Re: Scramble boards

["Mark Thompson" <markthom@flash.net>]

> | It'd be relatively simple to make a backend that creates a GIF/PNG
> | image and transmits this to the users in the emails...
>
> Uh... "relatively simple" ?? Compared to what? Where would all these
> images come from? Shogi, for example, traditionally uses Japanese
> ideograms for pieces. Some shogi players would prefer this, while
> others would probably want some sort of international set of images,
> and there would probably be much discussion about what that should be.

I write programs in QBasic, inventing a lot of my own tools, and recently
figured out how to write a program that produces a .BMP file and plot
points, lines, etc. in whatever colors desired.  I'm sure other people who
use better languages and have access to those huge libraries of canned
routines could write the code to implement graphics for all the games you
mention (Onyx, Y, Shogi, etc.) without much trouble, because given time I
could do all those things myself now -- at least in .BMP.  (If anyone has
the complete specification of the PNG format, I'd very much appreciate
hearing from you! -- I know where I can get all of it except the compression
routines, which are of course crucial.)

As I envision it, games implemented this way wouldn't require layers; the
program would simply keep a stored copy of the empty board, and would
overwrite the pixels that contain pieces.  I don't think you would want to
use or even implement such graphics on all games; mancala would be a good
example of one that certainly wouldn't repay the effort.  For Shogi (or
Chess), the programmer would probably keep images of the pieces on hand in
separate files, and plot them on the board (or to the board's side).  That
would be slightly more difficult than implementing, say, Twixt, and it's not
clear how much value it would add, but it wouldn't be impossible.

But implementing Onyx would certainly be easier with graphics, and so would
the "official" version of Y (as produced by Kadon Games).  Also, the
inventor of Y has been developing a new version of his game of Star
(originally published in GAMES magazine in 1983), which like Y would be
played on a kind of pentagonal geodesic board.  If he pronounces the game
"finished," I'd love to see it get implemented somehow for e-play.

Mark Thompson