Ratings & Comments
ERB Jetan 
. Implements different possible rules for Jetan.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]After almost 20 years, this is still the best existing computer implementation of jetan. It contains lots of variants, which may be slightly confusing, especially for the beginner. If you want to play the game that Burroughs intended, and that I have researched in my article Exploring Jetan at ERBzine, then you should choose the variant "Chained Wild Jetan with Chained Warriors".
Game Courier Developer's Guide. Learn how to design and program Chess variants for Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]It looks like the documentation for copyfn had been incorrect. It had said the new name could go on the left. But like with copy, the new name goes on the right, and the name of what is being copied goes on the left. Since this is how I prefer it to work, I'm glad the mistake was in the documentation, not in the code for the command. That means I can correct the documentation without breaking any code.
The Game of Jetan. Extensive discussion of various versions of the rules of Jetan. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I love Larry Smith's analysis, as shown in this article, but I am not comfortable with his conclusion that all variants of jetan were created equal. In my own analysis of jetan, published at ERBzine, I would like to think that I have shown conclusively that most of the jetan variants can in fact be treated as apochryphal. In Smith's terminology, the following pieces should be treated as "correct":
Chained Panthan, Chained Thoat, Chained Warrior, Chained Padwar, Chained Dwar, Chained Flier, Chained Wild Chief, Brave Chained Wild Princess
A case could be made to use the Free Thoat in place of the Chained, and there is also an optional board set-up. But otherwise, Burroughs' rules emerge as pretty clear after a thorough analysis.
Jetan. Martian Chess, coming from the book The Chessmen of Mars. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Late comer to the discussion here. Regarding the piece values, there are many takes on this. I list most of the ones I know about in my recent ERBzine article about jetan. Follow the link below, and scroll about two thirds down the page to the appendices.
ChessV
. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg:
I reloaded ChessV2.2 again and, trying to run it, a window was opened saying:
System.NotSupportedException: An attempt was made to load an assembly from a network location, so the assembly would have been included in an isolated space from previous versions of .NET Framework. This version of .NET Framework does not enable the CAS directive by default, so this load can be dangerous. If this load is not going to include the assembly in an isolated space, enable the loadFromRemoteSources modifier. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=155569 for more information.
A smaller window said:
The program stopped working correctly due to a problem. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution exists.
Then I loaded your program one more time by using another PC (also with Windows 10) and the result was the same error message.
So there is no doubt that whoever has the problem is me. And to think that I was so excited because I was going to try Symmetric Chess vs an engine!
Symmetric Chess. 
Variant with two Queens flanking the King and Bishops Conversion Rule. (9x8, Cells: 72) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Thank you, H.G., for the explanation and directions. I could already run Nebiyu properly but unfortunately... playing chess it defeats me easily!
Games on Game Courier. A listing of Chess variants for Game Courier, ranked by number of times played.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I got some new ideas for how to make it easier for non-programmers to make programmed presets. I have abandoned fairychess1.txt in favor of fairychess.txt, which I'm using with the fairychess Chess preset. Instead of using functions with the names of piece labels, it uses functions with the names of pieces. Instead of defining functions with the names of piece labels, someone using this include file would just set varables to the names of pieces. These variables would be used as references to the functions. The main things left to do are to add functions for more pieces and to write some documentation and a tutorial on how to use it.
Alice Chess. Classic Variant where pieces switch between two boards whenever they move. (2x(8x8), Cells: 128) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Nov 26, 2019 07:56 AM EST:This is a trial for using the Interactive Diagram for Alice Chess. Custom-supplied functions BadZone and WeirdPromotion take care of refusal of moves to squares of which the mirror square is occupied, and take care of shuttling the moved piece to the other board, respectively. The boards are separated by strip of 'hole' squares, which has to be two files wide to prevent Knights from crossing it.
I implemented e.p. capture as a move by the Pawn on the board where the doubly pushed Pawn started. This seemed the least illogical way to do it, as the e.p. square on that board will always be empty (or the double push would not have been allowed). And it is the square the double push really passed over, and thus where it could have been blocked. The move could still be illegal because the corresponding square on the other board is occupied, but that is normal for any move to an empty square in Alice Chess that would be legal on its own board. There has to be no extra rule to prevent double capture this way. This method of e.p. capture corresponds to one where the doubly pushed Pawn must first make a single retrograde step before being captured, rather than replacing its double step by a single step. That this is not the same is the fault of an Alice double push not really being two consecutive single pushes.
