Ratings & Comments

We could also ask the more general question of not keeping anything other than chess variants. Something to think about.

Indeed, that occurred to me too. We could easily delete all lines in the jocly-allgames.js file that do not refer to chess variants.

OTOH, the preferred access to the variants on this website appears to be through the Jocly overview page, not through the 'other Jocly games' link that the applet always shows. It is a bit silly when you first have to select a variant you don't want to play, and then switch. And the switch works in the applet, but not for the rule description page we embedded the applet in.

But the overview page also needs refactoring; listing the available variants by date is not helpful at all to the unwary visitor of this website. I am not sure what the best presentation is, though. I suppose alphabetically, even though this competes with what you could do (with some more knowledge and effort) in the site's alphabetical index.

I am also thinking of 'modernizing' the install here. By replacing jocly.game.js the Jocly core is already fully compatible with the recent source code. The only variant in the CVP install that has not been back-ported to source yet is Tenjiku Shogi. Since all game-specific model and view files include a version of the chessbase model and view, there is no harm in different variants needing different versions of these.

So we could replace all model and view files in the chessbase folder by those from the most-recent compile, and the images and supporting info file these use in the chessbase/res sub-tree as well. I think Tenjiku Shogi exclusively uses sprites, mesh files and diffusemaps from the shogi2 subdirectory, which does not exist in the source tree. Only jocly-allgames.js must be made to always have the extra line defining Tenjiku Shogi, compared to the version created by building Jocly from source.

I was also thinking about CwDA Army where each piece can move like a Trebuchet (H) & it's almost exactly like this except instead of Frog (FH) I use Brogop (BH). I called it Treacherous Trebuchets.

I suggest you update jocly with HGM's version of capablanca and my timurid's version: they now have a prelude allowing you to select a sub-variant.
this will remove the need

• carrera, janus, gothic
• babur, wild mirza,wild babur, wild timurid

You could also add Fantastic XIII and bigorra.

We could also ask the more general question of not keeping anything other than chess variants. Something to think about.

Tic Tac Toe

I can't see the image for the Black to move & mate in one problem.

I do have my issue at Thingiverse reported, and the staff moderator has been able to duplicate my problem; so while I'm waiting for the dev staff to fix it, I might as well post a bit of a something to keep the PotD slots filled.

284-289. The Orthodox Pieces (King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, Pawn). While they're not really fairy chess pieces on their own, they do appear in a majority of chess variants, and I do have models of them in a single set. I don't think I need to identify any of them or discuss their moves.

Now, however long the team at Thingiverse takes, at least I won't (necessarily) have to worry about it before Friday. :)

It's important to maintain backwards compatibility, and anyone who doesn't like the name of Aanca is free to use a different name with an alias.

I have done it but not sure it is a good idea because if you use "view as player B". It won’t be correctly oriented.

The editor Fergus Duniho has revised this page.

The editor Fergus Duniho has revised this page.

I also updated the seireigi-sprites file one more time so that the promoted Kanjis are all facing the right way.

www.chessvariants.com/play/jocly/dist/browser/games/chessbase/res/shogi/seireigi-shogi-sprites.png

P. S. GIMP is awesome.

The author, Fergus Duniho, has updated this page.

The editor Fergus Duniho has revised this page.

Indeed, it is in fairychess file. So, this is really sticking. Why can't we be disciplined just a little. On this community we all once agreed that Betza once made a mistake, he overread, when calling Aanca the wrong piece. We had a long discussion on that. So why there is still aanca for the wrong piece in this file which is rather recent? And then, it is contageous. I know that not everyone likes history and languages as I do. But once a fact is known, why keeping ignoring it? Ignorance is always stronger than culture. This is really discouraging.

Here is my updated version of your spritesheet. (For best results, clear browser cache before downloading)

I also took the opportunity to clean up stray pixels in your other shogi spritesheets.

www.chessvariants.com/membergraphics/MSchuseireigi/jocly-shogi-sprites.zip?nocache=true

The editor Fergus Duniho has revised this page.

:)

I'll send you an updated pictogram spritesheet that you can use. Currently, the pictogram images still have the Kanji for the Kings since they are pulling from those locations.

I'm thinking that this is because there is not a lot of experience in games with jokers.

At least in my case that's very much the reason; in principle the dicussion is very interesting (especially since a game I've been thinking about would involve a closely‐related, if potentially even more powerful (though less apparently‐random) piece)

My impression is that jokers are a bit like Querquisites and Smess/Ivory‐Tower pieces, in that they depart substantially enough from normal Chess dynamics that they'd take a good bit of learning to handle. And in their particular case, the art of dealing with them is in part (principally?) the fact that they reduce the value of strong pieces, especially if well placed: you can't freely move the queen if there's a joker ready to copy its move while still being worth (on average, presumed — though of course this ‘chilling’ effect increases its value correspondingly to the powerful pieces on the board) less.

I'd be interested to see how Jokers handle in games with (a small number of) really powerful pieces. I'd almost predict that capturing the jokers to free the power pieces (with maybe some judicious moves by the latter in between either while the J is still hidden in the setup position, or to give check) would be an important middle‐game theme.

But in any case for now you're probably one of the people here with most experience with the J :‌)

It not clear to me, when there's an apostrophe, it's the general of jade that corresponds to the blacks, right?

In kanji sets, the player that moves first always has the King with the extra stroke. And it is true that the player who moves first is called Black (or Sente) in Shogi. It's just that in Jocly and the Mnemonic sets by H. G. Muller, the player that moves first has the white piece images by convention to make it easier for chess players.

You should only have to swap the King kanjis in the 2D Classic Seireigi sprites.

For the 3D pieces its as simple as swapping "sh-king" and "sh-jade" in the 3D piece definitions in the *-view.js files, so no problem there.

P.S. What I said above also applies to the Shogi Jocly implementations that use the King kanji on the biscandine site.

P.S.S. Also you have two extra rooks in your laser cutter SVG.