It's been a while since I heard from Graeme. He was having considerable health issues some years ago. He has shown up relatively recently, but at best, like me, he is only an occasional visitor to this site. I was unaware Reinhard Scharnagl had passed. Thanks for letting us know.

Unfortunately I am the non-mathematical one, and I know nothing of Graeme's idea here. I've always been amazed at some people's ability to give numerical values for pieces, even though I've tried it myself a couple times. As far as I know, the best numbers coming out for piece values now are those of HG Muller.

Joe

I am interested on variants especially on piece value calculation methods.

Curious to know how do you derived the Max. Weight, Block and Speed Points for 8x8 board?

Is there any progress on PERK?

It was unfortunate Scharnagl had passed away.

Other than that, I'd recommend the chessvariants.org Piecelopedia and George Jelliss' site.
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/mainquery.php?type=Piececlopedia&orderby=LinkText&displayauthor=1&displayinventor=1&usethisheading=Piececlopedia
http://www.mayhematics.com/v/gm.htm

You may well be familiar with all 3. If you know of any more, please list them here.

Even tests with engines that take all that into account, the end-game value of the Commoner tests hardly better than that of a Knight, perhaps 0.2 Pawn (e.g. by playing one side with 1 or 2 Knights and the other with 1 or 2 Commoners, in the presence of 3-5 Pawns each). For opening value, the Commoner tests slightly weaker than Knight (e.g. replacing one side's Knights by Commoners in the FIDE setup).

Enjoy!
Joe

Best Regards

Graeme

It certainly points out the differences between the historical forms of chess and some of the new variants.

How good is your internet connection?The Alfaerie: Many piece set is large and may take a little bit of time to download.

http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game=Catalonia&settings=JPG-Alfaerie

Now, how do I add the Checkers?

I was referring to the definitions from the top of the page. Or were you asking something else? I'm not sure.

"I see Jorg Knappen gave you an excellent for Catalonia. Congrats."

Yes, I did see it. Thank you! However, it doesn't sound like he played it. I don't know.

"How is the preset coming?"

I'm gonna be honest with you, I still don't really understand what a preset is, let alone how to make one. Is there some kind of page for beginners explaining what it's all about?

Two quick things -

I see how decisiveness translates, but not drama, at a first glance. So how do you figure drama plays into the cooperative games, rather than decisiveness? And this may be as much a matter of semantics as difference of opinion. What do you mean by each?

I see Jorg Knappen gave you an excellent for Catalonia. Congrats. How is the preset coming?

Well, now that your game is working fairly well, you should do those Notes. You should give a brief design history [put in all the interesting spots], explain your thinking, and acknowledge your sources and inspirations, any collaborators, even your playtesters. How many people have heard of Vernon Rylands Parton?

Note just under the word "Index" at the top of the page, there is a link that says "Post your own game". Click on that and it takes you to a clunky 2-page form that you fill out and submit for an editor to review. Look it over a bit, and get back to me with your questions. ;-)

Enjoy!

Yes, but from what I can see so far, I can only see the graph when the page is published, not before. I want to be able to see it on my own computer while I am working on it.

As for forums and chatrooms, you're in 'em. I'm working on it, but it is quite difficult to put together an online game designers playtest group.

I see what you mean about playtesting now. Yes, I suppose that makes sense. Are there any forums or chat rooms where you guys go?

The capital letters stand for white, the small, for black. It's just an analog representation of the board.

And yes, I was suggesting that you find someone willing to play your game if you play his/hers. Now, play and playtesting are 2 different things. I'd suspect that with a willing partner, you could playtest things online that you couldn't actually play online. You may be sending emails back and forth between moves, but so what? As long as your partner understands what is going on, that's what you need for a playtest.

Yes, that's exactly it.

"It specifies the pieces and their placement for setup. If this is what you mean, I know this much about it, anyhow. What do you need?"

What I want to know is, is there a way to see these graphs locally, from one's hard drive, before sending the page in for publication? You know, when I work on anything, I like to do drafts and correct them, I'm a messy writer. I need to see everything that I'm doing.

"As far as playtesting, your best bet is to find someone who would be willing to swap playtesting of each other's games."

That just pushes the problem further though, doesn't it? Or maybe I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean finding someone with whom I could playtest both my games and his? I don't really see how that would work over the Internet…

The idea that I playtested my variants before posting is complimentary, but not entirely accurate. Aside from Hyperchess, which had some playtesting, none of my early variants, including all the shatranj variants, were playtested before posting. I felt it was obvious they would all work well as games. In most people's books, that would make me a stupid amateur.

As far as playtesting, your best bet is to find someone who would be willing to swap playtesting of each other's games.

