Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

This seems an improvement over Terachess II. I like the larger diversity of pieces, rather than just taking pairs of the very strong pieces. And the initial setup is guaranteed to be Cannon-proof, something I had great worries about in Gigachess II and Terachess II.

It does seem somewhat of a slow game, though, as there doesn't seem to be another method of breaking through the double wall of Pawn-like pieces other than attacking it with Pawns. But this is ameliorated by the Pawns always having the double move.

Looking at things a bit more carefully, your description of the initial setup doesn't seem to match the diagram. (That's probably why you've flagged it as Not Ready; I just thought I'd point it out in case it's something that slipped by you.)

Thanks to both of you. I have to complete the description, then try if I can code an Interactive Diagram and a Game Courier preset. In //, I'm running it with ZoG to see how it goes. I confirm that it is a slow game, which brings to a philosophical question: do we really need everything to go fast?

My answer to your question: Absolutely not. (Many years ago, a similar concern was posed about a new board game called Monopoly.)

Besides, I have my similarly-sized Vanguard Chess awaiting publication, and have done some offline work on what would become this site's third-largest variant (It's 5x(12x12)).

It is unavoidable that you need some custom Javascript for this, as I did in the Fantastic XIII Diagram. Although the promotion rules could be easily implemented by defining maxPromote=0 and adding morph parameters behind the pieces that do promote (like morph=Q following the Pawn definition), this will not work for the Troll. Because there the morphing is not purely location-dependent, but also depends on the type of move that it makes. And the Diagram has no standard feature yet to make the morphing move-dependent.

I'm somewhat bothered by the snakes and ships starting in the corners, where they are very unlikely to get out for a long time. If you swap the snakes and hawks, the snakes would be easier to develop and the hawks not much less easy than they are already, and it would be more like the Fantastic XIII setup.

@Daniel: you are right. I'm going to try.

@HG: I was not imagining this. I was thinking that I could manage that ID by copy-paste what you had done for Fantastic XIII but I have not looked deeply on it yet. It might be beyond my (modest) skill then.

Thanks

@HG: I was not imagining this. I was thinking that I could manage that ID by copy-paste what you had done for Fantastic XIII but I have not looked deeply on it yet. It might be beyond my (modest) skill then.

Well, the Fantastic XIII Diagram is accompanied by a small JavaScript routine to handle the promotions there, because it had to deal with the Troll problem as well. It just has to be expanded a bit by recognizing more piece types to promote. If you just copy-paste that together with the Diagram definition, I can adapt that routine for you.

@Daniel: first trials with ZoG shows it's more fluid like this. I have switched the position of Snakes and Ships with Centaurs and Squirrels; and be closer to the Fantastic XIII lineup. Thanks for the suggestion.

I initially had a similar thought to Daniel about the Snakes and Ships being in the corner; then I realized that standard Chess keeps the Rooks in the corners, with similar results, and doesn't suffer for it. But you do it the way you like.

And BTW, I recently added a Sabertooth piece to my Thingiverse (under Part VI). It's set to 62.5mm height with 30mm diameter base, and may or may not be suitable for your set.

@Bob for the Rooks: it's quite different. In chess, Rooks indeed cannot develop in the early phases, but this is part of the game, the game is not as long as a giant chess and castling is releaving this issue. In this giant chess, it is really more pleasant to have Ships and Snakes developping quickly because the board is very large and those are sliding pieces, not leaping ones with a short range, so they can attack very quickly.

@Bob for the Sabertooth: thanks. I pay a lot of attention in the homogeneity of my set, the relative sizes, and also the manufacturability. Your piece would not fit as is, but I could be interested by the head only, isolated, to make a try. That being said, I regret a bit the name I gave to this piece because with the Lion and the Cheetah I have already two felines. For sake of clarity and playability, a monster Wolf is preferable.

Re: Rooks: OK, understood.

Re: Sabertooth: Maybe, just for this game, you should just call the piece Dire Wolf. It'd avoid a bit of confusion. (My own preference for that name would be as a third-circle leaper, but what the heck.)

And I had expected that you'd use just the head. The original is part of this collection. (You'll probably do a better job at integrating the head than I did anyway.)

The Board Painter Sabretooth looks uncannily much like a hamster...

The Board Painter Sabretooth looks uncannily much like a hamster...

   It oddly does. So now I know what to use if I ever put a Gerbil into a game.

Saber-Hamster: yes it's true.

@Bob: thanks for the Dino collection!

The Interactive Diagram for Bigorra is now completed, including promotions.

The Interactive Diagram for Bigorra is now completed, including promotions.

I tried a game earlier this morning. I got whalloped, of course, but I had great fun at it nonetheless.

Notably, though, the Soldier and Troll entries on the list do not have their locations marked.

But beyond that, I think that the only thing remaining is to get the setup diagram to match the text and ID.

I don't understand what you mean by "I got walloped" in this context. English is not my mother tongue, this looks to subtile for me.

About the Soldier and Troll entries, there is nothing I can do I guess. Or I don't know. It seems a problem internal to ID. The same occur for HG's Megalomachy and Makromachy.

And by "get the set up diagram to match the text and ID", what do you mean, where is it not matching?

Walloped = beaten badly.

The setup diagram has the outer 5 on the first row as (starting at the outer corner) Snake, Ship, Hawk, Cheetah, and Mammoth, and the inner 4 on the third row as (starting just inside the Bishop) Squirrel, Centaur, Prince and Machine. The ID has the outer 5 of the first row as Hawk, Mammoth, Squirrel, Cheetah, and Centaur, and the inner 4 on the third row as Ship, Snake, Prince, and Machine, which matches the order in the text description of the setup.

Ah OK! this is because you need to flush your cache. I had updated the setup diagram in the same time I did it for the ID.

Yes, I had found walloped=beaten badly, but what is subtile for me is what you MEAN by being beaten. It looks like a negative comment. Usually people don't like to be beaten. I guess you may mean the opposite, I'm not sure. You see, that's the problem with written statement, the emotion are not written. So, is it negative or positive?

I don't care much whether I win or lose; it's whether the experience along the way is enjoyable. This was. So it's positive.

The piece list generated as satellite of the ID omits the list of start squares when it gets too lengthy, yo prevent a line break. Perhaps this was a bad idea. In most variants it only happens for Pawns, and then only when you specify each of those separately, rather than as a 'range' (like a2-h2). But I figured this was no problem, since most people would be able to recognize the Pawns on sight in the Diagram.

@Bob: if the ID plays too strong, you can reduce the search depth.

It's not that the ID plays too strong; it's that I play to weak. (Still, I may try reducing the search depth, since that probably will also speed things up.)

And now that you've explained what the deal with the piece list is, I'm OK with it. In this case it's easy enough to tell the Trolls from the Soldiers. If you make any fix, you can just replace the missing list with "See diagram" or something like that.