Magnetic style Chess Variant Piece Images in PNG format

These piece images were made by Fergus Duniho with the Chess Magnetic font by Armando Marroquin. Unlike my earlier Magnetic pieces, these are PNGs rather than GIFs. The benefit of making them PNGs is that in reducing their size, I can anti-alias them against a transparent black background, which allows them to blend in better with different background colors. GIFs had only a single transparent color, but PNGs include different degrees of transparency as part of the definition of a color. So these should look better.

I made these pieces with Paint.net, generally using this process:

Create a 500x500 frame with a white background and black foreground color.
Insert a text character in the Chess Magnetic font at a size of 400 pixels. For Chess variant images, I would copy the pieces I needed, copy parts from them, and piece them together. For some of these, I used smaller or larger versions of Chess images, and I sometimes resized or rotated components.
Use the magic wand to select the space around the piece.
Invert the selection, which will select the piece.
Copy the selection.
Paste the copied piece to a new image. This will be the same dimensions as the piece without extra white space.
Save to the Large directory as W<name>.png.
Reduce in size by 10% using the default Bicubic sampling.
Save to the main directory as W<name>.png.
Undo resizing.
Color white parts blue (#5594FF).
Reduce in size by 10% using the default Bicubic sampling.
Save to the main directory as B<name>.png.
Undo resizing and coloring.
Color white parts red (#C92323).
Reduce in size by 10% using the default Bicubic sampling.
Save to the main directory as R<name>.png.
Use XnView to check that I did everything right.

Standard Chess Pieces

Additional Gross Chess Pieces

Gross Chess is a 144 square variant that borrows three sets of pieces that had been added to smaller large Chess variants. These include the KnightBishop and KnightRook from games like Grand Chess and Gothic Chess, the Cannon and Vao used in Yáng Qí and Eurasian Chess, and the Champion and Wizard from Omega Chess.

Alternate Royal Pieces

These may be used as alternate royal pieces. The first three could be used in Fusion Chess, the KingKnight in Cavalier Chess, the Monarch in some of my Experiments in Symmetry, and the RoyalQueen in Caïssa Britannia.

Non-Royal Man Compounds

These move the same as the King compounds above, but they are not intended to be royal. The Lady is specifically from Holywar, where it was conceived as a lesser version of the Queen but still moves the same as a Man-Bishop compound.

The Amazon

This is based on my original image for this compound of the Knight and Queen. The Queen-Knight and Rook-Knight-Bishop images below could also be used:

Combined Pieces for the 1898 game Check, or Combination Chess

I made these for W. S. Campling's 1898 game Check, or Combination Chess. In this game, the Queen moves as a King, and all these combinations make sense.

Couplets

Triplets

I made these for W. S. Campling's 1898 game Check, or Combination Chess. In this game, the Queen moves as a King, and all these combinations make sense.

Special Pawns, Pawn Compounds, or Weaker Pieces

These image make use of the Pawn image. Some are specifically special Pawns, and others are named for weaker or less important versions of the Chess piece whose image is combined with the Pawn, though they could be used for special Pawns or Pawn compounds as well.

Conditions of Free Use

These images may be freely used on the Chess Variant Pages without further attribution.

Other free and non-commercial websites or programs can use them with proper attribution, mentioning that the set is based on the Chess Magnetic font by Armando Marroqin, and the additional pieces have been made by Fergus Duniho from this font. You should also include a link to this webpage or provide its URL.

Although Zillions-of-Games is a commercial product, games programmed for it and provided for free may include these pieces with proper attibution.

Comments

Magnetic style Chess Variant Piece Images in PNG format. Magnetic style Chess Variant Piece Images in PNG format.

🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Dec 12 07:43 AM EST in reply to Fergus Duniho from 07:30 AM:

I checked my Android tablet after my iPad. The GIFs looked good for the most part, but I did notice the more jagged line of the Rook. When I pinched and zoomed to make the images larger, I could easily see that the GIFs were lower quality, and I did the same on the iPad and got the same results. So the reason they initially looked better on mobile devices was because they were being displayed at a smaller size, possibly with some additional anti-aliasing.

🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Dec 12 07:30 AM EST in reply to Fergus Duniho from Wed Dec 11 09:11 PM:

On my iPad, the GIFs are looking as good as the PNGs, though on my Windows desktop, they were obviously lower quality.

🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Dec 11 09:11 PM EST:

Comparing my old GIFs, my new PNGs, and some SVG-derived PNGs:

My old GIFs and my new PNGs are both closer together, because they had extra white space cropped off, whereas the SVG-derived pieces are each 50x50 images. Testing a screenshot in Ultimate Paint, my PNGs match a font size of 40, which is what I predicted for an original font size of 400 reduced to 10%, and the SVG-derived ones match a font size of 37. The old GIFs match a font size of 40 except for the Rook, which matches 36 to make its height more comparable to the other pieces. In terms of quality, both sets of PNGs are much better than the GIFs, and it's hard to spot any differences in quality between them.