Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

That's odd. Just now I entered the moves 1.Nb4 (square lit up as usual) Ka7 (illegal) 2.Qa6 (illegal) and then clicked on 'Play It!', and next I clicked on 'Move'. At that point the Black king took my queen on a6.

Note that the castling move that is now defined for the King (isO2) describes castling with the furthest piece in that direction. Which in this case is the Judge. If you would want it to castle with the Rook you would have to specify isjO2 . (I used the j for this, which normally means 'jumping', because in a sense you jump over the Judge while looking for the castling partner.)

For user input the diagram is not very pedantic, and allows you to castle with the Rook anyway, but it allows every other illegal move as well, so that doesn't mean a whole lot. As it is the AI would never castle with the Rook, however.

This is definitely not as it is supposed to behave. The chekmate detection does seem to work, though, as can be tested by first playing the (illegal) moves 1.Nb4 Ka7, then switching on the AI and playing 2.Qa6. It then says "I resign" without playing a move. After it lost its King, and it is its turn to move, it should say "It seems I have already lost".

No idea why that wouldn't have worked in the game you played. That it doesn't see mate-in-1 coming is normal; the default lookeahead depth is only 2 ply + quiescence search, and for mated-in-1 the King is only captured on ply 4. (So 3 ply + QS would be enough to see it.)

In any case the play will be quite weak; it is intended to be a demo for people who just have seen the rules for the first time, to get an idea what the game is like. Setting it to 4 ply would make it slightly tougher, but even then a strong player should not have much dificulty beating it. (An for large games like SAC Chess it might think too long.)

I played it a complete game, though I didn't save it. It may have been on a very low number of ply look-ahead (i.e. the default level). I don't know if it's a bug, but when it let me checkmate it in one move, the losing king took the mating piece attacking it one square away, and it continued the game after I took its king (at which point I abandoned the game). Presumably playing it using several ply look-ahead higher would give me a much tougher time.

OK, you are welcome.

Thank you Carlos! I will try to play it sooner or later!

Kevin:

I configured the Muller's applet to play your variant. Hope you like it and find it interesting to face its AI. For me it is a great resource to enjoy doing something that I like.

I share the next game I played vs it driving me the white side.

1.Ng4 Jb7 2.Nd4 Ji7 3.h4 Nd7 4.Jh3 Ng7 5.c4 Mc9 6.Jc3 Mh9 7.Mc2 Jc5 8.Mh2 Jg6 9.b4 Jd6 10.f4 a6 11.a5 Nf6 12.e5 Nxg4+ 13.Jxg4 Jde7 14.Be4 Jgf7 15.M°h3 Md7 16.Nf5 Nxf5 17.Jxf5 Cc9 18.Jxe7 Mxe7 19.Jd5 Mb7 20.Bc3 Mg7 21.Kf1 Ch9 22.Jc5 Mc7 23.d5 h6 24.e6 Je7 25.Bxg7 fxg7 26.Jb6 Af8 27.Jxc7 bxc7 28.Qf3 Rb7 29.M°c3 Bh8 30.M°e5 Ca7 31.M°d4 Cb8 32.Cc3 i6 33.M°e5 Sg9 34.Cd4 Ri7 35.Mg4 d6 36.exd7 cxd7 37.f5 d6 38.M°e6 Jd8 39.Mg6 Ah7 40.g5 Cf8 41.Rf2 hxg5 42.Mxg5 Ah6 43.i5 Aj7 44.Ce2 g6 45.f6 Ch7 46.M°e7 Cxg5 47.Axg5 Rxe7 48.fxe7+ Jf7 49.Axi6 Axi6 50.Qxi6 Bxb2 51.Mxb2 Qg7 52.Sg1 Ae9 53.Bxg6 Jf6 54.Rxf6+ Qxf6 55.Sf2 Ag7 56.Cd4 Axi6 57.Sxf6+ Sf8 58.Sxf8+ Kg10 59.Axi6 Sc9 60.Ai10#

King, Queen, Rook, Bishop, Knight and Pawn are labeled as usual. The remain thus:
Amazon: A
Marshall: M
Cardinal: C
Sailor: S
Missionary: M°
Judge: J

I renamed the Archbishop as Cardinal so I could use the A to label the Amazon.

