Ratings & Comments
Zillions of Games
. Game package for Windows that allows you to play nearly any abstract board game or puzzle in the world.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Has anyone been able to unlock Zillions of Games to the full version? I didn't hear back from them when I e-mailed the support team. Guess they haven't been keeping their URL up to date, regarding the unlock order/purchase online. Unfortunate, as there are some newer variants I wanted to try on the full version.
Gess. A Chess variant played on a Go board where pieces are collections of go stones. (18x18, Cells: 324) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Viking Chess Set. Game board and pieces in search of rules. (Cells: 37) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]It's been over a decade, I doubt anyone else even cares....
But I find this story strangely compelling.
Michael (OP)-- just in case you see this--
do you remember ANYTHING else? Like:
A fuzzy memory of what even one piece's movement was like?
Are you reasonably sure the piece set is complete?
Do you remember anything about it being played, not like the rules precisely, but like you remember the big piece's capture was the goal? (Seems likely, just based on the fact that your parent's called it viking chess, but any info would be great.)
Do you remember pieces moving across the center? Just remebering they could would tell us a lot. There are only so many simple ways to use the center.
A vague memory of the pieces being played on the intercections of the lines/or in the squares?
It sure looks to me like it was played on the line intersections, not the spaces.
Just knowing THAT (intersections or spaces) would be a huge step forward.
With just a little more information we could probably reconstruct rules that were very close to the original. There are only so many logically simple rules for chess on a round board.
You probably will never see this.....I hope you figured something out. I have many happy memories of playing boardgames with my dad (especially Stratego) and a game from your parents being lost seems really sad.
Knights of the Round Table. Missing description (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The idea of Knights promoting into a set list accessable by both sides is an interesting one. It should encourage aggression.
However, the high probablity of uneven play drops the game's rating. Maybe if the pieces were closer in value....
Not knowing which side will get thid king is also interesting.
There are some unusual ideas here.
Diplomat Chess. Round-board variant with a Diplomat to suborn opponents. (Cells: 43) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]So, a couple months ago, I wondered about a circular board that uses the center.
I figured someone must have invented it, and looked through CV.
Apparently my google skills are weak, because I didn't find this or any other. :-(
So I began working on it.
It took some thinking, but I more or less hammered out the rules on paper.
Today I stumble across this! It has identical movement rules to what I have come up with! Brilliant!
Also, this looks to be a nice little variant.
If only I had found Diplomat Chess before I spent that time reinventing the round rules......
Jocly. An html-based web platform for playing 2-player abstract stategy games.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Nov 9, 2018 09:56 PM UTC:Agreed, Jocly is a brilliant piece of software. Too bad I only discovered it two weeks ago, and that the server went off the air a few days later.
The news is about as bad as it can be: the server will be off line at least until mid 2019. Before it went off the air it was continuously crashing, and too messed up for easy repairs. Mi-g currently has no time to fix it. The 'easy-embedding' method through jquery unfortunately was dependent on the server for fetching the required library scripts, so any website that was using this method shares the fate of the jocly.com server.
I have installed the entire Jocly library on my own server, and ported the demo applets for the variants I had made to use that, rather than the now defunct jocly.com. (Mind you, this is not a replacement for the game server, which was not open source, so there is no connectivity with other users; only the Jocly interface works.) So if you want to play against the Jocly AI, you can do it at http://hgm.nubati.net/jocly .
I implemented some new chess variants there, and the mentioned page allows direct access to those. All standard Jocly variants (i.e. those you get with the sources from Github) still work too, though, and you can switch to them from one of the directly accessible demos. The new variants are:
- Spartan Chess
- Scirocco
- Elven Chess
- Werewolf Chess
- mini-Shogi
- regular Shogi
- Tori Shogi
More will likely follow soon (CwDA?, Chu Shogi?).
The Jocly website isn't accessible for several days (I don't know exactly how much time), nor embeded games on other websites; and the Jocly Android apps seem to have disappear from Google store. It would be a pity if Jocly wasn't working anymore; it had a graphically beautiful interface. It was a great work from its developers.
Metamachy. Large game with a variety of regular fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Joe Joyce wrote on Thu, Nov 8, 2018 06:05 PM UTC:Interesting video. The game in the video falls between our two games, Ben, in its approach to 4D. Personally, I think the 3D board is too gimmicky; I rarely like boards that don't display rotational or reflection symmetry. And I think that the 2D 'double grid' 4x4x4x4 board would make it easier easier to see moves in my version, but for yours, Ben, the 3D-style boards might just be better... what do you or anyone with experience think?
I did commented on the video about triagonal. And don't forget about tetragonal. A (1,2,3,4) leaper would be to long for this though :)!
Ben Reiniger wrote on Wed, Nov 7, 2018 08:38 PM UTC:2:35, he came so close to defining the unicorn ('triagonal' slider), then just kinda went "nah".
8:18, looks like probably the best shot of the starting position. That one pawn on the backmost rank is odd. It also looks a little different to me, so maybe it's a replacement queen?
