[eboard-users] Critical review of eboard-extras packs

[Nayel F. <nay...@gm...>]

Critical review of the graphical piece sets
in the eboard themes-packs

Some new piece sets have highly impressed me,
but unfortunately in almost all cases there
is a problem with the contrast of the black figures
to the black fields. Often, the black fields are just
too dark so that the black figures are not well
visible.

I solve this problem by clicking at
Settings - Options - Use single-color fields
(in german: Einstellungen - Optionen - Einfarbige Felder benutzen)
Single color fields can be changed in color and brightness.
The patterned fields, however, can not be changed.
In my view, all the patterned black fields are too dark,
and only the single-color fields are usuable.

Another problem: In some cases the proportion of
the figure size to the field size is not so good, i.e.,
the figures are too big in relation to the fields.
Besides, in some cases the pawns are too big in relation
to the officers (root, knight, bishop, queen, king).

Now I come to speak about the figure sets. I divide them
into 5 categories with descending qualitiy (from 1 = very good
to 5 = poor).

1) Very good figure sets (simply a dream!):
-------------------------------------------
Diagram Red Wood
Enquil Desert
Berlin Wood
Adventurer Wood
Harlequin Wood (here, maybe the black king is a little too similar to
the black bishop)
Utrech blue
Rastrap marble (3 D)
Whitney 3D marble

2) Quite good figure sets:
--------------------------
Chess Base (the figures are a little too big in relation to the
fields)
Dyche stucco (here the figure size is good)
Kingdom marble
Mayan marble
Slics plastic (here the black figures could be better)
WCN Grainy wood (the figures are too big)
Altiner 3D Wood/marble (Very good 3D figures, good perspective,
but the figures are too big)
Nut Bold 3D Sandwood (the figures are too big)

3) Acceptable:
--------------
Alpha blue (interesing shape, but the black figures are not so clear)
Book marble (dito)
CMF gray (interesting shape, but the figures are too big,
and the pawns are too big)
Leipzip Paper (dito)
Dominincal Plain (figures too big)
Sad Green (I feel attracted to the color.
However, here the black figures seem to be better
designed than the white figures)

4) not so good:
---------------
Chap marble (color difference between white and black figures is not
so good (orange versus red))
Staunton wood
Traveller sand (the figures are far too big, especially the pawns)
Ususal wood
Vision cubes (there is a problem with the black knights)

5) Poor:
--------
Stone cold
Old classic dark
Yahoo plain

I hope that my review helps. May be I have forgotten a figure set,
because there are so many.
Some of the figure sets are really highlights; congratulations!

Yours sincerely
Nayel Farag

Am Die, 2003-07-08 um 03.58 schrieb Felipe Bergo:
> 
> and after 3 ice ages...
> 
> a new piece graphics and sounds package is finally released for eboard.
> 
> eboard-extras pack 2 has 12 new piece sets and 10 new sounds. It does not
> depend on pack 1. (you can install just pack 1, just pack 2 or both)
> 
> It's at
> 
> ftp://ftp.seul.org/pub/chess/eboard/eboard-extras-2.tar.gz
> 
> and at sourceforge also.
> 
> (and this pack does _not_ require eboard 0.9.0, you can install it to
> older eboards too)
> 
> Have fun,
> 
> -- Felipe
>