Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

In the effort you, Greg, HG, are making to improve and order the piece images, it would be worthwhile to include the sissa. For many years I have been using the following icons designed by Matthew La Vallee that belong to the Alfaerie Many set:

Of course I am very grateful to him, however I keep thinking that it could be improved by designing an icon that most faithfully represents a Hindu man. As an example, please take a look at this link: https://iconscout.com/icon/turban-man-avatar-1847750.

Do you think that icon could be used? I have the doubt if one could get it for only 1 dollar. It seems very cheap.

Anyway, it would be something great if the sissa could be included in the piece set available in the Play-test applet. 

Ah, yes, I made a typo in the color. I was doing this on a remote machine (winboard.nl, a rented VPS) using ssh, so I couldn't see what I was doing. I can render the white pieces with w=#FFFFFF, no problem. I don't know how the raw SVG got to have #F9F9F9, but as long as they all use the same, it doesn't matter what they use. I didn't think it strange that it wasn't exactly white; the XBoard pieces use #FFFFCC, for instance, to give them a more ivory look.

I will include any compounds you request in the script for automatic rendering of the sets. But note that when you need an occasional new compound of existing pieces (i.e. for which the SVG is already on winboard.nl), you can easily get them yourself: just use an URL like

http://winboard.nl/my-cgi/fen2.cgi?t=newalfa&s=50&w=ffffff&p=wnightrider-wbishop

(or any other color you want) to make your browser display the compound:

and then save the image with the name you want.

You can also use the < _ > symbols for creating rotated pieces:

New update, since we're re-rendering anyway:

https://www.chessvariants.com/public_html/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG/GS-2020-07-27.zip

A tiny change or two, but mostly just adds a few new pieces: wequesrex, wkingrook, wkingbishop, and wforwardchancellorprince (the CwDA Colonel.)

First, I know that the Alfaerie set has multiple, different compositions of the same pieces. The kingrook, kingbishop, and equesrex may seem unnecesseary or redundant but there is a reason for my madness: these pieces are used in the Game Courier set group "Alfaerie 1: Historical & Compounds". This will complete that set, if:

Second, as you have made compounds for archbishop and chancellor, can you also make a compound of bishop + nightrider called "wcardinalrider" (and, of course, bcardinalrider)? With my new additions, this is the last piece needed to complete that set.

As for my overall plan, we could do two different approaches:

(1) make the anti-aliased stuff only for new material. The problem is that this site has a TON of material, most of which will not be updated.

(2) swap out existing stuff. I think we should do this, but I am willing to do it ONLY under strict guidelines. The replacement must be considered to be an improvement. Going to smooth, anti-aliased pieces is definitely an improvement... But I will only replace an existing Game Courier piece set if everything has been upgraded, and any changes (and there will be changes) are improvements, not just swapping things out because it is convenient.

Granted, what is an improvement is somewhat subjective. I am editing these pieces. For the most part, it is just fixing errors or making them a more precise representation of what the original author intended. But, in rare cases, I am making more radical changes. I justify this with the opinion that, while most alfaerie graphics are very good, there is a ton of material in this set and some of it is clearly of lower quality. I have changed the Lion and complete re-done the Tiger. I think these both should be considered "improvements" because of the quality of the original artwork. That said, if others disagree, please speak up. It is not my intention force any changes of style on anyone who has strong feelings and doesn't like the changes.

I say all of this because what I plan - changing existing Game Courier piece sets - will change existing graphics across-the-board. I think we really should do this to upgrade the look of the site to modern standards, but please do not think I take any global, retro-active change lightly. I will only do it under these guidelines, and will be upfront about what I am doing and open to objection. Even if a piece set is changed, if the change is not popular, it can always just be changed back. The new graphics are in a new location. The old graphics will not be deleted.

I compared the code in drawdiagram.php to the code in Game Courier, and I found one difference that made a difference. By originally creating the board as a true color image, I got the backgrounds of the images to become transparent. However, the result is a JPG image, which looks fuzzier. I made a correction for that in the code.

Excellent!  We are close to being able to start converting to true scalable anti-aliased images, which will be a *huge* improvement.  That said, as one who has spent over a dozen painstaking hours editing in Inkscape in the last two days, there is a lot of work to go ...

While it is nice to have anti-aliased pieces, I do have a strong aversion to some shades of aquamarine, and the shade used for the black pieces feels uncomfortable to me. The original alfaerie pieces have more of a steel blue color, which I personally like better.

100% agreed that the colors cannot change, but I think this was just an accident.  The color is supposed to be 5984bd but is instead 2984bd.  I think it was just a typo on H.G.'s part, since the 2 is just below the 5 on the numeric keypad.

