Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

NOTE TO JEREMY: I still believe your TenCubed Chess preset needs to be adjusted. Most presets require Sides: White Black and Side: White. The Shogi preset reverses these settings, because Black moves first in Shogi. My email address will change in a week, so I have been avoiding correspondence lately.

And as long as you are working in that preset, I think that the dark squares would look better with Colors: FFFFFF 888888 - but I can always use a custom setting for my own viewing.

ATTN David Howe:

David, when I clicked on the 'quick edit' link for this page, I was
informed that this page is now part of a collection, and several new
presets, all created by members through the new system you set up, were
part of the collection. Why is this page now part of a collection with
other pages? What does it mean for these pages to be collected together?
Is it necessary to show pages in the same collection when someone clicks
on 'edit' or 'quick edit'? They don't appear to have the same id, so
no disambiguation seems to be required.

I then had to click 'edit', not 'quick edit' again, to edit the page,
and I had to wait for all the long drop-down menus to load. Would you
please add 'quick edit' links to collection pages and to pages on the
main site, not just in the play subdomain?

Yes this is true. What I meant is that at least the game design part is
left open and one can code a lot of game with game courier. That much is
also not easily avalaible elsewhere. As a matter of fact game courier is
an excellent creation, both as an idea and as an implementation. 
I understand the problem with point and click play. But one generaly use
it as a side option. One may use it or one may enter the move by hand. It
is like that in other servers. Why I suggested point and click play is
that to many computer-novice gammer it gives more comfort and hence is a
important factor to increase the popularity of a system. A java base
system also gives a better and faster preset to analyze and watch a played
game.

First, Game Courier is not an open source project by the users for the
users. It is my own creation, built up from scratch by myself, with a
little bit of assistance from some other editors. It enables open
development of presets by anyone who cares to make them, but that's all
that is open about it. Like you can use a word processor to write a novel
without being able to program the word processor, you can use Game Courier
to develop games without being able to program Game Courier.

Second, I have no plans to add point and click capability to Game Courier.
Entering moves by notation is more versatile than moving pieces with a
mouse, and it will work with any browser. It also helps a player think
about his move more carefully and helps safeguard against making a
mistake. Besides all that, I have no experience programming Java, and I'm
not so excited about the idea of point and click capability to think it is
worth my time and effort to try to implement it.

Both schemingmind.com and brainking.com have a number of 'hidden
information' games with rules that are automatically enforced. You can
try both sites out for free. 

They also both have a lot of mini-tournaments (that members can begin) for
their variants, though neither has anything near the number of variants
Game Courier has.

One thing I like a lot about schemingmind.com and would like to see
replicated at chessvariants.org is a pyramid system for each variant. You
can join a pyramid and then challenge other people at your level. If you
win, you go to a higher level and if you lose, you go down a level (or if
you're at the bottom, you stay at the bottom).

Rather than (or perhaps, in addition to) the tournament format now being
offered here, it would be interesting to hold tournaments for each game
type.  For example, there could be an omegachess tournament, and a shogi
tournament, etc., maybe on a yearly basis.  In this way, every player
could enter their favorite events.

Prize funds and entry fees to cover them and any incremental costs in
running the events could be considered also.

I think Game Courier could handle a three-step Pawn move without an
additional function. Assuming Pawns begin on the second rank, like so:

set legal and checkaride origin dest 0 1 less rankname dest 6;

The same principle can be used for a piece with limited movement, such as
an R4, which moves as a Rook no more than four spaces.

set legal and checkride origin dest 0 1 or less abs minus rank origin rank
dest 5 less abs minus file origin file rank 5;

A cursed Queen, which I think is limited to three spaces, like so:

set legal and or checkride origin dest 0 1 checkride origin dest 1 1 and
less abs minus rank origin rank dest 4 less abs minus file origin file
rank 4;

I don't think anyone has worked on rules-enforcement for Omega Chess; I
don't think the O.C. people responded to Fergus' request for permission.
 They never responded to me when I asked about ChessV either ...  

I am going to work on rules enforcement for your L&U Chess; I think that
one will be much easier, and thus will be better for my first attempt. 
The pawn move in Wildebeest is fairly tricky - unlike Omega Chess, pawns
may make a single step, and then still make a 2-space move later.