Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] Highly Portable Chess board Suggestion?

  • FromElliott C. Evans <eeyore@xxxxxxxx>
  • DateThu, 01 Oct 2009 09:17:27 EDT
Bryan S. wrote:
> I'm delighted with Eeyore's boards, but they do have practical
> difficulties.  It's difficult to see where the lines of attack
> are, especially along the diagonals.  This is largely due to
> the way angles change at the borders between sections, and how
> the diagonals may change colors at the borders, but I suspect
> the way individual squares' colors shift also is a problem. 
> (Eeyore, if you're reading this, have you ever tried board
> pieces with monochrome squares? Is it easier to follow that way?)

With fine enough dithering, the current boards *are* monochrome. =^>

...but seriously, yes, I did try to make versions with just black 
and white squares. It's horrible. You wind up with black squares 
against black squares, and some diagonals have squares of the 
opposite color in the middle. The gradient squares were carefully 
designed and placed to provide smooth transitions between black 
and white as often as possible. Since the boards were originally 
designed for three players, it works best there.

After ten years (!) of playing on these boards, I don't have any 
problem seeing the diagonal attack lines. =^>

--
Elliott C. Evans
eeyore@xxxxxxxx