New chess variant. Looking for players to play with.

WOWZEES!

• I can try playing will you,but I don't think I can remember the rules and all that stuff.
• WHOA!! SO MUCH PEICES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I mean ,pieces

Thank you & etc2000chess & LetTheW00kieeWin. I put a ton of time and effort, plus endless testing to get this layout.

 Very advanced chess960 (plus a few pieces)

BattleChessGN18, it is a free post, is it not. If I made a chess invention, i think you mean varient, I wouldn't mind other people posting. Anyone can post whatever they want. He posted it as a public post.  I made a suggestion to everyone to try shogi, chinese chess and go since it reminded me of it. Get off your high horse! 

Your suggestion to try different chess games while contributing nothing to the topic of the one at hand is unnappreciated by two or more people; 'freedom' to post in a public thread will not change this. (This is the same reason why advertisement of extra-related sites on web forums are usually against the rules.)

You had specified nothing as to how these things were related to Alpha-Omega. All you did was point away from the existing discussion to talk about another.  How do you think people will take that?

You can argue with me and shout "holier-than-thou" high horse all you want. I am asking you directly right now to consider your rude behaviour, for Acer, me and others who want to learn and enjoy Acer's chess variant.

Battlechess, you are the only rude one here. i can be off topic as much as i want just like how other people on this thread were as well. you could have either ignored me or replyied that you played them, but no, of course you have to open your mouth to defend against nothing. and no it is not the same reason advertisement of other websites are banned on web forums. its usually because of spamming if you did not know that. do you not know what a public forum is? are you so blinded by your ideas that you believe them?  I can argue all day, but I will go nowhere with a stubborn prick. have a good day. 

Seems overly complicated. Perhaps simplify it a bit.

I need to find a Metamachy set for most of my pieces... Unless someone can think of something better?

Acer,  this is the first time in so long that I've seen this thread come to life with so many curious supporters. Tips and kudos to your variant!

As far as the arrangement of the board goes, for both the starting positions and the dimensions of the board, I think we can mutually and respectfully agree to disagree.

In truth, both boards may work better than either of us are ready to admit. It all comes down to mere preference. (As a sidenew, I knew you updated the configuration of your board. I was actually referring to your new one all along. In fact, in the post I now edited out, I referenced the image of your new arrangement. However, I didn't know if that came off as "in your face", since you didn't bring it up. So, maybe I shouldn't have either, I thought. This was one of the reasons why I edited out. But, again, I was referring to your new arrangement, not the old one.)

The few points I do want to mention are -

1 - On how, according to you, the pieces in my set up don't allow pieces to protect each other when doing an array of maneuvers: in truth, I think that's more or less true for both of our boards. I configured your pieces so that, at leas on their first moves, 1 or several other piece other than the pawns are always protecting it. After that, pieces should move out in harmony with each other. Do bear in mind, that your leapers also have ranges (what you refer to as "sliding") too; even if they are limited.

2 - On the powers of the lion and cobra: you must also remember that the Queen on a 12x12 board is given additional material points because she can take on more squares at a farther range. An Omega chessboard (10x10) Queen  is worth about 12 points(!), so I would thinnk that a Queen on an Alpha-Omega 12x12 board is worth even more, being anywhere from 13.5 to 14.5 points. A lion, even with the power to capture a possible total of 2 pieces, would probably be worth only about 6.5 to 7.5 points, which is noticeably less than an 8x8 board Queen. (The power of a King's 1-square in all directions move is itself about 3 points; x2 of that, since the Lion can move twice; plus .5 or 1 point for its ability to move twice and, if pieces happen to be close enough on a large board, to capture 2 possible pieces). 

The point of fact is that the Lion's power is devalued as the board widens, and so, on a wide board, 2 lions would be nicely appropriate. And, since the Cobra, as you admit, is slightly less powerful than the Lion, so too should two of them be appropriate. 

According to your logic, on an 8x8 board, we should really only have 1 Rook, since it's so powerful: it's prowess can intimidate an opponent almost like a Queen can; all it's missing is the lesser diagonal power, see? 

Instead, we have 2 Rooks. What we have here is what would seem to be 3 Queens: the original Queen, plus 2 lesser "Queens". Likewise, there should be two Lions and Cobras (Hey, this is a complimentary tribute to your pieces here!!); especially, again, if we're dealing with a 12x12 board. But, once again, it all goes down to our ersonal preference as to which dimensional board to use.

