Alfaerie Omega Chess Variant Image Package v2.0

Welcome to the homepage of Alfaerie Omega, a comprehensive package of 800+ chess piece images you can use in your chess variant applications.

Usage

Images can be referred to either using data: URIs, or filenames of the format: color prefix + image base name + .gif. For each piece, the following colors are included:

Prefix Color Convention
w white first player
b blue second player
y yellow third player
r red fourth player
g green
c cyan
o orange
p pink
e grey neutral

Prefix	Color	Convention
w	white	first player
b	blue	second player
y	yellow	third player
r	red	fourth player
g	green
c	cyan
o	orange
p	pink
e	grey	neutral

White and blue images are stored in the repository, and images of other colors are generated using a script (run make). The script can be modified to generate images of any color for all pieces, or rotated various degrees, if desired.

For convenience, several JSON files are included, listing each piece, its long name, who designed it, where it came from, and informational "tags" (such as animal or compound). For an example of using these files, see the search page.

Change Log

v2.0 (2011/02/26; 800 pieces) is a major revision, breaking backwards-compatibility

Added a total of 44 new pieces
Added new pieces by Christa Connelly: dog, dolphin, duck, flamingo, blowfish, and witch
Added other new pieces: bronotosaurus, rat, mouse, fieldmouse, sidewinder, daemon, turtle, bison, buffalo, and many other variations
Added a wanted piece image wishlist (contributions welcome!)
Added aomega.jsonp as an alternative to loading aomega.json using Ajax
Added aomega-data.json and aomega-data.jsonp, with data URIs: for black and blue piece images
Added several informational tags to various pieces in aomega.json to ease searching, and its keys are now sorted
Added a compact view to browse.html
master.html now uses data URIs and displays pieces much more compactly (two-dimensionally instead of linearly)
process_images.py is now compatible with Python 2.6
Consistency: the snipers forwardknightbackwardsprince and forwardrookbackwardsprince have been renamed to fknightbprince and frookbprince
Consistency: pieces digit0 through digit9 have been added, replacing 0-9.gif (edigit0-9.gif are the closest to the originals)
Consistency: caged pieces now confirm to the color prefix convention (bc?bishop is now ?cbbishop, etc.)
Consistency: the cage piece is now a solid color, instead of solid black
Removed rotated image generation by default, it produced too many files and is best handled within the app instead (but you can re-enable it in process_images.py if needed)
Removed black (k*.gif) pieces, too ugly (again, generation can be re-enabled in process_images.py if you miss these)
Removed highpriest_ess, which was identical to highpriestess2
New webpage

v1.5 (2010/11/10; 756 pieces) has a bunch of improvements, notably:

incorporated Alfaerie Expansion Sets 5 and 6
added a handful of pieces with missing colors (smallcircle, forfnibakking, furlrurlbakking, wwall, ewall)
a new JSON piece index file with metadata about each piece (issue #6)
generated rotated versions (45°, 90°, 135° clockwise/counterclockwise, and inverted) of every piece in an optional package (issue #3)
generated yellow, red, green, cyan, orange, pink, and grey versions of every piece (issue #1)
Python script process_images.py for generating list.txt/master.html (supersedes the Perl script), updating the JSON index file, and generating colored/rotated variants
an experimental Ajax-based piece browser for searching pieces by name or tag

v1.2 (2010/11/04; 699 pieces) adds 20 new and exclusive piece images ("Alfaerie Beta"), and is the first public release, now available on GitHub.

v1.1 (2009/06/13; 679 pieces) renamed the filenames to be all lowercase, and use an underscore instead of a dash. Only affected a few alfaeriemisc images, mostly from Shogi. This change allows the piece filenames (minus extension) to easily be used as identifiers in many programming languages.

v1.0 (2009/06/12; 679 pieces) contained the original alfaerie set, expansion sets 1 to 4, alfaerie plus, and alfaerie misc, in a flat directory structure, with HTML files referencing each file. If you only want the original images, this is the version for you.

Credit

The bulk of the images in Alfaerie Omega come from David Howe's excellent Alfaerie Chess Variant Graphics set, plus all the known expansion sets. The following "sets" are included:

Original Alfaerie Variant Chess Graphics Set (source) by David Howe
Alfaerie Expansion Set One (source)
Alfaerie Expansion Set Two (source)
Alfaerie Expansion Set Three (source)
Alfaerie Expansion Set Four (source)
Alfaerie Plus (source), with a few minor modifications necesssary to avoid name conflicts (details)
Alfaerie Misc (source), except for identical images, and a few images had to be renamed to avoid conflicts also (details)
Alfaerie Expansion Set Five (source)
Alfaerie Expansion Set Six (source)
Alfaerie Beta contains new piece images not found elsewhere, including my humble contributions.

For per-image credits, see the "credit" key of aomega.json.

The goal of Alfaerie Omega is to include all known Alfaerie chess graphics into one, flat and consistent archive. Instead of having separate downloads to add new images, a new version of this package can be released when there are new images. Contributions are welcome!

Feedback

Have a new piece you want to contribute? Problems or suggestions? Check out the GitHub page at https://github.com/shellreef/alfaerieomega.

Contact

-Jeff Connelly (email: alfaerie-omega [AT] xyzzy.cjb.net)