I still have a comment to make about the legality of moves (an aspect that the diagram doesn't address). The ambiguity here seems to be caused by not making proper distinction between legal and pseudo-legal moves, but heaping them all under the term 'legal'. A more precise description would have said that a move in Alice Chess is pseudo-legal if (before transfer) it would have been pseudo-legal in orthodox Chess on the board where it is made, and the target square on the other board is empty. And then an Alice move is legal (as usual) when it does not expose the King to pseudo-legal Alice capture. This prevents solving distant checks by interposing a piece that was on the board where the checked King resides (but then disappearing to the other board, so that the King can be captured) from being considered legal. Despite the fact that they would have been perfectly legal orthodox Chess moves on the board with the King.
Symmetric Chess. Variant with two Queens flanking the King and Bishops Conversion Rule. (9x8, Cells: 72) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Nov 25, 2019 02:50 PM EST:That is because Nebiyu is an engine, and engines are not supposed to be used directly, but only through mediation of a Graphical User Interface like WinBoard. It is then WinBoard which will take care of launching the engine's .exe file, and send it the proper (text) commands to do something useful.
So the proper procedure is to start WinBoard (either as game viewer without any engine, or for playing against some other engine), then open the Engine -> Load first Engine menu dialog, use the 'browse button' behind the 'Engine' text entry to locate NebiyuAlien.exe, and then 'OK' the dialog. This will make WinBoard start Nebiyu in the background, (possibly terminating the engine that was in use before), and consult it through the appropriate communication whenever it needs it to make or suggest a move. You can then select one of the supported variants from the File -> New Variant dialog.
This procedure will also add NebiyuAlien to WinBoard's 'Engine List', which will be displayed in a listbox on the left in the Load Engine dialogs, so that you can just click on it when you want to use it again in a later session, without having to browse for it first. This Engine List will also be displayed in the comboboxes of WinBoard's Startup Dialog, so that a next time when you start WinBoard you can select Nebiyu immediately, as first or as second engine. (A second engine is only needed when you want to play two engines against each other, through the Mode -> Two Machines menu item.)
OK, I already downloaded Nebiyu 1.45 and unzipped NebiyuAlien; then double clicked on NebiyuAlien.exe and a window was opened but everything is black; there is only one blinking cursor; the window header says:
C:\Users\Carlos\Downloads\Nebiyu\NebiyuAlien.exe
But now I don't know what to do.
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Nov 25, 2019 12:04 PM EST:There are many more links on that page, which come into view when you scroll down. The Nebiyu version I know is at the link Nebiyu 1.45. There seems to be a newer version 1.5, but from the decription of it I am not sure it would be useful untill you train it first, and I never used it myself. IIRC the Nebiyu 1.45 package contains several executables (also covering games other than chess variants), but the one you should run for CVs is NebiyuAlien.exe. The game definitions for that are all in the file alien.ini, which is sort of self-documenting. The file starts with a series of piece definitions, after which a series of game definitions using those pieces follows.
There is Fairy-Stockfish, which is very much worth having. But it is not an independent app that goes accompanied with an installer. Just something you unzip in a folder of your choice, after which you have to point WinBoard to the executable through the Load Engine dialog, so that it can use it as an engine.
The same holds for Nebiyu, which is not as strong as Stockfish, but rather easy to configure for playing new chess variants.
Thank you very much for the info. Of the two, attracts me more Nebiyu. I'm somewhat confused on how to proceed with the installation because I don't see any link that be unique and clearly says "download". There are these 4 links:
Could you, please, tell me which of them to click?
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Nov 25, 2019 04:49 AM EST:For the second, I would be grateful if you, Fergus, HG or anyone else tell me of any program (preferable of chess or chessvariants) that I could download.
There is Fairy-Stockfish, which is very much worth having. But it is not an independent app that goes accompanied with an installer. Just something you unzip in a folder of your choice, after which you have to point WinBoard to the executable through the Load Engine dialog, so that it can use it as an engine.