Chess, between 2 high-level players, is not only concerned with the move being made in the present, but with the chains of moves in the future that are opened or closed. Let's say one player can see about 5 moves into the future, and the other 6, on average. In line with Francois' ideas, you can consider this an "event horizon" for the player. The closer to the limit a player gets, the harder it is for that player to see everything that could happen. Chessplayers are used to playing with that kind of information. We have a series of actions and reactions that we establish for each contingency, which reach some distance into the future. The games I'm considering would have a [reasonably successful] prediction rate of maybe 50% for the next turn. In other words, you have trouble predicting your opponent's "instantaneous" reply - the one made this turn in response to your opening move. You've brought the event horizon right up to now, effectively. This is what I mean by "effectively random" for a chessplayer. No confidence in projection abilities. I do not claim this is an any way actually [mathematically] random.

You don't happen to know how ffen2diag works do you? I've never used it before, and emailed Hans Bodlaender to get more information, but he hasn't replied yet.

Lol, just checked to see if you're in CV.org. This is what I found:
Game

* This item is a game information page, It belongs to categories: Two dimensional, Small board It is a 2 player game. It was last modified on: 2001-02-28 By Francois Tremblay. Action Man's Chess. A small (5x6) board and simple pieces ensures lots of easy-to-understand action. (5x6, Cells: 30) By Francois Tremblay.
* This item is a game information page, It belongs to categories: Two dimensional, In a category all its own, Orthodox chess set but with different winning conditions, Orthodox chess set but with different capturing rules, Orthodox chess set but with special rules It is a 2 player game. It was last modified on: 2002-04-04 By Francois Tremblay. Chain of Fools. Game with a Chess set where the goal is form chains of defended pieces. (8x8, Cells: 64) By Francois Tremblay.
* This item is a game information page, It belongs to categories: Two dimensional, Small board, Orthodox chess set but with special rules about the board It is a 2 player game. It was last modified on: 2000-11-06 By Francois Tremblay. Chess in the Fast Lane. The 64-squares of a regular Chess board are grouped into 41 "regions" producing a small board that looks full size. (8x8, Cells: 41) By Francois Tremblay.
* This item is a game information page, It belongs to categories: Two dimensional, Three or more players, Each player has a different army It is a 3 player game. It was last modified on: 2001-09-29 By Francois Tremblay. Foreign Policy Chess. Chess variant on 8 by 8 board with armies of unequal strength. (8x8, Cells: 64) By Francois Tremblay.
* This item is a game information page, It belongs to categories: Two dimensional, Chess combined with some other game or sport It is a 2 player game. It was last modified on: 2004-11-25 By Francois Tremblay. Ice Hockey Chess. Chess variant based upon rules of (Ice) Hockey. (8x10, Cells: 68) By Francois Tremblay.
* This item is a game information page, It belongs to categories: Two dimensional, Small board, Unorthodox shaped board It is a 2 player game. It was last modified on: 2000-11-03 By Francois Tremblay. Subway Chess. In a turn, player moves first middle subway part of board and then a piece. (7x7, Cells: 41) By Francois Tremblay.

Java

* This item is a Java program, It belongs to categories: Two dimensional, Three or more players, Each player has a different army It is a 3 player game. It was last modified on: 2001-12-31 Author: Ed Friedlander. Inventor: Francois Tremblay. Foreign Policy Chess. Peacekeepers are a third army. (8x8, Cells: 64) Author: Ed Friedlander. Inventor: Francois Tremblay.

Zillions

* This item is a Zillions-of-Games file, It belongs to categories: Two dimensional, Small board, Orthodox chess set but with special rules about the board It is a 2 player game. It was last modified on: 2001-01-04 Author: Peter Aronson. Inventor: Francois Tremblay. Chess in the Fast Lane ZIP file. The 64-squares of a regular Chess board are grouped into 41 "regions" producing a small board that looks full size. (8x8, Cells: 41) Author: Peter Aronson. Inventor: Francois Tremblay.
* This item is a Zillions-of-Games file, It belongs to categories: Two dimensional, Small board, Unorthodox shaped board It is a 2 player game. It was last modified on: 2001-03-19 Author: Peter Aronson. Inventor: Francois Tremblay. Subway Chess ZIP file. In a turn, player moves first middle subway part of board and then a piece. (7x7, Cells: 41) Author: Peter Aronson. Inventor: Francois Tremblay.

Amateur, my @$$! Lol, you've been around twice as long as I have. Sneaky - I like that in a chess player. ;-) Best with your design. If you think I might be able to help with something, let me know.

As far as amateur designers, we are all amateurs here. I've met a few people who are professional designers or something similar, and believe me, they do NOT do chess variants. They do things that sell. ;-) Anyhow, it seems to me that we are both trying to make chess into something it isn't, and never really has been. In your case, you are changing the nature of the game from one of fierce, total competition to one of cooperation. In my case, I am taking the quintessentially deterministic, win by outthinking your opponent down strings of moves, kind of game and turning it chaotic.

Working on the fringes like this, we don't get many chances to attract interested people to our work. I try to grab any opportunity I can manage. Are you a member of chessvariants.org? That is the best place I know of for this sort of thing, with boardgamegeek being a distance second. Hm, you might try posting a question in the general and games areas at the xkcd forums. They are scientifically-inclined more than most, so this sort of intellectual question might well appeal to them.

