H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Apr 22, 2020 10:29 AM EDT:
You are correct that I misunderstood things. But I still think that the problem that different graphics themes use different names for the same pieces contributes to the problem.
I suppose that with 'too limited' you mean that it would not be possible for each player to select his own preferred board theme. But if all corresponding pieces always had the same name for their image in any theme, it should be quite easy to provide that feature too. Users would just specify the theme they want to use. If the Cazaux theme disn't have a Camel image (so that you would get a blank image, or a question mark for the Camel when you selected that theme in a variant that featured a Camel), then it would obviously not be suitable for that variant, and users would discover that quickly enough. Or you would use a lying Knight as Camel in any theme that doesn't have a Camel, but does have a Knight.
It seems a bad idea to pick images just based on a single letter. For some variants there would not even be enough letters! What you describe sounds as a rather clumsy work-around for the problem that more unorthodox pieces exist than that there are letters. The logical way to assign piece IDs is to derive them from the piece name, and not the other way around. If a default way (such as the first letter) doesn't work because of collissions, the programmer could provide his own.
You are correct that I misunderstood things. But I still think that the problem that different graphics themes use different names for the same pieces contributes to the problem.
I suppose that with 'too limited' you mean that it would not be possible for each player to select his own preferred board theme. But if all corresponding pieces always had the same name for their image in any theme, it should be quite easy to provide that feature too. Users would just specify the theme they want to use. If the Cazaux theme disn't have a Camel image (so that you would get a blank image, or a question mark for the Camel when you selected that theme in a variant that featured a Camel), then it would obviously not be suitable for that variant, and users would discover that quickly enough. Or you would use a lying Knight as Camel in any theme that doesn't have a Camel, but does have a Knight.
It seems a bad idea to pick images just based on a single letter. For some variants there would not even be enough letters! What you describe sounds as a rather clumsy work-around for the problem that more unorthodox pieces exist than that there are letters. The logical way to assign piece IDs is to derive them from the piece name, and not the other way around. If a default way (such as the first letter) doesn't work because of collissions, the programmer could provide his own.