Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

O is amazon
.RF is dragon horse = rook or ferz
.BW is dragon king = bishop or wazir
.NGU is knight or guard

Testing the preset by the "MOVE pieces by yourself" resource, looks like the code doesnot recognize such pieces as own for any determined army.

Sorry, .RF is dragon king and .BW is dragon horse (from shogi).

For the Dragon Horse and Dragon King, where you have a checkride, you don't also need a checkleap. But this is just redundancy, not anything that would break these functions. The *L functions don't have this redundancy and seem alright.

When you say the code does not recognize these pieces, please be specific about what you're doing, what you expect to happen, and what happens. The pieces are not objects that are either fully recognized or fully not recognized. I could move these pieces, but I could not see legal moves displayed for them. Also, other pieces on the same side could capture them.

I think both problems are due to the piece labels not being purely alphabetical. With piece labels that have non-alpha characters in them, you cannot rely on islower and isupper to tell the sides apart, and you cannot rely on onlylower and onlyupper to provide a list of all pieces belonging to one side. You will have to rewrite any code relying on the assumption that piece labels are purely alphabetical. Alternately, you can use a smaller set that does use purely alphabetical labels for pieces. I never use the Alfaerie: Many set and do not encourage its use.

> 1. It's not possible to promote pawns because appear a message noting: "This webpage is not available. DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN." 

That's an unexpected message. It is not programmed into Game Courier, and I don't know what could be responsible for it.

> 2. When you click on the Amazon or on the Centaur (placed on a2/a9, j2/j9) its legal moves are not displayed, and when you click on the destination square it appears a JavaScript window saying: "This move is not marked as legal. Do you still want to try it?", followed by the "Cancell - Accept" alternative links. After clicking "Accept", the move is completed normally. 

The *L functions for these two are trying to merge three arrays with only one instance of merge. Merge takes two arguments, not three. To merge three arrays, you should first merge two, then merge the merged array with a third array. You would have to use merge twice to do this.

>> That's an unexpected message. It is not programmed into Game Courier,
>> and I don't know what could be responsible for it.

> I think it is related with the change of domain from .org to .com because the same happens with the chess preset; so unless you fix this, it won't be possible to promote pawns in games that have enforced theirs rules.

Yes, Pawn promotion uses the askpromote command, which includes a form, and the URL for the form's action was given in full at chessvariants.org. I shortened it to just play.php. Currently, chessvariants.org is out of commission until I can figure out how to successfully redirect it to chessvariants.com.

Hi Carlos

What happened in your first game of Sac Chess with Fergus, at least in terms of the result? How many moves did the game last? I haven't yet learned how to access a database of games of a particular variant that have been played on Game Courier, if there is such a database (there are logs of many games that started long ago, at least).

I saw that that game had gone past move 30 (with yourself as White), with a wide open position (in terms of pawn structure), where you were ahead by one pawn. After that, I checked later on and you two had started another game of Sac Chess, and I couldn't find the first game's log.

Hi, Kevin. To get the game logs, click on the site logo in the upper lefthand corner of the page. That takes you to the home page. Scroll down until you see the "What's New" section. The top line under What's New is the last game move made. Click on that kink and it will bring you to the game logs. Type "Sac Chess" in the game box, set the Age box to however far you want to go back and look - say 4 weeks. Then set the status to "Any Games", and click the "submit" button. This will bring up all the games of Sac Chess that were played in the last 4 weeks. You will get the current game between Carlos and Fergus and you will get their finished game. Note the game box is case sensitive. If you type "sac chess" or Sac chess", you will not see any games. Putting your user ID in will bring up just the games you've played in the last 4 weeks. You can use wild cards: putting "Sac *" or Sac*" will also get you those games, as will "Sa*". Typing just "S*" will bring up Seirawan, Shogi... also.
*******EDIT:
I see Carlos already gave you the short course.

Thanks guys. I got to see the game by following Carlos' instructions. I had tried some searching of the logs before, but not the way Joe describes.