I can help you out a bit at CV.org, by posting the question you asked once again, mentioning we both thought of coop retrograde, and that you had some ideas on heavy gravity chess that you haven't gotten to work out. You might comment on Gary Gifford's heavy gravity chess game, also, and ask about or discuss the possibilities of coop there. Maybe get some answers, a little traction for what you want to do. Let me know if you want to pursue this avenue.

Enjoy.

As for your proposal, I'm sorry to say that I'll have to pass. I've looked at the WarGame 2 page and I don't really follow as regards to what you may or may not be aiming at. I admire what you've done with these Chieftain and Chieftain-variants games, but I'm afraid I'm too much of an amateur designer to really help you. Thanks for the offer though.

Are there any chess variants that are cooperative? I've only come up with one idea, a coop game of retrograde analysis. The chesspieces are set up in some random position, maybe even a mate. The players have to play the game backwards, with the goal being the pieces winding up in the standard setup position. Heck, you could take pictures from chess books of game analysis to use as the start positions. You know those are doable…

Well, that's my deal. This is Chieftain: [http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/chieftain-chess], and this is what I'm aiming at in this area:
[http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DWarGame+2%26settings%3DWargame2]

*This is an offer I'll make to just about anybody. Designer swap meets where what's being swapped is game help.

Wow. No idea how I could possibly do that, especially since there are currently none on the site! This is a quandary to say the least.

"Not only am I an editor at CV.org and an admin here, but I'm involved in IAGO, the Int'l Abstract Games Org, and all those hats want to help you."

Glad the local hats want to help me, one can never have enough helpful hats around. :)

"What did you have in mind specifically?"

Well, my basic goal is to stimulate people into creating cooperative abstract games. As you may know, this is a field that remains pretty much completely unexplored (with weeks of research and a great deal of trouble, I have managed to find four of them that had any kind of information available, apart from those sold at game stores like Family Pastimes for which I have no information whatsoever). Also as mentioned there is none available on CV.

Designing cooperative games is very challenging because the natural balance that comes from having two people oppose each other is removed. Each game must therefore provide its own balance and its own goals. This means people really have to be creative, especially since Chess is not cooperative in any way and therefore provides no pre-existing template for people to follow.

My terminology is often sloppy, for which I often get into trouble of one kind or another. Let me try the idea of chaos in place of randomness. Consider a standard FIDE game, with a series of exchanges. Good players can project several player-turns into the future, and "know" the exact state of the board after each move. That's the point of chess, no? However, consider a situation where, even if captures are made, the player who initiates the captures cannot predict the exact state of the board for his next move, and maybe the prediction won't even be adequate enough to reply to the initial recaptures successfully. This is the idea I was trying to get across when I said "random".

We can distinguish 2 levels of chaos in a game. One level is total chaos. Consider a 4 dimensional chess game with a limited number of very powerful pieces. Within a few turns, the pieces could be in almost any configuration imaginable, because there are so many ways to go to and from any one location on the board. I'm experimenting with Ben Reiniger on that, with TessChess and Hyperchess. You can see the playtests in Game Courier at chessvariants.org.

The other is limited chaos. Consider a multimove game where the pieces are all short range, there are lots and lots per side, the board is huge, and you move several pieces/turn. In a game like this, there will be a large number of moves with the same value, and there is no real way to project from what you've done in any turn just what your opponent will do in return. The large variant Overlord, found elsewhere in this wiki, is a good example of this second type of game.

Consider that FIDE, Capablanca's [Carrera's], and Grand Chess as pretty much different aspects of the same game, expressed on 8x8, 8x10, and 10x10 boards. [Actually, I started with designing a series of shatranj variants, from which I got the basic ideas.] All 3 games use the same rules, the same basic pieces, and the same idea of combination of basic pieces to make stronger ones. Amazon Chess also fits in here, as do games which use different combinations of the basic pieces, for example the centaur, the knight-man, or the bishop-man, or rook-man, man being the non-royal king. These pieces are far less commonly used in games, but those games also fit in with this cluster of games.

Shogi starts its own cluster. All those monks playing those elaborate games left good-enough records to put shogi at the center of a cluster of games. Xiangqi is also at the center of a cluster, but it is much smaller, with only a few members, like Korean Chess. And shatranj is at the center of the FIDE, shogi, and Xiangqi clusters. Well, in brief, that's what I've been thinking about, and am now looking at what the coordinate axes are. Some are number of pieces, number of piece types, specific pieces, length of edge, length of side, number of dimensions, specific rules/mutators…

I have to agree with neoliminal on this quote. I think you are confusing "deterministic" with "predictability." Even the staunchest of ontological determinists (a group which I guess I would probably be a part of) does not contend that we can predict the universe to the most minute details. The same thing applies to games, I would think. The fact that something is deterministic does not logically entail that we have the capacity to predict it accurately at any level.

In short, my failure to analyze a game of chess tells more about me than it does about chess. All it indicates about chess is that an idiot can't analyze it properly. That's hardly evidence on which to base an evaluation.