Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

To check on whether something peculiar might be going on for you, I am going to temporarily change your password, sign in as you, and then restore your password by copying its encrypted form back to the database.

Do you see the "Edit" drop-down in the top menu, next to your name? Try that.

I am logged in!

Unfortunately I don't see the menu, see here:

Thank you in the meantime.

Unfortunately the selection menu 'Edit this Page', 'Edit Metadata for this Page' etc. is missing. Is it possible to restore the selection menu?

As far as I can tell, it is not missing. But you have to be signed in for it to show up. To avoid any confusion, I have changed the Edit menu item "Edit Index Information" to "Edit Metadata".

@ editors: I would like to set my suggestion 'Toggle Chess' to 'Private'. Unfortunately the selection menu 'Edit this Page', 'Edit Metadata for this Page' etc. is missing. Is it possible to restore the selection menu?

@H.G.: Can you imagine adding a selection menu to the 'Create holes' button that allows you to choose the colour of the 'black holes'? In addition to black, white or perhaps beige would be very suitable. A colour selector like the one provided by MS Office would be more than ideal :-). Because with these holes you can create very nice suggestions. Black is a bit harsh.

For your variants the programming would be limited to indicating the piece moves.

For most of them, sure. For Aquachess or Chess on a Tesseract, probably not. (Zwangkrieg might be a bit of extra challenge too. And I'm not too sure about Short Sliders.)

And I do hope, one day, to get some of my simpler variants on there.

Your variants are typically more 'regular' than Gerd's, in the sense that they could draw on existing chess-variants infrastructure of Jocly. For example, there is support for rectangular and hexagonal boards of any size and shape, but not for boards with switches, which would have to be programmed from scratch. There is support for normal, and even single locust captures, but not for 'recruiting' moves that make captured pieces appear elsewhere, or for neutral pieces.

For your variants the programming would be limited to indicating the piece moves.

Jocly is one such program available on GitHub. It is a gaming platform for use on websites through a web browser, or running on your own PC through JoclyBoard. It is mainly a user interface, but is designed in such a way that it can easily extended with new games, with already a lot of supports for the tasks most chess variants have in common. So you would only have to program the part that is unique to your variant, in JavaScript.

We have a version of Jocly installed on CVP, and there is also one on my website, where people could browse to, and play the games they support.

And I do hope, one day, to get some of my simpler variants on there.

GitHub is a website where programmers publish the  source code of the programs they develop. It is not a site where you can play anything. But of course some of the programs published there are games. Those could be downloaded and compiled to run on people's own computers, and often the programmers already offer a compiled executable for download. To offer something there that others could use, you would have to write a program that plays it.

Jocly is one such program available on GitHub. It is a gaming platform for use on websites through a web browser, or running on your own PC through JoclyBoard. It is mainly a user interface, but is designed in such a way that it can easily extended with new games, with already a lot of supports for the tasks most chess variants have in common. So you would only have to program the part that is unique to your variant, in JavaScript.

We have a version of Jocly installed on CVP, and there is also one on my website, where people could browse to, and play the games they support.

@Richard Milner:
Do we want to continue our games?

In my opinion, we should end the games 'Queenmania (conquer style)' and 'Queens (conquer style)' because the perpetual recaptures cannot be solved. As long as there is no counter for this problem that ends the repetitions, we will go round in circles. (Perhaps the protagonists of the scene will realize this at some point).

How do you see it?

I would like my game ideas to be playable on other platforms as well. Is it possible to realize ideas on github/jocly as well? My visits there leave me perplexed and wondering how to get there.
Could someone please tell me what needs to be done?

It depends on whether they would offer the same promotion choice or a different one. For the same choice all you would have to do is add the line

maxPromote=2

to the Diagram definition, and make sure the two promotiong pieces are the first two in the table. It doesn't matter what their ID is; only the IDs of the pieces they promote to must be used in promoChoice, never the ID of the promoting piece.

Offering a different choice is possible in the Diagram, by only have the first piece promote normally (the default situation), and defining a second promotion set, and letting the second piece morph to that. But this is not supported in the GAME code yet; only automatic morphing into a single type is supported there.

@H.G.: Is it possible to work with two different pawns (e.g. berolina pawn and asian pawn) that are both promoted on the opponent's base line? I think they should have different IDs (I'm thinking of GC), but how does the PTA recognize different IDs for promotion? 
And what if both pawns have the same ID, but they should be morphed differently.
Can't find the solution. Thanks for an answer.

Looking at the Diagram definition in the Page Source I notice this:

• It says royal=K , but it really should say royal=KJLMOT .
• The non-royal Queen is defined twice, in the same way
• The promoChoice parameter isn't useful without zone or morphing to *, and could have been omitted.

The morph parameters seem to do what you describe in the text.

@H.G.

Could you please take a look at my new idea.
I'm not sure if I've done it right because of the morph combinations. Thank you very much.

That is because you still have the HTML text that is supposed to go into an article's Pieces section in the Custom Sets text entry of the preset, rather than the description of a custom set.

