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Diamond Chess 306. Missing description (22x24, Cells: 306) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sat, Dec 26, 2009 12:56 AM UTC:

I am about in the process of updating this webpage to take account of changes I have made to the game over the past few months. The major change is to the Pawns - there are now four varieties of Pawns which all assimilate with and split from one another, as do the other pieces. My original idea of allowing a Pawn to morph into whatever piece it captured looked beautiful on paper, but it created some bizarre situations when I play tested it with Zillions: seeing every Pawn as a potential Conqueror (the most powerful piece in the game), major pieces would launch kamikaze attacks across the board against Pawns. That wasn't what I had in mind, so I've changed that. In addition, the Arrow and Intruder (superfluous because their move was identical to the Lance and Spy, respectively, and differed from them only in that they fused with 'crooked' pieces rather than 'line' pieces) have been removed, some pieces have been renamed, and some graphics have been changed.

I will spend the next few hours or days updating this page; new graphics and a new Zillions file will be uploaded, so please bear with me.

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sat, Dec 26, 2009 11:57 PM UTC:

Thank you for your opinion. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it is a given that what one person enjoys, another won't.

The bottom line is that I made the game for myself. If others like it, that's good, but the basic reason I made it is because I enjoy it. I play the game myself (yes, I really do!) against the zillions program, and have been mastering strategy by observing what zillions and remembering it.

Contrary to your assertions, the pieces do not have 'difficult' moves - they are all either sliders or knight-like leapers, apart from two pieces with crooked moves, analogous to the Griphon in some other variants. I have no trouble remembering their moves and anybody interested enough could master it quite easily. But that's the key: if you're not interested, of course I don't expect you to make the effort:-)

You mention the huge board and the huge number of pieces. Well, I think Chu Shogi has more, as have some of Lynn Smith's 3-D variants which I love. I have a preference for 'large' variants, and have made a point of downloading and studying the ZRF for every large variant I can find.

Finally, I made this game in order to teach myself Zillions programming. I knew nothing about it when I started. I deliberately created difficult problems, and spent thousands of hours crafting solutions to them. For me, learning to make a program to play the game was - and is - one of the greatest pleasures.

By the way, I'm about three quarters of the way through this update. I will upload the revised zillions file either today or tomorrow.

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sun, Dec 27, 2009 08:26 AM UTC:

The new Zillions of Games file is now available here.

Lemniscate Chess. Chess played on a Lemniscate board (in the shape of an infinity symbol). (18x4, Cells: 72) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sun, Dec 27, 2009 09:42 AM UTC:

Thank you Charles, for explaining the movement of your Red and Green Pawns.

The question you have just asked turned out to be my single most difficult programming problem when writing the Zillions file. I solved the problem by dividing the Pawns into four 'classes', depending on what quadrant of the board they originate from. White has 'southwest' and 'northwest' pawns; Black has 'southeast' and 'northeast' pawns.

If a Pawn makes a capture, and in doing so, ends up back in its own territory in the way you described, it simply turns around. A southwest pawn thereby converts to a northwest pawn, and thereafter behaves as such.

Thanks for raising the issue as it is not merely hypothetical - in playtesting with Zillions, I found that it really happens!

Cheers, David.

Chess on a Soccer Ball

. Chess played on the 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons of a soccer ball.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sun, Dec 27, 2009 12:20 PM UTC:

Can one of the editors please help me? I have tried to fix this, but it doesn't work. I definitely uploaded the zillions file - and it is accessible from the main 'Chess on a soccer ball' article, but not from here. I don't know how to fix it. Please help me.

Narnia Chess

. Chess, played on both the outside and inside of a social ball, with the Pentagons as "gateways" between the two.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sun, Dec 27, 2009 12:30 PM UTC:

I've tried uploading the Zillions file, and it is available from the main page describing the game, but not from here. What have I done wrong? Could somebody please help me?

Diamond Chess 306. Missing description (22x24, Cells: 306) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Thu, Dec 31, 2009 12:07 PM UTC:

Thank you for the links and the challenge! You have correctly guessed that my fascination is with using tilings as chessboards, and I am in fact working on two more such tilings at present.

I've just had a look at your Tai Shogi link - wow! That'll take me a while to master. Yes, I am considering a number of 'mini' variants of Diamond Chess (I deliberately included the number 306 in the name, denoting the number of cells, to allow for variants with different numbers of cells).

Dürer's Chess. Dürer's Chess, played on a board of 151 tessellating pentagons and diamonds. (Cells: 151) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Mon, Feb 15, 2010 10:16 AM UTC:

Please bear with me - I've written only about half of the text and need to upload a whole lot of graphics. I'll get around to it tomorrow sometime:-)

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Mon, Feb 15, 2010 10:59 AM UTC:

I've just uploaded a couple of images for this game, but they're refusing
to display.  Can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong?

[It was the u with the umlaut (dicritic mark) over it. To store the
images,
we create a folder with the same name as the name of the variant.
Unfortunately, such a folder becomes difficult to access because of this
character. I've created a page that should work. You'll just have to
reupload the images. The page is at:

http://chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSdurerschess

Sorry about that... --DH]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Mon, Feb 15, 2010 07:54 PM UTC:

Thanks a lot! It works now:-)

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Mon, Feb 15, 2010 08:42 PM UTC:

I've uploaded about two-thirds of the images now. I can't upload any more today - I've exceeded my 500KB limit, so I'll come back tomorrow and finish the job.

By the way, can anybody please explain the purpose of the 500KB limit rule? I find it rather inconvenient.

