Ratings & Comments
Fairy-Max confirms the given position is mate in 4. It prefers a slightly different line:
d5c3 b1a1 e3c2 a1b1 c2d2 b1c1 c3d1
In general 3-vs-1 end-games are very easy once the bare King is trapped in a corner (say resticted to a1-b1), You just approach with your second piece, and position it for the kill. The 3-vs-1 checkmating applet discusses what the requirement for the pieces is to be able to make that final kill. In this case it is even easier than usual, because the Wazir-Maos are so powerful that there are already checkmate positions that do not even need the white King. (Like the one Fairy-Max ends up in.) These can provide additional threats next to the normal patterns.
The hard part is usually to get the King in that corner.
Long ago I asked H.G. about the ending of K + 2HW vs. K, HW being Horse-Wazir compound. His intuition was that the HWs should be able to force mate (say on 8x8).
Perhaps someone with an engine or database that can include lame leapers (such as the Horse [aka Mao]) might be able to tell if the following position that I came up with has a shorter solution than mate in 4 for White, which I doubt. Another point is that it would seem once the lone king is cornered, the win shouldn't take long, as a rule, for this type of ending:
https://www.chessvariants.com/piececlopedia.dir/mao.html
White to play and mate; one solution I have is:
1.HWd5-c3 check kb1-a1
(if 1...kb1-c1 2.HWe3-e3 mate)
2.HWe3-c2 check ka1-b1 3.HWc2-b2 check kb1-c1
(if 3...kb1-a1 4.HWb2-a2 mate)
4.HWc3-e2 mate.
Yes, HaChu was written by me, and yes, I am in practice the only WinBoard/XBoard developer. PM on WinBoard forum is not really a good way to reach me, as my inbox there is overflowing. TalkChess.com would be a better forum, but for private communication e-mail would be preferable. However, I usually prefer public over private communication; most things that are discussed tend to be useful for others as well.
The mnemonic pieces were indeed conceived from the wish to be able to play these horrendously large games with virtually no learning at all, because 95% of the piece symbols unambiguously indicates its move. So you only have to worry about a hand-full of (often very special and very powerful) pieces, such as Lions, Teaching Kings and Fire Demons.
It is great that you are working on a replacement for the 81Doju Chu-Shogi website. In practice it might be difficult to get the population of that website to migrate to yours, through, no matter how nice it is. Especially the Japanese players. Setting up a new site also means the loss of the database of all games that have been played so far. Perhaps it would have a better chance of success if you would just build a new client for the existing 81Dojo Chu server.
@Muller
Thank you very much for SVG pics! :) They're excellent!
In general we're going to popularize Chu Shogi and (I hope) the others Large-board shogi variants as well.
Mnemonic SVG images are extremely helpful for introducting the game for beginners and others who is afraid of japanese hieroghyphes. Especially including into account that Chu Shogi itself includes comparativelly so much pieces with different variants of move, that it's difficult to remember them in case you don't love it initially. What to tell about much larger variants of shogi with a much complicated move rules.
If we combine mnemonic pics with a pleasant (a bit beautiful) interface, move tips and learning for new players, add HaChu engine for playing with computer (I guess, your work?), and also add possibility to play with another peoples over network (planned in nearest future) - we'll get the platform that actually can be distributed around the world in a much easier way, than before.
For example, when 81dojo came into world, it popularized shogi around the world quicker. The analogue for the Chu Shogi - the Chu-Shogi Renmei 81client had a similar impact, but it still contains hieroglyphes (however it still has a nice interface through). For now Chu-Shogi Renmei 81client is under danger to be unavailable because of outdating of Flash Player technology. If after end of 2020 Flash Player apps will be actually blocked (forcefully), then the remaining variants to play over Internet would be a few. Maybe ChuDo will be one of most comfortable of them. That is the point - the more comfort - the more people coming, as there is easier to entry into the game.
I have registered on WinBoard forum, I'll take pleasure to contact you there via PM or any another way. If I understand correct, you're the only (or main) developer of WinBoard/XBoard programs, are you?
@Alex - The mnemonic pics here were copied from WinBoard by taking screenshots, where I used a general-purpose drawing program to make the background transparent. WinBoard creates those images on-the fly, from components that represent the move in one direction (but i a way depending on the range in adjacent directions), plus a central dot. In order to draw an edge around that for the outline pieces, it creates a black image first, and overlays it with a slightly smaller white image, so that a black outline remains. The largest size is 33x33, though, and the images are not anti-aliased.
I remember having made a set of SVG images for each of the individual pieces, for XBoard, though. I am pretty sure this includes all the Chu-Shogi pieces, and probably also the Wa-Shogi pieces. I would have to dig that up; I could not find it on my website.