A completely new matter for me. Now I understand that - it works.

Great! That is just what I need to avoid auxiliary intermediate variables and testing those with if-statements.

If not, it seems to be useful to have an operator (let's call it number) that would evaluate to the numerical value of its operand, but to zero if the operand was not numeric, or undefined. So that I could write something like number elem #key piececount, which would give me the expected 0 if #key was not a valid key in the piececount table.

The int operator, which already exists, should do what you want. It uses the PHP function intval to convert its input to an integer, and for input that is not numeric, it will return 0.

That is because you still have the HTML text that is supposed to go into an article's Pieces section in the Custom Sets text entry of the preset, rather than the description of a custom set.

I am not sure what you mean here. A 'transfer' is something you do, so how can it be 'missing'?

Of course, it is me who transfers the script from the piece table to the preset to create a custom piece set. But the point is that it doesn't work - at least not for me. I still get the error message 'Your Custom Set description failed to decode properly. Make sure it has no errors in it.'

In my opinion, however, move diagrams provide a more rapid overview, both for the description of the variation and for the presentation of the rules in Game Courier.

This is apparently a matter of taste, because I hate articles with many move diagrams. Especially of large games. The diagrams dillute the information density by about a factor 20, and you have to scroll like mad to find the information you want. Awful. A simple sentence like "moves 1-4 squares orthogonally" tells me all I need to know, seeing a move diagram with a piece centered on an 8x8 board tells me hardly anything (as the leaps reach the board edge). And for complex pieces a static diagram often cannot really illustrate what the move does (e.g. Chu-Shogi Lion).

For those who want to see move diagrams the I.D. offers plenty of opportunity. You can summon a diagram for every piece without scrolling, either by clicking on the name of the piece (which I usually display to the right of the Diagrams), right-clicking the piece in the Diagram, or clicking in the pieceTable after you opened that.

If I see it correctly, the correct transfer of the piece table when creating a custom piece set in the preset is still missing. Or have I overlooked something. Anyway, I am grateful  for your doing.

I am not sure what you mean here. A 'transfer' is something you do, so how can it be 'missing'?

The piece table and the automatically generated piece description for presenting the variant is a nice feature. A very useful tool for a quick approach. In my opinion, however, move diagrams provide a more rapid overview, both for the description of the variation and for the presentation of the rules in Game Courier. After all, you want to play a variant in Game Courier and that's where move diagrams pay off in my opinion. Perhaps also a matter of taste.

The solution to the highlighting problem in the preset is also great.

If I see it correctly, the correct transfer of the piece table when creating a custom piece set in the preset is still missing. Or have I overlooked something. Anyway, I am grateful  for your doing.

But what does this HTML sequence have to do with the Pieces section of my description of the variant?

The Piece Table button in the PTA is an aid for those writing an article about a new variant, to save them the work of writing a description of the pieces by hand. If they use the PTA for creating an Interactive Diagram they can copy-paste to the Setup section (after using the Show HTML button), they can use the Piece Table button to get the Pieces section as a free side effect, as a nice table showing the images of the pieces. The Pieces section in my Makromachy article was made that way.

The highlighting problem in the preset should now be solved too. The preset was using the "accelerated legality test" (by default), and this was testing only for attacks on the first royal type in the wroyals/broyals arrays (i.e. K or k in this case). I now changed that to the first royal type that is actually on board.

I don't understand anything at the moment.

HTML according to 'custom sets (only needed for non-standard piece set)' which shows the old PTA under GAME code okay. But what does this HTML sequence have to do with the Pieces section of my description of the variant? Does it fit together? When I enter the HTML sequence in the pieces section and save it, the output only shows the HTML sequence.

I must have misunderstood this completely, right?

This is not code; it is HTML text for pasting in the Pieces section of your article about the variant, if you want to present that as an auto-generated table (e.g. such as I used for Makromachy.)

For defining a custom piece set you need what the (old) PTA prints in the section "Custom sets (only needed with non-standard piece set):" after you press the GAME code button. Something like this:

{
"custom": {
  "dir": "/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG35/",
  "pieces": {
    "P": "wpawn.png", "p": "bpawn.png",
    "N": "wknight.png", "n": "bknight.png",
    "B": "wbishop.png", "b": "bbishop.png",
    "R": "wrook.png", "r": "brook.png",
    "Q": "wqueen.png", "q": "bqueen.png",
    "K": "wking.png", "k": "bking.png"
  }
}
}

When a Diagram is pasted in the (old) PTA, and you generate GAME code from it, piece types that are not on the board won't be mentioned in the custom set that is generated.

