Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

As I have not received a response, I would like to follow up again and ask about the current status.

I wouldn't worry too much about delays in this area. The editors have a lot on their plates. I have four variants and a five-part Icon Clearinghouse that have been ready for a while now, waiting for either publication or review. At least one or two have been waiting for more than a month.

I wouldn't worry too much about delays in this area. The editors have a lot on their plates. I have four variants and a five-part Icon Clearinghouse that have been ready for a while now, waiting for either publication or review. At least one or two have been waiting for more than a month.

I'm a bit confused. The 'Man and Beast 07/08' variants have just been presented and have already been published. Good for the author. But not so nice for the queue. Some adjustments could be made here.

The Man and Beast series has had broken diagrams for years now, at the fault of changed code in the Diagram Designer, and I am in a position to fix some of them.

The review queue has generally hovered between 3 and 6 months, filling up until I have a few hours free to spend reviewing. I try to review from oldest submission to newest. Fergus recently helped clear out some of the older pages, but I haven't seen Greg around; he may be out for a while. Fergus mostly focuses on the web backend, and H.G. on Interactive Diagrams and now Jocly.

As far as I know, at least H.G. is not an editor.

Since there are several editors and everyone seems to have their own queue, I would like to suggest creating a standardized queue that is processed by the editors. This makes sense in order to equalize differences. The uniform queue could then also be viewed by the inventors and provide an overview of when a publication is due.

I can only conclude that there are serious differences between the submission of proposals and their publication.

Edit: The 'Man and Beast 09' has already been released! Kind of weird.

H.G. is an editor, see Who is Behind the Chess Variant Pages?. (The two junior editors aren't active AFAIK.) But again, as he has said in a number of comments, his focus is more programmatical, including the IDs and now Jocly.

There is just one review queue, which can be viewed by anyone. (Glancing now, it looks like the oldest page needing review (not "Uncreated" or having red text suggesting an editor comment without response) is from Oct 1, so just over three months right now.) Work other than reviewing on the other hand is up to editors' discretion, but my last post mostly summarizes that difference in focuses.

Edit: The 'Man and Beast 09' has already been released! Kind of weird.

M&B was released in 2008, and broken by a website change circa 2019. As I alluded in the previous comment, I am fixing a 5-year-old mistake on our part.

I'm a bit confused. The 'Man and Beast 07/08' variants have just been presented and have already been published.

They've been around for a few years now, actually. The series just has a lot of broken bits. Ben, as he explained, is just fixing them.

Since there are several editors

There are not several editors.

I would like to suggest creating a standardized queue that is processed by the editors.

We already have that.

The uniform queue could then also be viewed by the inventors and provide an overview of when a publication is due.

It can be viewed by inventors. There is a link to it on the homepage.

The 'Man and Beast 09' has already been released! Kind of weird.

Charles Gilman has not had a new submission in a long time, as he has not signed in since 2016.

That was informative for me, thank you very much. Of course I withdraw.

@ H.G.

I currently have a problem with the conquer rule. The PTA solutions with this rule, which have worked so far, no longer work. This means that the captured pieces are removed from the board and not converted into pieces of the capturing side. The applications on Game Courier work unchanged.

Is it possible that this has something to do with the work on betzaNew.js?  In any case, it is noticeable that the problem with the conquest rule has arisen since the 'Battle of the Kings' theme.

[Edit] Just tested again; it seems to be working again. Sorry.

@ H.G.

How do you manage to define your own baseline as the promotion zone? In the PTA it works if the promotion zone is set to 9, for example - I tried it.

On this basis, the PTA leads to a GAME code that apparently does not work in Game Courier, i.e. the own baseline is not recognized as the promotion zone.
How to do this, do you have any advice? Or is this a question for Fergus? Thanks.

The promotion zone in the Diagram is always the furthest N ranks. So if you set it to 9 on a 9x9 board it would be the entire board. If you want just your own back-rank you must use a morph for the promoting piece, with which you can define any irregular promotion zone. Like

morph=///////*

on an 8x8 board (7 ranks without promotion, one with the normal choice, counting from the furthest rank). Add this after the Pawn line of the Diagram, and then paste it back into the PTA, and generate GAME code.