Dürer's Chess

. Dürer's Chess is played on a tiling of tessellating pentagons and diamonds, first described by Albrecht Dürer in 1525.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Tue, Feb 16, 2010 10:56 AM UTC:

I uploaded a ZIP file containing the ZRF. A message came up saying that the upload was 'successful'. When I test it, however, it doesn't work. I'm sorry everything seems to be so full of bugs, but could somebody please look into this for me? Also, please link it to the Dürer's Chess page I created here.

Is the problem the same one that I had with the graphics yesterday - the umlaut? If so, I'll avoid it in future submissions. [David, yes, same problem. Sorry you see the system as being full of bugs. I know it must be frustrating. I will fix this up later today or tomorrow. --DH]

Dürer's Chess. Dürer's Chess, played on a board of 151 tessellating pentagons and diamonds. (Cells: 151) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Wed, Feb 17, 2010 08:02 AM UTC:

I've uploaded a Zillions file package (zipped), and after a lot of tweaking, I've finally got it to appear here..

However, I can't get this page to link to it! Can somebody please help me?

The "See Also" links appear automagically after the pages are made visible. --DH

Round Honeycomb Chess. A cross between Circular/Cylindrical Chess and Hexagonal Chess. (9x11, Cells: 99) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sat, Feb 27, 2010 02:49 AM UTC:

I've got to run to work. I'll come back tonight and add a few details - as well as the Zillions file I've programmed:-)

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sat, Feb 27, 2010 11:18 AM UTC:

Done now:-)

Spherical Guard Chess. Hiashatar (Mongol Grand Chess) on a spherical board. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

David Cannon wrote on Mon, Mar 22, 2010 11:20 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Hi Graeme,

You mentioned having made a ZRF for this game.  Is there any chance of publishing it here?  Thanks.

David.

Diamond Chess 306. Missing description (22x24, Cells: 306) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sat, Apr 17, 2010 12:38 AM UTC:

For the oblique path, look at the SLIDER family diagram. In the middle of the diagram is the CONQUEROR, which is a combined Rook/Bishop/Lance/Spy. You'll see the SPY-path marked out (the SPY is represented by the wheel symbol). That's the oblique path.

You could also consider downloading the Zillions of Games file I made, and trying out the various pieces for yourself.

Matrix Chess. Chess played on a tessellation of pentagons and diamonds. The name comes from the matrix in which diamonds are found. (14x14, Cells: 196) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sat, Jun 12, 2010 12:35 PM UTC:

Please bear with me, everyone. I've got several more images and diagrams, as well as two Zillions of Games files to upload, but I've exceeded my 500kb limit for today, so that will have to wait 24 hours.

Here may not be the place to discuss it, but I would like to propose raising the daily file size limit to 1MB. I think it would make work a lot easier for many of us.

Matrix Chess

. Chess played on a board of tessellating pentagons and diamonds.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sun, Jun 13, 2010 11:22 AM UTC:

This will not work until tomorrow night. I hastily uploaded a zip file - only to find that it has a couple of bugs that I had overlooked, so the program won't load. When I tried to upload the corrected version, it told me that I had exceeded my 500KB daily limit, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow night to fix it.

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Mon, Jun 14, 2010 10:25 AM UTC:

Fixed now:-)

Matrix Chess. Chess played on a tessellation of pentagons and diamonds. The name comes from the matrix in which diamonds are found. (14x14, Cells: 196) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Mon, Jun 14, 2010 02:16 PM UTC:

Thanks David! 1MB per day should definitely give me enough space to upload a game at a single sitting from now on. I really appreciate it.

Anyway, this game, along with the associated Zillions page, is now ready to go live:-)

' Roid Rage Chess. Missing description (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

David Cannon wrote on Mon, Jun 14, 2010 03:06 PM UTC:

'As far as I know, that remains intact are the Knight, the
King and the pawns.' Not so fast, mate.  I believe the Rook has remained fundamentally unchanged throughout the entire history of chess.

Diamond Chess 306. Missing description (22x24, Cells: 306) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sat, Jun 19, 2010 12:39 PM UTC:

This page looks like a dog's breakfast at the moment. I am in the middle of rewriting it and replacing the graphics with more cosmetic ones; will try to finish tomorrow.

💡📝David Cannon wrote on Sat, Jul 3, 2010 01:47 PM UTC:

The short answer is no. The Princess belongs to the 'slider' family and the Zealot to the 'crooked slider' family. The Lance shares membership of both families and can therefore be assimilated by members of either family - as a simple piece. But when it is part of a compound, it can be assimilated only by members of the same family. Therefore, a Princess cannot assimilate the Lance part of the Zealot to become a Queen.

You may ask why this fussy distinction. There are two reasons. The first is that I could either allow every piece to assimilate every other piece, or I would have to draw the line somewhere. The first option would create such a huge number of pieces that even I wouldn't be able to remember them all. The second option, which I chose, means that some arbitrary distinctions have to be made. I settled on confining assimilation to within 'families' - and in the case of families whose membership partially overlaps, a certain degree of subjectivity creeps in.

The second reason for this is programming. There were a number of things I would have liked to do, but the limitations of Zillions (or, rather, of my knowledge of it) forced compromises. The case you mentioned is one, although I think I would now be able to work around it if I was so inclined. I may may tweak the program that way when I get around to it.

Shogchess. Missing description (9x11, Cells: 99) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

David Cannon wrote on Mon, Jul 12, 2010 09:09 AM UTC:Good ★★★★

Hafsteinn, on the whole I like this game. There have been many attempts to combine Chess and Shogi, and I even tried developing a few such ideas myself, but was never satisfied with the result that seemed neither fish nor fowl. Although I share some of the ideas the others have expressed here, I think the way you've blended them is a big step in the right direction.

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