Also, @H.G., if you have to re-render anyway, is there any reason the white can't be true white?  Not a big deal since you can't really tell, but if there is not a reason not to, I think the white should be ffffff for consistency.

I compared the code in drawdiagram.php to the code in Game Courier, and I found one difference that made a difference. By originally creating the board as a true color image, I got the backgrounds of the images to become transparent. However, the result is a JPG image, which looks fuzzier. I made a correction for that in the code.

While it is nice to have anti-aliased pieces, I do have a strong aversion to some shades of aquamarine, and the shade used for the black pieces feels uncomfortable to me. The original alfaerie pieces have more of a steel blue color, which I personally like better.

The Play-Test Applet now uses the on-site 35x35 PNG set. It defines a diagram with pieces, but it has a script to modify the diagram definition based on what images are actually available: it removes those for which the mentioned image is not present, and adds those for which it does find an image that was not yet used. The original definitions only serve to supply a move with the piece, or a name that differs from the image name. (E.g. 'charging knight' instead of 'forwardknightbackwardsprince'.) For the pieces it adds by itself it cannot predefine a move.

So the Applet now offers all pieces we made, and if we add more PNG files, it will automatically also offer those. When people ask for the HTML it will use the 50x50 set in those. Originally the reasons for that were that this set was available on-site (albeit non-anti-aliased), and that 35x35 was sort of an emergency method to fit the board next to the table (which was important for easy designing) in the Applet, but is really a bit too small for Alfaerie. For playing against a preconfigured diagram it is sufficient to have the table under the diagram, so a larger board is no problem.

Note that the knightwazir and knightferz are now duplicated as wazirknight and ferzknight; the latter two can probably be deleted.

I renamed the folders from alfaerieSVG and alfaerieSVG35 to alfaeriePNG and alfaeriePNG35. Makes more sense ...

It does seem to work in Game Courier though!

Whoops!

Ok, now the images are found, but unfortunately whatever the diagram designer uses to render doesn't seem to support PNG correctly ...

Use extension png instead of pgn.

I have uploaded the graphics to /graphics.dir/alfaerieSVG and /graphics.dir/alfaerieSVG35 but they don't work for some reason.

This file definitely exists, but the link gives a 404:

https://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/alfaerieSVG/wking.pgn

And it doesn't seem to be a file ownership/permissions issue, so I'm not sure what the problem could be.

OK, I rendered the entire improved set, including some compounds, as 50x50 and 35x35 PNG. In (nearly) white and in standard blue. The files are at winboard.nl/graphics.dir/svg/newalfa/alfaeriePNG35.tar.gz and winboard.nl/graphics.dir/svg/newalfa/alfaeriePNG35.tar.gz .

It would be nice if they could be unpacked somewhere in chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/.../ . Once they are there I can have the Play-Test Applet use the 35x35 PNG set instead of directly accessing the off-site renderer. But to really have any impact, it would be necessary to allow them to be selected from scripts that ask for a piece theme. Like the diagram designer and the Game Courier preset editor.

It should be easy to also produce PNGs in other colors and orientations.

P.S. The Tiger is indeed  very nice.

Updated again. Several more small tweaks, a brand new tiger graphic I made (that I think is pretty awesome), and a couple new pieces: wcoppergeneral, wforwardrookbackwardsprince (charging rook), and wgreatwarmachineferz.

NOTE: That last one I am differing from the alfaerie name because the alfaerie name is just wrong and apparently has been all along. That is the graphic for the Half-Duck, but in alfaerie it is called wgreatwarmachinewazir despite the fact that it is a ferz and not a wazir.

Ok, new update:

http://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/alfaerieSVG/GS-2020-07-26.zip

This file includes versions of all 79 of your graphics plus 4 more. The colors should all be standardized to #f9f9f9. The file naming is consistent with the Alfaerie graphics set naming.

The new pieces are wcamelferz, wcamelwazir, wnarrowknightferz and welephantferzwarmachine. The last one will be a real test for your renderer - it was an incredible pain in the butt and uses many layers.

I think it is best to stick to the original alfaerie naming; I just accidentally misnamed the knightwazir and knightferz. The renderer just uses the names of the SVGs. And the Applet shows the SVG names as they are in /graphics.dir/svg/alfaerie.

The defaults.ini file for alfaerie contains:

f9f9f9
f9f9f9
a0a0ff
e0c080
A89060
compound 64 52 0 3 40
B~ = knight,N-B
R~ = knight+rook,N-R
Q~ = knight+queen,N-Q
C~ = gnu,C-Q
S = silvergeneral
G = goldgeneral
P^ = lance
N~ = horse

Ok, I didn't realize that part. I'll use a text editor to change to f9f9f9.