[Edit] On second thought, morphing with choice might not be implemented yet in the GAME code. In that case I am not sure what is best, also because I don't know what exactly you want.

...also because I don't know what exactly you want.

The idea is to let the player decide which additional pieces (NBRQ) they want to play with. I would like to do this using a row of pawns that move against the usual direction of movement to their own base line and promote there.

This works in PTA, but not yet in GC. I inserted the morph as described (it worked), and inserted the script back into the PTA as a finished diagram using an editor. Unfortunately the morph does not appear in the HTML - nor in the GAME code. I also wouldn't know where and how to insert the morph into the GAME code.

For the idea see here.

Well, it seems I remember things I did that I really did not do at all, but was just planning to do. Not even the new version of the PTA stores the morphs boards in GAME code. And the GAME-code include file does support morph board only form automatic type change, not the case where you have choice.

But fortunately what you want seems possible without using morph. I guess what you did was make the promotion zone the entire board to have the back rank in it, but that makes the white and black zone overlap, and this is what the GAME code cannot handle. But for what you want it is not needed to have overlapping zones, and each zone can only be reached by Pawns of the color that promote there. If that is the case the generated GAME code can handle it through its regular promotab. You just have to make that

set promotables (P p);
set promotab (
  (Q R B N)
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  (q r b n)
);

That is how it would also look for orthodox Chess, except that the white and the black pieces are now swapped. For each piece in the 'promotables' it looks in the 'promotab' at the rank it moves to, and if that is not 0 it is considered a promotion rank, and contains the possible choices.

As to the game: I don't see why players would ever choose anything other than Queen. Despite the limited range it is still far stronger than any of the other pieces. It has 16 unblockable targets; the Rook and Bishop have only 12. The Knight potentially has 16, but never on 8x8.

First of all, thank you for the help. I hope I implemented it correctly; it works in Game Courier - with one exception: the first pawn (white and no matter which one) is not converted and appears as a white pawn on the baseline. All other pawns (white/black) are transformed correctly. Below is the GAME code.

A note about the game: rook, bishop and queen now each have 16 unblockable targets, which equalizes the playing strengths. Which choice the AI makes is one side, players in Game Courier can decide differently. Maybe that will level it out a little.
______________________________

include /membergraphics/MSgame-code-generation/betza.txt;

set legdefs
(0
1  1  0 -2     1 // pawn(1)
0
1  1  0  2     1 // pawn(7)
0
1  2  1  2     3 // knight(13)
1  2  2  1     3
1  2  2 -1     3
1  2  1 -2     3
1  2 -1 -2     3
1  2 -2 -1     3
1  2 -2  1     3
1  2 -1  2     3
0
1  1  1  1     3 // bishop(54)
1  1  1 -1     3
1  1 -1 -1     3
1  1 -1  1     3
1  1  2  2     3
1  1  2 -2     3
1  1 -2 -2     3
1  1 -2  2     3
1  1  3  3     3
1  1  3 -3     3
1  1 -3 -3     3
1  1 -3  3     3
1  1  4  4     3
1  1  4 -4     3
1  1 -4 -4     3
1  1 -4  4     3
0
1  1  0  1     3 // rook(135)
1  1  1  0     3
1  1  0 -1     3
1  1 -1  0     3
1  1  0  2     3
1  1  2  0     3
1  1  0 -2     3
1  1 -2  0     3
1  1  0  3     3
1  1  3  0     3
1  1  0 -3     3
1  1 -3  0     3
1  1  0  4     3
1  1  4  0     3
1  1  0 -4     3
1  1 -4  0     3
0
1  1  0  1     3 // queen(216)
1  1  1  0     3
1  1  0 -1     3
1  1 -1  0     3
1  1  1  1     3
1  1  1 -1     3
1  1 -1 -1     3
1  1 -1  1     3
1  1  0  2     3
1  1  2  0     3
1  1  0 -2     3
1  1 -2  0     3
1  1  2  2     3
1  1  2 -2     3
1  1 -2 -2     3
1  1 -2  2     3
0
1  1  0  1     3 // king(297)
1  1  1  1     3
1  1  1  0     3
1  1  1 -1     3
1  1  0 -1     3
1  1 -1 -1     3
1  1 -1  0     3
1  1 -1  1     3
0);

