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

[Felipe B. <be...@se...>]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Nayel Farag wrote:

> 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).

Thanks for your opinion. The real problem here is that it all boils down
to that -- personal taste. One thing I know eboard is lacking is good
themes for high resolutions - people running 1600x1200 screens are
becoming common and the current piece graphics become pixelated when
enlarged.

In particular, my current choice of pieceset, the one I play with everyday
on FICS is the pieces from Book/Marble (extras pack 1) and the square
background from Harlequin/Wood (extras pack 2).

If you (or anybody else) wants to design new piecesets, feel free to do
it, the format is a PNG graphics file with dimensions proportional to 7:2
(for non "3D" sets). Exact rules can be found in the Themes document on
the eboard page, documentation section.

Most of the current themes are based on freeware chess fonts or piecesets
from other chess clients. Now some random comments:

> 1) Very good figure sets (simply a dream!):

> Enquil Desert

I'm very happy to see this on the top list, this is the only one that I
drew from scratch (actually drawing the pieces instead of using an
existing chess font, graphics or a 3D renderer).

> Harlequin Wood (here, maybe the black king is a little too similar to
> the black bishop)

This is a freeware chess font, I just used it the way it was.
While I didn't spend time on it, someone could surely get these fonts and
use some time making Dyche-like pieces based on them, it would probably
look good.

> Rastrap marble (3 D)

Rastapov. All themes ending with *pov were done with a 3D model of chess
pieces I made in POV-Ray a few years ago, they can be rendered from any
angle and perspective, if that's useful for anyone. I miss ears in the
knights, but other than that, it's a good 3D model. I should put the pov
files available on the web one of these days.

> Chess Base (the figures are a little too big in relation to the
> fields)

This is a standard book diagram display, pieces are large so that small
diagrams printed on books get readable. The piece size in relation to the
square depends too much on taste, I believe. Most likely I should add a
configurabl;e setting in eboard to allow scaling pieces so that they have
80%, 90% or 100% of their "current size" in respect to the square side.

> Nut Bold 3D Sandwood (the figures are too big)

Nut bolt is more of a joke, I just can't understand the board with these
pieces (it was contributed by someone else, like most piecesets, and my
intention is to provide as many options as possible, so I haven't
refused contributions until now).

> Book marble (dito)

I happen to think of these pieces as the most perfect set, I've almost
made them the default pieceset in the "bare" eboard distribution many
times.

> Sad Green (I feel attracted to the color.
> However, here the black figures seem to be better
> designed than the white figures)

This piece set was obtained with an impressionism image filter over the
Dyche pieces. I'll eventually make blue and beige/orange versions of it,
so that it goes along with whichever desktop theme people use.

> Vision cubes (there is a problem with the black knights)

there are also some leftover pixels from the queen in the bishops...
looks like this graphic needs fixing.

> 5) Poor:
> --------
> Stone cold

agreed. This one should die and I regret doing it, and this one is my
fault, unfortunately.

> Old classic dark

The blue background really kills it, it was a contribution and I was out
of good marble and wood patterns to use as background, ended up accepting
this one with these squares. You can still save it using the squares from
some other pieceset.

> Yahoo plain

Given the name, I wouldn't expect it to be good at all. I have heard
people advocate that this set is good if you need to have a very small
board size.

> 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!

Thanks, feedback is always welcome. Once upon a time the themes used to be
available individually from the eboard web page, I believe it would be
good to have a dynamic page generated off a database allowing people to
rate the sets and sort them according to the rating (like winamp/xmms skin
sites usually do). I'm not sure if sourceforge's database service is any
good, I think I'll give it a try in this second semester.


.........................................................................
Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Computer Science MSc Student at Unicamp
be...@se... - Campinas - SP - Brazil - Earth
GPG/PGP mail welcome - GPG/PGP Key: EF8EE808 (keyserver pgp.mit.edu)

* Software Independent: Won't work with any software.