Also, a couple had the filenames changed to match their name in alfaerie. But given the way you are doing this, I can change them back to match your naming and then just rename the PGNs that are produced.

And, yes, there are several still to do. A few of them will be very tricky because the paths are very strange.

Indeed. The others have color #f9f9f9, and the renderer is configured (through the http://winboard.nl/graphics.dir/svg/newalfa/defaults.ini file) to replace that by the color requested in the query string. Since not all pieces are shown I cannot exclude that there aren't any others.

[Edit] Our messages crossed. It was what the others had: some had already been done (those we have to repair now), and they used this color. I just copied that for the pieces I made.

How it converts them is determined by the deaults.ini file in their directory. This specifies the color to replacem the white and black default filling colors, and the default light and dark square shades. Plus some parameters for making compounds.

So the pieces that are still white in your picture are the ones it didn't successfully change the color?

EDIT: I see - I assumed it was supposed to be pure white, #ffffff, which is what I used. But your fills are #f9f9f9. Is that intentional? Does it convert them to pure white when rendering?

Well, I posted it just minutes ago, and it is 9 am here, and I did actually have a sound night of sleep. I will move your new pieces to winboard.nl now.

[Edit] OK, I unpacked your zip file in a directory 'newalfa' on winboard.nl, which means the renderer will now use them if you add the extra argument t=newalfa in the query string. It doesn't entirely work as expected, though. For one, some of the pieces stay white. (I used exactly the same FEN as for the old pieces.) Which probably means the SVG has given them a shade of white that is slightly different from what it was before, and for which the renderer scans the file to substitute it. The rendering also stops at some point. (Probably a missing file, haven't figured that out yet.)

[Edit] OK, FEN rendering stops at the first missing SVG. I copied a few missing ones from the old set (lion, cannon, paovao, nightrider), but very many are still missing.

Didn't see your message until after I had posted mine... either you are up far later than I, or you get up far earlier than I :)

Ok, it's 2:45 in the morning and I've been at it for about 8 hours but have made enormous progress...

First, I think I better understand the original issue. This was a chess font and it was never intended to be used in the way we were using it. The black pieces weren't supposed to be colored in. Like a typical chess font, the black pieces have both black outlines and black fills with thin white lines separating them. I think the gaps we were seeing were supposed to be the white from the page that shows through when the piece is turned black.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. For our purposes, they needed to be edited. It was a bit of a pain but I got better with practice. It wasn't just the standard pieces that needed to be changed though. A lot of the pieces are modified chess pieces or have components from them, so, sensibly, you copied those elements (preserving the artifacts). So about half needed modification in order to be colorable.

Beyond that, as I was going through them anyway and had to zoom way in, I spent time cleaning up some tiny anomalies... things that probably wouldn't be visible in normal usage but stand out when blown way up... line segments that didn't connect perfectly, things not perfectly centered, small asymmetries in pieces that should be symmetric, etc. Not criticizing your work at all - you were able to crank out a very large number of pieces in record time. And they were probably fine, but I'm kind of anal, and if I'm messing with something I tend to obsess and go overboard.

Anyway, I'm really excited. These are going to look great and will be a huge improvement! So far, I have 74 pieces ready to go. There were a couple of yours that I had difficulty with or need more time to get to where I want them. (E.g., the SVG for the Cannon piece is really messed up.) But I also added a couple of extras.

So here is delivery one: http://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/alfaerieSVG/GS-2020-07-25.zip

Will do more tomorrow, but it's now time to pass out :)

OK, I rendered all pieces with dark color on light backround as 100x100, so that we can easily judge which have imperfections that should first be cured. If you fix those, I will put the fixed SVG on the winboard.nl server so that the renderer uses those, and then query the renderer to make the complete sets we want.

We should also think about which forward-backward compounds we want; the renderer can also compose these on the fly.

Ok, now I've figured out how to do it a better way. I've updated that file to be correct now. It is still two objects, a solid one below an outline, but at least the paths are the same.

I will fix the other files tonight ...

I think the bottom-line cause is that the original font was made a little sloppy

Ok, I fixed the queen but perhaps not by the best method. (The SVG is now larger than it needs to be.) I deleted the objects that were the "insides" and drew a new, rough enclosed path that overlaps with the existing black path and set the color of it. It doesn't line up exactly, putting it behind the black path and you can't tell.

Here's the altered file. I will try to find a more elegant solution, but since I think only a few pieces are affected by this, this solution will work if need be.

http://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/svg/alfaerie/newqueen.svg