def P cond #0 1 0;
def p cond #0 7 0;
def N cond #0 13 0;
def n cond #0 13 0;
def B cond #0 54 0;
def b cond #0 54 0;
def R cond #0 135 0;
def r cond #0 135 0;
def Q cond #0 216 0;
def q cond #0 216 0;
def K cond #0 297 0;
def k cond #0 297 0;

set staledraw 0;  // stalemate is a win
set extinction 1; // must capture all royals to win
set baring 1;     // bare king loses
set promotables (P p); // pieces that can promote
set supply (N n B b R r Q q); // in infinite supply
set promotab (         // allowed choices per rank
  (N B R Q)
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  (n b r q)
);

That is weird indeed. Do you have a link to the preset?

The ID now guestimates the values as N=4, B=4, R=5.6 and Q=6. It seems no one would ever choose Bishop or Knight. Conidering how much orthodox Chess players favor Bishops over Knights, 0.5 Pawn difference could already seem sufficient reason not to choose it. R and B have 16 move targets only in the central square, the Queen has it in a 5x5 central area.

Click here for the preset.

OK, it is fixed. There was a statement that suppressed the promotion popup on the first move of any game.

The reason for this was that the Post-Game code is already called before any moves are done, because it also is responsible for calculating the highlighting for the next move. But it is also responsible for the promotion popup, and as a part of that it tested whether the destination of the latest move was in the promotion zone. This would lead to an error screen if that destination did not exist. So I suppressed it in move 0.

There is some unexpected behavior here in Game Courier, as the system variable mln which specifies how many moves have been played, specifies 0 both before any moves have been played, and after the first white move. So after the first white move the promotion was suppressed too.

I now solved that by testing directly whether a destination square exists, rather than relying on the move number.

Thank you very much. Could you take another look at the game where I changed the moves for the knight and bishop again.

AI now seems to be selectively accessing opportunities when it comes to promotions. Can you live with that?

The values it guestimates are now pretty close to each other. Is there a reason why you don't use a single sliding move?

I'm actually quite happy that the pieces' values are now close to each other. It doesn't seem to be that easy with sliding pieces, at least I think so.

@H.G.

Could you please take a look at my new idea, which you can find here.
I was able to implement it for the PTA, but I'm stuck with the preset for Game Courier.
I would be glad for help.

Well, the way you implemented it in the Diagram would morph the King to a non-royal piece, which it would consider a loss. To make it work as you described, you should define a royal and a non-royal version of each piece type, and let the King morph to the royal types.

I see that the regular PTA is not able to convert the morph parameters to GAME code. (I suppose originally this made sense, as there is also no way to specify morphs when you set up the variant.) You tried to use promotion to get the same effect, but the GAME code cannot specify promotion choice per square, just per entire rank. What you did would allow all pieces to choose to what they promote to, on each square of 5th rank (including promotion to enemy pieces!).

Fortunately the newer version of the PTA is nearly finished, and it can translate the morphs to GAME code.

This works very well with the newer version of the PTA when converted to Game Courier. Many thanks for that.

To make it work as you described, you should define a royal and a non-royal version of each piece type, and let the King morph to the royal types.

That sounds very plausible - but how should I do that? I'm currently at a loss, so please give me a brief explanation. Thank you.

Well, just make a Diagram with twice as many pieces, making sure that the piece you want to use as royals have different IDs from the non-royals. (Game Courier does not like it if pieces have the same ID.) In the new PTA you can specify the royals (through "Specify more rules"). Then make sure the King morphs into the royal pieces.