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Comments by FergusDuniho
One thing to note about the PBM is that it requires UserIDs and will not work with PersonIDs. When I tried inviting myself by my PersonID, FergusDuniho, it told me that this ID had no email address associated with it. This presents a problem for anyone who would like to start a game, because for those of us with PersonIDs, it is our PersonIDs, not our UserIDs, that show up with our names in the Comments area. Until we can find some solution to this, you should invite people to play by email address instead of userid or first ask someone you would like to play against what his UserID is.
I think the PBM is now ready for general use. The most important new features have been added, and these seem to be working fine. These include use of UserIDs to identify players, logging of games, facilitation of real-time play, the use of graphic images as backgrounds for boards of unusual design, and the ability to take back moves without subtracting anything from the log. Are there any other features anyone would like the PBM to have? For those of you who don't already know where the PBM is, it is at: http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/play.php It is a web-based play-by-mail system for playing Chess variants with other human opponents on-line. It does not provide computer opponents, and it does not enforce rules.
For the purpose of inviting an opponent to a game, the PBM will now accept a PersonID. When it gets a PersonID, it will convert it to the corresponding UserID. So now you don't have to know someone's UserID to invite him to play. You can use either PersonID or UserID and get the same results. Thanks go to David Howe for supplying me with the database code I needed.
I'm currently adding the ability to use circular boards. It makes use of CSS absolute positioning over a background image. I haven't yet drawn any images to use as boards, but the positioning of pieces is working. Take a look at this preset as an example of what it can do.
<A HREF='http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/play.php?set%3Dsmall%26cols%3D16%26code%3DpPpPpPpPpPpPpPpPPpPpPpPpPpPpPpPppPpPpPpPpPpPpPpPPpPpPpPpPpPpPpPp%26bgimage%3Dempty.gif%26render%3Dimage%26shape%3Dcircle'>Example</A>
Byzantine Chess Theory. Towards the theory of Byzantine Chess.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I came across this page while looking for the official notation of Circular Chess. In reference to the notation described here, the author says 'We do not know how the Constantinople chessplayers denoted the squares, but the above notation used in Circular Chess (the modern version of Byzantine Chess) looks natural and convenient.' I most emphatically disagree with his evaluation of this notation. The system of notation described here is like putting a square peg in a round hole. It's the wrong tool for the job. The notation for a circular variant ought to use polar coordinates, not cartesian coordinates. What this system has done is try to map the cartesian coordinates from a regular Chess board onto a circular board. In my PBM preset for Circular Chess, I offer a much simpler coordinate system. I simply treat rings as ranks and pie slices as files. Each pie slice has a letter, going from a to p in a clockwise order, and the rings are numbered from 1 to 4, going in an outward direction.
I would like to encourage use of the Yahoo group known as the Chess Variants Gameroom. Since it was created a couple years ago, it has received little use, and its membership has remained small. But, due to recent changes in how the PBM works, this mailing list could become much more useful than it has been in the past. This mailing list was originally created to request opponents and organize games and tournaments. This now all becomes easier due to new features in the PBM. The PBM now has the ability to issue invitations. These may be directed to one individual identified by a userid or personid, or they may be open invitations directed to a mailing list. When an invitation is issued, a log is created, and the game begins after someone fills out the form for accepting the invitation. To issue an open invitation, you answer 'Yes' to the question 'Is this invitation open?', and you use an email address to identify your opponent. If the email address on file for your userid happens to belong to a mailing list, you can use the PBM to mail open invitations to that list. The invitation includes a link for someone to follow to accept the invitation. Anyone with a Chessvariants.com userid and password may accept the invitation, which is done by following the link and filling out the form found there. Once someone accepts an open invitation, it is closed off to others. I recommend joining the CV Gameroom mailing list with the same email address you have on file for your userid. This will let you send open invitations to that list, and it will let you know about open invitations sent out by others. Here is the link for this mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cvgameroom/
Contest to design a chess variant on 43 squares. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I've just cast my votes, and I would like to point out that some last-minute votes may be delayed by the blackout in the northeast U.S. and Canada. I was fortunate that the blackout never reached me, but it did affect other parts of my city.
