Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

An important note about the editing page (including comments editing): You need to make sure that ampersands are properly expanded into the text area, currently it doesn't work properly. You should also expand less than signs and greater than signs to their proper HTML entity codes when editing in a text area. (The client will change them back to how they are supposed to be when displaying and when sending the contents of the file.)

A few days ago i tried to post one game. I was writting rules text, but i was desviared and did'nt complete it.
Now i tried to post it again, but when i clicked on 'step 2' i read that 'item with same name already exist'. What can i do with it?

Hi !

I have a Chess variant game that is listed on ' The Chess Variant '
website.
The URL has changed for it as well as the name of the game.

The new URL is: http://connectcapture.blogspot.com/  

The name of the game is now called ' Connect Shoot Kill '.

Thanks !

Rick Nordal - Inventer of Connect Shoot Kill

I changed titles of four of my files (one of which is due to unicode problem) but they won't change on the list of games I search for my invented/authored. Can you please update it?

And you should probably fix the HTML entity codes on all editing pages (I know how to do this in PHP; there is a built-in function for this purpose)

• MS3fewchess
• MSkirbyschess
• MSkirbysshogi
• The fourth one already got fixed somehow.

Two variants that I might have got rid of by the same means I appear to be stuck with. One, Great Herd, is a pre-PYO, and I'm having enough trouble persuading editors to post my updates to pre-PYOs where the variant itself is not changing. The other, I'm a Wazir..., of which I have reservations on account of the name's tasteless origins, has had an implementation posted so logically it should stay.

Given the illustration that the latter variant gives of how judgment varies I decided to look back on my past variants and put up some that I find, in retrospect, less inspiring for replacement. Here are the ones that I am considering, with the nature of their awkwardness, and I would welcome thoughts on which of these are least popular or any that anyone is especially fond of. Please alert me to any implementations that I may have overlooked. In some cases I compare them with better variants, for which I provide no link here to avoid confusion.

3 to the 5, now a complicated showcase of Gnu compounds compared to the more recent (and straightforwardly 2d) Overkill Ecumenical Chess.
Anglis Qi modified to add Cannons and Arrows, which makes for quite a cramped 8x8 board.
Crooked Board Chess, covering ground dealt with by other people's older variants.
Emperor's Nobility 3d Latrunculi, a not very Chess-like 3d variant with a complex chain of promotions.
Epping Forest Chess, a one-off microregional with complex treatment of edges and corners of squares. Overwriting this variant would also allow me to save on the memory used for it, which is unusually lrge for a 2-player variant of mine.
Flight and Ferry, a one-off microregional that was fairly comprehensively slammed in its original form and has taken some fairly desperate fixes.
Gateway Chess, a one-off microregional with as rotating interpretation of 'forward'.
Half Shoxiang, a variant that was fairly comprehensively slammed in its original form and did not inspire positive comments for its fixes and second variant.
Intrusive Squares, covering ground dealt with by other people's older variants.
Kamil Crater Chess, a one-off topical-theme variant involving board topography. Overwriting this variant would also allow me to save on the memory used for it, which is unusually lrge for a 2-player variant of mine.
Maharajah's Well Chess, a one-off microregional on a very awkward-shaped 3d board.
Partnership Mitregi, an 8x8 promotion-free Shogi variant.
Pawn the Brain, a divergent variant of Take the Brain, for whose pieces I recently dropped distinctive names in favour of a common prefix to the Take the Brain pieces' names.
Sextuple Besiege Wellisch, a hex version of my Quadruple Besiege variants and hard to illustrate.
Sultan's Elephant Chess, a one-off topical-theme variant that some people mistook for a satire on gigantic variants in general. Overwriting this variant would also allow me to drop the defintion of Sultan's pieces now that I have a (3d) piece actually called the Sultan.

So let's have your feedback on this rogues' gallery. Which should be the next to go and are are any of that lot worth keeping?

We're currently in the process of improving the CVP web site. This
includes using single sign-in sessions, ability to use OpenID to sign-in,
and an improved comment and rating system. This work takes time, so please
be patient. The indexing and current commenting/rating system will be in
various states of change over the next several weeks. We will try to keep
things usable, but just keep in mind that all this work is done in our
spare time.

The current commenting and rating system needs some attention, but for
minor problems, we will probably wait until the improvements are
implemented to fix them. If there are problems that are inhibiting their
use, we'll give them higher priority.

