Ratings & Comments

@Greg: We really should continue expanding the SVG set. Perhaps on a demand basis. If Aurelian just needs two or three new images, it would not be that much effort to create those.

Absolutely.  I haven't uploaded a new set yet, but I have made some new pieces.  But most of my time in Inkscape has been making SVGs for Fergus's abstract pieces.  (I'm up to 23 of those completed.)  But, yes, this work should continue.  I'll put together a new upload for Alfaerie this weekend.

@Greg Strong and Ben Reiniger - Since you two seem to be the one that I should contact for uploading set files, should I send my set file to one of you via email? Also, would having a plus sign (+) in a piece label cause any problems for Game Courier? It seems to work fine when I use code in the presets to change the labels, but I want to make sure the same is true when there is a plus sign in the label coming from the set file, as all the promoted piece labels have plus signs in them.

I will only be sending the first one for now, as I want to make sure it works as intended before uploading the other two.

.. Game Courier preset, ... Game Courier setting file, multiple presets, indexed link page, so complicated for someone like me to understand what I'm doing. You guys are pure genius.

I modified the sets files to use relative URLs for the value of $dir. I modified some other code to work with relative URLs, and I added code that exits the script with an error if you use a value of $dir that does not begin with a forward slash. So, from now own, $dir should be set only to a relative URL to a directory on this site.

Using relative URLs has a few advantages:

• Piece URLs will be shorter, using less bandwidth.
• Insecure http image URLs will no longer be used, since relative URLs will default to secure https URLs.
• No one will be able to use piece images that are located on another website.

In a related matter, $dir is now an accessible system variable in GAME Code. You may write to it with setsystem or get its value. This is useful for using GAME Code to create and use custom piece sets that are not defined in a PHP file. More details can be found here.

Game Courier preset, ... Game Courier setting file, multiple presets, indexed link page, so complicated for someone like me to understand what I'm doing.

I have updated the FAQ to help clarify this.

Greg, you can see it?

I'm using Firefox 88.0 on Ubuntu. I saw the snake in the process of creating the diagram, it was still there with the first two dots in the same rank, bit it disappeared mysteriously with the completion of the diagram.

You can email your set file to me. But I will have to test having a + in the piece label ... I suspect that might cause a problem.

Since the diagram designer is a server-side script that generates and outputs an image file, the browser used should not make any difference.

Testing the interactive diagram thing, but i can’t seem to make it work

I can confirm that originally the Snake was not displayed in the diagram that Jörg posted. I looked at the page source, and the diagram was a direct link to the diagram generator, which did contain the S in the intended square in the CGI parameter. But no show... But now it magically appeared, with the same browser (FireFox). There must have been something temporarily wrong on the server, such that the server-side script could not find the Snake image file to compose the entire image.

Testing the interactive diagram thing, but i can’t seem to make it work

Try Shift + reload, to make sure the cache is refreshed for the betza.js script. I just had some problems with the diagram too, and I jus uploaded a new version to fix those. For me most of the functions in your diagram seem to work now. (didn't try the AI, though.)

Otherwise, what exactly does not work?

One thing I foresee that will cause trouble is that you use the same id for white and black pieces. The diagram is not smart enough to keep separate sets of ids for white and black; it always assumes that each side can have all pieces in the list. So this will cause ambiguity, and will probably wreck the SAN parser when you want to paste back a recorded game. I solved that in CwdA by giving all black pieces a quote in their id.

There must have been something temporarily wrong on the server, such that the server-side script could not find the Snake image file to compose the entire image.

Yes, I made all $dir values relative today, and I had to fix the diagram designer before it would work properly with relative URLs.

It seems to be workign now, thanks. By the way, how do you choose which piece is royal?

I have just sent the set file to you via email. If the plus signs cause problens, let me know.

Also, I took a quick look at the Alfaerie: Many piece set, and the plus sign did not appear to be used in any of the piece labels, though this of course means little, as plus signs can be used in piece IDs by replacing the labels without the alias command.

This is a very nice index you have so far. However, I noticed that Ryugi was missing. While it is admittedly not my favourite game, it is just as simple for AI to play as Yangsi, if not simpler. If you can add Ryugi to the list that would be great.

Also, my larger Shogi variants have diagrams that an AI can play as well, though not including these is sort of understandable, as the AI would of course take a very long time to make a move. I actually had the AI play a game of Taishin Shogi (my largest game) for the first 60 or so moves, and in the worst case it took upwards of 9 hours for the AI to make a move due to the sheer size and complexity of the game, which only increased as more moves were made, although this would theoretically lessen as the board thins.

Since you mentioned Ryugi in another thread (here) it reminded me that I wanted to mention it.  There's a reason I hadn't implemented it in ChessV.  Your pawn rule:

It can also move two squares forward on its first move

The difficulty is that you cannot always tell by looking at a position if a pawn on e3 or f3 has moved or not.  (A pawn on d2, for example, could get to e3 by capturing.)  So extra state information would need to be captured, and we'd need to define how the FEN notation is expanded to record that, etc.  Since this game is so similar to Unicorn Great Chess, may I suggest using the rule from that game:

Any Pawn may make a double move from any space a Pawn of its color starts on

This resolves the issue and simplifies the game.