Interesting that there now is a new Chu-Shogi engine. How strong is it, compared to HaChu?
As to larger variants: I have a pretty strong engine for Tenjiku Shogi. (Not yet released; I am still planning to do that.)
I am not on Facebook.
[Edit] Oh, I see. The engine actually is HaChu. It is only the interface that is new.
[Edit2] I found the SVG pieces, and uploaded the whole project to http://hgm.nubati.net/Mnemonic-S.tar.gz .
Hello, H.G. Muller!
So, if I understand right, you weren't drawing it by yourself?
Recently one man named Joe Henbethydd have developed a Chu Shogi program with a pleasant interface. I took participation in its localization to English. You can try it yourself here http://anubhuuti.com/chudo/
As I understand, he is planning include multiplayer game over network in future, also I hope, he is planning include another Large-boards variants of shogi like Maka Dai Dai Shogi etc. But it is not exact. Time will tell.
For popularization purposes of Chu Shogi there is a nice idea to use mnemonic pictures representing piece's moves. I really like it, and I use it as my memory sheets, and also I use it when teaching peoples how to play Chu Shogi.
It is nice if we would integrate such mnemonic pics into ChuDo program of Joe Henbethydd, but unfortunately, the pics are somebit a low quality (I mean low resolution). It is nice, if we have at least 200x200 sized images, or (which is better) vector images.
At the moment we don't have any artist which could draw for us such image assets.
So the question is - where did you actually get the mnemonic pics? Have you drawn them by yourself, or you just used already existing images, which is located in the link you provided?
Anyway nice to meet you, and hope we shall some time play Chu Shogi or another Large-board variant of shogi.
P.S. By the way, do you have any page on Facebook? There is a Chu Shogi group, maybe we can find each another there and write one to another sometimes?
Sincerelly yours Alex Trick
it is ambiguous whether "left" and "right"
I use "towards lower/higher file" precisely because of this ambiguousness. I will make the definition of "lower/higher file" clearer.
I do think this is a good mnemonic; anybody good at a quick animation
Good idea. An animation would definitely speak a thousand words here.
Finally, I assume when a king can move more than one space, (because of doubled pawns), it still cannot move through check?
Right, it is indeed not quite precise. I'll clarify that since the "long" king moves are sliding moves then moving through an attacked square is indeed forbidden, so that it's consistent with castling.
Thanks Fergus!
There seems to be something weird with the "won" command.
I have now fixed this. See the comment below.
The correct game was this one:
Seems to be fine now. Thanks.
It was showing that your opponent had won, yet you had entered the won command. So, I fixed that. It now makes use of the $players variable if available. This gets set when an invitation is accepted, and it keeps a permanent record of who moved first, which makes it easier to tell which player entered the command.
It would be even nicer if instead of a button that shows you the GAME code so that you can copy-paste it, there would be a button 'Create Preset'. Which would send the HTML requests to the server (through AJAX calls) that are needed to open the preset edit page, and deposit the the code there as if the Save button was pressed. This should be technically possible, as the pages are on the same server.
Of course the user should then have to supply the name of the variant, and the name of the settings file first. But there could be text entries for those. The Wizard could in response display the link through which you can edit the created preset. Or perhaps open that preset in edit mode itself, in another browser window. The user would then only have to adapt the settings for the graphics (color, piece theme...).
Fergus,
I must be going crazy... :-(
Now this game:
(the game whose moves I couldn't see before) is showing that my opponent won the game. This game is another one where I ended the game with the "won" command.
I issued the "won" command as white, but the log shows that my opponent (black) won.
There seems to be something weird with the "won" command.
Below the page source section with the problem:
Apologies Fergus, gave you the wrong link.
The correct game was this one:
But I just checked again and now the log is there. It was weird. last time I checked there were only two lines in the log, White to play and Jose Carrillo won the game.
And I saw it as well in the page source.
Seems to be fine now. Thanks.
And thanks for correcting the winner in the other comment I submited.
Cheers!
So I could write something like
def BadZone == 9 rank #destination =origin =destination =locustsqr =dropsqr =droppedpiece;
to get a function called with 5 parameters, and only testing if the second is on rank 9?
First, a matter of vocabulary. Function definitions have parameters, but function calls have arguments. An argument is a value passed to one of the parameters of a function. This will test whether the fourth argument from the right is a coordinate on rank 9, which would be the tenth rank. As long as you include five arguments in your function call, it will be the second argument from the left. If you had only four arguments, it would test the first one from the left. If you had three or less, that parameter would not be assigned a value. I know it's a bit counter-intuitive, but it's what comes from evaluating functions in reverse order, as Game Courier does.