Thank you for your patience. I think the improvements that Fergus is making
will be well worth the wait!

I have put buttons for the Login page in the header for play.chessvariants.org. It is functional, but it is not yet integrated into the rest of the site. This means that you can sign in and out, but signing in won't yet do anything for you. Since I can't access comments for the Login page, I'll describe it here.

You can sign in with either your CVP userid or with an OpenID. Once you sign in, details about you are stored in $_SESSION variables. $_SESSION variables are like cookies but are stored on the server. This will create one cookie that identifies your session id. You can link your CVP account with an OpenID. You do this by signing into one while still signed into the other. Then, once they are linked, you can sign into your CVP account by signing into the OpenID linked to it. This will let you access your account when you forget your password, and it can be used as an alternate way to sign in. When you sign into your CVP account, one more cookie is created. This cookie contains your userid. This cookie will not let anyone sign into your account without your password. Your login session ends when you close your browser, and you will need to sign in next time you come to the site. The userid cookie is meant to persist beyond your session in order to make it easier to sign in again. In the header code I've created, it presents you with a sign in form with your userid already filled in if the userid cookie is set. If your password manager fills in your password, then signing in again is as easy as one click. Without the userid cookie, it just gives you a button to the login page if you are not already signed in.

I expect that site membership will give you more privileges than just signing in with an OpenID. One main use of the OpenID sign in is to expedite registration. By first signing in with your OpenID, you can join the site without email authentication of your identity, and it will also fill in the registration form, as much as it can, with appropriate values, including an available userid that is based on your OpenID userid or your name.

The next step will be to integrate session sign-ins with Game Courier.

I logged in using OpenID, filling in 'zzo38computer' in the SREG nickname
field and '(zzo38) A. Black' in the SREG real name field. And then it did
not say anything about I was logged in (I did not reload the page), but I
filled in the normal form with my username 'zzo38computer' and my
password. And then it timed out, but then I reload the page and it says I
am logged in, including the OpenID.

Did I do it correctly?

In addition, when I try to view logs in the Game Courier, it always fills
in my user ID in the username field and if I change it or blank it, it
doesn't work. I want to view all logs, not only my own.

I am unfamiliar with the OpenID provider you used. So I assume you already know what an OpenID is and entered yours in the OpenID field that appears when you click on the OpenID button. It should have reloaded the login page when you signed in. There have been some bugs that have stopped it from reloading, and I have just fixed some. So you could try it again and report back if it works. When you successfully sign in with an OpenID, it should report to you the OpenID you are signed in with. If you saw that reported back to you, then you did it successfully. But the login page should have reloaded and told you of this immediately. Also, I checked if your OpenID is now associated with your CVP UserID, and it is not. If you were logged into both at the same time, this should have happened. I may have to look into this more to make sure it is working both ways.

Yes, thanks, it works now, and now it says the account is linked.

(The username field in the Game Courier logs still fails to work correctly; and I know what is wrong. You use $_REQUEST to access the field and if it has the same name as a cookie, the cookie will override it. You can either change the name of the field, or change the GPC order. So far I deleted that cookie as a workaround, but you should fix it.)

Thanks for mentioning that before I observed the problem. Yes, using $_REQUEST to get the userid will now be a problem with the userid $_COOKIE. I have replaced the use of $_REQUEST with a conditional expression that returns the value of userid from either $_GET or $_POST.

For security reasons, signing in with an OpenID will first sign you out of any accounts you are in. If the OpenID you are signing into matches one linked to an account, it will sign you into the account. If the OpenID does not match any OpenIDs linked to accounts, but its verified email address matches an email address that is used for exactly one account, it will sign you into that account, and it will link the OpenID you signed in with with that account. So if you then sign in with a different OpenID account that has the same verified email address, it will not sign you into your account, and it will not change the OpenID associated with your account.

The security risk is that if you walk away from your computer while signed on, someone else could sign in with an OpenID and gain access to your userid. By signing you out of your account first, this security risk is eliminated. If you want to change the OpenID linked to your account, you will have to do it by first signing in with an OpenID, then signing into your CVP account. As I have time, I'll also add a confirmation on that, so that you cannot change which OpenID is linked to your account by accident.

I have added a script for changing your password to the Login page. If you have lost your password, you can now set a new one. All it requires is that you have an email address or an OpenID associated with your account.