Thank you very much!

Ok, that's fixed.

@Greg:

I just noticed that in both standard and alternate piece sets the labels for Sailor (R+F) and Missionary (B+W) are reversed.

They are currently incorrectly labeled thus:

= M

= S

They must be correctly labeled thus:

= S

= M

Could you please take a look at it?

Okay, thanks. I hadn't realized the implications of that default checkbox.

Incidentally, Tim O'Lena recently submitted a couple of Zog-related submissions to be looked over by editor(s), in case you missed that.

I just unchecked Uses HTML for you. You should check that only if you are completely depending on HTML to describe your page's formatting.

I slightly edited the rules page for Sac Chess, by noting in the introduction that there are (now) 3 rules enforcing presets available.

Unfortunately, it seems the Sac Chess rules page formatting has become messed up, once more.

Yes, it appears the formatting issues with all my submissions that were messed up previously (somehow) have been nicely resolved, by one or more of the editors it may well be.

The only possible exception might be with the Notes Section of my Full House Hexagonal Chess rules page - unfortunately I cannot recall if I left sparse/no spacing between what perhaps should be independent paragraphs in the Notes section to that rules page, so perhaps fixing it further, if it should be fixed further, might take some guesswork or arbitrary editing.

You are welcome, Kevin.

The formatting issues seem to have been fixed. It only remains to mention that the available presets are three.

@ Carlos:

Looks good, thanks!

@ Greg:

The Sac Chess rules page is not the only submission of mine that has gotten messed up, due to some formatting changes to CVP's database perhaps. I wasn't in a hurry to draw attention to all of those submissions, in case the onus somehow fell on me to modify what used to be well-formatted submissions of mine.

@Greg,

The key at the bottom that describes the pieces shows Alfaerie images.

 

So is. I already corrected it. I even put links to the three presets separately so that the player who is going to launch an invitation can choose the one he/she likes.

Yeah, I know. I have to be very careful never to switch off 'Source code', once I have started to do advanced things. Or they would all simply disappear. Embedded JavaScript disappears completely, Diagram definitions become line-filling text, the 'id' names of HTML elements are all forgotten...

The formatting probably got messed up somewhere along the way.  It can happen with the editor if you aren't careful.  Fortunately, now that revisions are saved, it will be possible to go back if it happens ...

Some sections are very poorly formatted; even the images are just part the lines. And division into paragraphs is sorely missing in a very long text.

You're welcome.

The key at the bottom that describes the pieces shows Alfaerie images.  So I think the preset should default to Alfaerie, particularly since the dragon king/dragon horse are non-standard.  A player can switch to abstract if he desires.

@Greg,

 Thank you very much!

@Kevin,

The new preset page is already updated. Please let me know if you want us to write any particular text there. You don't have to worry about past game logs being affected because I have used another settings name.

Ok, I have created a set group for Sac Chess with two Alfaerie options and an Abstract set option.  These use the proper notations for Sac Chess so be sure to update the game courier presets and change the settings name so that existing game logs don't get broken.

Note for Fergus: The graphics Kevin has used for dragon horse and dragon king may not be correct.  The cross within the graphic usually represents royal pieces but I don't see any other options for these pieces.

I have never seen the word 'compound' used in sequential meaning; I would say the Sissa is an (isosceles) hook mover. And I would not say the Tai Shogi Hook Mover is a (conjunctive) compound of two Rooks. The word 'or' usually implies 'and', and if you consider this operations on the move sets, the 'conjunctive compound' of R and B would have no moves (as B and R have no moves in common), and the conjunctive compound of K and R would be the Wazir, etc. There doesn't seem a case where this cumbersome way of describing more elementary move sets is useful, as they tend to all have simple names of their own. Note that the Sissa can neither move as a Rook, nor as a Bishop.

It seems to me the addition of 'disjunctive' serves no other purpose here then sow confusion in a case that otherwise would be correctly understood with 100% certainty.

Thank you very much, HG, for the clarification. Soon I will make the correction in what corresponds to the Sac Chess preset. It will take more time to do it in other texts because they are many.

What is paradoxical and anecdotal about this case is that I believed that making that distinction introduced clarity!

In passing, it should be borne in mind that 90% of what I write in English is "formatted"  [written, thought, said] by the Google translator.