Let's say you want a 10x10 board, and like the Grand Chess board. But you are going to use some unusual pieces, and don't know exactly what icons to use, so you want a choice of icons.
Go to the Grand Chess preset, click the edit button.
On the new screen, you will see the GC board and pieces. Scroll down to just below the board.
Put in your name and ID# and a new settings and game name for this practice preset. [See my example1, url below:]
Hit update.
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DUri%27s+Chess1%26settings%3DUrisExample1
***
Below the User-Password-Settings block is the larger Name-Code-Shape… block. Below that is 6-8 large rectangular areas with specific game info - for Grand Chess - [often] in [some of] them. Erase everything in those boxes.
Just below those rectangular boxes are 2 little checkboxes. The one on the left says "exclude pieces not in setup. Make sure that is unchecked. [no little green mark]
Go back up to the top, under "Password", and hit SAVE. This will put you in a screen that tells you what the saved settings are, and gives an active link.
Click on that link, and it'll bring you to a new edit page. Examine the rectangular boxes [the bottom one will probably have new info in it - that's okay, it's your info now] to make sure they're empty, and look at the exclude pieces box to make sure it's unchecked.
When the exclude box is not checked, you will get the full piece set specified, not a truncated one.
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DUri%27s+Chess2%26settings%3DUrisExample2
***
Note the boxes that say "Render as" and "Scale". Render is set to HTML, and scale to 100. Change the scale to 50 and update. Nothing happens.
Now, change Render to JPG or PNG, and hit update. Note the changes in the board's appearance. Then set scale to 50 and update. The HTML table form is always 100, no matter what you set it as. The others are scalable.
Go to "Set", change it, and update. Look at the choices. Then go to "Set Group", and change that. Go back to Set, and see the new pieces. Warning: Alfaerie Many is all the pieces - great if you have high-speed connections. Every piece available is pretty much in there, though the specialty sets have some different pieces.
Note the "Files" and "Ranks" boxes are empty. You can specify the designation for each rank and file here. Now, down at the bottom right, you have "Columns". That is currently set to "10". Unless your board is going to have 10 columns, change it to the correct number [or erase it - it may fill in a blank box automatically - if you've put in the "Code" correctly.]
"Code" - This is the ffen "diagram" of the initial setup, using the piece ID's from the piece set. This is where you actually build your game.
***
In the "Code" section, you specify, square by square, what's on the board. I've changed the piece set to Alfaerie Many [I hope you have a fairly high-speed connection - if you've got dial-up or something really slow, the AlfMany is probably too big to load or load in a reasonable time. If this is the case - let me know, and I'll use a different piece set.]
Empty squares are indicated by numbers.
First square coded is the upper left; coding goes across, then back and down one row.
Black is small letters, white is CAPS.
Empty squares are denoted by numbers.
You may separate rows with the foreslash: "/" but it's merely easier, not necessary, if you've specified how many columns there are.
A missing square [say you trimmed off the corner squares] is denoted by a dash "-", and also by a period [I'm pretty sure]: "."
Any piece that is designated by a single letter only may be put into the code as just that single letter, capitalized for white, small for black.
Any piece that has more than a 1 letter only designation must be put into the code string in these brackets: "{" and "}". Thus, the guard, code gu, is put into the code string as "{gu}" for black, and "{GU}" for white. Note added pieces [guards] on board.
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DUri%27s+Chess3%26settings%3DUrisExample3