If I see it correctly, this seems to be the case. Here is an excerpt of the generated code, which concerns the part of the pieces that are not on the board (royal pieces - markings in the text are mine):

<tr><td width="35"><img src="/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG/wking.png"></td><td>royal pawn</td><td>slides orthogonally, slides to the 2nd square straight ahead for capturing only, or steps one square straight ahead</td></tr>
<tr><td width="35"><img src="/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG/wking.png"></td><td>royal amazon</td><td>slides in all 8 directions, slides in all 8 directions, or makes a knight's jump</td></tr>
<tr><td width="35"><img src="/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG/wking.png"></td><td>royal chancellor</td><td>steps one square in all 8 directions, castles by stepping 2 squares towards the king (fast castle), makes a knight's jump, or slides orthogonally</td></tr>
<tr><td width="35"><img src="/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG/wking.png"></td><td>royal archbishop</td><td>steps one square in all 8 directions, castles by stepping 6 squares towards the king (fast castle), makes a knight's jump, or slides diagonally</td></tr>

The suggested lines [set wroyal (K J L M O);
set broyal (k j l m o);] I have tried several times before - and just now again. The following happens: as soon as a white piece is clicked, the game stops immediately and the message 'White lost by absence of royalty!' appears.

It appears I have now solved this.

I have just tested this with the following result:
When the king enters the morph zone, the previous error message 'White lost by absence of royalty!' no longer appears. Instead, the king is shown in the table of captured pieces, which was the case before. The game can be continued, whereby the new king appears to be recognized as such and the king also receives the upgraded or downgraded move options. The only strange thing is that whenever the new king comes into check, this is not shown as a 'check'. The move options displayed for the new king also include those that put him back in check, which should not actually happen. If he makes such a move, an error message 'GameEnd This exposes your royal piece to capture' appears. Moves that free the king from check are possible.

Did you move the King to a5 through an illegal move? 

Yes, I did. To test it, I moved the king from e1 to a5. I understood that it can't work like that.

I just wonder how it can be that the game ends with 'I win' when a king on a5 is captured with a move from a9.

I am not sure what exactly you tried here, in particular, what you mean by 'king'. It should not be possible to have a King on a5; it should have morphed to a Royal Pawn when it got there.

Did you move the King to a5 through an illegal move? The I.D. allows you to play illegal moves, (if these are non-captures), but these are considered part of a position setup, and would never be subjected to promotion rules. They just move a piece from one square to another. So if you play Ke1-a5, it would not morph into a Royal Pawn, and stay a King. (But due to your choice of images, you cannot see that!) As a consequence you have not lost yet, and if it can the AI would capture your King and claim the win.

If I play, from the start position, Ke1-a4, switch on the AI, and then play Ka4-a5, it does claim the win. (A bit strange here is that the King appears to promote to an enemy non-royal piece; I still have to figure out what causes that.)

@Fergus: OK, so it is what I thought. But it only contains values for pieces that are present; labels of pieces that are not on the board do not get value 0 associated. This makes it tricky to use.

What is the best way to test whether an associative array contains a given key? In JavaScript I would just copy array[key] to a variable, and then test if that variable is undefined.

But testing for an undefined value seems to be difficult in GAME code. In seems that variables to which you assign an undefined value disappear, and that #name for nonexisting variables evaluates to the string literal "#name". Is this guaranteed behavior? I.e., would it make sense to write

if != #name "#name":

to only process a variable when it does exist / was not assigned an undefined value?

Or can the problem be avoided by reading the value of the variable using var rather than #? Is there any guaranteed behavior for using var on a non-existing / undefined variable?

If not, it seems to be useful to have an operator (let's call it number) that would evaluate to the numerical value of its operand, but to zero if the operand was not numeric, or undefined. So that I could write something like number elem #key piececount, which would give me the expected 0 if #key was not a valid key in the piececount table.

As should be expected, as otherwise only the last piece in the table is royal.

You are certainly right, in the piece table only the king is marked as the last in the table with 'c00'.

I just wonder how it can be that the game ends with 'I win' when a king on a5 is captured with a move from a9. Consequently, the king on a5 must have been recognized as royal. The same applies to any other square in the morph zone.
 

                    case "piececount":
                        $temp = array();
                        foreach ($space as $p) {
                            if (($p != "@") && ($p != "-"))
                                $temp[$p] = isset($temp[$p]) ? $temp[$p] + 1 : 1;
                        }
                        array_push ($output,  $temp);
                        break;

That seems to be the case, because the I.D. works as intended.

Not when I tried it. When I morph my King the AI claims victory. It really needs a royal=... specification. As should be expected, as otherwise only the last piece in the table is royal. When you look at the piece table and click the header of the 'move' column, the royal pieces should have '(c00)' behind their piece value, and J,L,M,O do not have that.

The suggested lines [set wroyal (K J L M O);
set broyal (k j l m o);] I have tried several times before - and just now again. The following happens: as soon as a white piece is clicked, the game stops immediately and the message 'White lost by absence of royalty!' appears.

It appears I have now solved this.

The matter with the custom set is new to me - I'll have a look at it. Many thanks in the meantime.