I greatly enjoyed the second ever game of Sac Chess, between Fergus & Carlos, both because it was full-blooded, in terms of having many pieces and pawns traded before the end (unlike happened in the first ever game of Sac Chess), and because all these trades (of about 20 units per each side) happened at a fast pace (namely about 1 pair of units for every 6 ply), i.e. faster than is the average pace for chess (which is 1 pair of units traded for every 10 ply, I read somewhere).

I was a little concerned that an average game of Sac Chess might take around 220 ply (if 1 pair of units are traded for every 10 ply on average in a game, as for standard chess). That is since an average game of chess takes about 80 ply, therefore leaving about 8 units per side on the board. That is presumably if an average game of chess is not further played out, until checkmate, or else until a draw by the rules of chess.

One thing I noticed was that in this second ever game of Sac Chess, Black seemed to pass up more than one available checkmate in 1 move (that was around move 69, I recall), but this did not take away from my enjoyment, because now I have more reason to hope that Sac Chess may be a fully viable chess variant, for people to play and enjoy.

H.G. wrote:

"If you want to test your theory about the computer resitance of this variant: 
You can download a version of Sjaak II + WinBoard configured to play Sac Chess from http://hgm.nubati.net/SacChess.zip. Just download and unzip it, and double-click the WinBoard icon (the black Knight) in the folder, and it should start up a Sac Chess game as black (so you can start playing white). If you want the computer to play white, click the Mode -> Machine White menu. You might want to give yourself more time through the Options -> Time Control menu. You can also watch Sjaak II play Sac Chess games against itself by clicking the Mode -> Two Machines menu.
 
Have fun!"


Thanks for your effort, H.G. I've been busy lately, with two 4D variant ideas of mine, and planning my activities (& recording appointments) ahead for 2016. This coming weekend, for example, I plan to play in a weekend tournament in Ottawa that starts Friday evening. A regular participant in Ottawa events is an immigrant GM from Montreal (Bator Sambuev), who is a mutual friend of the organizer/director of these events. I try to prepare something for him usually, since we'll usually play in such a small event, even though he almost invariably wins by a 5-0 score. 

After the weekend I was thinking of reading up more about Game Courier, to see how convenient it might be for me to understand & participate in that. Doing the downloading (and, e.g., trying machine vs. machine play) that you suggested will hence be on my backburner for a little while at least. To show how tech-challenged I am these days, I can't seem to recall ever doing the sort of 'unzip' you refered to, though I'm pretty sure it will be very simple to figure out how. Fwiw, my brother & his wife visit almost every weekend, and if able she helps me with software/hardware issues now & then if I am stumped.

Take care, Kevin

To Carlos:

Now that I've read Game Courier user documentation, I am thinking of trying to play my first Game Courier online game, such as a game of Sac Chess against you, if you wish to play (say at this point in time). I've got a handful of questions though:

1) I can't yet figure out how the players agree to the time contol to be used within their chosen game that is to be played on Game Courier (unless that comes somehow after an invitation is accepted). A large pool of time to play a whole game, for example, would probably suit me best, if that is the sort of default used nowadays.

2) I can't tell (e.g. by your ongoing 3rd Sac Chess game vs. Fergus) what you used as the preset for online Sac Chess (i.e. playing with, or without, rule enforcement) - that's besides not being able to tell what time control is being used in your game. I know I have some issues viewing webpages on The Variant Pages because of my older browser (which I may switch later on), but I don't think that's a problem as far as my viewing Game Courier, generally speaking. In any case, I don't know which preset for Sac Chess has been tested so far, or which you think best to use in a game.

3) I'm not sure if I need (or want) to be put on the Gamesroom(?) player list for regular Game Courier players to be told of existing open invitations. For invitations issued to a single person, I suppose they would show up on the publicly viewable list including open invitations, or the person to whom the invitation is issued to would receive an email. I'm not sure who gets White, i.e. to move first, when any sort of invitation is issued as well, but I don't mind playing against either colour my opponent may want in my first few games. If you wish, you could send me an invitation to play Sac Chess when ready to play (you could also send an invitation for a game of Glinski's Hexagonal Chess to me if you wish, too).