I like the "projected" 3D boards, shrinking as the levels go up, for ease of reaching the pieces inside, though I wonder whether it makes seeing moves harder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wFQPSEPgWc&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2LYMJcOnnWGPuNDp03EOvKjtxy7DeLBg2UcNKtyxC-sBVULLOs52wl1Sk
The beta review period for Unicode 12.0 has just begun. This contains the heterodox chess piece symbols. The code point assignments are now fixed; the beta period is to allow developers (and font designers) to get a head start on anything that depends on the newly assigned characters before the Standard is formally released in March.
Cheshire Cat Chess. Squares are disappearing. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I made two presets for Cheshire Cat Chess and its 10x10 subvariant:
https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DCheshire+Cat+Chess%26settings%3Dcheshire
Game Courier Logs. View the logs of games played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Military Chess. 19th century commercial chess variant. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I played this game as a boy around 1960. The object of the game was to put the opponent's General in danger 6 times in a row. You did not have to checkmate as in chess. I cannot find any information other than what you have posted, but I would sure love to get my hands on a copy of the game.
Thank-you for your post.
Game Courier Logs. View the logs of games played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]As I had said before your are perfectly correct.
It is hard for me to find the comments in quenstion, but I'll try :)!
Thanks Aurelian for your reply, I feel less alone :) I didn't find your comments about it, from when are they dated and in wich thread? But I saw that a player who don't respect the rules in games I have with him had issues with automatic russian translation that alter commands in the game log (if I well understood - and maybe there was bugs then in the website, I don't know). And in addition to the question of language, some functions in Game Courier could be complicated and difficult to understand for people nor very accustomed to this interface (but not for everyone). But this is not the problem: the problem is not to respect the rules of the game you are playing, or even not to try to read them at all. Maybe I appear a little 'psychorigid' (don't know if this word exist in english), but rules is the condition of existence of this type of games, which are defined by them. But above all I don't see the interest for those people of trying to play a game without knowing its rules, except for ruining the website.
Game Courier. PHP script for playing Chess variants online.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]You can't castle on first move and move the rook on the second. The program says it's an illegal move because "there is no rook there".
Chu Shogi. Historic Japanese favorite, featuring a multi-capturing Lion. (12x12, Cells: 144) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]📝H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Nov 2, 2018 07:18 PM UTC:Getting a Lion out early is OK; it is impervious to stepper attack by its igui capability, and can easily withdraw when chased by sliders because of its jumping ability. And if the opponent develops his Lion, you often have no other way to keep it at bay than opposing it with your own Lion.
But suppose your opponent will keep his sliders safely behind his Pawn wall, and advances his Copper, Silver and Leopard while you are dancing around with your sliders. No matter how fast you develop your sliders, they won't be able to breach the Pawn wall, as this is well protected by the opponent's sliders without him having to spend many moves: his sliders start there. At some point the Silvers and Coppers stream out through the occasional hole in the Pawn wall, and will start forking your valuable sliders, which are trapped in the narrow area between the Pawn walls (usually both sides advance all their Pawns one step without opening up large holes, to allow the Side Movers to cover the original Pawn rank). You will get slaughtered.
Sliders are very valuable in Chu Shogi, because they promote easily in the end-game. Promoting steppers, OTOH is very difficult: they need to approach from afar, and by the time they reach the zone the opponent will oppose them with his steppers, needing far fewer moves to do that. And you have to overcome the extra defense provided by his Side Movers; you cannot neutralize those with your own Side Movers. Basically you can only promote steppers that are left over when all stepper material of the opponent has been traded away. So if there is an imbalance where you have steppers, and the opponent tactically equivalent sliders, and the potential promotion gain is the same, you are toast: he will promote all his sliders long before you promote your first stepper, and this will put you at such a tactical disadvantage that you will not have any steppers left by the time the opponent has not enough material left to prevent them from entering the zone.
In warfare one should never expose one's artillery to infantry attack!
Game Courier Logs. View the logs of games played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]@Erik
It has happened to me, too! Bassically I had followed the same steps you did and then did exactly what you have done. It is the common sense after all, maybe with very small tweaks :)! There will always be a small chance for these things to happen so that is that :)! I don't remember the name of the dude that has done that to me, but I have publically commented about it during spring. Does it worth it for you to find them?
Game Courier. PHP script for playing Chess variants online.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Thaks for the tips Fergus!
That file is the copy although it has a bunch of new code. You need not worry about what causes the bug.
It's my job after all.
It is enough that we agree that this is an infinite loop :)!
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Presto Chess: "The first player that gives check with a piece that cannot be taken wins the game."
This leaves it unclear if the checking piece must actually be taken or if it's enough to be able to capture it, and one may instead move the king away or a piece in between. And in the second case: must the capturing move be legal or need it be only pseudolegal?
Another variant of this family:
Like orthodox chess, but a side in check must not move their king. If the check cannot be defended by capturing the checking piece (by a different piece than the king) or moving in between, that side is checkmated and loses. When not in check, one may move the king as usual. Might be called "paralysed king chess".
A milder variant: like above, but the king is allowed to capture a piece attacking him, if it is not a double check.