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Comments by FergusDuniho
Interdependent Chess. A 42 square variant in which pieces borrow capturing ability from other pieces. (6x7, Cells: 42) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I opened up Pritchard's Encyclopedia of Chess Variants at random this morning, and I discovered that someone else had invented the Guardian piece over a hundred years before I did. Regarding Decimal Chess by Lt Obert, Pritchard writes 'The guardian moves as a fers (one square diagonally) and captures as a wazir (one square orthogonally).' This is the same name and the same movement as the piece I created for this game.
Caïssa Britannia. British themed variant with Lions, Unicorns, Dragons, Anglican Bishops, and a royal Queen. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I don't believe the game does insult the British. I do not wish or seek your help in coming up with a new name for it, because I am quite satisfied with its current name. I consider you a crank and an eccentric who does not represent or speak for Britain in general.
Games for Game Courier. The many games you can play online with Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Okay, I think I found and fixed the problem. I added some preprocessing for automation code today. It strips out comments and any leading or trailing whitespace from a line. The problem was that it changed the value of automation code strings, and this caused them to be saved in logs when they shouldn't be. I fixed this by using separate strings for the preprocessed automation code, and I also fixed the logs that had been causing problems with the Logs page by deleting all the automation code assignments. The automation code for these games should be found in the settings files, not in the logs.
Large Chess ZRF 
. ZRF for Capablanca's Chess plus variants: Bird's, Aberg's, Grotesque, Univers, Embassy, Janus, Archbishop, New Chancellor + more.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I just checked, and the ZRF was in the zip file. But I did just update it because I fixed some graphics.
Game Courier. PHP script for playing Chess variants online.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The previous comment lacks context. Boards will resize with different piece sets. Smaller boards are generated for smaller pieces, while larger boards are generated for larger pieces.
Piececlopedia: Wolf. A doubly-bent rider, inspired by the Gryphon and Aanca.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This page violates the Piececlopedia guidelines and so should be removed. The Piececlopedia is reserved for pieces that have previously appeared in games or fairy chess problems.
Piececlopedia: Fox. Doubly-bent rider, inspired by the Gryphon and Aanca.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This page violates the Piececlopedia guidelines and so should be removed. The Piececlopedia is reserved for pieces that have previously appeared in games or fairy chess problems.
Piececlopedia: Rabbit. A doubly-bent rider, inspired by the Gryphon and Aanca.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]<P>This page violates the <A HREF='http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/guidelines.html'>Piececlopedia Guidelines</A> and so should be removed. The guidelines state, 'If a piece has not been used in any games or published fairy chess problems, you should not submit an entry for it. The Piececlopedia is for pieces with some kind of established history.'</P>
Alice Chess . Classic Variant where pieces switch between two boards whenever they move.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]For whatever reason, the What's New? text for this page is not showing up on the What's New? page. I fixed the directory structure of the zip file. This ZRF plays Alice Chess on a single board.
Game Courier. PHP script for playing Chess variants online.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Please don't omit important details when describing bugs. What Shogi game are you talking about? What is the URL for the game?
Poll number Fall 2004 Poll for New Recognized Variant. Vote for the new addition to the recognized Chess variants list for Fall 2004.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]It was an oversight. So I deleted all four votes and added Courier Chess to the poll. Anyone who voted before will need to vote again.
ChessV. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Unfortunately, ChessV doesn't work well on my computer. After my first move, the spaces and pieces all turn the same color, rendering them invisible. I have 256 MB of RAM and a Pentium III.
Extended Chess. Standard setup with changes in moves and win conditions. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]How is this supposed to be any kind of logical evolution of Chess?
You say 'I consider almost many of the variants an evolution of the game of chess,' which allows you call your game an evolution of Chess in a relatively meaningless way that doesn't distinguish it from other variants. But what I'm wondering about is what makes this a LOGICAL evolution of Chess. The phrase 'logical evolution of Chess' suggests a natural development of Chess towards its logical culmination.
ChessV. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Alice Chess ZRF . New Alice Chess ZRF plays Alice Chess on two boards.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I just fixed a bug in this ZRF and uploaded a new version. The bug showed up in a game that Antoine Fourriere sent me. At one point in the game, Black had checkmated White, but the game continued anyway. White's next move was to block the Black Queen's check by moving a Pawn. But this move should have been illegal, because the Pawn was supposed to move to the other board after temporarily occupying the space it would need to occupy to block the check. Instead, Zillions let it stop there without moving to the other board. To fix this bug, I gave all pieces but the King an invisible? attribute. Except for King moves and castling, any piece that moved would have this attribute set to true on completing the first part of its move, and it would have it set back to false on moving to the other board. I then allowed Rooks, Bishops, and Queens to treat spaces with invisible pieces the same as empty spaces. This removed a piece's ability to block checks on the board it is moving from, forcing such moves to be illegal from the start. After this, Antoine's game concluded in checkmate at the point it should have.