The background image rendering method now works for every shape of board or cell. I have also added two more 'shapes.' One is a 'Custom Grid' shape. This lets you use a customized grid in which you get to set the x and y intervals between ranks and files. It is good for square, rectangular, hexagonal, triangular, and other boards. The other is a 'Custom' shape. This lets you give an absolute position to each space of the board. Instead of relying on ranks and files, it associates the Forsythe code with spaces in the order that they are listed in the Positions field. Both of these new shapes require the background image rendering method. Neither will work with automatically generated boards. Both make use of CSS absolute positioning to place pieces over a board that is provided as a background image.
I changed the origin point for Custom boards from the lower left to the top left corner. This is to bring it in line with what counts as (0,0) for images in graphics programs. This will make it easier to use a graphics program as an aid when custom designing the positions of a board. Further details are given in the Developer's Guide.
Cut-Out Symbolic Shogi Pieces. Make your own Shogi set.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]As I mentioned on this page, I borrowed the symbols for the Gold and Silver Generals from alchemy, which used the sun symbol for gold and the moon symbol for silver. Well, I learned today, or yesterday as I now write, that this association wasn't limited to the Old World. While reading Ignatius Donnelly's <I>Atlantis: The Antediluvian World</I>, I came across this curious bit of information: 'The Peruvians called gold the tears of the sun: it was sacred to the sun, as silver was to the moon'(113).
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. The HexColor constructor had somehow lost the line for assigning the value for the red part of the color. Since Yellow and Orange both lack blue, all you got was the green part. Olivedrab has some blue in it, but it is already a shade of green anyway. So that's why all the spaces were shades of green. The problem did not show up for the default colors, because the PBM creates tiles only as it needs them, otherwise using already created tiles. The tiles for the default colors had been made before the bug crept in. So they were fine. I have now fixed the bug, and I deleted all hex tiles created this year. So it's working fine now.
I removed the Asteryx Chess invitation from the Waiting Room, because it was not an open invitation. It was not an open invitation with priority to the inventor. It simply wasn't open at all. David Jagger is the only person who can accept this invitation. There was a bug in the script that let you call an invitation open even when it was not. I removed this bug, and to make sure your invitation did not confuse anyone as to the purpose of the Waiting Room, I removed it from there. In the future, the PBM will not let you call an invitation open unless you identify your opponent with an email address. Whenever you use a Userid, it is directed to that person only, and it is not open. You should also know that selecting an open invitation affects the wording of the invitation. In fact, this is all it was originally intended to do. So the text in the email looked like this: Roberto Lavieri issues an open inviatation [sic] to play Asteryx Chess on the web-based PBM server at Play.Chessvariants.com. This invitation will last until someone accepts it. To play Asteryx Chess with Roberto Lavieri, follow this link: So, I expect that David Jagger did not understand that the invitation was directed to him specifically. Perhaps you should email him and tell him that it was.
An invitation should not be open if it is directed to an individual. When you extend someone a personal invitation, it should not be up for grabs to the first person who comes along. This would be like going to your wedding and marrying the first woman who comes up to the altar instead of your intended bride. It's not quite as extreme, but it is the same kind of faux pas. If you do offer a personal invitation that doesn't get accepted, you may delete it and extend a new invitation. To delete an invitation, you delete its log. Go to an url like this: http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/play.php?game=$game&log=$log&userid=$userid&submit=Delete Replace each of the variable names with the appropriate value for your log, enter your password where you are prompted for it, then click the 'Delete' button. As Tony already mentioned, usernames are already showing up in View mode. I added this on your suggestion shortly before Tony mentioned it.