3 - On your adding a surplus of pieces to the back row of both armies: I wasn't completely sure I saw the necessity of doing this. This was one reason why I originally thought a wider board could really benefit your variant. But, I'm guessing the reason for these extra heads somehow goes back to the point on pieces inter-protecting each other, right? If so, I'll leave it at just that.

(Also, on another note, if we do widen the baord to be 12x12, one could validly say that we would want more of the minor pieces to compensate for the extra space. This was apparently the very argument I was making regarding the Cobra and Lion, right? haha)

You also mentioned in a different post that, in order to play with a 12x12 board as mine, you would have to delete a lot of these pieces. Acer, I set up your board using ALL your pieces!! Nothing was deleted. =) Unless, of course, you're talking about not having the surpluses. In which case, yes, pieces were deleted.

These are only my little pointers. It seems, however, that your variant has worked very well with you. You seem to know what you're talking about when you were focusing on developing positionality of starting pieces, positionality to aid newcomers learn new pieces, as well as opportunities to inner-protect; even if I don't see the things the way you do, I understand that at least 3 people have tried your original set up and really like it. ^-^

Your variant was simply meant to be.

Concluding this post, I want to acknowledge you for being polite, courteous and level-headed while we discussed our disagreements. In my experience, these kinds of conversations likely turn to flamewars simply because people are a little too passionate with their ideas, always on the defense against someone else who might break down something they hold so dear. On the other hand, despite our differing viewpoints, you have managed to make this conversation a very pleasnat one, and I want to thank you for it.

The 'relay server' at winboard.nl was indeed not running anymore. The winboard.nl domain is a rented VPS system, and sometimes the company from which I rent shuts it down for maintanance or migration to another platform. That kills everything that was running there, and I had not set up the system to restart this relay server automatically when it reboots. So I have to restart it by hand after every reboot, and had not done so. (As no one seemed to use it anymore.) I did restart it today, however, so feel free...

Note that the WinBoard package for this game is really based on the p2p adapter, which is a peer-to-peer connection adapter that installs itself as a server on the machine where you run it, and then can be approached by another version of p2p running elsewhere to make a connection. That latter 'client' p2p then has to know the domain name or IP address or domain of the machine where the server p2p runs.

This way of connecting is not dependent on any outside agency (such as my relay server); however, the computer on which the server-p2p runs will have to be reachable from the outside, which usually requires you to open ports (NAPT, virtual servers) in your modem and/or router, as well as in the firewall of the computer itself, to allow such incoming traffic. This can be a big hassle (and different for everyone, depending on the brand of his equipment).

For this reason I conceived the 'relay server', which runs on my VPS that is reachable from the outside world. Then the people that want to connect with each other can both use their p2p for making an outgoing connection to the relay server. And outgoing connections do not require you to open any ports. Their p2p simply connects to the relay server thinking that it is another p2p that took the role as a server. The first one to make that connection thinks that this server-p2p must be pretty slow, as it doesn't get an immediate answer to its login request, but it will patiently wait for such an answer. The second p2p to arrive thinks likewise, but it does get immediate confirmation of the login, as the relay server sends such confirmation to both as soon as the second p2p connects. After the initial login the communication between the two p2p is symmetric, and not dependent on whether they were client or server; messages are simply forwarded from one to the other by the relay server without any processing, to maintain the illusion the p2p are directly connected with each other. Except that the relay server will recognize when a 'quit' command is exchanged between the p2p, after which it will disconnect both.

To know whether two p2p that log on to the relay server should get their messages forwarded to each other, the relay server compares the passphrases they use during login. If a newly connected p2p uses a passphrase that no other connected waiting p2p has, it is put in the waiting list. If there was a waiting p2p with that same passphrase, they are both considered 'connected', (i.e. removed from the waiting list), and messages received from one will be relayed to the other. This allows multiple users to use the relay server at the same time, provided they all use different passphrases. They don't even have to know each other's IP address, they just connect to winboard.nl.

When they would all use the same passphrase, they still would get connected, but in order of arrival (i.e. first to arrive with 2nd, 3rd with 4th etc.). Even this could be a useful mode of operation: if people that want to play a certain variant (say Spartan Chess), but don't care against whom they are going to play it, they could all use the passphrase "Spartan Chess", and as soon as anyone arrives that wanted to play Spartan Chess too (and thus used that passphrase), they would have an opponent.

You mean as depicted here?

Some of the pieces there I recognize as coming from Superchess, where you can also order them. E.g. Exchess set 1:

 At first I would use letters, not pieces