When I unzipped the same zip file to another computer, I got the same problem Roberto described. Since I started revising it, I haven't checked back whether the same thing would happen on this computer. Prior to creating the zip file, it had been working. Anyway, I have now uploaded a new revision. I called it the third revision in the ZRF. Someone on Andromeda said, 'There are three kinds of people in the universe: Those who can count and those who can't.' It's actually the second revision, since the original version doesn't count as a revision. I'm tired, which is why I'm releasing this version now instead of continuing to test it. I'll check if there are any bug reports in the morning. It occurred to me that the previous version might not let pieces move from the board opposite to the King's to block a check. So I checked for this, and the bug did indeed exist. Shortly after I began implementing the solution, I realized that what I was doing could be applied to the whole ZRF to eliminate the need for add-partial moves. So I rewrote how everything works. This new revision still has a piece moving from one space to another on the same board. But instead of having you move the piece to the other board with an add-partial move, it automatically transports the piece to the other board. This makes it work more like the Game Courier preset I wrote. I have spent some time testing and debugging this, but it is now time for me to sleep.
I've now uploaded the third revision. It works the same as the second revision, but it includes some macros for making the movement definitions shorter and easier to read. So far, it seems to be bug-free. Let me know if you spot any bugs in this one.
I've just uploaded the fourth revision. This one doesn't fix any bugs or change how anything works. It adds some variants with clear boards for doing problems in Alice Chess or Ms. Alice Chess. It also includes some ZSG files of all the Alice Chess games described in Pritchard's Encyclopedia of Chess Variants and our own Alice Chess page. This ZRF handled them all without a hitch.
Carrera's Chess. Large chess variant from 17th century Italy. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]In an earlier comment, I wrote:
According to Pritchard, the Champion (R+N) goes on the King's side and the Centaur (B+N) goes on the Queen's side. He also mentions that Murray mixes the names. Since this page describes the positions of Champion and Centaur as the reverse of what Pritchard says, and given what he says about Murray mixing the names, it looks like this page gets the setup of the game wrong. It would seem that it is my Capablanca variation, not Aberg's, that has the same setup as Carrera's Chess.
I just came back to this page, because I was reading Parton's description of this game in Dasapada. Parton gives the same description as Pritchard, but I have just noticed that the King and Queen are reversed in the diagram provided on this page. The White King is to the Queen's left instead of to her right. Thus, the descriptions given by Pritchard and Parton actually do fit the diagram given here. But I think confusion has arisen from the general understanding that Queen-side means White's left and King-side means White's right. In this game, it is the reverse. It turns out that the setup shown on this page is just the mirror image of the array used for Aberg's Capablanca variation, and they are mathematically identical.
dUchess. Chess on two levels. (2x(8x8), Cells: 128) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Something may be frustrating to attain but satisfying once attained. For example, 'It was frustrating to try to scale Mt. Everest, but it was satisfying to finally reach the top.' He may mean that it is frustating to try to master this game but satisfying when you do make progress in mastering it. In fact, if you keep at something despite repeated frustration, your experience of frustration may eventually add to your satisfaction at attaining your goal. For example, it is more frustrating to play a good opponent and more satisfying to defeat one. Also, something that is more challenging, such as a difficult Chess problem, will normally be both more frustrating and more satisfying than something less challenging, such as watching Sesame Street and figuring out which one of four objects doesn't belong. In this way, the same thing may be both frustrating and satisfying.
Alice Chess Play-By-Mail game. Examine this game![All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]If no one objects, I'll just delete this page. We don't need separate pages for individual Game Courier games.
The page is now deleted. I'm wondering if this will stop me from posting a comment to it. If you can read this, then it doesn't.
I think either will work, but if you have any doubt, go with the new .org address. It will work.
Contest to design a chess variant on 44 squares. Our annual N-squares chess variant design competition.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I've added a votes44 address for our new domain. It will forward email to Hans. The form above will send you to it even though it uses .com in the text. Tests I just ran seem to indicate that chessvariants.com addresses no longer work. Although we have both domains, our control panel only allows the creation of chessvariants.org addresses.
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