Sincerely, Kevin

The player who issues an invitation decides on the time controls, and the player who accepts an invitation decides which side to play. Carlos and I have been playing with a preset that enforces the rules and displays legal moves. That is the sort of preset I recommend for playing most any game.

Exactly. Thanks for answering, Fergus. It is not easy for me to express myself in English. I only add that our games are UNTIMED. 

Kevin: I'm sending you a couple of invitations... Enjoy!

I'm having trouble playing my games with you, Carlos. I managed to play my first move at Sac Chess, but not my second move after receiving your reply. I encountered the same problem as I had in our game of Glinski's Hexagonal Chess right away, in that I had no way made available to me to move (or Preview a move). I switched my browser to Firefox in attempting to shed the problem, and had trouble even visiting this website for a short while (maybe it was just down?). Now I'm back, but my troubles playing haven't gone away after switching browsers. Perhaps Fergus can help. Fwiw, I sent Fergus the following email, while I still could not yet visit this website again:

"Hello Fergus
 
I made my first move with White against Carlos in my Sac Chess game with him. I tried to make my first move as White against Carlos in our game of Glinski’s Hexagonal Chess, but was unable to because unlike for the Sac Chess game log webpage, many options were not presented to me on this game’s Game Courier log webpage, including a space to enter my move, or a button to Preview a given move I’d make. Figuring the problem was with my old browser, I finally decided to switch browsers in an attempt to shed the problem, clicking on Firefox (a suggested browser option on the webpage of my Hexagonal game). After I managed to download Firefox and set up a Firefox account, I was able to use Firefox to get to any number of my Favourite websites successfully using Firefox as my browser, except when I tried to visit The Chess Variant Pages I was not successful, in that a message appeared saying “502 Bad Gateway” and below that was “nginx” as well. Please let me know if the website is down (or whether I might have done something wrong), and pass on to Carlos that I am having trouble continuing to play our games, especially if he is not having trouble seeing The Chess Variant Pages website too (I received his reply with Black to my first move in the Sac Chess game, but clicking on the link also showed the Bad Gateway message.
 
Yours truly, Kevin"

[edit: on the bright side, the problem I had viewing the Berolina Pawn webpage (or unfavouriting it if I wish to) has disappeared.]

Sorry for your troubles. The website is working fine and it has not had any downtime. Hope they will be resolved soon.

I have made it a bit easier to move if you make a wrong turn. There is now a button in View mode for going to a form for making a move. But what you should normally do is this. Go to the Logs page, enter your userid and submit the form, then you will see the games you can move in, and for the games you are already playing, the link will bear your name. Click on your name for a particular game, and you will be brought to the form for making a move.

After going out this evening, I have returned and succeeded in making my second move in my Sac Chess game, and my first move in my Glinski's Hexagonal Chess game. Thanks Fergus. 

A question to Carlos is, for the Hexagonal Chess variant that we are playing, namely "Glinski's Hexagonal Chess (Symmetric)", is the only difference between it and Glinski's (original) Hexagonal Chess game that the start position is different, that is that there are two queens per side used instead of one queen? 

I did not see any rules given when I looked up the webpage for "Glinski's Hexagonal Chess (Symmetric)", in the big listing of games found on The Chess Variant Pages, so I have assumed (so far) that the basic rules are indeed the same for both the original & Symmetric versions.

Yes, the only difference is that there are two queens per side instead of one. I have already fixed the bug on the link to the ruleset page.

The textarea in Edit mode that it titled "Rules, Written in HTML for Players to Read:" should be used to provide a brief description of the rules that players can consult without looking at the rules page. It should not be used simply for providing a link to the rules page. There is already a Rules URL field for that.