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Play Metamachy on Game Courier. Play this large game with a variety of regular fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Nov 9, 2020 09:54 AM UTC:

@Fergus, Hello! This Metamachy preset says it is a work in progress. Is that still the case? I need it as an example for cooking the Zanzibar- S game which is quite similar.


Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Nov 9, 2020 06:03 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 09:54 AM:

This is the preset that we used for the tournament so it should be solid.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Tue, Nov 10, 2020 11:44 AM UTC:

Can I save an Include file similar to Metamachy or is it any permition needed? Later Edit: I realise the question is not very clear. I want to create a new include file for Zanzibar. Can I? Or do I need some special permission?


Aurelian Florea wrote on Fri, Nov 13, 2020 11:33 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Tue Nov 10 11:44 AM:

May anyone please answer if I can save an include file on my own!


H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Nov 13, 2020 12:55 PM UTC:

The GAME code include command allows specification of a path name. So I suppose you could direct it to any file saved on the CVP website. I am not sure on whether it would also allow arbitrary URLs, pointing to other websites. But using off-site material is strongly discouraged here anyway.

I use a betza.txt include file in the membergraphics directory of one of my articles. I could not upload it myself, though, as .txt is not an extension that the upload manager allows. So an editor had to rename it. But now that it exists, I can update it. I am not sure whether Game Courier would allow include files with 'unnatural' extensions. E.g. when you would give the include file a .jpg extension, the upload manager would not complain. And GAME code might not care, and only look at the content rather than the name.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Fri, Nov 13, 2020 01:08 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 12:55 PM:

Thanks for that, HG!


Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, Nov 15, 2020 10:51 AM UTC:

@Fergus, I think the best way to open the way for me to creating a zanzibar-s preset would be if you can expand the metamachy piece set with the few other pieces needed for zanzibar-s. This way I do not have do do a lot of workaround caused by the need to change the names of pieces (as allfaerie many has other letters).


H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Nov 15, 2020 11:35 AM UTC:

It would be nice if presets could define their own arbitrary mapping from piece IDs (used in move notation or FEN) to image URLs.


💡Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Sun, Nov 15, 2020 02:37 PM UTC:

Thank you Aurelian.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Sun, Nov 15, 2020 02:42 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 02:37 PM:

I've done nothing yet Jean-Louis. I'm trying to make as professional as possible!


Daniel Zacharias wrote on Tue, Dec 15, 2020 08:36 PM UTC:

in the last three metamachy games I played my opponents resigned but I still lost
arx-cvgameroom-2020-316-876
arx-cvgameroom-2020-147-879
arx-cvgameroom-2020-123-942


💡Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Thu, Dec 17, 2020 08:30 PM UTC:

It happened the same thing to me. I played Metamachy on game courier, my opponent resigned and now it is registered that I lost and he has won!

Can someone looks what's wrong?

Thanks


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Dec 18, 2020 02:23 AM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from Tue Dec 15 08:36 PM:
in the last three metamachy games I played my opponents resigned but I 
still lost
arx-cvgameroom-2020-316-876
arx-cvgameroom-2020-147-879
arx-cvgameroom-2020-123-942

I will look into this more tomorrow. Looking at the first one tonight, I noticed that the $players string in your log has the players listed in the opposite order from what I expected it would be. It should list White first and Black second, but it says "catugo arx" even though you are White. Since I was relying on the value of $players to know who was White and who was Black, this incorrect value could mess things up. I will do tests tomorrow to determine why this value would be the reverse of what it should be.


💡Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Fri, Dec 18, 2020 07:04 AM UTC:

Hello Fergus. Yes, the same happened to me for

timurthelenk-numerist-2020-328-848  

Numerist (Black) resigned ... and was declared winner.

Maybe the bug comes from the fact that Black has the 1st action in the game, which is the chose the starting array, placing the central pieces. Then only White plays the 1st "real" stroke.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Dec 18, 2020 06:09 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 07:04 AM:

Maybe the bug comes from the fact that Black has the 1st action in the game, which is the chose the starting array, placing the central pieces. Then only White plays the 1st "real" stroke.

I think that's correct. Tests with other games had no problems. When I tried Metamachy, fergus invited duniho to play. When duniho accepted, he chose White. Nevertheless, duniho got the first move as White. When fergus resigned, he was declared the winner.

As a further test, I created a new settings file called Test, in which I changed Sides from "White Black" to "Black White". This fixed some things. When I selected to play White, it let the other player move first as Black, and when I resigned, it correctly assigned the winner. However, it kept misreporting which side is White and which side is Black.

The easiest solution is to create a new preset in which Black is simply the first player, and no attempt is made to make White look like the first player. But this would make the movelist look confusing, because the moves that look like they should be for White would be for Black and vice versa. So, I'm wondering if there is a better solution than this.


