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Has anyone noticed this?

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So, I was saying:

This and the twin game are still works in progress. But I'd like some help from the community if someone has the time. I'm in no hurry. First and foremost the motif piece set is very good for this type of game that uses many compounds, but this piece set is very small and the allfaerie piece set does not satisfy me as the piece's pictures don't seem to work. I'm very poor with drawing pieces, so if someone has the time to invest I'd be grateful. Also I'm not happy with some of the piece names. The hussar is more a lancer type that a separate thing, but I have named two pieces differently. Any suggestions here? The same goes for the ninja and the assassin. Also, what do you think about the names of the striped-gryphon and cobra-manticore?

This could get confusing with so many leapers

Indeed, every piece besides the "pawns" may leap. This is the specific of the game given you have to checkmate suck a powerful king.

So I"m guessing nobody has the time to help here. It was a lot to ask probably anyway. I'll need to get by with what there is, isn't it?

You should include piece images in your pieces section so that readers can more easily tell what they are looking at.

I was planning to not use those images. So I have delayed this step.

You should include piece images in your pieces section so that readers can more easily tell what they are looking at.

I'm not sure how to do that giving that the pictures are constructed with the scipt (https://www.chessvariants.com/cgi-bin/). Does the interactive diagram help? You can press here and see all the piece pictures and thier names with also their XBetza desciptions.

I'm not sure how to do that giving that the pictures are constructed with the scipt (https://www.chessvariants.com/cgi-bin/).

You can just include the script in your URLs. BTW, that's a directory, not a script. The script is at /cgi-bin/fen2.php, and it includes some query parameters you would want to remember to include.

Does the interactive diagram help? You can press here and see all the piece pictures and thier names with also their XBetza desciptions.

Not really. I don't read complex Betza code, and I'm probably not alone in this.

Note that you can paste your Diagram in the PTA, and press the Piece Table button to get the HTML for a piece table including images and textual move descriptions, like the one I put in my 'Demotion' submission. The table there was entirely generated in this way, as all pieces were sliders, leapers or compounds of those. For more complex pieces the generated descriptions might not be perfect, and need some hand editing. But usually there aren't many of those, and what it generates for them might still be partly usable.

(Flush the browser cache first, though.)

I tried it for your variant, and it produced thefollowing:

	hussar	makes a lame (1,2) leap via the (0,1) square, or steps one square straight backward or sideways
	lancer	makes a lame (1,2) leap via the (0,1) square, or steps one square diagonally backward
	equesrex	steps one square in all 8 directions, or makes a knight's jump
	camel-queen	makes a (3,1) leap, or slides in all 8 directions
	striped-gryphon	steps one square diagonally and from there can continue to slide orthogonally outward, or makes a (3,2) leap
	cobra-manticore	makes a knight's jump, slides up to 2 squares orthogonally, or jumps to the 2nd square orthogonally if that is empty and from there must continue to slide diagonally outward
	paladin	slides diagonally, or makes a knight's jump up to 2 times in the same direction
	zebra-nightrider	repeatedly makes a knight's jump in the same direction, or makes a (3,2) leap
	marshall	slides orthogonally, or makes a knight's jump up to 2 times in the same direction
	assasin	makes a (3,1) leap, or makes a (4,3) leap
	ninja	jumps to the 3rd or 4th square diagonally, or makes a (4,1) leap
	lightcannon	slides orthogonally to an empty square, or jumps over the nearest piece orthogonally for capturing only
	heavycannon	jumps over the nearest piece orthogonally, or jumps over the nearest piece straight ahead for capturing only
	mammoth	steps one square in all 8 directions, jumps to the 2nd square diagonally, jumps to the 2nd square orthogonally, jumps to the 3rd square orthogonally to an empty square, or jumps to the 3rd square diagonally to an empty square

The Heavy Cannon obviously confuses it, while it could have been smarter contracting the descriptions of the Mammoth (But the latter would have sounded better if the XBetza had described it as KSmT.) And it sometimes ignores that the piece is not fully symmetric.

I've made some progress, Fergus.

Thanks HG for the advice.

It might be a bit optimistic to assume that the average reader will know how a Chinese Horse or a Janggi Cannon moves, though.

Agreed,

But for now this is not for the average reader. Just if someone can help with drawings in the motif set, for, well, most of the pieces.

Just if someone can help with drawings in the motif set, for, well, most of the pieces.

Apart from some combinations and modifications of the original Chess piece images, all I've added to the Motif set are the Cannon, Lance, Silver General, and Gold General, none of which are representations of animals or monsters. And no one else has ever added to this set like people did to the Alfaerie set. The original artist made the Chess Motif font in the 20th century. Apart from asking him for permission to use his fonts, I have never had any contact with him. Searching for his full name now turns up no leads.

Fergus,

My hopes were mostly from your part.

AI can help a lot and I'm under the impression that you own one as you have shown some amazon pictures in the past.

But I'm also aware that your time is very limited.

Anyway, anyone is there a free AI that I can use? I have zero skills with drawings, but simple chess pieces should be manageable.

The Motif set has a KnightQuueen piece, which is probably the Amazon you are referring to. I very much doubt that an AI would be able to design piece images in 'Motif style'.

No, I was referring to the pictures in the Amazon piececlopedia article!

AI can help a lot and I'm under the impression that you own one as you have shown some amazon pictures in the past.

I do not own one. I sometimes use free generative art services, and I sometimes subscribe to Leonardo.Ai.

Anyway, anyone is there a free AI that I can use? I have zero skills with drawings, but simple chess pieces should be manageable.

Leonardo.Ai has a free plan that limits how much you can use it each day. However, my attempts at getting it to draw images for use as 2D pieces were completely unsatisfactory. Even with line drawings, it tends to go for more complicated imagery, and it's also difficult to get images in the same style.

I'll find a solution! Thanks for your feedback Fergus and HG!

I usually design pieces with Inkscape on Linux. This allows you to download a raster-format picture (e.g. the photograph of an elephant), and then draw a vector image on top of it, by clicking points on the outline to define a curve. Then I use the 'edit curve' fuction to bend the line segments in shape so that they follow the outline, adjust their width and color. In the end I delete the raster image, and set a fill color for the curves, and save as .svg file.

I have Inkscape, but on windows 10. I'll try though!

Before starting drawing I am interested in some feedback about the piece names, please!

The author, Aurelian Florea, has updated this page.