Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I have now loaded new images, consistent with the set-up diagram. Is that OK?

The movement diagrams now have matching images, but some of the pieces have no image in their descriptions. To avoid any ambiguity about where pieces go, you could include a legend with the diagram. This would also make the page more accessible to anyone who can't see the diagram for whatever reason.

I don't see the new problems.

The pieces that have no image are those of regular chess with the addition of RN and BN. The text clearly says that.

The diagrams have no legends because they are just illustrating. If someone doesn't see the diagrams, it will not be a problem because the text is saying what is in the diagrams. Putting a legend saying "move of the Cannon" for example is not helping much.

Most of the descriptions in chessvariants.com are done in a similar way.

Please publish my page as it is. Thank you.

I have added legends behind each diagram

What I meant by legend was a listing of which piece is on each space in the setup diagram. However, this may not be all that helpful, given that most of the pieces unpictured below are not in the initial setup and are left up to one of the players to place into position. Of the unpictured pieces, I can tell which is which, and since this is not a beginner's Chess variant, I suppose anyone interested in playing it will be able to tell the Marshall from the Cardinal and will be able to recognize the usual Chess pieces.

One more thing I'll recommend is including a link to the piececlopedia entry for a piece where there is one. This should, of course, match the piece that moves the same way, not necessarily the entry with the same name. For example, it would be appropriate to link to the Murray Lion for the Lion or to the Zebra for your Giraffe piece.

Speaking of the Giraffe, bringing up the Elephant in Janggi adds confusion, because that piece is not a leaper, but the Giraffe is.

With respect to the Cannon, it would be better to say immediately that it is the same as the Cannon from Xiangqi, because that game is much better known than Shako. You may mention in an afterthought, though, that you have previously used the piece in Shako, as I have mentioned in Gross Chess, for example, that I have previously used the same piece in Yáng Qí and Eurasian Chess.

Finally, please make your links to the relevant pages on the Chess Variant Pages rather than to the relevant pages on your site. If the CVP is missing a relevant page, you may create it.

Here's something I just thought of while making breakfast. You can organize your piece descriptions in a way that minimizes the reading that has to be done by someone who is familiar with Metamachy, Shako, or Chess. You could start with the pieces that are new to this game. Then you could say that the remaining pieces move as they do in Metamachy, which will signal someone already familiar with Metamachy that he doesn't have to read any further. Continuing with the remaining pieces for completeness, you could then describe the pieces in Metamachy that aren't used in Shako. Then for someone who knows Shako but not Metamachy, you could say that the remaining pieces move as they do in Shako. Then you could describe the pieces that are in Shako but not in Chess. Finally, when you get to the pieces from Chess, you could say these all move as they do in Chess and just include brief descriptions for completeness. For Chess pieces that move differently than they do in Chess, you can describe them at a higher level. In this way, you could create a series of stop points where someone who knows other games would already know how to play and could stop reading further.

Thank you.

OK the legend was for the setup. I have legended all other diagrams... 
Difficult for me to understand what is not clear. In the text I do list all pieces, then the ones which are on the board, then I explain which other pieces are coming on which squares, then I give as an example a completed set-up. Anyhow, I will try to clarify more.

I will do for the links for piececlopedia, I just have to find out how to do but it shoudn't be complex.

You're right for the Elephant in Janggi, I went too fast, too much focused on the pattern of the move. I'm going to correct.

OK for the Cannon. Yes, this text is made by copying what I have on my own website, this explains why, but I'm gonna change.

Links to CVP pages: yes of course, again because I first wrote this for my website, no problem I'll change. 

Thank you, sorry to bother you

Things are looking better. I'll mention a few things that caught my attention.

The Eagle diagram seems to be incorrect. In the lower right corner, it is missing its horizontal movement.

Your link to the Lion is to griffon.html. Since your Lion can leap as a Knight, I was wrong about it being a Murray Lion. There are multiple ways it could be described, such as a Knight/Murray Lion compound, as a Man/Squirrel compound, or as a Wazir/Ferz/Dabbabah/Alfil/Knight compound.

Aaargh. I correct the Eagle's diagram immediatly.

For the Lion, I failed my cut/paste, I wanted to point to Chu Shogi's Lion. 

Let me correct them.

Thanks a lot

I think it should be OK now. Thank you.

Okay, I have published it on the site.

