Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Is Supremo ever going to be shown to the public?

I have found a page I never uploaded for a game called Thule, which I gave as a new name for the game I was previously calling Supremo. But maybe I'll publish it under the name Supremo, since people have been waiting for it by that name. Briefly, it is like Ultima, but it replaces the Withdrawer with the Pushme-Pullyu, the Coordinator with the Swapper from Rococo, and the Pincer Pawns with Rammers. A Rammer may move up to two spaces, pushing any piece in its way ahead of it. It can push no more than one piece, and it captures by pushing a piece off the board or into another piece. This is to discourage the doubling up of pieces that serve as a protection against Long Leaper captures. Finally, the Long Leaper can now capture a piece on the edge of the board by leaping off the board in a full kamikaze move that removes it from the game. While it might not always be wise to do this, this does enhance its checking power.

It appears that the knightcamel image used for the Pushme-Pullyu has not been converted to SVG yet.

There is also a dedicated Pushme-Pullyu icon that someone created:

That too has not been converted to SVG yet.

I was pointing it out because I prefer the dedicated one to the knight-camel combo, which is more appropriate (and, I think, was originally made) for a Gnu.

But both need to be done (IMHO).

Since no one else did it, I have now created wknightcamel.svg and bknightcamel.svg by removing the zebra stripes from wcamelzebra.svg and changing the color for the black piece. I also converted these to 50x50 PNGs in /graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG50/.

Since no one else did it, I have now created wknightcamel.svg and bknightcamel.svg by removing the zebra stripes from wcamelzebra.svg and changing the color for the black piece.

I guess normally one uses the Wildebeest icon for this compound. Usually we don't have any black SVG, since the fill color can so easily be adapted to anything. Only for piece sets that have their black pieces really black we have separate symbols, as filling with black would make the inner lines invisible.

I guess normally one uses the Wildebeest icon for this compound.

I never have, and I created this piece. Also, the diagrams on this page use the knightcamel piece.

Usually we don't have any black SVG

We do as of today, because I made them with showpiece.php.

since the fill color can so easily be adapted to anything.

Having individual pieces of each color can spare the need to call a script to generate pieces for one side, and it makes things easier for people who are liable to prefix all their black pieces with b in a custom set.

Only for piece sets that have their black pieces really black we have separate symbols, as filling with black would make the inner lines invisible.

That's not true. All the original GIF pieces and their PNG replacements have separate white and black pieces regardless of how the black pieces are colored.

A Knight-Camel chimera seems a very odd choice for a Push-Me Pull-You, which neither moves like a Knight nor a Camel. Encouraging its use seems the opposit from what we should do, as it can only cause confusion. If this page uses it, the proper action would be to replace it on this page for something more sensible...

That's not true. All the original GIF pieces and their PNG replacements have separate white and black pieces regardless of how the black pieces are colored.

I was talking about SVG pieces. So far these were only used as input for rendering scripts. The browser on my tablet wouldn't render them if I used them directly (as I did in one of the Comments below). So they cannot be used directly. And if a script is used to render them, this script does not have to be awfully clever to know that when someone asks for bxxx it should render wxxx with teh default white color replaced by the default black color. So we had no use for the black alfaerie SVG.

The XBoard (and Motif) pieces do have essentially different designs for black, though. In fen2.php you can request these by asking for black color #202020.

A Knight-Camel chimera seems a very odd choice for a Push-Me Pull-You, which neither moves like a Knight nor a Camel.

A Push-Me-Pull-You has a head on each end, which this piece is used to illustrate. Two opposing llama heads would be most accurate, but I don't think we have any llama pieces. Someone has made a Push-Me-Pull-You piece that combines two images sometimes used for the Withdrawer and the Advancer in Rococo, but no one has made an SVG version of this piece.

I was talking about SVG pieces. So far these were only used as input for rendering scripts.

That's no longer true. Game Courier can use SVGs directly.

The browser on my tablet wouldn't render them if I used them directly (as I did in one of the Comments below).

Yes, some browsers do not support SVGs, but modern browsers on up-to-date devices do. That's why Game Courier has started to allow their use.

Well, no one had made an SVG of a back-to-back Camel and Knight either. If you are referring to the Ox-Ram chimera shown in an earlier command: SVG of the Ox and Ram are available too.

A Push-Me-Pull-You has a head on each end, which this piece is used to illustrate. Two opposing llama heads would be most accurate, but I don't think we have any llama pieces. Someone has made a Push-Me-Pull-You piece that combines two images sometimes used for the Withdrawer and the Advancer in Rococo, but no one has made an SVG version of this piece.

I'll need to get a copy of the actual novel, but the Wikipedia article on it describes it as a "gazelle/unicorn cross" for the book; the Rex Harrison film uses the double-llama adaptation.

With that in mind, I certainly can add a Gazelle, a Llama, and a Pushmi-Pullyu to my SVG set.

Edit: I include the last part of that, realizing that you're referring specificially to the Alfaerie SVG.

I'll need to get a copy of the actual novel, but the Wikipedia article on it describes it as a "gazelle/unicorn cross" for the book; the Rex Harrison film uses the double-llama adaptation.