There is a problem here: When a Diagram is pasted in the (old) PTA, and you generate GAME code from it, piece types that are not on the board won't be mentioned in the custom set that is generated. I won't manage to fix that today. But it is not very difficult to fix it directly in the preset: just copy the suggested code, and then duplicate the line that defines the Kings 4 times, altering the K/k in these copies into J/j, L/l, M/m and O/o respectively. Then all these labels should get a King image. (Well, beware of commas. Each line should end in a comma, except the last!)

@Fergus: I ran into something strange. The include file for automation with the PTA uses an identifier piececount, like it is an associative array that tells for each piece label how many there are on the board. It is used like

set nr + #nr elem #type piececount;

I cannot find a desciption of it in the GAME-code tutorial, though. Did it ever exist, and is it deprecated? Or has it been a figment of my imagination all the time? I cannot print it either; printr piececount; just prints the word 'piececount'.

The strange thing is that elem #type piececount evaluates to 1 if type has the value K or k. (Which is usually the only value it gets, as it is in a loop that has the purpose of counting the number of royals left, and K is usually the only royal type.) I would not expect that from an undefined variable, and indeed there is one King on the board. If type has the value of a piece label that is not on the board, the value does seem undefined. And apparently 1 + undefined equals 0, which is also strange. But nr ends at 0 because of this, leading to a win claim...

[Edit] For piece types that are on the board, piececount indeed appears to work as one should guess from the name. But for piece types not on the board elem #type piececount appears to evaluate to something strange, rather than 0. I now assigned it to a variable a, and print #a then produces output '#a'. Now I have seen this before for undefined variables, so I expected if not #a: set a 0; endif; to solve the problem, assuming 'undefined' would be interpreted as false. (Or is this a JavaScript expectation?) But not so; the if-statement does not trigger, and adding the undefined variable to a variable nr that already has a non-zero value appears to reset it to 0.

[Edit2] It does work as intended when I do this:

    set a elem #type piececount;
    set b 0;
    if var a:
      set b var a;
    endif;
    set nr + #nr #b;             // count them

Using #a instead of var a it just keeps interpreting that as a literal. Can this be simplified to set nr + #nr var a; ? I am afraid to try it, because I already spoiled one GC game by experimenting...

@H.G.

Select a Set Group 'Custom', and then a Set 'Completely Custom' in the preset Edit page, and paste the text the PTA suggests for this section.

I have tried it, both with the old PTA (.../MSplay-test-applet-for-chess-variants) and with the new PTA (.../playtest.html). 

The result is the same in both cases and the error message appears 'Your Custom Set description failed to decode properly. Make sure it has no errors in it'. 

A very nice feature and would help a lot.

So the I.D. doesn't understand these morphed Kings are royal, and as a consequence also has not passed that info to the GAME code.

That seems to be the case, because the I.D. works as intended. I.e. the morphed kings are recognized, they get new moves (pawn, archbishop, chancellor, amazon) and the game is over when they are captured. So in the I.D. everything works as expected.
 

The suggested lines [set wroyal (K J L M O);
set broyal (k j l m o);] I have tried several times before - and just now again. The following happens: as soon as a white piece is clicked, the game stops immediately and the message 'White lost by absence of royalty!' appears.

The matter with the custom set is new to me - I'll have a look at it. Many thanks in the meantime.

I see one problem, which is probably not what is bugging you, and perhaps somewhat my fult. The I.D. defines separate pieces for the King to morph in (good), but these are not marked as royal. There should have been a line royal=KJLMO in the description, but it turns out the new PTA is not so finished yet as I thought, and that the text entry for defining royal pieces is still ignored. (That is what you get if you take a long pause in developing something...)

So the I.D. doesn't understand these morphed Kings are royal, and as a consequence also has not passed that info to the GAME code. This could be fixed directly in the GAME code by adding lines in the Pre-Game section

set wroyal (K J L M O);
set broyal (k j l m o);

About the label-image assignment: you should be able to use a custom set that uses exactly the limages that you want for the labels of your choice. Select a Set Group 'Custom', and then a Set 'Completely Custom' in the preset Edit page, and paste the text the PTA suggests for this section. (Oh, problem: the new PTA does not suggest this yet, as it is a feature that was only introduced after I made that. But you can use the old PTA to generate that, and only use the custom-set output from it.)

@H.G.

I have been trying for days to transfer a working interactive diagram to Game Courier - without success.
I have transferred the HTML code of the interactive diagram to the PTA via editor (including the IDs of the royal pieces) and then transferred the GAME code to the preset for Game Courier. It does not work. (Interactive diagram see here, preset see here.)

Another problem I see is that the piece labels/IDs used in the PTA are only partially compatible with the piece labels/IDs in the Diagram Designer for Game Courier. For some pieces this can be adjusted (archbishop, chancellor, amazon). But the royal pieces needed for my idea can apparently not be realized with the options of the Diagram Designer (each piece has a unique label). At least that is what I know. Can't get any further without help.

