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Topic: Arimaa game viewer (Read 5507 times) |
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clauchau
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bot Quantum Leapfrog's father
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #15 on: Nov 19th, 2005, 5:46am » |
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I've been drawing Arimaa boards and pieces for a while now. I can't help filling sheets of paper with them and coding ray-tracing routines and studying the SVG Vector language! Unfortunately I can't seem to commit to issue a finished set. So I'd better share my partial attempts.
I'm trying to come with simple geometrical shapes. An elephant could be a disc, a camel could be as below, or with 'humps' more obvious to make it more distinct from a disc ... I like it when they have the square symmetry, except for the rabbit. On the board, I plan to stack 6 levels for the elephant, 5 for the camel, ..., 2 for the cat, only 1 for the rabbit, to help us remember. For the move notation, one level is enough. I've also been thinking of a small graphical way for the move notation to locate a square on the board without algebraic notations. I'll post it there. More later.
 
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omar
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Arimaa player #2
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #16 on: Nov 19th, 2005, 1:21pm » |
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The Arimaa graphics and sound files are no longer covered under the Arimaa Public License. They are now public domain. Feel free to use them without any restrictions or limitations.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/graphics/
I think having Arimaa trademarked and patented is sufficient protection. Copyrighting the rules, graphics and sounds is just be getting in the way of progress. I've also modified the license page to reflect this change.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/license/
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clauchau
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bot Quantum Leapfrog's father
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #17 on: Nov 19th, 2005, 2:13pm » |
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That's a nice move, Omar. Fewer barriers always get me closer and happier 
Here is a proposal for a move notation that pleases my eyes and mind quite more than letters and numbers :
Ee3n = 
The square is located by the board quarter it is in, the quarter of the quarter and finally the square in the latter.
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clauchau
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #18 on: Nov 20th, 2005, 11:39am » |
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Here is a more readable and scalable down move notation I've been drawing while the best players are stressing out in the tournament  :
Ee3n = 
I agree it looks like some alien writing. Here is a cushion board:
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omar
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Arimaa player #2
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #19 on: Nov 28th, 2005, 3:20pm » |
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Nice images Claude. I've always pictured adding a 'Theme' option to the Arimaa game client, but haven't gotten around to doing it. Maybe I'll add it in the next version. That will allow different board and piece images to be used to suit the players preferences.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #20 on: Dec 7th, 2005, 7:42pm » |
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Well, I took the newly public domain Arimaa images and stuffed them into the chess diagram template on Wikipedia. The great news is that anyone can now make an Arimaa diagram on Wikipedia with only a text editor. The text looks like
{{arimaa diagram|=
|tleft
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|=
8 |rs|rs|rs|cs|cs|rs|rs|rs|=
7 | | |ds|hs| |eg|ms|rs|=
6 |rs| | | | | | | |=
5 | | | | | | | | |=
4 | | | | | | | | |=
3 | |hs| |es| | |dg| |=
2 |rg|dg|hg|cg|cg|mg|hg|rg|=
1 |rg|rg|rg| | |rg|rg|rg|=
|The players are racing to capture pieces as quickly as possible
}}
The bad news is that it looks awful, as you can see from the first diagram at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arimaa_strategy. I couldn't figure out how to make the pieces float over a board image, so I just chose some (hideous) background colors. And the way the browser squashes the images is icky.
Does anyone want to help me clean up this mess? The template code is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Arimaa_diagram&ac tion=edit; anyone is free to make changes. I had asked a few people on Wikipedia to help me with this, and they all encouraged me to do it myself. Finally I did it myself, but I don't think you can make it worse than what I've done. 
In addition to editing the template, you can edit/replace all the piece image files which are stored under names like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Arimaa_cgb74.png. In the filename Arimaa_xyz74.png, the x stands for piece type (e, m, h, d, c, or r) the y stands for color (g or s) and the z stands for board or trap square (b or t).
Claude, maybe Wikipedia would be a great forum for you to trot out all of your snazzy new piece images. Think of your everlasting fame. Or at least my eternal gratitude...
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99of9
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #21 on: Dec 7th, 2005, 8:38pm » |
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Well done for getting that going. I agree it doesn't look too hot yet, but now that there's a template it shouldn't take too much for some of us to get it looking good. I think the aim should be an exact reproduction of the marble gameboard in the gameroom (maybe with the edges cut off).
