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The 'diagram designer' was not made by me, but by Fergus. I am only responsible for the 'Interactive Diagram'. Because you explicitly address me, I will answer for the latter:

It is certainly not possible in the Interactive Diagram to use other board topologies, such as hexagonal bords, or circularly deformed boards. All boards must consist of a corner-connected grid of squares. Irregular shapes of such boards (such as e.g. in Omega Chess, with its wizzard squares, or the citadel of Tamerlane Chess) can be emulated by declaring some squares in the smallest surrounding rectangle to be inaccessible 'holes'. The Design Wizard in the Interactive Diagram article has no provisions for defining those, though. But you can just edit the HTML code that it delivers to add the holes; you only need to define an extra 'piece' with the name 'hole', followed by a list of squares that should be holes.

@Hg,

Is it possible to make with the diagram designer  boards that are not rectangular?

Good job tracking down those pages!  Fortunately not too bad.  Gilman has over 250 pages so I was afraid it could be much worse...

Given the scope, I don't mind taking it on, probably manually.  I'll probably take me a couple weeks to get through them but they've been broken for a while so I don't think fixing them is super urgent, so long as it gets accomplished.

The change of interpretation of the period from movement-marker to single empty square has affected a few pages.  (The changes were documented in this comment thread; a bug report was made at https://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?id=37820 .) 

I have added the new functionality's description to the introduction here.

I've identified 25 affected pages, all but one of them by Charles Gilman.  (I only ran the search on member-submitted pages' Pieces section.  There were 4 false positives in the regex [from another author], so perhaps not all of these actually have problems.  The other affected page is an old never-published submission.)

ItemID    
MSaltorth-hex-chess    
MSnearlydouble-wildebeest    
MSnimrod-chess    
MSbachelor-nimrod    
MSman-and-beast-01-constitutional-characters    
MSman-and-beast-03-from-ungulates-outward    
MSman-and-beast-04-generalised-generals    
MSman-and-beast-06-the-heavy-brigade    
MShunterbeest    
MSman-and-beast-07-when-beasts-collide    
MSman-and-beast-08-diverse-directions    
MSman-and-beast-09-mighty-like-a-rose    
MSman-and-beast-11-long-nosed-generals    
MSman-and-beast-12-alternative-fronts    
MSman-and-beast-13-straight-and-crooked-moving    
MSman-and-beast-14-oddly-oblique    
MSman-and-beast-15-strengthened-across-the-board    
MSman-and-beast-19-the-vice-squad    
MSwestfield-chess    
MSman-and-beast-21-lords-high-everything-else    
MSfragnurasian-qi    
MSbachelor-hunterbeest    
MSaltorth-with-further-piece-types    
MSknavish-chess    

There might be a regex solution to fixing all of these pages, which seems superior to doing them by hand or splitting off a version of this script for the old period-markers, but I don't want to accidentally break anything more.  I think the periods that need to be replaced can be described as those following `drawdiagram.php`...`code=`, before any closing `>` or argument-separating `&`.  I'll think/look at it more later, but comments are eagerly solicited.

Background images work for the "Custom Grid" Shape.

Is it possible to get a background image with the diagram desiginer?  It has a pick-list for the option, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

I tried adding &bgimage=marble-gw.png to the code it generated but that didn't do it for some reason.

Uploading images would defeat the purpose of having an on-line generator, as you would have to fix the color and sizes at generation time.

Apparently with Game Courier you can create your own piece set (i.e. a collection of images), which could then be used with GC or Diagram Designer (which uses pieces sets currently available from GC), but if you wish to upload images to this website (for use by GC/DD, at least) you ought to ask Fergus or perhaps another editor to do that for you, I gather from the following GC instruction sub-link (I've never tried to create my own piece set as yet, and it may be beyond my current know-how if I ever wished to do so):

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/devguide.html#newset

I don't know anything about GC. But if it allows the use of off-site image files for the pieces (like http://...) it would also be possible to put the URL of the SVG generator there, requesting the desired piece. If the requested 'FEN' is 1x1, it will be rendered with transparent background, as the generator will assume you just want an individual piece to be used in a larger image. This is what I actually did below.