Apparently I was able to get the PTA running. The upgrade of the pawns does not seem to work with the GAME code. I had to make some adjustments here, i.e. I added the missing IDs for the pawn to the 'set morphers' (P p ...........). For 'set morphs assoc' I added the missing P (0 0 0 0 (P P A C Z C A P P)) and p (0 0 0 0 (p p a c z c a p p)).

Furthermore, when converting the HTML code into the GAME code, the upgrading or downgrading of the king does not work, which works with the PTA. The royal figure is not accessed, but the non-royal figure appears with the result of 'White lost by absence of royalty!

Click here for the PTA and here for the preset.

Sorry if I'm making work, but maybe it's not just me.

Well, just make a Diagram with twice as many pieces, making sure that the piece you want to use as royals have different IDs from the non-royals. (Game Courier does not like it if pieces have the same ID.) In the new PTA you can specify the royals (through "Specify more rules"). Then make sure the King morphs into the royal pieces.

This works very well with the newer version of the PTA when converted to Game Courier. Many thanks for that.

To make it work as you described, you should define a royal and a non-royal version of each piece type, and let the King morph to the royal types.

That sounds very plausible - but how should I do that? I'm currently at a loss, so please give me a brief explanation. Thank you.

Well, the way you implemented it in the Diagram would morph the King to a non-royal piece, which it would consider a loss. To make it work as you described, you should define a royal and a non-royal version of each piece type, and let the King morph to the royal types.

I see that the regular PTA is not able to convert the morph parameters to GAME code. (I suppose originally this made sense, as there is also no way to specify morphs when you set up the variant.) You tried to use promotion to get the same effect, but the GAME code cannot specify promotion choice per square, just per entire rank. What you did would allow all pieces to choose to what they promote to, on each square of 5th rank (including promotion to enemy pieces!).

Fortunately the newer version of the PTA is nearly finished, and it can translate the morphs to GAME code.

@H.G.

Could you please take a look at my new idea, which you can find here.
I was able to implement it for the PTA, but I'm stuck with the preset for Game Courier.
I would be glad for help.

I'm actually quite happy that the pieces' values are now close to each other. It doesn't seem to be that easy with sliding pieces, at least I think so.

The values it guestimates are now pretty close to each other. Is there a reason why you don't use a single sliding move?

Thank you very much. Could you take another look at the game where I changed the moves for the knight and bishop again.

AI now seems to be selectively accessing opportunities when it comes to promotions. Can you live with that?

OK, it is fixed. There was a statement that suppressed the promotion popup on the first move of any game.

The reason for this was that the Post-Game code is already called before any moves are done, because it also is responsible for calculating the highlighting for the next move. But it is also responsible for the promotion popup, and as a part of that it tested whether the destination of the latest move was in the promotion zone. This would lead to an error screen if that destination did not exist. So I suppressed it in move 0.

There is some unexpected behavior here in Game Courier, as the system variable mln which specifies how many moves have been played, specifies 0 both before any moves have been played, and after the first white move. So after the first white move the promotion was suppressed too.

I now solved that by testing directly whether a destination square exists, rather than relying on the move number.

Click here for the preset.

That is weird indeed. Do you have a link to the preset?

The ID now guestimates the values as N=4, B=4, R=5.6 and Q=6. It seems no one would ever choose Bishop or Knight. Conidering how much orthodox Chess players favor Bishops over Knights, 0.5 Pawn difference could already seem sufficient reason not to choose it. R and B have 16 move targets only in the central square, the Queen has it in a 5x5 central area.

First of all, thank you for the help. I hope I implemented it correctly; it works in Game Courier - with one exception: the first pawn (white and no matter which one) is not converted and appears as a white pawn on the baseline. All other pawns (white/black) are transformed correctly. Below is the GAME code.

A note about the game: rook, bishop and queen now each have 16 unblockable targets, which equalizes the playing strengths. Which choice the AI makes is one side, players in Game Courier can decide differently. Maybe that will level it out a little.
______________________________

include /membergraphics/MSgame-code-generation/betza.txt;

set legdefs
(0
1  1  0 -2     1 // pawn(1)
0
1  1  0  2     1 // pawn(7)
0
1  2  1  2     3 // knight(13)
1  2  2  1     3
1  2  2 -1     3
1  2  1 -2     3
1  2 -1 -2     3
1  2 -2 -1     3
1  2 -2  1     3
1  2 -1  2     3
0
1  1  1  1     3 // bishop(54)
1  1  1 -1     3
1  1 -1 -1     3
1  1 -1  1     3
1  1  2  2     3
1  1  2 -2     3
1  1 -2 -2     3
1  1 -2  2     3
1  1  3  3     3
1  1  3 -3     3
1  1 -3 -3     3
1  1 -3  3     3
1  1  4  4     3
1  1  4 -4     3
1  1 -4 -4     3
1  1 -4  4     3
0
1  1  0  1     3 // rook(135)
1  1  1  0     3
1  1  0 -1     3
1  1 -1  0     3
1  1  0  2     3
1  1  2  0     3
1  1  0 -2     3
1  1 -2  0     3
1  1  0  3     3
1  1  3  0     3
1  1  0 -3     3
1  1 -3  0     3
1  1  0  4     3
1  1  4  0     3
1  1  0 -4     3
1  1 -4  0     3
0
1  1  0  1     3 // queen(216)
1  1  1  0     3
1  1  0 -1     3
1  1 -1  0     3
1  1  1  1     3
1  1  1 -1     3
1  1 -1 -1     3
1  1 -1  1     3
1  1  0  2     3
1  1  2  0     3
1  1  0 -2     3
1  1 -2  0     3
1  1  2  2     3
1  1  2 -2     3
1  1 -2 -2     3
1  1 -2  2     3
0
1  1  0  1     3 // king(297)
1  1  1  1     3
1  1  1  0     3
1  1  1 -1     3
1  1  0 -1     3
1  1 -1 -1     3
1  1 -1  0     3
1  1 -1  1     3
0);

