the clearing of the board.
8. I'm not sure what are you asking by simpler rules, but these games are named apothecary because of the way old pharmacists were tinkering with substances trying to make a cure. As them did I try different ideas from which some admittedly a bit crazy in order to explore many possibilities. These 3 games are my first attempt at 12x12 boards and hopefully from working on them I'll get sufficient experience for my future designs.

HG, Are you here?

Greg, Actually a while ago I have sent an email. But I had solved the problem on my own. But there is still the issue of a bug I had found. When trying to change the appearance of the "white" squares, it does not work. Can you send me again the source files you currently are confident they work. I want to try some things with the joker. I'm not sure if my email is fine. It probably is and I had missed the previous mail, when you did just that.

Greg, could you indulge me over this weekend?

In this game I cannot move my rooks : https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Chinese+Chess&log=catugo-cvgameroom-2021-269-200&userid=catugo

Fergus,

The games I was playing with Oisin in this tournament have been over since he had not the possibility to move and they resulted in a time lost. He had around 2 days of time. Can you restore the clocks since before the site going down?

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Apothecary+Chess-Modern&log=sxg-catugo-2021-214-201

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Apothecary+Chess-Classic&log=sxg-catugo-2021-214-201

I had tried that already and it did not work at the time. Now I saved it twice and it works. It seems that the saving twice necessity is still present.

HG,

At the same link before I have the absolute value to the dir like that: setsystem dir "/graphics.dir/alfaerie/";

It seems it is wrong. Where is my mistake?

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Applet

This is the one!

It does not work. I'm using whole paths becuase I need those images. They are not in the default directory!