The same holds for Nebiyu, which is not as strong as Stockfish, but rather easy to configure for playing new chess variants.
Games on Game Courier. A listing of Chess variants for Game Courier, ranked by number of times played.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Nov 24, 2019 05:05 PM EST:@Fergus: I definitely agree that for having sufficient generality it is necessary to be able to resort to some Turing-complete programming language. But a quite large fraction of CVs would not do anything that is not standard (in the sense that hundreds of other CVs would not do exactly the same). If exposing those who want to create presets to the code for such standard tasks discourages them, it would be better not to do that. And it would not be that difficult to achieve that.
One solution could be to reserve the code edits in the preset Edit form only for enforcing / implementing non-standard rules (and perhaps show them only on request, after ticking a checkbox that you want them). And have the code for the very common tasks, such as forbidding capture of own pieces, testing for check / stalemate / checkmate, 50-move draw, repetition draw be added automatically when the user requests this through ticking a checkbox, (e.g. "can expose royal to capture") selecting from a drop-down menu (e.g. "stalemating the opponent wins / draws / loses / is ignored") or typing a number in an otherwise empty text entry (e.g. declare draw when the same position is repeated .... times"). Untouched squares can be remembered for the entire board as a standard action of the basic system; this never hurts, and castling or special rules that require virginity could use them or ignore them as they want.
Most of the time the user would simply select the rules he wants from the combo-boxes, and never have to see the code this results in. The initial settings of these controls on creation of an entirely new preset could be those of normal Chess, so that in most cases the user would not even have to change them, but can just click 'OK' after having selected board and pieces. Only when a rule is not covered by a standard option (e.g. the counting rules for Makruk instead of the usual 50-move rule) the user would have to provide his own code for it, after deselecting the standard rule.
A simpler way to implement this would be to defer all handling of the standard rules such as mate testing to the basic system, but make its execution there conditional, subject to flags or numeric variables. The rule selection of the user would then only have to result in setting of those variables to the selected value at the start of the game.
Note that when I talk about 'default' code I don't mean code that would always be present or run unconditionally, but code that would be added / enabled unless the user decides he wants to provide something different. Where he should always have the option of having that something be nothing. Just allow exposing to check, capture of your own pieces, ignore mates, never declare draw etc. A non-rule-enforcing preset is the same as a rule-enforcing preset for a game without rules...
In line with what I was talking about earlier, I've begun work on a new include file called fairychess1. It is designed to work with the Abstract1 and Alfaerie1 piece sets, which include images of the same pieces. I noticed that these sets included the Vao without the Cannon, which seems pointless. I don't want to break old games, but I might consider replacing the Vao in these sets with some other piece. I still have to adapt copies of the Pawn code for Berolina Pawns, but the others were easy enough to do.
Well, I'm happy that I could do non-rules-enforcing presets (and rules page submissions) for so many CVs already, after only a few years being a member. While my health is not the best (brain fog and brain lock at times, mainly to meds and age), I hadn't tried to do any sort of programming for decades. So, I'm not very representative of members/users here, I'd think. For example, I'd struggle to even upload anything to CVP (maybe it's easier to learn than I think, though when using the internet I worry in general about getting my laptop infected 'somehow', not knowing all the ways it could happen).
What my previous post also meant to allude to (aside from my other, largely unrelated topics) is that making rules-enforcing presets seems, at least at times, not entirely easy - however some users seem marvelously productive at churning them out. I've only made one, for my Throne Chess variant (same game as chess, except playing king to K8 also wins a game, instantly); Fergus helped with that by indicating the chess preset to start with (in order to suitably modify it), and also checking my code when I kept getting error messages. I found I had to add a lot of extra lines of code to check for the implications of the extra victory condition, though maybe there was a way to do the task with less lines (most presets seem remarkably low on code). However, I'm not sure that preset works correctly, as I'd need to do a lot more testing of possible game positions to see if a bug might happen - a reason I'm shy about making rules-enforcing presets in general (I'd hate for anyone's game to be spoiled due to a bug that I could not fix quickly, assuming I was available).
CVs I'd currently have trouble making even non-rules-enforcing presets for would include those with special board features, such as shogi-like ones, or Smess-like ones, or something like Eurasian Chess (e.g. which has a river demarcation); Diagram Designer currently does not support round boards, at least, so I'd have trouble making a rules page submission without learning how to upload something to CVP.
