💡📝H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Oct 18, 2019 08:15 AM UTC:
Alfaerie is one of the six preconfigured settings in the design wizard for the interactive diagram, (setting the right values for the image directory, square size, white/black prefix and graphics type at the press of a button), and in fact the default choice. Other buttons give you Abstract, Motif, Utrecht, 2 sizes XBoard presets. And of course you could use your own uploaded graphics, by supplying the location and other parameters to the design wizard explicitly.
For the pieces I needed Alfaerie was not too bad. I had to improvise a bit for the (Mounted) Veteran, using the Wazir(-Knight) instead, thus only indicating the non-capture move correctly. But that seemed acceptible.
Some of the other Alfaerie pieces look embarrasingly simplistic (e.g. Elephant), so I usually prefer the XBoard theme when I need any of those. Even the orthodox pieces look pretty ugly in Alfaerie; they are not anti-aliased, giving them a very ragged appearance. This is so 20th-century... I think it is high time someone would take the trouble replacing all the Alfaerie image files by anti-aliased versions (with alpha channel).
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BTW, I am happy you like Veteran Chess. I have not programmed it into any engine yet, but I play-tested it against a regular participant of the Dutch Superchess championship over the board, and it seemed quite playable. That 1:1 trading is discouraged by leaving the opponent with a promoted piece seems compensated well enough by that in 2:1 trading you can promote your second piece to compensate for the loss of the first. E.g. a Pawn protected by a Pawn is pretty much unassailable in orthodox Chess, but here after BxP, PxP, NxP=M promoting the Knight to a Rook-class piece plus capture of two Pawns seems enough compensation for the Bishop. So you don't get into stand-off situations too easily.
Alfaerie is one of the six preconfigured settings in the design wizard for the interactive diagram, (setting the right values for the image directory, square size, white/black prefix and graphics type at the press of a button), and in fact the default choice. Other buttons give you Abstract, Motif, Utrecht, 2 sizes XBoard presets. And of course you could use your own uploaded graphics, by supplying the location and other parameters to the design wizard explicitly.
For the pieces I needed Alfaerie was not too bad. I had to improvise a bit for the (Mounted) Veteran, using the Wazir(-Knight) instead, thus only indicating the non-capture move correctly. But that seemed acceptible.
Some of the other Alfaerie pieces look embarrasingly simplistic (e.g. Elephant), so I usually prefer the XBoard theme when I need any of those. Even the orthodox pieces look pretty ugly in Alfaerie; they are not anti-aliased, giving them a very ragged appearance. This is so 20th-century... I think it is high time someone would take the trouble replacing all the Alfaerie image files by anti-aliased versions (with alpha channel).
BTW, I am happy you like Veteran Chess. I have not programmed it into any engine yet, but I play-tested it against a regular participant of the Dutch Superchess championship over the board, and it seemed quite playable. That 1:1 trading is discouraged by leaving the opponent with a promoted piece seems compensated well enough by that in 2:1 trading you can promote your second piece to compensate for the loss of the first. E.g. a Pawn protected by a Pawn is pretty much unassailable in orthodox Chess, but here after BxP, PxP, NxP=M promoting the Knight to a Rook-class piece plus capture of two Pawns seems enough compensation for the Bishop. So you don't get into stand-off situations too easily.