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Sky. Brilliant original game by Christine Bagley-Jones. Pieces promote through a succession of odd leapers eventually to a rooks.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
📝Joe Joyce wrote on Mon, Jan 17, 2011 08:26 AM UTC:
Please pardon my intrusion, Christine, gentlemen. As an editor, I insist on a certain amount of decorum in these pages, and request that the topic be confined more or less to chess or something similar. Further, certain comments may cross boundaries that should not be crossed on this site. I have edited part of a comment out, and will continue to remove comments I deem offensive for a child-friendly chess variants site while I am an editor. 

Disagreements are fine, but they must be carried on in a civil fashion. I fully understand passions of many sorts may run high for many reasons, but I also see, from my English-only viewpoint, that there are often misunderstandings as we all try to communicate in this one language.  Claudio, Fergus is quite right - Charles was not making that comment seriously. Further, he has apologized for this totally unintentional slight...

I request that those involved in this or other disputations look at what they have written and what they will write, and delete any personal or offensive comments. I do not wish to have to do it for you. I really do not like doing this. I remind everyone this site is looked at by thousands of children as well as adults. Please make your comments with our total audience in mind.

Again, Christine, my apologies. Your excellent game's comment page is no place for this. I hope everyone will take my not too subtle hints and make appropriate amends, so we can forget about this, and get on with the serious business of arguing chess. Thank you.

Joe

Jörg Knappen wrote on Mon, Jan 17, 2011 09:38 AM UTC:
To Charles Gilman: In fact, my comment from 2002 reflects my knowledge I had at that time. There was a strange gap with the Flamingo alreay being named, but the (1,5)-leaper was left without a name.

Die Schwalbe is one of the leading problemist's journals (hey, they have journals allowing them to standardise on names!), therefore I consider their usage as well established. The Schwalbe reference gives no date when the name Ibis was assigned to (1,5) leaper, but here you can find a problem from 1999 using the Ibis:

www.softdecc.com/pdb/search.pdb?expression=CREATIONDATE%3E=20101230

(a quick google search with 'ibis chess problem' turned up this page as first hit).

To Christine: My first name is Jörg iwth an O-umlaut as second letter.


💡📝Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Mon, Jan 17, 2011 12:14 PM UTC:
ah that's ok Joe, all is fine now i hope, i kind of didn't even realise things got out of hand a bit here. Let's all forgive and be friends, i know the nameing of pieces can sometimes cause 'friction' among people, but let's try to remember, it's not really that much of a big deal hehe.

I don't want to get off the topic here, but, i am going to update this game (hehe) to fix the 'early check' problem arising from the 'trippers' on h1 and h10. At first i was going to simply remove them and not even replace them with anything but i now i'm thinking i could replace them with the 'threeleaper'. I know Jeremy Good has played a few games of 'Sky' on game courier here and wanted to know his opinion of this. Anyone who has thoughts on this i would be interested to hear too. Thanks all.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Jan 22, 2011 08:03 AM UTC:
As I say, this is not primarily a problematists' page. I wasn't that surprised to see the Flamingo but no 5:1 piece as the latter is colourbound (just as there is a Zebrarider page but no Camelrider one). I have now used the Zemel in variants, and it does convey that it is to the Zebra wha tthe Camel is to the Knight. It even suggests the use of a camel-shaped image with zebra stripes.

Jörg Knappen wrote on Tue, Jan 25, 2011 04:10 AM UTC:
Charles,

I will not ask you to assign the name Ibis to the Zemel (we can live with multiple names for the same piece), but IMO you should consider giving the (1,8)-leaper another name.

Charles Gilman wrote on Wed, Jan 26, 2011 07:37 AM UTC:
Well that would be a dangerous precedent. Caliph, Empress, Ibis, Kangaroo, and Princess are all names with one use in Man and Beast and another for problematists. All the Man and Beast uses now appear in variants - mostly in mine but note Timothy Newton's Outback Chess. The first three appear in my Armies of Faith series, all based on the names that they use. What should I do with that lot, change the names or the pieces? If I keep the pieces with new names they won't fit the theme. If I keep the names but as the problematists use them they won't relate to the rest of the pieces properly - and they'll clash with my use of the same pieces under their MAB names elsewhere. AOF 5 already uses the piece that problmatists call Empress, the Marshal.