def P cond #0 1 0;
def p cond #0 7 0;
def N cond #0 13 0;
def n cond #0 13 0;
def B cond #0 54 0;
def b cond #0 54 0;
def R cond #0 135 0;
def r cond #0 135 0;
def Q cond #0 216 0;
def q cond #0 216 0;
def K cond #0 297 0;
def k cond #0 297 0;

set staledraw 0;  // stalemate is a win
set extinction 1; // must capture all royals to win
set baring 1;     // bare king loses
set promotables (P p); // pieces that can promote
set supply (N n B b R r Q q); // in infinite supply
set promotab (         // allowed choices per rank
  (N B R Q)
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  (n b r q)
);

Well, it seems I remember things I did that I really did not do at all, but was just planning to do. Not even the new version of the PTA stores the morphs boards in GAME code. And the GAME-code include file does support morph board only form automatic type change, not the case where you have choice.

But fortunately what you want seems possible without using morph. I guess what you did was make the promotion zone the entire board to have the back rank in it, but that makes the white and black zone overlap, and this is what the GAME code cannot handle. But for what you want it is not needed to have overlapping zones, and each zone can only be reached by Pawns of the color that promote there. If that is the case the generated GAME code can handle it through its regular promotab. You just have to make that

set promotables (P p);
set promotab (
  (Q R B N)
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  (q r b n)
);

That is how it would also look for orthodox Chess, except that the white and the black pieces are now swapped. For each piece in the 'promotables' it looks in the 'promotab' at the rank it moves to, and if that is not 0 it is considered a promotion rank, and contains the possible choices.

As to the game: I don't see why players would ever choose anything other than Queen. Despite the limited range it is still far stronger than any of the other pieces. It has 16 unblockable targets; the Rook and Bishop have only 12. The Knight potentially has 16, but never on 8x8.

...also because I don't know what exactly you want.

The idea is to let the player decide which additional pieces (NBRQ) they want to play with. I would like to do this using a row of pawns that move against the usual direction of movement to their own base line and promote there.

This works in PTA, but not yet in GC. I inserted the morph as described (it worked), and inserted the script back into the PTA as a finished diagram using an editor. Unfortunately the morph does not appear in the HTML - nor in the GAME code. I also wouldn't know where and how to insert the morph into the GAME code.

For the idea see here.

The promotion zone in the Diagram is always the furthest N ranks. So if you set it to 9 on a 9x9 board it would be the entire board. If you want just your own back-rank you must use a morph for the promoting piece, with which you can define any irregular promotion zone. Like

morph=///////*

on an 8x8 board (7 ranks without promotion, one with the normal choice, counting from the furthest rank). Add this after the Pawn line of the Diagram, and then paste it back into the PTA, and generate GAME code.

[Edit] On second thought, morphing with choice might not be implemented yet in the GAME code. In that case I am not sure what is best, also because I don't know what exactly you want.

@ H.G.

How do you manage to define your own baseline as the promotion zone? In the PTA it works if the promotion zone is set to 9, for example - I tried it.

On this basis, the PTA leads to a GAME code that apparently does not work in Game Courier, i.e. the own baseline is not recognized as the promotion zone.
How to do this, do you have any advice? Or is this a question for Fergus? Thanks.

@ H.G.

I currently have a problem with the conquer rule. The PTA solutions with this rule, which have worked so far, no longer work. This means that the captured pieces are removed from the board and not converted into pieces of the capturing side. The applications on Game Courier work unchanged.

Is it possible that this has something to do with the work on betzaNew.js?  In any case, it is noticeable that the problem with the conquest rule has arisen since the 'Battle of the Kings' theme.

[Edit] Just tested again; it seems to be working again. Sorry.

That was informative for me, thank you very much. Of course I withdraw.

Since there are several editors

There are not several editors.

I would like to suggest creating a standardized queue that is processed by the editors.

We already have that.

The uniform queue could then also be viewed by the inventors and provide an overview of when a publication is due.

It can be viewed by inventors. There is a link to it on the homepage.

