Ratings & Comments

They are called .zrf files. Make sure you have the extension right, and if that doesn't fix things, you can zip up your file and graphics and upload them here after creating a page for the ZRF. Then I'll take a look at it.

I made some minor changes. I have a few questions before publishing this. When you say, "our Royal game," are you referring to Chess or to some variant by that name? Where on www.S64chess.com are there articles on this game? Going to that website didn't give me any indication of how to find them. What is the URL for your Facebook page on this game?

Thanks,yes "our Royal game" refers to Chess. Paradigm Chess30 article URL is https://s64chess.com/2020/08/22/paradigm-chess30-3/ The Facebook page URL is https://www.facebook.com/Paradigm-Chess30-102086278342121 The Chess South Africa link is https://chessa.co.za/articles/docs/7.pdf

This is now published.

I would recommend using your userid for only one of you and creating a new one for the other one, as each listing in the Person table is supposed to be for one specific person. We can then update the credits for this page to include both of you.

Thanks Fergus I have created separate userid now; Craig Willenberg USERID:DragonB30, and Lourenzo van Niekerk USERID:Lollder for your perusal.

I have created separate userid now; Craig Willenberg USERID:DragonB30, and Lourenzo van Niekerk USERID:Lollder for your perusal.

Okay, I have now added Lourenzo van Niekerk as the second author and inventor.

Do you know how to implement the images in the links below into this page?

Download them from where you currently have them, upload them here, and use the IMG tag to place them into your HTML code.

Daphne//

I'm not sure the tactical or positional qualities of the game have been changed much, though one of the changes you've made (rule for switching minor pieces around) certainly adds to the richness of the options for play coming right out of the first opening moves. The potential for lots of powerful pieces eventually getting into action is still there.

Interesting cross over between decimal chess, shogi, janggi, xiangqi.

On the critical side, I find the rules of castling confusing: sometimes referring to the Jade, sometimes to the King. I guess they are applicable to both but a strict reading permits to doubt. So why two different names, apart from the exotic touch?

Also what the point to define an Apricot and a Whole if they are exactly identical to a Queen, or I missed something? I like the idea of promoting non-Pawn pieces, but not sure that promoting a BN and a RN to a Queen is so nice as these pieces will loose their knight-part.

Anyway, interesting game

Kevin // Thank you so much for the comments!! 8ㅅ8

Jean-Louis // Thank you!

1. The two King pieces are separated into Jade and King. I followed it. Therefore, it was necessary to explain Castling differently.

2. And, in Chess without Drop, BN (Cardinal) and RN (Marshal) are less valuable than Queen. So it reflected being promoted to Queen. Anyway, promotion is optional. There is no reason to promote BN or RN to Queen unless you want to. And in Shogi, all minor pieces are promoted to Gold. With this in mind, BN and RN were also promoted to Queen(a piece of the same status as Gold in Shogi).

3. Now castling is also possible with a moved or dropped Rook. Likewise, you can castling with a moved King. Of course, the King and Rook needed for Castling should be at the starting point. A dropped or moved pawn can move more than 2 squares, but I think it's strange that casting is impossible if the Rook and KIng are dropped or moved. So in Pandemonium, castling was modified to be possible multiple times. What do you all think about this?

(Because my English is not good, I rely heavily on Translate google. Therefore, there will be a lot of awkward parts in the sentence and there will be parts that you don't understand. If you have such a part, please tell me!)

I'm pleased to see this game! One correction : it is a trigonal, not hexaxonal, chess variant. The cells are triangles, not hexagons.

I unchecked the hexagonal category. However, it is accurate to say it played on "a hexagonal board of dark and light triangles," because the board is in the shape of a hexagon.

We should tackle the external images; one of:

1. bypass the upload limit temporarily
2. shrink the image data size without hurting quality too much
3. add a way for editors to hide the external image warning block (case-by-case)
4. maybe OK certain external sites? github ought to be pretty stable?

shrink the image data size without hurting quality too much

The file manager is able to do that.

Another way to look at this is that the authors should simply provide suitable images. 8MB for a few pieces and move diagrams is pretty ridiculous. We did not put an upload limit for no reason; space and bandwidth are not entirely free, and unlimited wasting of those resources will hurt.

The images I see now in no way qualify as 'high quality'. They are in fact awful. They contain lots of totally unnecessary detail (like an irregular texture for the background of a board) which enormously bloats them, and is detrimental to the purpose they are for (namely to convey how the pieces move). Less detail = better, and the image size is a good indication of the lack of suitability.

But they would still look ugly, without monochrome background. And using a monochrome background is bound to save a far larger factor than 50%.

And using a monochrome background is bound to save a far larger factor than 50%.

You misread what I wrote. That 50% refers to image quality. It is a value that is passed to the function for converting a PNG to a JPG. The reduction in filesize was around 90%. As I said, it reduced it to about 10% of the original size.

You use the phrase "within its possibilities" multiple times, but the meaning of that phrase is not defined, and I'm not sure what it means. Perhaps it means the spaces a piece could possibly move to. In that case, it would be clearer if you said so.

