I'm pretty sure there are a few of you that use FICS and you probably use BabasChess if you do. Here is my idea:

BabasChess is the best client by far, but it has some horrific piece options. I honestly can't stand them. The bmp piece options are all grainy and don't scale well, while the vector pieces are all gimped in one way or another (several of them use the same glyphs for the white pieces and black pieces, which looks terrible and is highly distracting to me--some do it correctly, but there is some misalignment that makes the edges really ragged or something).

I want to make some decent pieces for this interface. I have done this for many other interfaces, and they look very nice, but I can't seem to do it for this interface. The problem is that BabaChess uses True Type Font for the vector pieces. This is a very difficult file format to deal with. There aren't any free editors out there that are worth anything. However, I can use inkscape (where I have a ton of pieces all ready to go anyway) to make an SVG font, and then convert it to TTF using any number of websites or tools.

The trouble is, I can never get the TTF files to work in BabasChess. I have no idea why, but every time I try to select it in BabasChess, I just get wingdings crap (in other words, it isn't finding my font and is just using some default wingdings that it probably uses when it can't find the font it's supposed to be displaying). I have tried everything I can think of to reference my new TTF file correctly, but I just can't get it to work.

What I'm asking is for someone to help me figure it out. If you can, I will do a lot of work making 10+ new nice looking sets for BabasChess and could even take some requests if people have a set they really like.

If you are interested in helping me, you can either respond here in the thread or PM me. If you have questions about what I mean, feel free to ask.

I've never learned how fonts work as pieces. i sort of get the idea, drawstring for example in java at a point put the piece via a font. Maybe he has a settings file for the font. maybe some stuff is hard coded in the program. Does the programmer get on fics anymore or respond to email? he was from Italy i recall. babbas meant like clown or something. rra* something.

Babbas chess was a closed source interface. If the programmer is not to be found that's not the greatest situation for a server to be in interface wise.

I know there was this new interface raptor that was out about a year ago on fics. Have talked to that programmer as well. it was under an open source license. You have jin which is open source as well. Anyone can take over the jin project if alex ( sasha) has stopped work similar to hg mueller taking over winbboard.

I guess the upshot is don't throw good money after bad. If the programmer of babbas chess is out of the picture, if i was a member of frechess, i'd be interested in supporting interfaces the code is available for.

All this is said as someone who spends more time on ICC than fics. I was on fics tonight. Was fun, got disconnected didn't log back on. But fics always seems to be wandering from its principles. It supports open source but the server itself is closed source and few can touch it. The main interface, babbas chess is closed source and sounds like nobody is touching it now. Fact is the fics community beyond the software is its main strength. But these to me are reasons i'm happy with the icc model as being more straight foward than the FICS.

Mike

There is a settings file for each font. What I know is this:

1) You need a ttf file with a character for each piece (at least). You put it in the \data\fonts directory

2) You need a .bcfi file to reference that font. You put it in the \data\VPIECE directory. The contents of that file are basically a line that says what font is being referenced and a couple of lines that describe which characters in the ttf represent which pieces. You can use some sort of masking to layer a couple of characters on top of each other, and can reference either a single character for a piece or a character for the mask and piece each in this definition file.

If there is any more to it than that, I can't find it. It is not hard-coded because people have made extra pieces for them. I just need help figuring out how they did it or help finding those people.

RRaf (the author) doesn't really come around anymore, but I have sent messages any way. The two users I know have done it successfully are TNoirLord (gone for over a year) and I think it was tenpi (not sure, but that is at least close to his name--he's been gone a couple of months).

I use the Dyche bitmaps on a dark grey/light grey solid color board with no shadow.

Dyche is definitely the closest to acceptable. They bug me quite a bit because of the spotiness of the texturing and the fuzziness of the edges.

I have created a temporary workaround that is ok for me (I'm kind of OCD about this if you can't tell--I just don't like any distractions when trying to concentrate on the game). What I did was use a board that has two similar colors for light and dark squares (luckily, I actually prefer that). I used the median color between the two as a background in Inkscape and exported the SVG pieces one at a time to a specific size png then converted it to a bmp for each piece. The result is a nice, crisp anti-aliased bmp (babaschess won't anti-alias the bmps--that's why I pre-did that on a set background color in inkscape) that looks great at a specific size and on that specific board color. Any other size or color and the edges of the pieces look awful.

Here is a sample of how it looks:



note: Looks ok with the forum shrinkage, but the full size version looks best

I have made 4 different sets for that size and board color. Habsuburg (pictured above), USCF, Fritz, and ChessCube. The square size is 81 pixels (chosen because my window layout in babaschess is set to render the board at that exact size, so it works out).

Oh and in the Dyche screenshot above there is no way I could play with that set. The white and black pieces look way too similar. I prefer my black pieces way darker (you can set the Dyche pieces to any color you want in BabasChess) and my white pieces to have some yellow/brown to them.

Like this:

Yeah I'm kind of the opposite, I prefer for the pieces to be a similar color haha.

I see that same Dyche set all the time in the ICC videos - some guys have deliberately darkened their black pieces but it can be a confusing mofo

I finally solved this problem. If you use BabasChess and want some clean vector pieces, here are the first 4 I have made:


Fritz: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/141925/GFritz-Vector.zip
Habsburg: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/141925/GHabsburg-Vector.zip
Merida: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/141925/GMerida-Vector.zip
USCF: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/141925/GUSCF-Vector.zip

Each zip file contains two files. Place the ttf file in your Program Files/BabasChess/Data/Fonts directory. Place the bcfi file in your Program Files/BabasChess/Data/VPIECE directory.

Here's a small preview of the pieces (pretty low-quality, the actual sets look cleaner). They scale perfectly and can be colored/textured in the program as you want. Also shadows and anti-aliasing work if you have those options on.


Here is the Fritz set in action (with a small shadow applied, which I'm not quite sure I like):

Moved everything to here. Links in previous post no longer work:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/141925/Web/index.html

Full blown BabasChess website, now, with the pieces I edited and lots of boards, textures, videos, etc, even a page with some other recommended free chess software and a link to a database of chess games created from all TWIC pgn files (1-926 I believe, I need to update it all the way to 960 whatever it's on now).

http://babaschess.******.com

babas is all i know but i love it. thx man, will check out.

that last is quite valuable, hard to find these days

Agreed, I worked hard to find it when I was looking for it.

So an update. I have made an installable graphics pack with 5 high quality sets and some of what I think are nicer looking board and piece textures, as well as some of my favorite color combinations as select-able "textures." I have moved the BabasChess downloads to one page of a larger website that contains my personal blog and downloads for general chess and graphics for other chess programs.

The site is:
http://gorgonian.******.com/
http://gorgonian.******.com/babaschess.html

One last note. Since BabasChess uses fonts for the pieces, the quality of the graphics is very dependent on Windows' font rendering method...which is, peculiar. I have installed (and provided a link to on the second link) and use a program called "MacType" which changes the way Windows renders all fonts to the method used by Macintosh. I think all the fonts on the whole computer look better this way, but the difference for BabasChess pieces is night and day. Highly recommended. (My blog has a before and after screenshot, if interested).

The installable graphics pack contains:
FFritzB (a version of the Fritz pieces from ChessBase)
FUSCFB
GHabsburgB
GMeridaB
GAlphaB

and lots of textures.