The PBM had a bug that prevented the acceptance of newly created open invitations. The bug was introduced when I prevented the PBM from logging email addresses. Thus, the opponent variable had a null value for open invitations, and the persons database interprets a null string as the userid for Vernon Parton. Thus, after the introduction of this bug, the PBM was treating any new open invitation as a personal invitation for Vernon Parton. So, the invitation was addressed to Vernon Parton, and you could not enter your userid. This is now fixed. If you previously wanted to accept an open invitation that appeared to be for Parton, you can now accept it. Just go back to the Waiting Room and try again.
There was a bug in the PBM that prevented you from accepting a personal invitation when you were identified by email address instead of userid. I have now fixed this.
Yes, it is possible to delete logs. The Waiting Room page has a link for deleting each log. To delete a log you created, follow the link from the Waiting Room page, enter your password, and click the 'Delete' button.
Storm the Ivory Tower. A Smess adaptation of Chinese Chess. (9x10, Cells: 90) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]In all fairness, you do mention the two things I am dissatisfied with about my game. At one time, I did change the colors of the Blue pieces to a lighter shade, but when I was putting things together yesterday, I was dissatisfied with that color. So I changed it back. The colors of the board have been based on the colors of the Smess board. But I'll look into what might be done. The exit-moves of the Ninny and Yahoo are somewhat kludgy, but so is en passant. I could have barred them from entering their own Ivory Tower, but I don't want to violate the spirit of Smess by making some pieces ignore certain arrows. I tried demoting them to a piece called a Sycophant, but that didn't work well. I considered placing the arrows so that they can't enter the Ivory Tower, but this would also prevent them from entering the opponent's Ivory Tower. So far, exit-moves has been the best solution I have to keeping the game from becoming too drawish. Here's an idea I might try. Within their own Ivory Tower, Ninnies and Yahoos cannot move at all, but they can be pushed by other pieces belonging to the same side. While this might make for an interesting variant, it veers away from both Smess and Chinese Chess. It would also add to the complexity of the ZRF. Anyway, something had to be done. Ninnies and Yahoos are normally trapped when inside an Ivory Tower, and letting them inside your tower normally weakens your attack and increases your defenses so much that the game becomes very drawish.
I hope you will be pleased with the changes I made to the Logs page today. Logs can now be sorted and filtered, which should make it easier to find the logs you're looking for. They can be sorted by age, game + age, game + logname, and logname. They can be filtered by age and by Unix style wildcard pattern matching. The Logs page now also includes a link for deleting each log.
Storm the Ivory Tower. A Smess adaptation of Chinese Chess. (9x10, Cells: 90) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Here's what I'm thinking of doing now. When beginning a move within their own Ivory Tower, Yahoos and Ninnies must move against the arrows instead of with them. This would replace the exit-move. Any Yahoo move would automatically take it out, and any Ninny would be out in no more than two moves. This doesn't violate the spirit of Smess as much as arbitrary borders do, because I can envision a whole class of contrarian Smess pieces, which move against arrows rather than with them. I may make future Smess variants that include such pieces.
I'm glad you like it. It's now even better than I made it last night. You can now filter logs by userid, and if you enter your own userid and password, you can get your userid included in each link to a log and see any hidden logs you may have.
Storm the Ivory Tower. A Smess adaptation of Chinese Chess. (9x10, Cells: 90) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Peter, No a Yahoo may not double-back to its own space. When it moves, it moves to another space.
I have updated and clarified the rules concerning how Ninnies and Yahoos move. I have changed the blue color of the blue pieces to royalblue. This helps makes the features of these pieces easier to make out. I think the real problem with the blue pieces was that the blue was too dark to contrast well with the the black drawing.
Alice Chess Play-By-Mail game. Examine this game![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I saw how you took back your move. Did you have trouble doing it the way it is supposed to be done? The clean way to take back a move, which does not inflate the turn count, is to go back in the movelist to your opponent's last move before the one to be changed, then make a move. To go back, you select the previous move in the movelist, click on 'Go', then view the old position. While viewing the old position, repeat your move if it is your opponent's move that must be taken back, or just make a new move if you are taking back your own move.
Okay, I debugged it, and it looks like it is working now. I still have to do some work on letting a player take back the very first move, but it should now let you take back other moves.
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