The 'Man and Beast 09' has already been released! Kind of weird.

Charles Gilman has not had a new submission in a long time, as he has not signed in since 2016.

I'm a bit confused. The 'Man and Beast 07/08' variants have just been presented and have already been published.

They've been around for a few years now, actually. The series just has a lot of broken bits. Ben, as he explained, is just fixing them.

H.G. is an editor, see Who is Behind the Chess Variant Pages?. (The two junior editors aren't active AFAIK.) But again, as he has said in a number of comments, his focus is more programmatical, including the IDs and now Jocly.

There is just one review queue, which can be viewed by anyone. (Glancing now, it looks like the oldest page needing review (not "Uncreated" or having red text suggesting an editor comment without response) is from Oct 1, so just over three months right now.) Work other than reviewing on the other hand is up to editors' discretion, but my last post mostly summarizes that difference in focuses.

Edit: The 'Man and Beast 09' has already been released! Kind of weird.

M&B was released in 2008, and broken by a website change circa 2019. As I alluded in the previous comment, I am fixing a 5-year-old mistake on our part.

As far as I know, at least H.G. is not an editor.

Since there are several editors and everyone seems to have their own queue, I would like to suggest creating a standardized queue that is processed by the editors. This makes sense in order to equalize differences. The uniform queue could then also be viewed by the inventors and provide an overview of when a publication is due.

I can only conclude that there are serious differences between the submission of proposals and their publication.

Edit: The 'Man and Beast 09' has already been released! Kind of weird.

The Man and Beast series has had broken diagrams for years now, at the fault of changed code in the Diagram Designer, and I am in a position to fix some of them.

The review queue has generally hovered between 3 and 6 months, filling up until I have a few hours free to spend reviewing. I try to review from oldest submission to newest. Fergus recently helped clear out some of the older pages, but I haven't seen Greg around; he may be out for a while. Fergus mostly focuses on the web backend, and H.G. on Interactive Diagrams and now Jocly.

I wouldn't worry too much about delays in this area. The editors have a lot on their plates. I have four variants and a five-part Icon Clearinghouse that have been ready for a while now, waiting for either publication or review. At least one or two have been waiting for more than a month.

I'm a bit confused. The 'Man and Beast 07/08' variants have just been presented and have already been published. Good for the author. But not so nice for the queue. Some adjustments could be made here.

As I have not received a response, I would like to follow up again and ask about the current status.

I wouldn't worry too much about delays in this area. The editors have a lot on their plates. I have four variants and a five-part Icon Clearinghouse that have been ready for a while now, waiting for either publication or review. At least one or two have been waiting for more than a month.

@ Editors

Could you please publish my variants 'Conquer II' and 'Corossfire'.

If something is missing please let me know.

As I have not received a response, I would like to follow up again and ask about the current status. Do my suggestions have any disadvantages compared to other publications or open ends? I would be happy to help.

@ Editors

Could you please publish my variants 'Conquer II' and 'Corossfire'.

If something is missing please let me know.

As I have not received a response, I would like to follow up again and ask about the current status. Do my suggestions have any disadvantages compared to other publications or open ends? I would be happy to help.

The description for Conquer II currently looks like this:

'https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Conquer+II&settings=conquerii. (8x8, Cells: 64)*.
(I have no idea why that is!)

It should look like this:

'The goal of the game is to conquer the opponent's army and to add it to your own army.'

Could you please change that, Ben? Thank you very much.

Are you sure you mean the What's New text, and not the Item Description? The former only shows up a few places, most notably the What's New page, while the latter shows up in most index listings, content headers, etc. You can modify What's New text in the index information and while updating the text, but for now updating the Description has to be done by an editor.

Can anyone tell me how to update the 'Whats New Text' in the 'Index Information'? It seems that the old text cannot be changed even though the new text is included in the text line. Or can only an editor change this?

@Editors,
I would like to discreetly point out my variants that are still in the queue:
Kings Castle, Queenmania, Pattern Chess, Masquerade.
Thanks for your attention.

Hi Lev,
I have revised my variant 'Conquer' and made it to 'Conquer II'.

I think I have defused the perpetual recaptures by changing the pawn move. Perpetuals can't be completely avoided, but we can deal with them 'intelligently'.

What do you think about giving it a try? You can find an invitation here.

Greetings

@H.G.
I tried to solve or avoid the problem of perpetuals in my variant 'Conquer' by changing the pawn move. I couldn't get it to work for the ID, but it seems to work in GC.
Such perpetuals have not occurred in my tests so far, which does not mean that they are still possible. 
Could you please have a look at this - 'Conquer II' on Game Courier.
Thank you.

Of course checkmate is the goal. But our game shows me that the problem of perpetual recaptures hardly ever leads to a result.

I warned against that! The Diagram's AI also crashed on these perpetuals, as it always searches recapture, and has no repetition detection..

Hi Lev,
I must try to understand your question.

Which version of Conquer it supports?

There is only one version of 'Conquer'. Which versions do you mean?