The simple truth is, variant designers rejected problematist names long before I joined these pages, and problematists rejected names from variants still earlier. The problematists had their chance when naming the Rook+Knight and Bishop+Knight compounds. They had a lot to choose from if they could be bothered to research them, but they just came up with new ones. It was in search of 'the' standard set of names (esp. for 3d pieces as it happened) that I found these pages. Had a consensus built up over both communities I would have been the first to go along with it but none had. From what little I've seen of problematists on these pages I get the impression that we don't even featuire on their radar. Why should we stick up for their usages when they've never stuck up for ours? Sorry for all the passion, but it really is too late to do anything about it.


Jörg Knappen wrote on Wed, Jan 26, 2011 08:30 AM UTC:
I don't think we should see problemists and chess mathematicians as a kind of enemy camp. And: As long as chess variant inventors are ignorant to prior art, why should anyone else care. A striking example is Seirawan/Harper chess: Allthough there are established and sometimes even well-known names for the Rook-Night compund and the Bishop-Knight compound, they came up with new names. Even worse, their new names are established for pieces with other moves.

As I say: With their (peer reviewed!) journals problemists have a far better infrastructure than chess variantists can even dream of. We have this web site and wikipedia. Neither of the two media is peer-reviewed.

Charles Gilman wrote on Thu, Jan 27, 2011 06:57 AM UTC:
Perhaps not enemies, but certainly very uncommunicativbe neighbours. The point is, it is only if a name has been used for a piece in sn actual variant that we should worry about using the name for a different piece.
	Perhaps you do not realise how much work went into Man and Beast. A renaming of one piece often leads to the renaming of many more. When I realised that certain cubic pieces were also Tetrahedral ones and te significance of semi-duals it meant that te cubic and hex root-19 leapers were associted wit different cubic root-38 leapers and so required different names. Fortunately I had created relatively few compounds of them at the time. When I decided that Muskrat would be a better name for the 8:2:1 cubic leaper than the more generic Myomorph, that knocked out Mustang, and Mustang's replacement Ringaui knocked out Irregular, and it all eventually developed into a chain of changes. Pieces connected with the Ibis include Beau, Bemel, Bijou, Bimel, Ibex, Isis, Ixion, Landyman, Ledge, Lump, Pandyman, Pledge, Pump, Pyramid, Yramid, and no doubt many others.

Claudio Martins Jaguaribe wrote on Thu, Jan 27, 2011 06:28 PM UTC:
For me, it's ok, but I always clearly show whem I'm kidding and ask for apologies after the joke; what was not the case, in this game that can be seen in one of my comments to C.B.-J (joke and apologies).

Christine: as we dont have Alfaerie for these pieces, I guess, put a little who's who.

Thanks and kisses!

BTW: Christine where are you from?

💡📝Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Sat, Jan 29, 2011 06:14 AM UTC:
Claudio, i'm from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. We recently got flooded bad here but the house i live in was fine, all good.
Now, what alfaeirie graphic's don't we have for what, hehe?
Sorry :)

oh, piece naming, it's a pain, i like to use the 'orginal' name mostly for pieces but some pieces get so well known by certain names in your 'community' that it is hard to resist, some names u don't like, etc etc.
i got no time at the moment, got to go out but i'll revisit the sticky subject of piece naming, bye for now, and, 'where's my beer' :)

💡📝Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Sat, Feb 5, 2011 04:21 AM UTC:
Oh if u mean no original alfaerie for 'sky' then yes there isn't but i am very used to the ones i used, u don't really see them too much in games either. On the download zrf page for 'sky' is info on game and at the bottom of the page there are graphics of pieces and the name and movement given.

Charles, naming pieces, i know u have a 'big production' going on there and changing one name means changing a lot of others, so, yeah, it's a problem, and i think u should name them what u want. But if u could not name an 8-1 leaper 'ibis' it would probably be good seeing that name is connected with a 5-1 leaper from at least 1999 it seems. It would be confusing. If u havn't already named it that, u could consider, or at least on your page mention that some people call 5-1 leaper 'ibis'.