Also, something went wrong with this game, which also just ended with the "won" command:
Are you sure you gave me the link to the correct game? This one doesn't include the won command in it.
Now it shows that my opponent (who resigned) won the game.
That's now been corrected.
Fergus,
Also, something went wrong with this game, which also just ended with the "won" command:
I'm trying to view the moves to replay the game, and now I can't see any of the moves.
It just show the starting board without any of the moves played.
Thanks in advance.
Thanks Fergus.
Now that the "won" command is working (and because by opponent had resigned to the game, while the won command didn't work) there was a strange behavior that affected the result for this game:
Now it shows that my opponent (who resigned) won the game.
Can you please correct the result for this game? Thanks again.
The Play-Test Applet indeed adapts the default King move to the board width, by making the castling end as usual w.r.t. the corners. Identifying the castling partners is a bit tricky, though. Originally the Interactive Diagram allowed castling with corner pieces and Rooks (which in some variants start closer to the King). For the AI this was not acceptable, so I added code to scan the board to locate the piece that can castle, look how wide the rank is that it is on (the board could be irregular, or have holes, e.g. Omega Chess), and defines the extreme squares as 'corners'. If those squares are empty, it scans the rank towards the King to find a piece. Later I implemented the j modifier to explicitly shift the castling square inward (so the AI could also do Omega Chess, where the square behind the Rook is not empty).
In the Wizard Tutorial I state that if you are not interested in the FEN, you can just put one piece of every type you need on the board. I realize now that this is wrong: You need to put the someting at the edges on the King rank to get the correct castling partners. I guess I should alter the Diagram script to entirely rely on the j (and board holes, if any) for identifying the castling partners, irrespective of whether these are empty in the initial position. That makes the generated GAME code less dependent on the initial setup. The King would still have to be in the right place, though.
I am glad you like it. For variants with less-typical rules, such as the Jumping Chess, one still has to write GAME code. But often that can be limited to code to implement the non-standard rules. I try to make this as simple as possible, though. Confinement to board zones (at the pseudo-legal level) can now be enforced by just defining a single function for vetoing moves based on the square coordinates of those. I am not entirely happy with that yet, because it does not pass the location of any hopper mount. So it cannot be used to implement the Janggi rule that Cannons cannot jump over Cannons. In the Diagram hops are treated transparently, though: you don't have to indicate the mount when entering the move. As a consequence there can be an arbitrary number of them. Perhaps I should have the move generator remember what was the last piece hopped over, and also pass that to the user-supplied routine.
For larger flexibility I guess it would be good to allow a user-supplied callback for the move generator, so make it easy to call it for your own purposes. Like testing whether there exists a move that is mandatory (by whatever criteria you want).
To summarize, I fixed it.
Fergus,
I'm not sure I understood your response.
Does the won command don't work anymore when entered as a move?
How are we supposed to claim a win when we checkmate in a preset that does not enforce the rules?
It would make more sense for the "won" command to work as a move than the "lost" command. For losing a game we have the alternative to "resign" command, but what is the alternative when we win by checkmate and we should claim a win immediately, rather than ask the opponent to resign a checkmated position?
I have now a problem with the "won" command.
This problem went deeper than the won command. Thanks to a bit of restructuring I had done to speed up Game Courier, it was not properly handling any commands entered as moves except for a few that were handled earlier, such as resign, lost, and drawn, but not won. I corrected it to handle commands entered as moves. I set it up so that resign, lost, and drawn are not affected by the global ban on all commands, though they may be banned individually. I commented out the code for using them earlier, and I modified the code in the commands section.
How sure are you that you changed it back to what it was?
I used Ctrl-z all the way back in Notepad++.
It could also be that FireFox was updated, and is not so forgiving as a previous version anymore.
It hasn't been updated since I began running it earlier today. I just tried it in other tabs, and it is working. Maybe I went to the wrong tab. The one that wasn't working turned out to be for I-Chess, not Chess.
It says KisO4 in the list, which is correct, but I didn't update that one. I had guessed that it defaulted to that based on the board size. But I didn't put the king on the board either - it starts there (if that matters.)
I updated those values and now castling works correctly too.
This is VERY impressive. It is now possible to make presets for typical variants with no writing of GAME code at all. Thank you for making this!
25 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.

Fergus,
The problems with the "won" command are back.
This game is again showing the wrong winner:
https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Latrunculi+XXI&log=j_carrillo_vii-cvgameroom-2020-281-060
Can you delete 18. resign move from the database?
I think this is causing a problem after a won command.
= = =
Source code: