Ratings & Comments

Congratulation for this repair Fergus! Happy to see this back!!!

I can't access my game that was interrupted. I hope that timed-out games (due to the site being down) will be playable soon.

It appears that the problem with your game affects only Chu Shogi, and it has nothing to do with the game being interrupted, as I encountered the same problem when I tried to simply move pieces in Chu Shogi. What happens is that the page stops displaying partway through the menu, and it doesn't give me any clear indication of what is wrong. It looks like this is going to be a problem for Adam DeWitt to solve, as it stems from his chu settings file.

I can't access my game that was interrupted. I hope that timed-out games (due to the site being down) will be playable soon.

Please back it up ASAP!

I copied a backup of the files and the database to the backup server. When I extracted the tar file, it overwrote the .htaccess file, which caused chessvariants.org to go to chessvariants.com. I will have to rewrite the .htaccess file so that the same file can work properly on both servers. Then I'll be able to test that the database and pages are working correctly over there.

The server never crashed. I was simply unable to boot it back up after attempting a reboot. For those who don't know, this is because the host's website was down, which left me without the ability to access the control panel for the VPS. The host is now back online, and I now have a second VPS with a different company, which has been assigned to the chessvariants.org domain. I will now work on backing up my websites to the other server.

It seems the server is back in business?!

Please back it up ASAP!

I do have a VPS available (rented up to Oct. 6) where we could practice the process of cloning the website. Apache, PHP and MySQL are installed, as well as ftp and ssh servers. Tell me if you want an account with root access on it.

Two possibilities:

1) Change the piece IDs in the description of the Interactive Diagram before you paste it into the Play-Test Applet.

2) Edit the GAME code generated by the Applet in order to change the IDs of the pieces you want changed. Piece labels occur in the function definitions and in the arrays behind the legdefs array with step descriptions, in the Pre-Game code.

@HG, It seems all well to me so far but the pictures used are the ones from the alfaerie many where the letters in use are from the interactive diagram. So it is difficult to read out. How do I fix this?

In the routine below the variable 'sqr' stays 0 for all iterations. Only when I deleted the comma ("for (sqr piece) $space;") it runs through the square labels. Yet the GAME code manual suggest a comma should be present.

The Developer's Guide was wrong. I have corrected it. It uses spaces as separators, and when I used a comma, it added the comma to the variable name, so that this code worked:

foreach (key, var) spaces:
  echo #key, #var;
next;

But this code did not:

foreach (key, var) spaces:
  echo #key #var;
next;

(And thanks for fixing the dash problem; I would never have found that.)

It's important to remember that it was a minus sign, not a dash. When you use the # prefix before a variable name, it rewrites your code by replacing your variable with its value. Because it rewrote your code with a minus sign, your line of code was now trying to do subtraction. This threw a monkey wrench into your code in a way that a mere dash – which would be a meaningless string that was wider than a minus sign – would not have. Inserting the value of variables in this way is mainly intended for using variables with commands that do not process expressions (at all or for a certain argument). Within expressions, it is usually safer to use the var operator, which simply returns the variable value without rewriting your code. I believe functions are now an exception to this, since the following code prints 13, not 17:

set a 8;
def test + 9 #a;
set a 4;
print fn test;

@Fergus: In the routine below the variable 'sqr' stays 0 for all iterations. Only when I deleted the comma ("for (sqr piece) $space;") it runs through the square labels. Yet the GAME code manual suggest a comma should be present.

(And thanks for fixing the dash problem; I would never have found that.)

Yet another question: is there an elegant way to convert internal rank and file number to the square label? For games that need symmetric shuffling I first shuffle the white pieces, and then copy the white setup (color-flipped) to the black camp, and for that I have to derive the label of the mirror square. This is now done by a pretty complex calculation. Which only works if rank labeling is a consecutive range of integers.

@Aurelian: The FEN for your start position has one dash too many at the start. Otherwise it should work now. (At least the shuffling.)