But then again, as we see, people name pieces what they want disregarding names that they were called earlier. Who invented the compound pieces 'knight/bishop' and 'knight/rook'? What were original names?

Tai Shogi has an 'alfil/wazir' called 'Phoenix' (Hoo) and another piece called 'Kirin' that moves 'dabbaba/fers' Surely these pieces were the first ones invented?

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2011 07:23 AM UTC:
Small tip: as the I and U keys are adjacent on the keyboard it's always best to write out you in full to avoid any ambiguity. When I see a u in isolation I never know which pronoun the writer really means, especially as I occasionally find I written as U when proofreading my own writing.

Regarding the main business, as far as I know only one variant uses a piece called Ibis, and it's the longer-range one. The tendency in Man and Beast has been to phase out reference to problematist usage unless the name is a direct lift - sorry, tribute - like Sexton or Frog. Not even All the King's Men, which seems to be considered the authoritative page on problematist usage, mentions Ibis.

Don't get me wrong, I welcome constructive criticism, but are you prepared to offer a string of new names yourself, fitting all the criteria required, just for this one out of many clashes between two strands of naming? Frankly I don't think that, given my other priorities, I can make the effort without a far better motivation.


💡📝Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2011 09:16 AM UTC:
sorry for writing 'u' meaning 'you', but u just might have to get used to it when i post on the forums.

let's just remember i said u can call your pieces whatever u want, i couldn't care at all really.

You say about 'all the king's men' site .. 'seems to be considered the authoritative page on problematist usage'

This is a problematist page? Right at the top of the page is says ...
'A Guide to Variant Chess: All the King's Men'

It starts off with this ..
'This part of the Guide to Variant Chess is devoted to chess pieces.'

anyway, even if it is problematist page, i didn't know the chess variant community had a 'war' going on with them, but that page to me does not seem to be a 'problemastist' page, please correct me if i'm wrong.

Serge wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2011 12:29 PM UTC:
'Don't get me wrong, I welcome constructive criticism, but are you
prepared to offer a string of new names yourself'

Nope, but I'm quite prepared to ignore yours.  And how about some nice
destructive criticism?  Stop constructing.

Ben Reiniger wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2011 08:20 PM UTC:
Given that All the King's Men has a number of diagrams all of which are problems, I agree that it is primarily a problematists' site.

Jeremy Good wrote on Thu, Sep 11, 2014 03:55 PM UTC:
Forgive me if this has already been addressed but almost none of the logs for these games are accessible and i would really like to review them. Ah well, i suppose there's nothing to be done about it.

Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Sep 12, 2014 12:28 AM UTC:
It looks to me like most of the logs _are_ accessible... the ones that are not are the oldest, and it seems like the problem is that the initial board layout was changed after those games were played.  When the log is called up, the game rules are checked anyway, and since the current game rules think the first pieces moved weren't actually where they started, it objects.

I would prefer to leave any changing of the scripts to Fergus.  If someone knew what the starting positions in those early games were, they could create a new settings file for that, and I could modify the logs to indicate that they use that setup, which I think would fix the problem.

Jeremy Good wrote on Fri, Sep 12, 2014 11:03 AM UTC:
Out of ten games (two of the ten Carlos and I just started) the following are inaccessible: 1,2,3,6,7,8...

:)

I think an effort should be made to retrieve these and other games lost to changes in piece names. In cases when the older names can be remembered, we should re-alter them so we can publish the games in the proper places (below their courier presets) alter them back again, and then delete the ones whose logs can no longer be accessed. We should be careful not to change names when they can endanger games logs. 

This is important for building knowledge and understanding of chess variants through play and playtesting.

Ben Reiniger wrote on Fri, Sep 12, 2014 07:52 PM UTC:
Oh, sorry, I don't know why I thought most of the newer logs were working earlier.

Where exactly are the names of the pieces defined?  In the Sets?  I think it would be possible for me to change the logs manually to use new piece names, so the Frog logs (hehe) can probably be fixed.  