My best guess is that the given piece values totally suck. The hoppers seem hugely over-estimated. Even in the opening phase of Xiangqi a Cannon is only marginally better than a Horse, while the Horse is only worth half a Knight in a FIDE context. The Cardinal seems hugely undrestimated; on 8x8 it is only about a quarter pawn weaker than a Marshall, and I would not be surprised if it is actually stronger than one in this game, as it is very adept in demolishing Pawn chains, and there are a lot of Pawns here.

I did do some piece-value measurements on a 12x12 board lately, but the results were a bit anomalous. It seemed the difference between a Rook on one hand, and a Bishop or Knight on the other could not be compensated with any reasonable number of pawns; the Rook always won, and giving the opponent one more extra Pawn did not change the average result. The problem seemed to be that too many Pawns remain on such a large board, and their path to promotion is long. And Pawns cannot self-defend against a Rook while a Bishop or Knight can never catch a passer, and Bishops often not even a blocked Pawn. So what happens is that the Rook just eats away all opponent Pawns, the opponent minor being tied up by preventing advance of a passer. And then it starts to push his own passers protected by the Rook, so that in the end the only way to prevent promotion is sac the minor. After which the Rook player promotes his other passers, or just checkmates with the Rook.

Thank you for your pleasant comment.
As explained, the piece values are just reflecting what Zillions computes. It has no more value than that, the goal was just to give an idea of the relative values. Every method "suck", because the piece value is a complex notion where mobility is just one parameter, we all know that. Maybe I will include a disclaimer to avoid more comments like this.
The path to promotion for Pawns is not longer here than in std chess. Because the Pawns can always move 2 squares forward, like in Metamachy.
With this variant, like with my other ones, my intention was to give fun. Not to be upset by people self-convinced to have found a winning strategy. I was glad to get back to CVP after many years of absence. I was co-editor in the early times with Hans. I see that the spirit has changed a lot.

It was not my intention to upset anyone, but in this era of fake news it is important to unambiguously suppress erroneous information at the source. All too easily it will spread as an oil stain over the internet, and become 'common knowledge' that no one doubts because they see it everywhere. That Zillions piece values are no good should be common knowledge. (Or is it, really? Or do only authors of ZRF games know that, and would the average reader be intimidated that a computer did say it, so that it must be true?) So yes, a disclaimer like "these values are based on pure guessing / mobility calculation / play testing in five hundred games" would be very useful.

And I don't agree with the statement that any method for determining piece-value "sucks". If, after trading a Rook for two Knights in an otherwise equal position, both sides would still score about 50% in 1000 games, I would say that this is very strong evidence that a Rook is exactly twice as valuable as two Knights. (And thus N = 2.5, if R=5 served as a standard.)

Interesting point about the Metamachy/Zanzibar Pawn speed. The measurements I referred to were with FIDE Pawns. But beware that this willcould have a huge effect on piece values. Bishops will be no good at all for stopping multiple passers, which would just jump over the diagonals controlled by a Bishop. Not even a Bishop pair will be able gain an isolated Metamachy passer, as it cannot attack both squares in front of it, as well as attack the Pawn itself at the same time. Which a Rook can still easily do, by attacking the passer from the same file.

There still is one thing in the rules that is not clear to me, in connection with the King jump: can the King jump over an enemy piece that is protected? In other words, are pieces considered to attack friendly pieces in their path?

Not sure I understand the question: 

"There still is one thing in the rules that is not clear to me, in connection with the King jump: can the King jump over an enemy piece that is protected? "

>> No for two reasons. 1) when jumping it doesn't matter if the square is occupied or not. So it is like if the square was void. 2) The enemy piece is obviouly on a square. The jump is forbidden when the square is threatened.

"In other words, are pieces considered to attack friendly pieces in their path?"
>> This the question I don't understand. I don't see the relation between your two sentences. Pieces are never attacking friendly pieces or I miss something

Pieces are never attacking friendly pieces or I miss something

That is the answer to my question. So if a virgin King is on h1, a black Bishop on h2, and a black Knight on g4, the King can move to h3. If his own Bishop was on h2 instead, he could not.

Some people would say pieces can attack the square a friendly piece is on. They obviously cannot capture it, but that doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as being attacked. E.g. when my King stands next to an enemy Pawn that is protected, does he attack that Pawn?

Personally this rule strikes me as quite illogical; to pass through a square it should be empty, and if you don't pass through it but jump over it, you shouldn't have to worry if you are attacked there. And I wonder how much this rule actually affects the game; it seems very hard to attack any squares next to the enemy King before he moves away to safety, as he starts buried behind 2 or 3 ranks of pieces. Especially if he can jump.

