Comments by DavidHowe

I am starting this thread for the purposes of discussing chess variant
related input for the next version of the Quivira font. See:

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

Sorry about that. All new submissions should be up on the What's New page
now...

Mea Culpa. I have been terrible about processing email for the past few
months. I plan to start catching up soon. Apologies to all who have written
in and have not received any response. IMO 'old style' pages that need
updating should be converted to member submitted pages. I am not aware of
issues with updating the newer member submitted pages. Perhaps they've
been emailed to me and are sitting in my in-box right now. In any case, I
will be getting to the email soon. I promise. It's one of my many unspoken
(until now) new years resolutions.

By the way, if any one out there is interested in assisting with the site
as a volunteer, please let me know. This site runs on pure volunteerism. I
pay for the hosting and domain names, although this gets supplemented with
income from ads (another aspect I have been neglecting).

Let me wish all our readers, our active community of commenters, our Game
Courier players, our designers and authors, and our volunteers a very Happy
and Healthy New Year. We are a small community, but active and energetic. I
am glad this site can provide a focal point for discussion, design,
creative expression, exploration and playing.

While there is no detailed policy governing the editorial standards of this discussion board / commenting system, I'd like to remind everyone that we should try to be respectful and polite, even when disagreeing. It is easy to take criticism the wrong way, especially if it is couched in a somewhat condescending tone. We should also avoid the use of derogatory terms in our postings.

We have a lot of great postings and discussions. Let's try keep it polite and respectful.

Thanks!

Hi all, I hadn't seen this thread before. I found it while looking for a
place to propose my extensions to Betza's funny notation.

I feel that Betza's funny notation is a good place to start for defining
a
standard since it has been in use for many years, and seems to be
functioning as an 'undeclared' standard.

I would like to propose an extension to Betza's notation that perhaps
could be agreed upon by a group from the CV community and then published.
Obviously, such a standard will not be easy to agree upon, which is why I
am posting this as a proposal.

If any one is interested in forming a group with the purpose of attempting
to establish a move notation standard, please post here. Thanks!

http://chessvariants.org/dictionary/BexNotation.pdf

Hi all,

At the author's request, I have removed the page for Jeppseirawan. This
automatically removes all comments and ratings for this game. If you still
would like to read them, please contact me.

Let's all try to be civil and constructive when commenting on others'
work. Let's also try to not take ourselves (and others) so seriously. CB-J
is a prime example of using humor and friendliness to help avoid
unfortunate results.

Thank you.

Here's my take after a little thought. The point assignments probably need work.

A game which is a form of chess, is one which includes all of the following properties:

1. A game of movement and capture, rarely of placement (2 points)
2. Bilateral symmetry and equality of material (1 point)
3. Functionally differentiated pieces (2 points)
4. Capture by replacement (1 point)
5. Win by capturing a definitive singleton (royal piece) (3 points)
6. A Turn-based game (1 point)
7. A Two-player game (1 point)
8. A game of Complete information (1 point)
9. Played by moving pieces between discrete positions (2 points)
10. The players can move one piece per turn (1 point)
11. One piece type is more abundant than the others, quite weak, moves uni-directionally and can promote (1 point)


[1-5 (but not the point system) taken from: Parlett, D. S. (1999). The Oxford history of board games. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 277.]

[6-11 (but not the point system) taken from H. G. Muller's post on chessvariants.org commenting system.]

Suggested terms:

Chess-game: 16 points (all properties)
Chess-like game: 10-15 points (many properties)
Chess-related game: 4-9 points (some properties)

Note that many chess variants are (according to this scheme) chess-like or chess-related games.

Examples:

Go                = 0 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 1 +0/1+ 1 + 0 = 5/6
Checkers          = 2 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 0 = 9
Losing Chess      = 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 13
Extinction Chess  = 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 +0/1+ 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 13/14
Ultima            = 2 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 0 = 14
Progressive chess = 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 1 = 15
Grand chess       = 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 16

Fergus, if you need any help with the SQL end of things, please let me know.

There are two existing rating and commenting systems. I will refer to the older (and heavily used) system as the rating and commenting system. The newer system, which is not used to any significant extent, I will call the newer rating system.

I agree that the newer rating system is not used (much to my chagrin, given the work I put into it) and should be wiped from the site. The older rating and commenting system seems to work acceptably, although it has its issues and limitations. I agree that we shouldn't toss years of valuable comments/ratings.

So my feeling is that we should have a single, consistent commenting and rating system. Having two parallel systems is confusing and inelegant. That said, I am at a loss for how to proceed. Somehow, we should keep what we have, but also add desired functionality, but as a single, comprehensive system.

I suppose we could export the existing comment and ratings into the proposed new system, and have a unified and elegant commenting and rating system. That will take more effort, but may be worth it.

Just my 2 cents. Please let me know if I can be of any help on the PHP or SQL end of things. I really hope we can achieve a more effective and elegant system than the existing one.

We're currently in the process of improving the CVP web site. This
includes using single sign-in sessions, ability to use OpenID to sign-in,
and an improved comment and rating system. This work takes time, so please
be patient. The indexing and current commenting/rating system will be in
various states of change over the next several weeks. We will try to keep
things usable, but just keep in mind that all this work is done in our
spare time.

The current commenting and rating system needs some attention, but for
minor problems, we will probably wait until the improvements are
implemented to fix them. If there are problems that are inhibiting their
use, we'll give them higher priority.

Thank you for your patience. I think the improvements that Fergus is making
will be well worth the wait!

Fixed. It was an "include_once" issue.

Fergus, the summary prefix is used for entries such as "The Last
Mourning". The summary is set to "Last Mourning" and the summary prefix
is "The". This allows entries to be listed in proper order. There is no
good reason for the prefix field to display after the summary field, and I
cannot remember why I did it that way. In any case, please feel free to
change it if you'd like.

I believe he's saying that the height of the squares is greater than the
width.