Some games I would not want to make anything but a rules-enforcing preset for, if I would learn to, as these games have complex moves by the pieces that players should best have help with by such a preset. An example would be Ultima, where for example a move by a Chameleon might conceivably wipe out a number of enemy pieces. The same goes for games with drops, because they are multi-move by the players otherwise, which could make playing a game tedious a bit.
One game I'd be reluctant to make a non-rules-enforcing preset for is Universal Chess, not only because the setup needs initial randomizing of seup code. Universal Chess would take extensive work to make its rules page submission for, and I think for this particular game such a rules page is an absolute must. I'm not yet close to being familiar with how all the piece-types Carlos included move, to boot.
All that said, I think Fergus is right that some games are too complicated to make rules-enforcing presets for, at least in a reasonable amount of time for even someone adept at making presets. I also think replacing the current preset-making process on Game Courier would seem a herculean task, though maybe it should be considered on the drawing board for the far-future. As an aside, I'm a bit concerned whether the contents of CVP database, or the website itself, will live on indefinitely, as a lot of work by a lot of people has gone into these - I hope that at least some of my better CV inventions are saved in good time by people elsewhere, just in case. Anyway, a friend requested I not help continue the discussion here about presets much longer, so I hope I've answered H.G.'s questions of me (which seemed deserving of answer) well enough.
Game Courier originally started out without any support for rule-enforcement. It offered a way to play games by email by generating diagrams from FEN strings that could be included in URLs. When I started working on what became GAME Code, I started with commands for automating some tasks, such as moving captured Shogi pieces off the board. In time, it became a programming language with the ability to be used for rule-enforcement. Because of the way that the language was added into Game Courier, it always remained optional rather than required. Besides that, some games could be too complicated to program, and using Game Courier just as a dumb board server would allow them to be played despite that. It also turned out that some people were a lot more interested in creating and trying out new variants than they were in programming, and they went ahead and created lots of presets without any programming.
As a programmer, my own preference has been for programmed presets. H. G. is also a programmer and might feel similarly as I do about the advantages of having programmed presets. I do want to make it easier to create programmed presets, but I also consider it important to still allow unprogrammed presets. This precludes the option of putting default code in presets. However, it could be helpful to have a GAME Code include file that includes default functions for a wide variety of common pieces. Another thought is to write new include files to require some values to be set before they are included. By require, I mean they would exit with informative error messages if any of these values were not already set. This would give programmers who include them reminders about what values might need to be set differently than for Chess.
This would still require some willingness to do programming, but it would at least make it easier.
Actually I think HG's idea to associate images with common pieces to be very useful, even the siege elephant as it will appear in the new version of apothecary games that is in beta FAH, i'd need to make small adjustments to existing pieces!
H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Nov 24, 2019 04:40 AM EST:@Kevin: I was mostly worrying about the existence of non-rule-enforcing presets, which I think we should not have at all. I would have thought that creating such presets would almost never present any problem, as it basically just requires specifying a board size and topology (square/hex), putting a number of piece images on a board in the desired (starting) location, or put them in a 'holdings' next to the board. This doesn't seem to require any special skills beyond those needed to use a computer in general (i.e. using mouse and keyboard). So I am shocked that you say over half of the popular CVs would be beyond your abilities. And I fear the answer to the question of how many rule-enforcing presets you would be able to make for those 107 variants.
I think this is pretty serious, because I consider you as a quite representative example of our target audience. Since you have already investigated the matter, can you give a few examples of CV traits that made you decide creating even a non-rule-enforcing preset was beyond you?
I don't see why it should ever be a problem to define a rule-enforcing preset for a CV with "just sliders/leapers on a rectangular board". Specifying a move on each of the pieces does seem a rather trivial task. And perhaps not even needed for most pieces, as the piece images could have a default move associated with them, so that you only would have to take care of this when you wanted to change that move into something unusual. I would be very surprised is CVs that use the Bishop image (say) would not have it move like an orthodox Bishop in >95% of the cases.
Symmetric Chess. Variant with two Queens flanking the King and Bishops Conversion Rule. (9x8, Cells: 72) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Do you know what version of Windows 10 you are using?
