Alfaerie SVG Set: Scalable Vector Graphics for Chess Variant Pieces

Nearly twenty years ago, David Howe started the Alfaerie piece set to provide a set of piece graphics for chess variants. It was based on Eric Bentzen's Chess Alpha font. Since then, the set has been extended by many members of the Chess Variant Pages community and has become something of a standard here.

Despite the unquestionable success of the set, however, the graphics are fixed-size bitmaps that cannot be scaled, and are not anti-aliased, so they have become very dated in appearance. This is a recreation of the Alfaerie set in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format, and thus anti-aliased and fully scalable. It was started by H. G. Muller and further developed by Greg Strong.

Unlike the original set, these are provided only in one color. You can convert them to any color desired with text search-and-replace, as SVG files are just text. Search for "#f9f9f9" and replace with the desired color. Alternatively, you can use H. G. Muller's rendering engine to render them to PNG in any size and color.

Download

You can download the complete set of SVGs as a zip. Please note that this is a work in progress, and new pieces will be added over time and existing pieces may be updated. There are still a few that I am not entirely happy with.

Also note that the piece names are chaotic and inconsistent because they match the names of the original Alfaerie GIFs. I plan to change that at some point. As this set grows, better naming will be important to help manage it. The original Alfaerie set has grown to several hundred pieces in size. This set currently stands at 174 pieces.

Download link   LAST UPDATED: 2021-05-08

Available Pieces

Standard Chess Pieces

Pieces for Other Basic Movement Atoms

Alternate Pawns

Basic Compound Pieces

Riders and Compounds

Other Beasts

Shogi Pieces

Ultima and Rococo Pieces

Complex Compounds and Chess with Different Armies

Miscellaneous Pieces

Neutral Pieces