I never read the book or saw the movie. I just looked up pictures on the internet. Too bad there is no gazelle piece in the Alfaerie set.

I include the last part of that, realizing that you're referring specificially to the Alfaerie SVG.

I was. It has the most realistic and distinguishable animal pieces of any set.

Too bad there is no gazelle piece in the Alfaerie set.

Maybe someone could do like I did, improvising an Antelope for Alfaerie in the Icon Clearinghouse, but in SVG instead of PNG (which I apologize for making 35px rather than 50px):

Addendum: The only place I've used the piece so far has been in Unnecessarily Complicated Chess, where I compound my own icons for Ram and Ox.

Here are some new piece images I made tonight. These combine the ox and the ram, which are used in Rococo for the Withdrawer and the Advancer. To fit them in a square, I scaled the width to .66. While the Ram/Ox piece fits the order of Pushmi-Pullyu better, I think I prefer the look of the Ox/Ram piece. Does anyone else have a preference for one or the other?

Both look good to me. If the left/right part would be perceived as specifying a temporal order, the one with the Ram facing right is the correct one, as the piece first 'pulls' (= Withdrawer-captures) a 'you' (= enemy piece), and then 'pushes' (= Advancer-captures) another 'you' out of existence. So if there is anything inconsistent, it is in the name, and not in the image.

Does anyone else have a preference for one or the other?

Most Alfaerie icons face to the left (for which reason I do the same in my icons). The Ram being the Approacher, I'd put that face on the left, and the Ox, as the Withdrawer, on the right.

I made some slight tweaks to the images today. While you might use Inkscape, I'm editing these in a text editor like I would HTML or CSS. Last night I was looking at them in a browser without any visual reference for the boundaries of the image. But today I placed each image in a colored square box in an HTML page to see how each image fits into the borders of a square. What I found out was that the SVGs were all being clipped. So I adjusted the position to be centered in the box, and I moved the width scaling from the main image to the individual ox and ram images. I also stretched them a bit wider and dropped the ram down a little bit, which put their baselines and tops of their heads at the same level.

If the left/right part would be perceived as specifying a temporal order the one with the Ram facing right is the correct one, as the piece first 'pulls' (= Withdrawer-captures) a 'you' (= enemy piece), and then 'pushes' (= Advancer-captures) another 'you' out of existence. So if there is anything inconsistent, it is in the name, and not in the image.

I was thinking more of the linguistic order. I'm not interested in changing the name except to follow the original spelling, which is pushmi-pullyu.

Since the ox looks like a bull, the ram-ox order also signifies the time of year when Hans, myself, and David all have our birthdays.

I have updated the Alfaerie for Rococo set to use PNG pieces with the ram/ox pieces for the Pushmi-Pullyu.

This reasoning seems sound to me

Other (minor) advantages include the usual visual trope (the Pokémon Girafarig comes to mind) that the forward‐facing head is more prominent (the Ram is both bigger than and in front of the Ox), and (super minor, but a nice touch) that the positions of the larger and smaller heads matches that of the original Knight–Camel image (which, incidentally, is used on several (all?) pages featuring the Pushme–Pullyu, not just here)

Would it be worth trying a slightly less flattened Ram? Probably due to the relative roundnesses, it seems to suffer that scaling more than the Ox does

Would it be worth trying a slightly less flattened Ram? Probably due to the relative roundnesses, it seems to suffer that scaling more than the Ox does

I think you mean more flattened, which involves reducing the height. I did that by scaling the ram at (.72,.92) while the ox scales at (.72,1). This makes the ram a bit smaller, which helps make up for the imbalance of the ram being in front of the ox.

Since the ox looks like a bull, the ram-ox order also signifies the time of year when Hans, myself, and David all have our birthdays.

If you're referring to Taurus on the Greek zodiac, I happen to be in there too (11 May). In fact, my birth year (1961) happens to also have been a Chinese Year of the Ox.

I think it would indeed be better to slightly demagnify the Ram part (so that it can be squeezed less, as the width seems OK). It is not just that it is in front, but the size of the images is not really to scale; in real live a Ram is much smaller than an Ox. Which is no problem if they are individual images, but might seem unrealistic in a composit. (Let's hope we never need a Spider-Elephant compound...)

I think you mean more flattened

I'd meant less horizontally flattened, i.e. wider, but yes making it less tall achieves the same and it does look better that way

might seem unrealistic in a composite

I imagine with semi‐abstract iconography like this people tend to be willing (I know I am) to suspend their disbelief a little :‌)

If you’re referring to Taurus on the Greek zodiac, I happen to be there too (11 May)

While all three of us are Tauruses, I specifically mean the Aries-Taurus cusp. Hans was born on it, and by some accounts of its range, so was I. David was born close to it. My birthday is two days after Hans and two days before David.

In fact, my birth year (1961) happens to also have been a Chinese Year of the Ox.

That makes you just a year younger than Hans. On the Chinese zodiac, I happen to have the sign of the other animal in this pair, as 1967 is the Year of the Ram (a.k.a. Sheep or Goat).