I'm using Windows 10 Home, 1903 version, operative system version 18362.476, installed on 14/Oct/2019.
My PC is a Compaq Mini CQ-1100, Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N2600, 1.60 GHz RAM.
Go in to the EnginesXBoard folder and delete everything underneath and then try running ChessV.exe again?
I already did it but the problem persists: no error message is issued nor the system crashes, it simply behaves as if nothing had happened.
In order to determine the cause there are 2 steps:
1) To install ChessV2.2 in other computer with Windows 10 Home .
2) To install in my PC another app.exe
For the second, I would be grateful if you, Fergus, HG or anyone else tell me of any program (preferable of chess or chessvariants) that I could download.
Games on Game Courier. A listing of Chess variants for Game Courier, ranked by number of times played.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]We have had some very active non-programmers making presets. While this page won't tell you which are programmed, you can go to /play/pbm/settings.php to get some idea of that. If interested programmers want to program games that haven't been programmed yet, that would be very helpful.
Tonight I studied the list of well over 1300 games currently listed as possible to play on Game Courier, paying special attention to the ones most played. Of the top 107 games (currently those each with 14+ games finished), a little under half were ones I could have made a (non-rules enforcing) preset and/or CVP Diagram Designer diagram for by myself, with my presently limited abilities and study time, which I view as helping set my limitations (at the moment) for any CVs I might invent, to later in any way submit to CVP.
Other interesting things I found about the top 107 games listed included that only about 20 had what I'd call auxillary, or IMHO rather complex, rules out of the ordinary (that is, aside from how to simply move some fairly standard pieces), that one needed to know to play them. Also, my favourite 'meta-variant' as an inventor, because it seems it's not always very difficult to cook up a fairly acceptable example of one (basically 'leapers and sliders on a square or rectangular board'), made for about 20 CVs (within the top 107) that were IMHO 'truly popular' on GC. That is, the inventor was not almost always one of the players, who had issued an invitation, thus helping to promote his game; note these approx. 20 also were not CVP Recognized CVs, or in any way ground-breaking ones, but also the number of this meta-variant (in the top 107) would be considerably larger if I included games played heavily by the inventor in making this approximation.
Previously, I had noted that my favourite meta-variant comprised (at minimum) roughly 10% of the whole list of CVs currently available on Game Courier, as far as I could tell with a cursory inspection. Tonight I also surmised that I would have been able to make a non-rules enforcing preset and Diagram Designer diagram for (at minimum) 25% of the CVs played at least once on Game Courier to date (about 1100 CVs), with my present skill level - noting too that some games might e.g. require randomizing the game's setup, warranting a sort of rules-enforcing preset (I think).
Symmetric Chess. Variant with two Queens flanking the King and Bishops Conversion Rule. (9x8, Cells: 72) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Nov 22, 2019 09:18 PM EST:Ok, I had a thought. Carlos, if you would be so kind, would you mind trying this? Go in to the Engines\XBoard folder and delete everything underneath and then try running ChessV.exe again?
I included engines Fairy-Max, KingSlayer, and SjaakII. When ChessV first runs, it will try to start each of those engines to determine their capabilities. Perhaps one of them is failing and it is stopping everything...
Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Nov 22, 2019 09:08 PM EST:Hi Carlos. Thank you for the extra information. Unfortunately, this does not make sense to me. Do you know what version of Windows 10 you are using? I know there is a "Windows 10 S" that can only run apps from the Windows App Store. Other than that, I cannot imagine why it would not be possible to run a simple exe ...
Oh- ok- on further thought. ChessV requires the .NET Framework while Winboard does not. (The older ChessV used an older version of the .NET Framework.) I would think you would get a better error message if that was the problem, but ... Also, .NET Framework 4.6 is already installed on Windows 10 and should be compatible. Does not really make sense. Let my try something; I need to figure this out and I do not think that the problem is because there is no installer.
Greg:
When I double click on ChessV.exe it appears a window asking me if I agree the app makes changes in the device. After clicking "yes" NOTHING HAPPENS. It's disconcerting why does WinBoard 4.8.0 works while ChessV2.2 doesn't.
HG:
I already learned to drop pieces in Seirawan Chess. Thanks!
26 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191126140413.htm