Only the creator of this game, whose identity is unknown, could speak authoritatively on this. I will point out that this game is based on Bughouse, not on Shogi, and it's resemblance to Chessgi is coincidence. Since Betza omitted the same rule in Chessgi, you might have better luck asking him why he omitted it. However, he is no longer active here.

Thanks for answering!

A more natural question would be: "is there any reason why checkmating with a pawn drop is forbidden in Shogi?". You can checkmate by dropping any other piece, so why would a special exception for Pawns be needed? Or for drop moves, as it is perfectly allowed to checkmate with a Pawn move on the board. It is a highly irregular rule exception. Unlike in Crazyhouse, where all pieces are treated the same in this respect. (But there it can be considered strange that Pawn dropping on the back rank is not allowed...)

That Shogi forbids dropping of Pawns in files that already contain one is understandable from the fact that Pawns capture straight forward there: without this rul you would quickly build an impenetrable fortress of doubled Pawns around your King, and the game would become unplayable. I never saw any detrimental effects of allowing Pawn-drop mates, though.

'Drop move' = dropping a piece from the hand on the board, as opposed to 'board move', where it was alreay on the board.

I love this universe! (´ ˘ `)

I suppose there is a 50-move rule, because it doesn't seem to make sense to continue a game that has not been able to see any progress in 50 moves. And since it is based on orthodox Chess, one would not expect any needless alterations of the Chess rules.

Likewise, one would expect stalemate to be a draw. But of course stalamate is only a theoretical possibility. To run out of legal moves you should have almost no material left. Which here means the opponnet has nearly all the pieces. So he would have such an overwhelming advantage that he would have checkmated you long before you got anywhere near having so little material that stalemate becomes a possibility.

(That were two questions, BTW! ;-) )

That's very informative - evidently my recall of the show was rather off. This CVP website also has a number of pages devoted to that 36x36 shogi variant.

For what it's worth, one of my older friends, who had lived in Japan for 5 years, was laughing his head off at the bath scene back then (a scene which also confirms this is the right show, I guess), along with another friend being doubled over, too. I didn't find the scene necessarily too odd, but rather I thought it was largely irrelevant to the shogi variant game being played - I suppose there has to be some sort of breakaway scene(s) at times from a game, though.

You can play Pandemonium on vchess!

https://vchess.club/#/variants/Pandemonium

Also, since the number of promotions to specific pieces is limited, the FEN notation for a game would need to be expanded somehow to keep track of which promotions have already been used.

That is not true, is it? You can see what is on the board, and at all times would be allowed to increase that to what you had in the opening position (which can also assumed to be known). And you cannot promote to an Elephant on the shade where you already have one.

Pawns may promote to lost pieces, with restrictions. One pawn may promote to either (lost) member of the following 4 pairs of pieces: dababbas; knights; elephants; minister-high priestess. If promoting to a lost elephant, the pawn must promote to the opposite color of a surviving elephant.

I took this to mean that only one pawn may promote to a lost piece in each pair.  In other words, once a pawn has promoted to knight, you cannot promote another pawn to a knight even if you lose another one.  Upon further reading, however, I see it is not entirely clear.  But the word "either" must have been chosen for some reason.

Are you doing this game for your program Chess V Greg. First off, I notice on your 'person info' page, the link to Chess V ....

http://sourceforge.net/projects/chessv

this doesn't seem to work.

I have actually done a zrf file for this, I did it years ago, but I notice it wasn't released, the file is titled 'great shatranj -test' lol, so I must of forgot. I see that I have made pawns able to promote to General, Minister or High Priestess :)

Joe, you need to change your pawn promotion rules, stop making life difficult for everyone :) .. and I sent you an email too, look in your junk email section hehe.

My original idea was to restrict promotions to only 1 piece total of each pair, or to 'generals', non-royal kings. However, I've always considered a game a collaboration between the designer and the players. ... Okay, when a bunch of designers says 'change your promotion rules!' I'm amenable. Grin, anything to get a game played!

If I were to suggest one different rule, I'd say promotion to the pasha (jumping general) might make the original version better. It has the virtue of being a powerful piece not in the original game. However, if you're playing with HG's variant which uses the pasha instead of the man, you might want to expand the possibilities.

Now, what would you all like to see?

Sorry whaaaatt, whose trying to make you change the promotion rules .. oh, Greg, shame on you!!! How could you!!

Alright, with that said, Joe, interesting idea with the Pasha, pretty powerful piece, Alfil Dabbaba Wazir Fers. Interesting because it isn't in the starting line up. I like it :)

It seems I always have misinterpreted this rule. The WinBoard inplementation of Great Shatranj allows promotion to any piece that was captured before. Fairy-Max doesn't support 'under-promotion', and always promotes to the same piece. So I had to pick the General for that.

It seems to me that the rule is needlessly complex. (And therefore a bad rule.) Dababba, Elephant or Knight would be very rare choices, so that you would want to pick any of those twice is a bit inconceivable. General would (in general ;-) ) be a better choice, and there is no limit on those. Minister and High Priestess are of course very strong, and the obvious choice when it can survive. The first promotion that does that, will very likely be decisive. Which makes it irrelevant whether you could do it a second time or not.

