Comments on piecepackr

# 14 Comments. # If an announcement of a cool new software feature ("Can now make diagrams!") merits an exclamation mark, it probably also merits not being marked as minor. :) I can't wait to see how that works, by the way; I hope you'll release a demo PDF soon.

-- RonHaleEvans 2018-05-06 03:45 UTC

Sorry, somehow I missed seeing this comment... Here is a pdf example of the shogi starting board using traditional piecepack graphics. Here is the corresponding R code (it also makes the starting board with the mirrored 6-suited chess-ranked piecepacks). There is currently also an make_piecepack_images executable which makes individual images of components which could then also be manually arranged into a diagram (using something like Inkscape or Gimp) for people who don't like to code. I have more info in the FAQ on how to make diagrams using the R package.

Don't know if/when I'd have time to do this but with some work one could use this to write diagram-writing code and ruleset code such that one could build custom-graphic rulesets (and perhaps even generate custom-graphic rule books) i.e. one could design a piecepack and then generate a piecepack book with rulesets with diagrams using that design. Or write a ruleset and generate different versions of that ruleset supporting different piecepacks that people might own (i.e. traditional piecepack design plus another ruleset using something reminiscent to but not infringing on the IBG piecepack design plus one of your favorite DIY design). Would be a somewhat tricky for some rulesets since the best way to play certain games (like Shogi) with some piecepack designs are very different then with other designs plus some piecepack themes (and games written using those themes) are also quite different (i.e. steampunk piecepack theme versus traditional piecepack theme). However for a large subset of piecepack games and piecepack designs this should be a fairly straightforward albeit time consuming endeavor.

-- TrevorLDavis 2018-05-29 21:01 UTC

Congratulations on your software's nifty new name! piecepackr says it all.

-- RonHaleEvans 2018-08-23 01:13 UTC

• Can now do configurations by specific rank and/or suit (but need to specify some environmental variables on the command line if going to use configure_piecepack tool to do so).
• Started writing some (very basic) documentation on the "cascading" piecepack configuration implemented by the program.
• Created an 11th demo: a "yellow crown" demo. First piecepack is an "orthodox" one while second piecepack in the demo has a " --invert_colors.suited --uninvert_colors.r1 --invert_colors.s5.r1" configuration which although it doesn't look like an IBG pieecpack has a similar color/rank scheme as one (although I deliberately invert the dice nulls which I don't think the IBG ones do). The third piecepack uses all six of the most popular piecepack suits i.e. both "light" yellow crowns AND "dark" green crowns as well as "dark" blue anchors AND "light" blue fleur-de-lis with a fourth matching multi-colored french-suited piecepack (with yellow and blue stars).

-- TrevorLDavis 2018-08-29 19:50 UTC

Trevor, what do you think about moving the content of the PiecepackRPackage page to a new page called piecepackr and making it so the old page automatically redirects to the new page, so all hyperlinks continue to be good?

-- RonHaleEvans 2018-10-20 16:49 UTC

Sounds fine to me. I assume this operation requires admin permissions to execute?

-- TrevorLDavis 2018-10-21 03:30 UTC

No, any wiki user can do such a thing:

https://oddmuse.org/wiki/Redirection

-- RonHaleEvans 2018-10-21 07:00 UTC

Check out the new kind of piecepack tile at http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/Comments_on_Packtet -- can piecepackr make them without too much retooling?

-- RonHaleEvans 2018-10-25 04:25 UTC

Not a high priority but I'm thinking about possibly letting users specify the drawing function used for a given component, if I also implemented multi-suited components one could then use piecepackr to make those if someone wrote the code to generate those fancy Packtet backgrounds. I'm not going to have much spare bandwidth the next few months (I'll be defending my PhD dissertation and have a toddler) but my piecepackr priority will be on re-factoring the configuration system a bit so a user can more easily layer multiple configurations (including some stored within piecepackr itself) as well as decide if there are any other possible non-reverse compatible changes I want make to the API so I can declare the API stable and move the package out of alpha into beta.

-- TrevorLDavis 2018-10-25 19:59 UTC

I have an easy request. Please graphically distinguish between groups in DualPiecepacks better. When we were testing DualPiecepacksPoker with a freshly printed set of French-suited tiles, we found it hard to distinguish between the light and dark versions of the same suit/color. I recommend going with solid and hollow colored suit icons for really unambiguous grouping. I think you just can't count on being able to distinguish between laser-printed solid gray and black or pink and red, especially if you don't happen to have examples of each color in your hand for contrast.

-- RonHaleEvans 2018-11-02 00:44 UTC

> I recommend going with solid and hollow colored suit icons for really unambiguous grouping.

That is a good (and easy to implement) idea, I'll do it after I finish updating the configuration code so it is more easier to layer different pre-configured configurations as well as store some configurations within the package (so easier for people to use certain configurations in rule set diagrams etc).

-- TrevorLDavis 2018-11-02 03:46 UTC

I should probably be making my requests via GitHub, shouldn't I? :)

-- RonHaleEvans 2018-11-03 01:00 UTC

I welcome feedback via any channel but it is true that raising an issue via Github would save me the step of opening the issue myself while submitting a pull request with a solution would save me even more steps :-)

-- TrevorLDavis 2018-11-03 17:27 UTC

> I recommend going with solid and hollow colored suit icons for really unambiguous grouping.

Done. It was hard to read the "white" french suits in a light color scheme so I switch the color scheme to a "dark" color scheme (matching the "black" french suits). Also I am playing with using a lower-case n and a for rank symbols.

I am also experimenting with the default (aka "lowest-common-denominator") piecepack having a more color-blind friendly color-scheme.

-- TrevorLDavis 2018-11-17 17:47 UTC