But the Sky logs that used different starting arrays (is that the only problem???) will require more effort.  I think the way to do this is to create a new Settings file for the Sky game, and change the appropriate logs to use the new Settings file.

Jeremy Good wrote on Sat, Sep 13, 2014 06:57 PM UTC:
Ben, thank you very much. 

"Frog logs" - hehe.

We may possibly need the designers of the presets to help by telling us what changes were made along the way? I don't currently have the expertise to figure this out but there may be other ways of unlocking those records...

The one nice thing though is that the logs *do* exist and I'm sure that they can be unlockable at some point (so I hope they don't get arbitrarily deleted) - I'm just not sure how right now.

💡📝Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Wed, Dec 10, 2014 10:21 AM UTC:
Hi, i just noticed your talk about what was original setup. I added a screenshot of the original setup at the bottom of the Sky page :)
Not sure if it was a problem, but the game was updated to stop a 2nd move check from white, and another change to slow down the promotion process.

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MZsky

Jeremy Good wrote on Wed, Dec 10, 2014 04:31 PM UTC:
Hi Christine.

Did you get my email I sent you a few months ago? Email me, please, if you have time.

I have a suggestion for a possible Sky variant which I'm currently calling "Sky Kamil." This is just a working playtest variant, not necessarily final.

The point is to tame it; make it a teeny bit more "chess-like" by adding a little bit of traditional pawn-interference.

1. These camel pawns move like forward camels or like regular "European" / Orthodox / FIDE pawns.

2. They can NOT make a NON-CAPTURING camel move on their first move.

3. After that, the SK Camel-Pawn's camel-move aspect switches, from CAPTURING to NON-CAPTURING.

4. Camel-Pawns can only promote to Trippers or Commuters.

Open, of course, to any comments you might have.

***This occured to me in writing out the above: An easier and simpler alternative to the above (and this could be implemented easily in the Game Courier automation - all the camel-pawns can be programmed to change into regular pawns upon moving): The camel pawns only exist as such camel / orthodox pawns for their first move which can be capturing or non-capturing. Immediately upon moving, they revert to "normal" (orthodox / fide / European) pawns.

This latter variant of "Sky Kamil" sounds more appealing at the moment...thotz?


Ben Reiniger wrote on Thu, Dec 11, 2014 06:01 PM UTC:

Thanks Christine. I have created a new Settings file for the game and modified several of the logs to use that Settings instead. They appear to be working now.

A couple of notes:
1) Probably a Settings file should not be able to be modified if any logs use it. I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement on our side, but in the interim, if a user is aware of logs on their games it would be best to create a new Settings file instead of modifying the current one.
2) For some reason I was unable to use the GC Menu to create the new Settings file (I went into the file system as an editor instead). It should be possible to create a new Settings file even if you don't own the original, right?
3) Perhaps there should be a list somewhere of the different existing Settings files for a given GC Preset?


💡📝Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Mon, Jan 19, 2015 02:46 PM UTC:
Oh Jeremy sorry, i must have missed your mail.  It is fine that you want to make a game based on Sky, please feel free to do whatever you want and call it Sky Kamil, i am honored :)

Jeremy Good wrote on Wed, Jan 21, 2015 03:59 PM UTC:
cherry, ty so much - great - well, Sky is a variant I'd like to keep working on, both the original and some subvariants. I'll post more about this variant eventually....It's one of a handful of *unique* variants I've truly enjoyed playing and thinking about...

The email address you have listed on your profile for this site doesn't seem to work. Maybe you should create a new one?

If and when you have time, I'd like to correspond with you about piece icons, e.g., your Fairy Pieces 1 (which I just noticed only today), forthcoming Fairy Pieces 2 and other cv-related things...

I'm doing a lot of piece design too (more than ever), including venturing into some art territories that I've never explored before. Very exciting for me. Would like to share what I'm working on, confer and maybe collaborate...? We also need to get all these pieces you've already created and shared with the site uploaded to Alfaerie - Many and maybe you could coordinate with me to get that done...

You were the one who explained to me how I could design pieces to begin with...I'm impressed with all the work you've done in this area.

If and when you get a chance, please do email me...suspecting you're a busy professional so please don't feel rushed or obliged.


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