H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Dec 25, 2022 05:58 PM UTC:
There are two independent issues here. One is a matter of taste. Some people like thin borders, other people like fat borders. Those who designed Alfaerie preferred to have borders as they are when the AlfaeriePNG set is rendered the normal way. Those who don't like that should design their own piece set. Not sabotage the use of the original piece designs to alter those to their taste. Just render the SVG with thicker lines and standard anti-aliasing, call it AlfacentauriPNG, and people to which it appeals might even use it.
The second issue is that converting transparent pieces at the boundary to darker ones to create the illusion of fatter borders is a very inferior method, which leads to ugly results. E.g. if you have a boundary that runs nearly vertical, there will be places where it coincides with a pixel boundary, so that there will be no adjacent half-transparent pixels, just a fully opaque one next to a fully transparent one, and the method adds nothing. In other places the border will cut a pixel in two, and make it half transparent, half black. By converting the transparency to black, you push the percieved boundary out there. So the line gets wobbly. If you want to push the boundary out, just move it out half a pixel before rendering, and render it anti-aliasing in the standard way. Which is the way designed to make the line appear as straight as possible.
There are two independent issues here. One is a matter of taste. Some people like thin borders, other people like fat borders. Those who designed Alfaerie preferred to have borders as they are when the AlfaeriePNG set is rendered the normal way. Those who don't like that should design their own piece set. Not sabotage the use of the original piece designs to alter those to their taste. Just render the SVG with thicker lines and standard anti-aliasing, call it AlfacentauriPNG, and people to which it appeals might even use it.
The second issue is that converting transparent pieces at the boundary to darker ones to create the illusion of fatter borders is a very inferior method, which leads to ugly results. E.g. if you have a boundary that runs nearly vertical, there will be places where it coincides with a pixel boundary, so that there will be no adjacent half-transparent pixels, just a fully opaque one next to a fully transparent one, and the method adds nothing. In other places the border will cut a pixel in two, and make it half transparent, half black. By converting the transparency to black, you push the percieved boundary out there. So the line gets wobbly. If you want to push the boundary out, just move it out half a pixel before rendering, and render it anti-aliasing in the standard way. Which is the way designed to make the line appear as straight as possible.