Looking at this page on my Kindle Scribe, the dark squares appear a bit too dark compared to the black pieces. So, I would suggest using a lighter color. I don't really like the pink squares, but at least they're white on my Scribe's e-ink screen.

Noted! I'll get a lighter shade of green.

I made the squares pink and green because that's the favorite color combination of the woman who inspired the game.

Addendum: This new color should be an improvement; let me know if it needs more.

The pieces section could use an image of each piece as a reminder of which piece it is describing from the diagram.

I actually was already getting to that today, for pretty much the reason you say. The main reason I waited this long was that I wanted to see if I could use my SVG icons (both there and on the actual diagram) c/o H.G.'s scalable graphics tool, but that's taking a while (understandably so, given all the issues going on at the moment).

The pieces section could use an image of each piece as a reminder of which piece it is describing from the diagram.

Looking at this page on my Kindle Scribe, the dark squares appear a bit too dark compared to the black pieces. So, I would suggest using a lighter color. I don't really like the pink squares, but at least they're white on my Scribe's e-ink screen.

Two more quick notes about this, one a concern and the other a trivium.

Concern: the Lariat seems to have a longer reach on the ID than the intended 4 spaces.

Trivium: the Linebacker Pawn has the longest XBetza string (fhmKifmnDifmnAfhmpafabucKifhmpafmpafabucK) of any piece I've created. It makes me wonder if anyone's ever put up anything longer.

Thanks for the reminders, both of you.

EDIT: While that did work, it turns out I still have to wait for something else to publish before I can add anything.

And in any case you should not copy the HTML tags, just what is between those.

Look at this.

@H.G.: I've been trying to paste the ID code for this game into the Play-Test Applet to create a GC preset, but I just get the old

Cannot make a diagram with 0 pieces on an 8x8 board!

error message. (Of course, the code indicates 72 pieces on a 12x12 board.)

I'm mainly copying everything from <div class="idiagram"> to <div>, though I've also tried leaving out those tags and (separately) including the <script> tag.

Well, I do consider it a real problem, but since you reminded me about taking back moves (thank you very much for that) it's a pretty minor one.

Do you see anything here that would need special handling for Game Courier?

The ID doesn't enforce any rules. You can also start a game of normal Chess with Ke1-h5. This is by design; it should be easy to set up arbitrary positions.

I don't see this as a real problem; you can always take the move back.

I've played a few games on the ID, and finding this game to be even more fun than I'd anticipated. I'm having a bit of a learning curve in controlling the Valkyrie and Lariat, but that's my own challenge. It's especially interesting when the AI uses the Lariat on one of my pieces!

@H.G.: A problem I am having is that the ID (here or anywhere else) doesn't seem to enforce check rules; I can move my King into check, move a piece that's blocking check, etc., leading to a premature loss.

Now that I have an Interactive Diagram in place (albeit as yet untested), I think this one's ready to be published.

When I also include the non-pushing and initial pushing moves, it breaks down to fhmKfhmpafabucKifhmpafmpafabucK, which is the exact same number of characters as fhmKfhmpamuabcKifhmpafmpamuabcK (plus, I only just realized that I forgot to include ifhmK2). While fhmKifhmnD[fhD-bucK][ifhH-bucK] is a bit more reasonable, I'm a bit reluctant to use bracket notation while it's not working consistently, so it looks like fhmKifmnDifmnAfhmpafabucKifhmpafmpafabucK will be it for now. Thanks for trying, at least....

(It's always fun trying to "bucK" the system....) #BadPunNoCookie

[fD-bucW] works, but then there is no way to combine the orthogonal and diagonal moves, as there is no shorthand for AD like there is K for WF. So all in all it will not be much shorter.

Interesting is that [fhD-bucK] now does what you want by mistake. Because the K in the second leg forces the XBetza generated by the preprocessor to be based on K, and it currently doesn't make any attempt to transform the fh specification. Which, incidentally, is meaningless on D.

[Edit] I suppose that since it is meaningless, there is no harm in treating fh on a 4-fold atom (and likewise bh, rh, lh) as if we are dealing with an 8-fold atom of the same stride.

I found that fhmKfhmpamuabcKifhmpafmpamuabcK works just as well (fhK = fF + fW), cutting the length by nearly half. I'd love to make it even shorter, but this is definitely an improvement.

I was just going about coding some of the pieces, and got to the Linebacker Pawn:

fmFfmWfmpamuabcFfmpamuabcWifmpafmpamuabcFifmpafmpamuabcW

It seems to work, but surely there's a way to make that shorter?

The board change is done now....

Coming soon: I'll be reducing this to 12x12 (since it's actually possible to buy a 12x12 board), taking out one each Queen, Phoenix, and Linebacker Pawn.