I know this works for the Interactive Diagram. This is what I actually used in the 'Board Editor' posted in the Alfaerie comments; it uses an Interactive Diagram to let the user set up the desired board position, and it uses the SVG generator to supply the individual pieces in it.

That's quite nifty, then. The only problem at the moment for CVP users would seem to be if Game Courier somehow does not yet allow for the use of SVG generated figurines in presets (i.e. for use in actual play on GC), but rather GC users still must use the kind of piece sets found on it, which are also found on the diagram designer.

> It seems it would be great if the SVG generator supplements or is the successor to the diagram designer on CVP at some point. I assume most any shade of colouring can be used for the SVG figurines.

Well, it is there for you to use it. Just type the FEN after the f= in the link I gave. Indeed you can use any color for the pieces or shade for the squares; for details see the discussion in the comments on the Alfaerie piece set.

It seems it would be great if the SVG generator supplements or is the successor to the diagram designer on CVP at some point. I assume most any shade of colouring can be used for the SVG figurines.

Again an aside: For the variant idea I had in mind, it involved  using the RA piece type (besides the BD and QAD types, along with NP, and K) for an 8x8 variant involving eight sergeant pawns per side, but the idea looks like it's not going to pan out, if only because the RAs apparently could be swapped off the board on the flank files early in a game, at little cost to either player. Using RD (plus BA) instead would be no better, on 8x8, for that reason, but on a 10x8 board with the BD's not guarding the RA's in some setup with an extra piece type I've yet to decide on, with the seargent pawns and QAD thrown in, all the ingredients in question might work together better. The toying continues...

You can get compound pieces of any kind with the SVG piece generator:

( http://winboard.nl/my-cgi/fen2.cgi?f=e-r )

In case anything can be done, I'd note that the Diagram Designer's Alfaerie: Many piece set seems to be missing any symbol to represent a plain Alfil+Rook compound piece figurine, which I happen to be thinking I might use sometime, since I'm toying with an invention idea. The closest symbols are for either elephant rider versions of that compound piece, or else for versions where the rook component is restricted to moving up to just 4 squares. I'm thinking the latter would be a less confusing substitute (if one is necessary) for a plain Alfil+Rook piece, unless something more unrelated like e.g. an upside-down rook figurine would be less confusing than even that. I suppose CVP editors take accepting such emergency substitutions for diagram figurines on a case-by-case basis.

As an aside, oddly enough, Diagram Designer's Alfaerie: Many piece set does have a figurine for the plain Dabbabah+Bishop compound piece, as well as for the (plain) Alfil+Dabbabah+Queen triple compound piece. The latter I recently noticed is a piece type used in the patented 10x10 Big Battle commercial variant. No indication on the CVP page for Big Battle that that piece type is patented, nor is there anything about the QAD type being patented that I could easily find elsewhere on the internet. I know e.g. the Champion piece type (aka WAD) in (commercial) Omega Chess is used liberally in games found on this website alone. On the other hand, every aspect of e.g. Arimaa is patented/licensed (including the piece type names for that, if I recall correctly).

Until now, the FFEN tool and the Diagram Designer shared a common limitation. Neither one could show capture moves by placing a dot over a space with a piece on it. I have now fixed that for the diagram designer. Enclosed in braces, write the index of the color, a space, and the label for a piece. For example {2 r}. This will draw that piece on the space with a dot over it in the color with that index. So, if you include 3 colors in the colors field, 2 will be the index of the third color, and a dot of that color would be placed over black's rook.

