Classes of chess pieces for chess variants

[Ovyron]

Oh, do any of those options give you a box to insert some I.P. address somewhere? Presumably one person would give their IP to another one and host a session so they can play over the Internet.

[RichV]

Ovyron, yes, an IP address box did display, but I had no one to connect to at the time so I abandoned the process. I believe it was the Direct Pllay TCP/IP Service Provider selection. I looked up 'Direct Play TCP/IP Service Provider' on google. It seems it is an old technology and people are having trouble trying to run it in Windows 10. It is too bad that the staff at Zillions are so unresponsive to questions. The last couple of times I asked them for help, there was no response. If they are not going attend their site, they should just make their game engine public domain and quit charging $25 for a product they are not supporting.

My customers do not want to pay $24 for my board game and then have to pay $25 for a chess engine to play it on their computer. I tried to get Zillions to let me sell their game at their old $15 price, but they said no.

[Ovyron]

Ovyron, yes, an IP address box did display, but I had no one to connect to at the time so I abandoned the process.

Yeah, I've used Netplay to connect and play with other people similarly, perhaps it's the same process?

What you'd need to do is go to a website like this:

https://www.whatismyip.com/

In the "My Public IPv4" line, it shows your IP, so you would give this IP to the person that wants to play with you (and only to this person!), then you arrange a time with them at the point the game would take place, and when you're ready you'd "Host Session", and the other person "Join Session", and they enter that IP, and then perhaps it just works.

[RichV]

Ovyron, Maybe we could try it this week. What country do you live in and what would be a good time for you to play a game? The link to download my ZRF files is:
http://castlesiegechess.com/02_la_03_08_la_c_game.html

There are 3 different screen resolutions. The 800 pixel one is the most popular for medium size monitors. The 1200 pixel one is for large, high resolution monitors.

Thanks!

[hgm]

Now that I am back from vacation, let me report on what I still managed to do in the mean time:

It turned out that the version of WinBoard + Fairy-Max adapted for the cirsquare board that I posted before I left still had two problems. One was that the King would get an extra step when it moved orthogonally to a triangle. I fixed that in Fairy-Max. The second was that WinBoard considers any sideway move of a King of more than a single step to be an attempt at castling, and would swing the piece found in the step direction around the King. And the way we mapped the cirsquare board on a 12x12 array would lead to King moves that WinBoard mistakes for non-adjacent (e.g. square nr 17 to 20), which then would cause undesired displacement of some other piece as a side effect. The work-around was to use a piece type to represent the King. WinBoard is not able to reliably detect check or checkmate on the cirsquare board anyway.

After this was fixed I had my laptop playing many games from materially imbalanced positions, to get a rough idea of the piece values. As a start I determined the Pawn-odds score by deleting a Pawn on square number 55. I also removed the Queens, as I had the impression they made the game very drawish through perpetual checking. This produced results around 65%, which were then used as the unit to which other material imbalances were expressed. I typically used matches of 250-400 games, played twice reversing the colors in order to average out any white vs black bias.

Note that Fairy-Max does not 'assign' values to pieces any more than an analytical balance assigns a weight to objects placed on the scales; it is the user that must figure out the values that are intrinsic to the pieces by selecting the proper calibrated weights on the other scale to achieve counter-balance.

I tried the imbalances NNP-R, NP-B, BB-RP, (all without Queens) and Q-RR. The tentative results suggested the following piece values:

N = 3
B = 4 (lone Bishop) or 4.5 (second Bishop of a pair)
R = 7
Q = 14.5

[Ovyron]

I don't have Zillions installed on this machine, and haven't had time yet to search for it and reinstall it.

Hey H.G.Muller! Have you considered hosting some ICS like the one used for the On-line engine blitz tourney but that implements variants like Circular chess so people can go there an playtest them? (by playing as humans)

[hgm]

Unfortunately new variants can only be added to the ICS code in a very cumbersome way. Even when they use a normal rectangular board.

It would be possible for me to set up a turn-based server similar to http://hgm.nubati.net/variants/elven/ for a 12x12 board, but because of the unusual board topology the Interactive Diagram on which this is based would not be able to prperly highlight the allowed destinations of selected pieces. Which would not really hurt, as the Diagram does not do any legality checking, and to avoid confusing highlighting, all the participating pieces can simply be defined without any moves. The players could then use it as a dumb interface, leaving legality checking to the opponent. (Like you would do when playing on 'woodware'.) The Diagram does allow custom coloring of the square shades.

[RichV]

Note that Fairy-Max does not 'assign' values to pieces any more than an analytical balance assigns a weight to objects placed on the scales; it is the user that must figure out the values that are intrinsic to the pieces by selecting the proper calibrated weights on the other scale to achieve counter-balance.

I tried the imbalances NNP-R, NP-B, BB-RP, (all without Queens) and Q-RR. The tentative results suggested the following piece values:

N = 3
B = 4 (lone Bishop) or 4.5 (second Bishop of a pair)
R = 7
Q = 14.5

HG, Wow! You have been doing a lot of work on CSC in Winboard. Based on your values for the pieces, I added one point to the Bishop and two points to the Queen so now my classes are:

………...….Value
...………...Range
Class 0: 0-0.9.....(blocker type pieces)
Class 1: 1-2...…..Classic Pawn 1; Swordsman Pawn 1.5; Spearman Pawn 2
Class 2: 3.........Longbowman
Class 3: 4...……..Classic Knight; Onager; Crossbowman
Class 4: 5...……..Classic Bishop; Extended Knight
Class 5: 6...……..Halberdier; Wolf; Amur Leopard
Class 6: 7......….Trebuchet; Merlin Hawk; Unicorn; Elephant
Class 7: 8-9...…..Classic Rook 8; Falcon Cannon 9
Class 8: 10-11....Archbishop 10; Spider Tower 10
Class 9: 12-13
Class 10: 14-15...Classic Queen 14; Fortress 15
Class 11: 16-17...Dragon 17
Class 12: 18+

Your values are about half the ZoG values. So in the future when I add more new pieces, I will initially use half the ZoG values, unless of course you figure the CSC values in Winboard/Fairy Max.

Thanks!

[RichV]

HGM, Yesterday, I created and made public 3 versions of my CSC Legendary Armies game in the Tabletop Simulator in Steam. The 3 armies are: Classic Army, Knights Army, and Colossal Army. As soon as I get some 3D models of my Longbowman (Archer) and Onager (Catapult), I will create the 4th main army, Caissa Army. I don't know if you are familiar with Steam and the Tabletop Simulator. It is used by tabletop game enthusiasts to play their board games online. You might find it a fun way to quickly create a prototype for playing a variant without rules checking. It took me about 4 hours to learn how to use the basics of the software (no coding required) and create & post the 3 versions of Legendary Armies.

There is no rules checking or playing against the computer, but it is a very convenient and fun way to play board games online. It is very easy to create board games in Tabletop Simulator--no coding required, although it can be used. Steam is the place where the chess engines are used. I really like the Chess Ultra game in Steam. They have a great Kickstarter-type trailer video and very cool 3D graphics for their chess games. However, I did find that their chess engine set for 1200 level play actually played more like a 600 player. Having only played one game with it, I will have to try it set for a 1600 opponent and see how that goes. I am only about a 1200 level.

[Ovyron]

To me rule checking is a must. I remember trying to play Magic the Gathering online and it was very frustrating to have my opponent telling me how I should be doing things and not doing others and how I was forgetting to do things, I didn't play more than one game...