I'm fine with the General (Wazir/Fers) too, it's a less power piece than the Pasha, but either one, I don't want to influence Joe at all (lol).

Are you doing this game for your program Chess V

ChessV has played Great Shatranj since the early days.  The original versions (0.x) supported it fully.  But about eight years ago, I abandoned that code and rewrote from scratch (versions 2.x).  These also supported GS but the other day I noticed - to my horror! - that the promotion rule wasn't fully implemented.  I think I meant to talk with Joe about simpilifying it first and then forgot about it.  So the current version doesn't allow pawn promotion at all!  Obviously that needs to be fixed.

I notice on your 'person info' page, the link to Chess V .... doesn't seem to work.

Wow, yes, that link was very old indeed.  Thank you for pointing this out.  The new home is http://www.chessv.org/ You should check it out if you haven't seen it since the rewrite.  It's a huge improvement.

Regarding a new promotion rule, the options discussed are fine with me.  Should promotion be to General or Jumping General?  I guess it depends how decisive we want promotion to be.  A possible shortcoming to allowing promotion to only Jumping General would be the (admittendly very rare) situation where promoting to that piece would trigger a stalemate.  My personal suggestion would be either (A) pawns always promote to Generals, or (B) pawns may promote to a choice of Minister, High Priestess, or Jumping General.  But I'm not really picky.  My main objection to the current rule is that you cannot tell what promotion options are available by looking at the board - you have to know the game history.

The WinBoard implementation is really tailored to 'promotion to captured pieces, or Generals'. It shows the possible choices in the 'holdings' left and right of the board, where captured pieces go (without color flip). Initially it is filled with 10 Generals. So I would appreciate it if this stays the same, or at least when it remains forbidden to promote to something that was not captured first. Otherwise the user would not be able to select his choice in WinBoard. (Engines can always refuse a choice that they think is not appropriate.)

So: Pawns may promote to General or to any captured piece?

That's also fine with me. But preferably without any additional restriction about having two elephants on the same color.

Yes Greg, i'll check out your program.

And, I do like the General, it's a nice piece.

But preferably without any additional restriction about having two elephants on the same color.

Indeed. This is a pretty useless restriction anyway, as no one should want to do that in the first place. Same-colored Elephants are almost useless.

Say, speaking of Winboard, I notice the CECP specifies 'great' for Great Shatranj as an internal variant, but it doesn't specify if it is the 'D' or 'R' variant (although the brief description implies it is Great Shatranj D so I'm assuming this is the default.)

Any more comments or suggestions?

Hi Joe

Haven't heard from you in a while.

I can imagine some unusual circumstances where it might pay to underpromote to an elephant that runs on the same diagonals as one the player already has on the board, such as in cases where a promotion to such an elephant results in an elephant fork, say involving the opponent's king and another valuable piece.

In general, I personally prefer the allowance of [under]promotion to any piece type in the setup of a given CV, as it often/always seems rare/unusual cases can be imagined where any sort of [under]promotion can be justified tactically. However, there is also a certain elegance to restricted promotion, like in Courier Chess or your Modern Shatranj CV, where only one piece type can be promoted to, in those two cases. I think an inventor should feel free to make promotion rules to be as he or she chooses.

On a personal note, in our home we're having issues with our phone+internet company, and we may have to switch to a different company at some point if we cannot solve things, so I might need to re-register on this CVP website somehow later on, if that's necessary.

so I might need to re-register on this CVP website somehow later on, if that's necessary.

It's not - you can update your email address.  Log in, select "Personal Information" from the "Kevin Pacey" menu, and click "Change Email".

Thanks Greg.

Actually I like all the suggestions: my pita original one, only generals, only pashas, any lost piece + generals. The vote is split with a plurality to any lost pieces plus unlimited generals. (And what if the first general could be a pasha and each subsequent general a mann?)

So I guess we go with any lost piece + "unlimited" generals. But I wouldn't mind if anyone managed to add one or more of the others as options, despite knowing simplicity is the best rule (in most cases.)

So, after all that talk, we can do what we want, haha, amazing, trolled by a master. Well, I think I might do two versions, one where promotion is to General only, and the other promotion only to a lost piece.

Thanks, Joe!

Yes thanks Joe, I might also throw in a Pasha promotion variant too, seeing you suggested it. But yes, thanks very much, your a true hero!!

By the way, the variant (with en passant allowed) is available to play on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/variants/fog-of-war

Hi Kevin, yes, I'm having a fun game of Sky with Carlos at the moment. I see your playing Joe at Great Shatranj, good luck there, hope you win lol. I'm joking, hope you both draw hehe. I see it's a close game.

I do notice though, the HightPriestess (alfil knight fers) could have a more precise graphic, the one like you using now but has the fers symbol on it. Also, the Warmachine (dabbaba wazir) or Wazaba piece could have a more precise piece graphic too, the one with wazir symbol on it. But it's all ok if you know what is happening.

It's not terribly clear given that the diagram lacks horizontal separators between ranks (instead using one text line per rank), but the pawns start (as written below the diagram) on the 3rd rank, not the second.

Though I'm a bit curious as to why 3 generals rather than the more obvious two?