Daniel Zacharias wrote on Fri, Dec 18, 2020 08:29 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 06:09 PM:

might it work to force white to pass for his first move?


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Dec 18, 2020 09:12 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 08:29 PM:

might it work to force white to pass for his first move?

That's essentially what I was trying to do, but something has gone wrong with that.


Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Dec 18, 2020 09:25 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 09:12 PM:

The Metamachy games from the tournament don't seem to be affected by this. Perhaps because the matches were assigned.


💡Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Fri, Dec 18, 2020 11:32 PM UTC:

I've tried to play against myself. I place 1 of the 4 central piece, but when I place the 2nd one, I get a message of error. Is that preset bugged?


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Dec 19, 2020 05:59 PM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from Fri Dec 18 09:25 PM:

The Metamachy games from the tournament don't seem to be affected by this. Perhaps because the matches were assigned.

I just tested this, and assigning games didn't make a difference. I assigned fergus to play White and duniho to play Black. It correctly assigned $players to "fergus duniho". When I went to make the first move, it was for fergus as Black. After making a few moves, I had duniho resign. The comments on the last line say "// - Gus Duniho has resigned. -// - Fergus Duniho has resigned. -" and it reports that Gus Duniho (who is duniho) has won.

While looking into this, I did make one change that may have made a difference. The form_assign.php script didn't previously create a $players string, which meant that assigned games were not using the value of this string to determine who is who. That might account for why games in the tournament were unaffected.

One solution, which I started working on yesterday, is to write a new settings file that makes the White player manually pass the first move instead of automatically adding the move for White and letting Black make the first actual move. This would make the first move actually belong to White, which would stop it from mistaking Black for the first player.

Alternately, maybe I could make sure that color choice is preserved and not assume that White moves first just because it is first in the $sides string. The $players string is newer than the $sides string, and I expect I'm not using the $players string everywhere the $sides string is used, which leads to a discrepancy between them in instances where Black ends up moving first because White's first move is automatically passed.


💡Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Sat, Dec 19, 2020 06:36 PM UTC:

Thanks for taking care of this.

I'm not able to understand, and I confess I'm a bit lost because I have never programmed with that code.

As author what I just would like is that the player making the choice of the central setup is not the one playing the first actual move.

Would it help if Black was placing his 4 central piece, then the situation is replicated on White's side.

Then Black (automatically?) pass his first move, then White plays the second move, which is actually the first as Black has just passed?


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Dec 19, 2020 09:59 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 06:36 PM:

Would it help if Black was placing his 4 central piece, then the situation is replicated on White's side.

It already does that.

Then Black (automatically?) pass his first move, then White plays the second move, which is actually the first as Black has just passed?

I think this would result in Black's move appearing first in a turn, and White's move appearing second in a turn, which is something I would like to avoid.

Game Courier used to have a setting for which player moved first. I got rid of it in favor of the $sides string, which is a space-separated list of the sides in the game in the order they move. But I do still have code using a variable called $first, which now gets set to the first word in $sides. I'm thinking I could bring back $first as an independent setting and use it in conjunction with $sides. When they differed, $first would be the side that actually moves first, and the first word in $sides would be the side that nominally moves first, i.e. the one that moves at the beginning of a turn. At least that is one possibility on my mind. I have to go exercise now, and I'll return to this problem later.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Dec 20, 2020 09:23 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from Sat Dec 19 06:36 PM:

I have made one small change. I created a new checkbox in Edit mode called "Skip First Move", and I checked this for Metamachy. When checked, this causes $player and $opponent to be switched when an invitation is accepted or a tournament game is assigned. This switch happens after the $players string has been assigned. So, it does not affect the value of that string, which will still put the White player first. In tests, it gave the first move to Black, and it correctly identified the winner when someone resigned. Note that "1. skip;" still had to be provided in the Initial Moves section.

This does not affect games already in progress or already finished. Therefore, it does not fix any games that gave the wrong results. This will have to be handled separately.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Dec 20, 2020 10:04 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from Tue Dec 15 08:36 PM:
in the last three metamachy games I played my opponents resigned but I still lost
arx-cvgameroom-2020-316-876
arx-cvgameroom-2020-147-879
arx-cvgameroom-2020-123-942

I have now fixed these. Since the backup had all the same moves as the log but with different results, I first copied the backup to the log. Since the player who was supposed to play White instead got the first move as Black, the $players string was actually listing the Black player first. So that the White player would be listed first, I switched the order of the players in the $players string. When I reloaded each game, it calculated the correct results and saved them to the database.

If any other games need fixing, these should be brought to my attention. The precise log name is required, and a link to the log would be helpful.


💡Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Mon, Dec 21, 2020 11:35 AM UTC:

Hello Fergus

The bug is also affecting my log: timurthelenk-numerist-2020-328-848

I (Timurthelenk) had white. Numerist resigned and was declared winner. Thanks a lot


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