Then I'll see if I can get to work on an Interactive Diagram, with some of the adjustments being made to spells.

I do appreciate how, at this time, putting bracket notation in the forms translates to the current notation. The latter is much longer and harder for a human to interpret, but it's a handy tool.

And thanks again for your input on this!

Well, it is the pieces that are being moved. By your reasoning every chess variant coerces the pieces...

OK, so the Shoving Rook is not really what I thought: I imagined it would always end up at the square where the shoved piece was.So it is cafyabuR. I am still amazed by the things that can be described with XBetza. The only drawback is that the description is difficult to grasp for a human. I really should work some more on the bracket notation, which would describe the above move by [cR-R-buW]. A rudimentary form of this already works, but would require you to write directional modifiers on every leg, lest these would be interpreted as "going in arbitrary direction". Since the a is not needed for chaining legs in bracket notation, it could be used to indicate arbitrary direction, and the default directional modifier could be made into f.

With the Shoving Rook, the player can choose how far to push, so it's cafibuR -- if that move leaves the SR in the space adjacent to the shoved piece.

Thanks for that, and the Lariat's move. I'll be able to make use of those!

It does look as if the Ghast is impractical for an ID, and I suspect the Sentry (from Eight-Piece Chess) is about the same. (Not that it makes that much difference; we've already established that the Bodyguard is an issue!)

The reason there's a choice to swap instead of capture is for those rare circumstances, such as when the swapping piece is blocking a check or other potential capture of a valuable piece. The same with the choice of shove or capture: the Shoving Rook can move a piece to a spot that blocks a capture, but otherwise wouldn't be accessible to it, and may be guarded so moving another piece there would just sacrifice that piece.

And as pointed out in the notes, it's not the player being coerced; it's the pieces.

Incidentally the etymology of the surname is quite the fun anecdote :‌)

I have a similar story from the small island that a quarter  of my ancestors come from. There is a family there called 'Zoekende', meaning 'Seeking', and I am pretty sure that this originated because in 1811, when people were forced to adopt surnames, the founder of that family said to the naming agency "I am still seeking one".

I'd like to see what H.G.'s take on them would be for the Interactive Diagrams, though, as well as on the Lariat and Shoving Rook.

The Lariat's special move can be written aibuabcaibQ. (Works only with betzaNew.js.) First make a back-and-forth 'rifle non-capture' to select the unload square, and then a normal rifle capture in the same direction to pick off the piece you want to unload.

From your description of the Shoving Rook it is not clear to me wether the piece it displaces should always be pushed to the furthest possible destination, or whether you can choose how far it is pushed back. In the latter case the special move could be cafaibuR. In the other case it would be more complex, as the leg of the move that selects the shoving destination would have to 'sense' that there is an obstacle directly behind it. Such sensing can be done by making an extra back-and-forth King step that must either hop over a piece (p), or go off board (o). E.g. a Rook that only moves maximum distance would be yafpoabR. Using this method in the unload legs would give pafyafpoabyaifuR.

(I rather suspect that the Ghast would need a new Compel spell to do its thing.)

You mean the Ghast from Nemoroth? Indeed. Perhaps even a combination of several more elementary spells. Such as exclude, for making squares in the spell zone inaccessible, and expell for forcing pieces to leave the zone. The latter touches on the subject of forced moves, though (such as mandatory capture in Suicide Chess), which the ID currenly does not implement. Although for check evasion this is implemented in an indirect way.

I guess a similar method could be used for implementing exclusion zones, by adding captures that cover the zone, and declaring every victim that it captures with such moves absolutely royal. This would be an easy addition to the captureMatrix, making it possible to specify some captures as winning game termination. (As the morph can already do, for winning by reaching a certain square.) The 'normal' moves of the piece could then be exempted from this by the apostrophe trick. This way you would not even need a spell.

The problem with the Nemoroth Ghast is that there is no requirement to leave the zone immediately, though. It is already OK to increase your distance. And for friendly pieces it is even OK to keep it the same.

BTW, I don't really see this as coersion, which to me implies a player cannot freely choice his move in his own turn. But it must still be his own action. This is more like "Push and Shove Chess".

And why would you want to swap places with a piece that you could have captured (or push it away)? It seems to me you should only prefer that in the rarest circumstances, so rare that in practice it will never be used. (Like being allowed to capture friends as well as enemies.) So this seems just a rule for the purpose of complicating the rules, which I consider a bad thing in any Chess variant.

I've taken said look, and at least the Sentry and the Ghast look like they'd have potential for this game.

I'd like to see what H.G.'s take on them would be for the Interactive Diagrams, though, as well as on the Lariat and Shoving Rook.

(I rather suspect that the Ghast would need a new Compel spell to do its thing.)