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Joe Joyce wrote on Wed, Jul 12, 2006 10:56 PM UTC:
Why 'mini-rules' in the title? Well, there are several reasons. The first is that preset pages done by the editors all have mini-rules included on the page, and I thought it was a very good idea. It is very convenient to have a condensed rules set readily available to the players. Unfortunately, I am not very computer literate. [I admit to being born B.C. - before computers. The slide rule I used throughout my college career I keep under an abacus on my encyclopedia bookshelf.] I got my first home computer [a Franklin Ace 1200] in 1984, and taught myself some DOS, with which I did well, until everything became Windows. So I learned Windows. They changed it. I re-learned Windows. It changed again. I re-relearned it, and it changed again, and again, and yet again. It got tiresome, and went beyond annoying. Eventually my son [soon to be 33] took Computer Science, so I have him do most of the computer work. As he couldn't care less about chess, he does the minimum, for which I am grateful, but this leaves me with no understanding of what he's done. I understand the concept of indexing, but PHP is just random letters to me. It is not worth it to me to keep learning and re-learning something in which I have no intrinsic interest. What I am interested in is game design. Now, I posted Two Large Shatranj Variants without any presets to see how they would be accepted. [Somewhat of a misnomer, as the 'two' refers to the number of different boards used, not the actual number of variants, which number many thousands.] People seemed to have a positive reaction to the games, so I eventually prevailed upon my son to do presets for me. Now, each preset is only a tiny piece of the whole series, so I felt it appropriate to provide an extract from the 2Large rules for the players convenience, rather than having them wade through the entire 2Large posting and try to figure out just which pieces and rules they were using. [For an excellent example, please look at the promotion rules in 2Large and in the presets.] These small subsets of the rules I thought would validly be named 'Mini-Rules', since I believed the term fit standard English usage, and it fits how I see the preset games, as mini-versions of 2Large, as well as following what I took to be common usage on site. Call it designer prejudice. I certainly wasn't trying to be misleading, and I was most definitely unaware of the specific, technical nature of the minirules files. I only knew I couldn't do them the way the editors do, and that they are an obvious plus to any game that the designer wishes to have played. So I had my son create these to my specifications. Now, I will be happy to change the names of the Great and Grand Shatranj preset pages, as long as I don't lose any votes for games to be included in Tournament #3, as Jeremy Good did when he re-submitted his Royal Pawn game [His votes for RP Chess went to zero. I would prefer that not happen to my games just before the end of the voting. Some are doing fairly well.]; and I do not wish to lose the comments and ratings for each one, such as they are. I would suspect that, too, would happen although I have no real way of telling without trying. So, what should I do to rectify this? I am most willing to do whatever is necessary. Just let me know. Joe

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