In general I like your variants a lot, because you do not only feature super-strong pieces (much stronger that Rook), but also Knight-class pieces. Most variants suffer from an over-abudance of Queen-class pieces. The middle of the strength spectrum is still a bit under-populated, though: almost none of the pieces is close to a Rook in value.

That is the answer to my question. So if a virgin King is on h1, a black Bishop on h2, and a black Knight on g4, the King can move to h3. If his own Bishop was on h2 instead, he could not.

I have programmed Metamachy, and I believe the rule is the same in Zanzibar. Apart from the King never starting on h1 and so never being able to move two spaces from h1, this is still incorrect. Assuming the King did start on h1, it could not pass over h2 to h3, because the black Knight on g4 is attacking h2. So, the King on h2 could not leap to h4 in this position. Also, replacing the black Bishop with a white one would not make any difference. What would make a difference is replacing the black Knight with a white Knight. With that change made, black would not be attacking h2, and the King could leap from h1 to h3.

Personally this rule strikes me as quite illogical; to pass through a square it should be empty, and if you don't pass through it but jump over it, you shouldn't have to worry if you are attacked there.

This has to do with restricting the King's ability to move through check, which is borrowed from the restrictions on castling in Chess. Inspired by its use in Metamachy, I adopted the same rule in Fusion Chess for the Cavalier King's Knight leap.

HG says: "if a virgin King is on h1, a black Bishop on h2, and a black Knight on g4, the King can move to h3. If his own Bishop was on h2 instead, he could not. "

>>As Fergus said, in both cases, the Bishop on h2 being black or white, the King cannot jump on h3 because h3 is a square under threat.

For several reasons, I wanted to put in Metamachy the original rule of the old medieval King's leap (although they had no real standards in those times) which preceded the modern castling in chess. This is why I kept the rule that he can jump over a threatened square, although it is a bit weird, I agree.

There is the same relic in modern castling. We don't see it because when we mechanically castle, we first move the King two steps, he is not jumping. But the castling's root was a particular case of the King's jump, where the Rook was coming close to the King and the King jumping over. We still have the rule that the square d1 or f1 shall be not attacked.

Zanzibar follows Metamachy, that's right.

No, this is not what Fergus said. He said the King could not go to h3 because h2 was attacked. h3 is not attacked. And what Fergus says contradicts what you say: according to Fergus the black Knight is actually considered to attack the black Bishop, a piece of its own color that he cannot capture. While you said: "Pieces are never attacking friendly pieces...".

This is not obvious, one can argue both ways. Therefore I think it should be clarified in the rules what exactly "attacked" means.

According to Fergus the black Knight is actually considered to attack the black Bishop,

No, it is protecting the black Bishop by attacking the space it is on. I presume you have never programmed in Zillions-of-Games. That provides an attacked? function which can be used in piece definitions. It defines a move by moving a piece around and checking conditions, and this function checks whether the space a piece is currently passing over is attacked by a piece belonging to another side. In the code written for the King's movement in Zillions of Games, the attacked? would get used to check whether a move by the King would be passing through a space it would be in check on if it stopped its move there.

Indeed, I never programmed for Zillions; I don't have it. But what Zillions thinks about this is not relevant. Articles here are not meant to be only understandable by people that program for Zillions.

That a Zillions operator attacked? means "attacked or protected" does not redefine the meaning of the english word "attacked". Even in chess circles attacked and protected are very troublesome concepts. E.g. many Chu-Shogi players insist that a Lion is protected when in fact recapture is not possible after it gets captured (because the pawn that was supposed to protect it is captured in the same move). And imagine a lame Dababba on d1. Does it attack f1? Can white castle O-O (on 8x8)?

And what if the Knight on g4 in my example was pinned on his own King (on g12, say) by a white Rook on g2? Does that pinned Knight still 'protect' the Bishop on h2? Would it 'attack' a white Bishop there?

A space is attacked from the perspective of the player who is moving. From the perspective of the player who is not moving, those same spaces would be protected rather than attacked. When a King is moving, its own perspective is what matters. This does not change the meaning of the word attacked.

I don't think that is true. Whether a move that would be a pseudo-legal capture if the target square was occupied by a piece of opposite color is an attack or a protection depends on the color of the occupant of that target square: it would be attack on an enemy, and protection on a friend, irrespective of who has the move.

The interpretation that 'attacks' means "must have a legal capture to that square if it was his turn" is a perfectly reasonable one, that cannot be excluded in absence of an explicit statement defining it differently. In the Xiangqi chasing rule it even means "must have a capture to that square that would be legal if his King was not in check".

I'm sorry, this thread is becoming very confusing ... and I'm adding confusion, really sorry. I made an awful typo.

HG you say: "No, this is not what Fergus said. He said the King could not go to h3 because h2 was attacked. h3 is not attacked. And what Fergus says contradicts what you say: according to Fergus the black Knight is actually considered to attack the black Bishop, a piece of its own color that he cannot capture. While you said: "Pieces are never attacking friendly pieces..."

Sorry sorry. I made a mistake. This is my correct sentence:

>>As Fergus said, in both cases, the Bishop on h2 being black or white, the King cannot jump on h3 because h2 is a square under threat. 

Sorry, I meant h2 and I don't know why I wrote h3, which is absurd. As I said, I agree with Fergus.

The black Knight "attacks" h2. When a white piece is on h2, the black Knight obviously attacks that white piece. If it is a black piece which is on h2, then that piece is "protected" by the black Knight. You say "attack (by a friend)", I say "protected", this is just a different understanding of "attacking". "To attack" as something aggressive in my language, which is opposite to "to protect", but for the square which is concerned, it is the same.
No more complicated than that. If I define the rule relatively to the square which is or not under threat, I think it is clear. 
 

I agree this is the usual terminology ('attacked'/'protected'). In the game description you use the word 'threatened', though, which I now understand means "attacked or protected". I am not sure that is standard terminology (in fact I think the more comon meaning of 'threatened' is "attacked and not (sufficiently) protected or of higher value than the attacker"), and in any case it is rather ambiguous. And it still leaves open the question whether pinned pieces attack or protect anything.

So I think it would be good to add an unambiguous definition of 'threatened', e.g. "when it would not be legal for the King to be left on that square replacing whatever was there before". I have now adapted the phrasing that way in the Metamachy article.

I'm not perfect. I speak French every day, not English, please forgive me if I use '"threatened" instead of I don't know what else. If we start to criticize each other for such things, then let's scrutunize every variant that we give in our chess variants pages and not only mines. I believe everyone has understood what the rules of Metamachy or Zanzibar are with respect to that point. 

About pinning, common sense is to apply the principle which is in the rules of chess, article 3.1 of FIDE laws:

• A piece is considered to attack a square, even if such a piece is constrained from moving to that square because it would then leave or place the king of its own colour under attack.

Well, perhaps I am exceptionally stupid then, because I did not understand it. Criticism is good; it can lead to improvement of the quality of the website. We should do it as much as possible. Authors should not be blind to imperfections in their work, and the normal response would be to repair the defects, rather than complaining about someone noticing them.

What make you think that we would only scrutinize your articles? The article attracted attention because it was newly posted. Not because it was you that posted it. As you can see my freshly posted article about Tengu Dai Shogi gets a lot of criticism.

Peer review works! It is a good way to guarantee quality.

No I don't believe that you are stupid. You are not at all. But you always want to have the last word and your words are often difficult to swallow. Look here "Authors should not be blind to imperfections in their work, and the normal response would be to repair the defects"
I'm not blind at all and I welcome positive remarks. I have currently people play testing this variant quite intensively and I will take their feedback into account. I know the benefits of peer review as I practice this a lot in my professional life too. But what are the "imperfections" and "defects" you corrected here? We are just talking of something that was not an imperfection but rather something you were not understanding. 
I was happy to post this new game here but now this page is spoiled. A new reader coming here will conclude that this game is flawed and has imperfections. Nice. 
I was happy to come back on CVPs after so many years of absence but every post I've made these last weeks have turned to upsetting feedbacks. I will stop here. I wish you success because these pages in overall are really great and a very valuable source of information for the researchers interested in chess variants like me. 

I did not correct anything; this is not the Wikipedia, and people cannot edit each other's submissions. I pointed out that the rule description in your article was ambiguous, and why. At that point you could have rephrased that rule to make it unambiguous (like I now have done in the article about Metamachy that I authored, now that I finally understand the rule), and that would have been the end of it. Then you would have had the last word.

But for some reason that escapes me, you did choose not to do that, but instead argue about procedure: people have no right to criticize your submissions, want to have the last word, spoil your fun, make your variant look bad...

Of course that doesn't solve anything; the ambiguos rule description is still in your article. If you think that people will not like your variant when it has ambiguous rules, you have only yourself to blame for it by insisting the description must remain ambiguous. It is not my fault that it is ambiguous, and you should be grateful someone pointed it out, giving you at least an opportunity to fix it. But, as the saying goes, you can leed a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

H. G., As far as I can tell, what Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote is perfectly clear. You seem to have a peculiar way of understanding some words. This could be because English is a second language for you, though I think it's more likely that you are just being overly pedantic. I can understand the frustration he feels when you keep telling him that he has made a mistake when in fact he has not. I would really like it if you could be more civil toward people and not drive them off. Jean-Louis Cazaux, in particular, was an editor of this site before I was, and he has a lot to contribute if he sticks around.

Sorry, but even if one person doesn't understand it, it is obviously not 'perfect'. If it is clear to you, but not to me, it is not clear. That is what 'clear' means: that everyone should be able to understand it, not just you.

There is much about this discussion that is unfortunate but the solution seems simple.  H.G. wants an additional clarification.  Jean-Louis is concerned that the discussion will reflect badly on the game.  So we add a clarification, delete all the related comments, and everyone's happy.

I added an entry for "threatened" to the glossary and added a link to it to the word "threatened" in the description of the King.

It seems that the first diagram is missing, showing the line-up before putting the major pieces. If it has been lost, it can be found here: http://history.chess.free.fr/images/zanzibar/zanzibar-XL0.jpg

I see you're still using non-local images. Can you upload the images here and change the SRC values in your IMG tags to use the local files?

I don't know how to do it. When I created the page for submission the form/template was asking to a weblink to upload the images. I thought it was what I did, believing it was then uploading the images to a local server, not just taking the link.

Now to modify, if I click on EDIT, I get a form/template  but I cannot make any changes on the content of the page. 

Is there a way for me to edit that page? Thank you

Wait a minute. I was hitting the "edit" link which is at the bottom of the page, not the one in the black rectangle. I was confused. It is confusing. I try again, sorry.

Sorry, I have tried but I'm not skilled enough. 1) when I upload a graphic, I choose the file on my HD, then I take "Upload file" (under my User ID/password) and then I get a white screen with only this address:
https://www.chessvariants.com/index/memberupload2.php

And I don't knwo if it was successful or not. I have tried with Safari and Firefox, I get the same result.

2) when I edit the page, I see the code with SRC in HTML and the address to the external page, but what shall I put to make a link to local?

Forgive my ignorance

I'll work on making the scripts for uploading more user-friendly after breakfast.

There was a bug in the code, which I corrected. I also added some links for continuing to upload graphics or to work on your page.

OK, thank you. I have been able to upload 2 graphics. I was only able to do them one by one, and to enter my password at every upload, sometimes twice. Finally, after only 2 successful uploads, I have reached by upload size limit and I cannot go forward. This is a bit hassling. 

I see you uploaded four files with a total 609 KB in file size. I downloaded them all, resaved them all to use a number of colors that's adaptive with the pallette, and reduced their total file size to 189 KB. I then uploaded the smaller files. I would recommend doing the same with your remaining files. I used the old program Ultimate Paint for this, which is still my favorite paint program.

However, the value in your UploadBytes column in the database is 1003357 bytes, which is greater than the amount you uploaded. Although I did rewrite this script to use PDO instead of mysql, I didn't write the original script, and I didn't pay too much attention to how it works. It looks like it might be adding to the past UploadBytes value without ever resetting it, which would be very bad. I'm going to take a closer look at it and probably redesign it. In the meantime, I have manually reset your UploadBytes value to zero. So, you can now upload more images.

Well, it's not quite as bad as never resetting it. My own UploadBytes value is equal to the bytes I uploaded today, and I have uploaded stuff in the past. So, it must have gotten reset. But the reset mechanism might not be perfect.

I have updated the script to handle resetting a bit more reliably, and I have added reports on how much you have already uploaded the same day. I have also increased the total maximum per day to 2MB, and I have used the actual byte values for the 1MB and 2MB limits instead of using the rounded off base ten figure of 1000000 bytes for 1MB.

Thank you very much. I have been able to upload all diagrams and the process was very lean. 

Yesterday, it was my mistake for the size limit. Instead of uploading the jpg diagrams I have made for my own website, I uploaded instead the source images coming from the board painting tool, which are much heavier. Thank you for your help.

I have added an Interactive Diagram to this page. (Thanks to HG)

The author, Jean-Louis Cazaux, has updated this page.