Here is the fixed subroutine:

sub GetSquares toshuffle:
  my sqr piece;
  // determine the squares the pieces in the given set are on.
  // the result is left in 3 global arrays:
  set left array;  // on left board half
  set light array; // as well as sorted by shade
  set dark array;
printr $space;
  for (sqr, piece) $space:
print . iter . #piece #sqr;
    if match var piece #toshuffle:
      if < * 2 file #sqr lastfile:  // left half
        push left #sqr;
      endif;
      if == color #sqr 1: // distinguish by shade
        push dark #sqr;
      else:
        push light #sqr;
      endif;
    endif;
  next;
print "got it";
endsub;

The actual fix was changing #piece to var piece in the conditional if match var piece #toshuffle:. There are subtle differences between these two ways of getting the values of variables. The way you were doing it embedded it into the line during pre-processing, and the problem with doing that was that its first value was -, which is also an operator. Changing it to var piece made sure that it treated the value as a string at the proper time and not as the minus operator.

I changed another line to use the color operator, because this might be a better way of doing what you want. This returns the color index associated with the space. Looking at the color values, I figured that the number 1 was being used for the dark squares.

When I clicked on that, I saw a listing of all the spaces. So, I presume it is working.

No, that just shows the printr $space before the loop worked. After that list of spaces it prints "iter0"  in the first and only iteration of the loop.

If things worked, you would not see anything printed; You would just see the diagram of the shuffled starting position.

This routine is in the shuffle.txt file included in the preset Aurelian posted the link to 5 postings ago in this subject thread.

When I clicked on that, I saw a listing of all the spaces. So, I presume it is working.

Once you have shuffled the pieces, are you storing the results of the shuffling in a constant for later reuse?

There isn't that much context; it is in a subroutine, and sqr and piece are 'my' variables, which should pretty much decouple it from the remaining code:

sub GetSquares toshuffle:
  my sqr piece;
  // determine the squares the pieces in the given set are on.
  // the result is left in 3 global arrays:
  set left array;  // on left board half
  set light array; // as well as sorted by shade
  set dark array;
printr $space;
  for (sqr, piece) $space:
print . iter . #piece #sqr;
    if match #piece #toshuffle:
      if < * 2 file #sqr lastfile:  // left half
        push left #sqr;
      endif;
      if & 1 + file #sqr rank #sqr: // distinguish by shade
        push dark #sqr;
      else:
        push light #sqr;
      endif;
    endif;
  next;
print "got it";
endsub;

This routine is in the shuffle.txt file included in the preset Aurelian posted the link to 5 postings ago in this subject thread. That preset calls the routine ShuffleSetup (at the very bottom of the Pre-Game section), which eventually calls this routine. If you click that link it directly tries to execute the preset, which immediately exits after printing the $space array, and "iter0". It never gets to the "got it".

When I tried it by itself, it did loop through the board. Perhaps something in the outer context is affecting your code.

@Fergus: I don't understand what is wrong with the following GAME code:

  for (sqr, piece) $space:
print . iter . #piece #sqr;
    if match #piece #toshuffle:
      if < * 2 file #sqr lastfile:  // left half
        push left #sqr;
      endif;
      if & 1 + file #sqr rank #sqr: // distinguish by shade
        push dark #sqr;
      else:
        push light #sqr;
      endif;
    endif;
  next;
print "got it";

I would have expected it to loop over the board. But instead it prints "iter0" and then exits. If I do a "printr $space" just before it, it does print the board as expected.

HG, Have you took any time to take a look on the initial position randomization issue?

It's not so much that there is a bug here but that this preset was written before I gave Game Courier the ability to move pieces by clicking with the mouse. So, I did not program it to handle partial moves. As long as you enter the whole move at once, which will require some typing, it will allow the promotion. I will eventually get around to updating this preset or replacing it with a new one.

Hi Fergus, thank you for the reply.  I think there is a violation to this rule.  The following is an example:
1. H d3-c5 
1... h g8-h6 
2. I c1-g9 
2... x f10-g9 
3. H c5-d7 
3... x g9-h9 
4. H d7-f8 // - Check! -
4... x h9-i9 
5. C j2-j3 
5... q e10-e9 
6 . H F8-    Can not promote?
=====
This was done in self-play mode. 2 people at the same PC.
In move #6 I thought the Cavalier could pop-into the last rank, and promote to the night-rider it lost.
===

The result of one of my 3 games is here :

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Grand+Apothecary+Chess+1&settings=Applet

although it seems I have done something wrong as I don't get normal results. It just says to report any bugs to you HG!