Besides using # and ! for border-colored and text-colored dots, it will now use numbers to specify dots in the color of one of the colors listed in the colors field. This field is normally used for coloring the spaces of the board, but it may be expanded beyond the colors needed for the board. On a regular checkered board, the two colors of the board will normally be 0 and 1, and the next color will be 2. You can set 2 to whatever color you want, then insert {2} in your FEN code to display a dot of that color. Since numbers are normally used to indicate a number of empty spaces, any number used to designate colors must appear inside braces. This lets the number be used as a label instead of information about the number of empty spaces.

The previous change I made to increase compatiblity with FFEN is incompatible with a change I previously made. That change was to use . for border colored dots and ! for text colored dots. The . for border colored dots works if you enclose it in braces, and the ! for text colored dots still works normally. The reason for this, and the reason I didn't catch it earlier, is that these are handled in two different parts of the code. To use periods in the same way that FFEN does, it catches a period when populating the board and inserts a @ to represent an empty space. When actually drawing the board, it interprets a period as a border colored dot. The problem is that now, a period in the FEN code does not get inserted as a period in the array representing the board unless it has been enclosed in braces. I'm going to keep the use of the period for empty spaces, and I will use the # sign for border colored dots. These dots are for use in movement diagrams. Note that these will be overridden if a set uses these punctuation marks to represent pieces.

In order to make conversion of FFEN diagrams easier, I recently modified drawdiagram.php to recognize periods in the FEN code. A single period indicates a single empty space, as it does in FFEN diagrams. Unlike the number 1, which would indicate too many spaces if repeated, the repetition of a . just means one more empty space, not ten more or 100 more, etc.

Images made with the diagram designer will now have smaller file sizes when the color count does not exceed 256. Although the script was outputing images with larger color counts as JPG, and it was outputing smaller pallette images as PNG, it was still outputting the PNG images as true color images. I modied the script to output PNG images as small pallete, and I modified it to use the greatest amount of compression when outputing a PNG. In a test I ran, an image that was originally 12.7 KB got reduced to 7.66 KB by changing it to a small pallette image, and it got further reduced to 6.43 KB by maximizing the compression. In another test I ran, I compared the file size to that of an image I had already reduced the file size of with Ultimate Paint. With its file size optimized with Ultimate Paint, it had been reduced from 12.9 KB to 6.6 KB, but the improved script now outputs the same image with a size of 6.57 KB. This means there is no longer any need to reduce the size of the PNG images created with the Diagram Designer with some other program. Note that this affects all diagrams previously made with the Diagram Designer, since the changes were to drawdiagram.php, the script that draws the images, not to diagram-designer.php.

Thanks, I am trying to write an article for now! Then I'll be constructing the game courier and maybe other wonders for everyone to enjoy!

If you want to add a new square later in the game, you should probably include room for it from the beginning, initially deleting it and any other extra spaces you'll have to include in your FEN code with the minus sign. You can add the space later by putting a piece or an @ sign (representing an empty space) on it. But if you're actually playing the game, you would want to use Game Courier, not the Diagram Designer.

You can use a minus sign in your FEN Code to delete squares. Just use it the same way you would a piece label but for spaces you don't want on the board. I don't know what you mean by figurate a square.

Hello Fergus,

I need for my apothecary to include bruhahaa  squares so bassically a 10x10 board with 4 more squares connected to the top and bottom rank, say d0,e0,f0,g0,d11,e11,f11,g11. But just those. Is there a way to block the rest of a 12x12 board or do something to be able to draw that? Also I need to figurate a pocket square for an joker(jester) that will be added during the game seiwaran chess style. How do you recommend me to do that?

Thanks!

Since some contributors have been using drawdiagram.php to display individual pieces, I have made a couple changes.

1) When drawdiagram.php is used to display a single piece image, it will not display coordinate labels.

2) The Diagram Designer now includes code you can cut and paste for displaying the piece images used in your diagram. This code places piece images within FIGURE.piece tags with a caption, and I have added CSS to the global css files for formatting the piece class for FIGURE.

Here is what the output looks like for Chess. You can view the code itself on this page.