Sry your Conquer GC preset supports checkmate or nope?

Of course checkmate is the goal. But our game shows me that the problem of perpetual recaptures hardly ever leads to a result. The diagonal capture possibilities of the pawns are particularly annoying. I have to improve this somehow.

If you agree, I'll finish the game and get back to you with an adapted version that avoids the perpetual recaptures. I fear that this cannot be fully achieved.

Sry your Conquer GC preset supports checkmate or nope? Which version of Conquer it supports?

"Angular"

 - on Game Courier / Invitation here

"Crossfire 90 Degrees"

 - on Game Courier / Invitation here

Promotion of the lancer on ranks 1 and 9.
Promotion of the double dart does not take place. 

So instead I started a new Play-Test Applet as a HTML page somewhere. (I forgot the link...)

I have it right here. :)

Although the GAME-code include file betza.txt now has some support for morph boards, it does not support the * for out-of-zone promotion choice. Only morphing into a predetermined type.

And even then the regular Play-Test Applet does not support the conversion of the Diagram's morph parameters to GAME-code. Because I was not able to edit it. (Although I think that problem now has been solved; it was just a matter that it was stored as the wrong type, HTML vs text, at least that was the case with the Diagram Editor.) So instead I started a new Play-Test Applet as a HTML page somewhere. (I forgot the link, but since morphing with choice is not supported yet in the GAME code itself, it would not be useful to you anyway.)

It will take some time to implement promotion-support per square; the automatically generated GAME-code currently only supports promotion on entire files.

@ H.G. or/and Fergus
The following HTML code does not seem to be translated correctly into GAME code for Game Courier. In the Play Test Aplet everything works fine, in GAME Courier the promotion zones of the files 'a' and 'i' are not recognized. There seems to be a problem somewhere. Can you please help!

<script type="text/javascript" src="/membergraphics/MSinteractive-diagrams/betza.js?nocache=true"></script>
<div class="idiagram">
files=9
ranks=9
promoZone=1
promoChoice=SNBRQ
graphicsDir=/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG/
squareSize=50
graphicsType=png
symmetry=none
lancer (vertical):P:fmFfWfnDfcnH:pawn:d1,e1,f1,,d9,e9,f9
morph=*********////////
lancer (horizontal):S:rmFrWrnDrcnH:berolinapawn:b2,b3,b4,b5,b6,b7,b8,,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,h7,h8
morph=*.......*/*.......*/*.......*/*.......*/*.......*/*.......*/*.......*/*.......*/*.......*
knight:N:N:knight:a3,a7,,i3,i7
bishop:B:B:bishop:a1,a9,,i1,i9
rook:R:R:rook:a2,a8,,i2,i8
queen:Q:Q:queen:a4,a6,,i4,i6
king:K:K:king:a5,,i5
</div>

Thanks again!

I would like to declare files (in my case 'a' and 'i') as a promotion zone for pawns. Is that possible?

It is. Set maxPromote=0 to suppress normal promotion, and immediately after the Pawn definition line write

morph=*.......*/"/"/"/"/"/"/"/"

This declares the 1st and 9th square of the first rank to squares where Pawns will promote with chess-like choice, and then repeats that for the next 8 ranks. You might consider rotating the diagram 90-degrees, though...

Is it possible to prevent the board from flipping in Game Courier?

Yes, each player or observer may choose the orientation he wants to see the board in. When programming a game, you can use setsystem to change the value of $orientation to either first or flip instead of its default value of auto.

@ H.G.
I would like to declare files (in my case 'a' and 'i') as a promotion zone for pawns. Is that possible?

@Fergus
Is it possible to prevent the board from flipping in Game Courier? With 'Crossfire 90 Degrees' the board rotation doesn't seem to be particularly necessary.

Thank you both.

"Black Holes II"

 - on Game Courier / Invitation here

Note that fWfnD is the same as the more compact fW2.

"Black Holes"

 - on Game Courier / Invitation here

At first sight: I haven't understood it yet and will think about it. Thank you in the meantime.

In the ID you have to specify the image file for each piece. What color the pieces in these images have is entirely up to the creator of the images. You could make a rainbow army if you wanted.

The ID does assume there are only two players, and that the names of the images for one player start with the whitePrefix, and for the black player with the blackPrefix. It doesn't know neutral pieces. If you don't use the AI that is never a problem, as turn order is not enforced, so each piece can be moved at any time, no matter which player the ID thinks it belongs to. So you can just define an extra piece type, e.g. only existing for white, and put that on the board.

For the AI it would be a problem, though. With extra programming one could alter the AI's functions that perform and take back the move such that they would also flip the ownership of the neutral piece, such that the player on move will always be allowed to move it. (And use the same image of a deviating color for both the black and the white player.)

@H.G.. 
Can a figure be displayed in a third color (not white, not black) in the Play Test applet (without separate programming)? Thanks in advance.

"Crossfire"

 - on Game Courier / Invitation here