Personally I would prefer to stick with the animal pictures than change to stacks of discs (now that Omar is happy to put them out on a separate license) ... otherwise anyone who ever sets foot in the gameroom will forever have to convert in their head.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #22 on: Dec 7th, 2005, 9:08pm » |
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on Dec 7th, 2005, 8:38pm, 99of9 wrote:| I think the aim should be an exact reproduction of the marble gameboard in the gameroom (maybe with the edges cut off). |
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In HTML, can you use an image as a background for a table? If so, then using the marble gameboard should be relatively easy. If not, can you use an image as the background for a cell in an HTML table? That could be exploited by cutting the board into 64 pieces and backgrounding each cell. Inelegant, but doable.
If you can't do background images in HTML tables, then I don't know how we could hope to recreate the marble board, because the Wikipedia template is based on Wikipedia tables, which is based on HTML tables. At best we could put each piece on top of a bit of grey marble and on top of a bit of pink marble, losing the overall pattern.
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99of9
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #23 on: Dec 7th, 2005, 10:03pm » |
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on Dec 7th, 2005, 9:08pm, Fritzlein wrote:| In HTML, can you use an image as a background for a table? |
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Not sure, but you can put an image *behind* a table by specifying overlapping DIV's.
Quote:| If not, can you use an image as the background for a cell in an HTML table? |
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Yes. But since this method is more work, perhaps wait until someone has a better idea .
Quote:| the Wikipedia template is based on Wikipedia tables, which is based on HTML tables. |
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Ahh... this means the DIV stuff may not work.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #24 on: Dec 7th, 2005, 10:52pm » |
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on Dec 7th, 2005, 10:03pm, 99of9 wrote:| Not sure, but you can put an image *behind* a table by specifying overlapping DIV's. |
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Well, then this will probably work. You can certainly wrap a div around a Wikipedia table. That's how the captions are put on below the board with a grey background, I think.
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Janzert
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Arimaa player #247
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #26 on: Dec 8th, 2005, 9:23am » |
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Hmm, I can mock it up locally in html fairly easy. I even uploaded the board image to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:37px-Arimaa_board.jpg. But attempting to add a background image style to the wiki template makes the whole style attribute disappear. So I assume either background-image: or url() isn't allowed in the css?
Maybe something with overlapping divs would work but that seems rather ugly.
Also once a way is found to set the board as a background the current piece images will need to be replaced with ones having a transparent background and there won't be any need for seperate trap pieces. I already created these and was planning on just replacing the 37px-Arimaa_xxb75.png files if the board image can be used.
Janzert
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #27 on: Dec 8th, 2005, 12:38pm » |
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on Dec 8th, 2005, 9:23am, Janzert wrote:Thanks for helping out. I'm sure we'll get something working.
Quote:But attempting to add a background image style to the wiki template makes the whole style attribute disappear. So I assume either background-image: or url() isn't allowed in the css?
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I'm not sure if this is relevant, but I know Wikipedia won't link to images not on their server. There were issues with links to porn being maliciously inserted all over the place, and I think a security issue too. Anyway, maybe this means that images on their server also have to be linked in a certain syntax so it doesn't look like an external URL? Within articles I've always linked to images with the syntax [[Image:Arimaa_elephant_trap.jpg]], so this might be something to try out inside the table.
Quote:| Also once a way is found to set the board as a background the current piece images will need to be replaced with ones having a transparent background and there won't be any need for seperate trap pieces. |
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Wikipedia doesn't allow for users to delete uploaded images, but when the template is finished and working, I'll post a list of images we are no longer using to a janitor page and some admin will remove them for us.
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Janzert
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Arimaa player #247
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #28 on: Dec 8th, 2005, 2:01pm » |
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According to #wikipedia channel on irc it isn't possible to set the background image on a table (unless it's important enough to add to the site wide css file).
But I almost got it working using a floated div with negative margins to place it behind the table. Unfortunately it doesn't work in IE. So back to the drawing board again. :/
Also png transparency apparently doesn't work in IE so we'll have to use the gif's if it ever works.
Janzert
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Janzert
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Arimaa player #247
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Re: Arimaa game viewer
« Reply #29 on: Dec 8th, 2005, 4:03pm » |
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Yay! I got it working or at least it does for me in IE and FF1.5.
The row and column name images still need fixing though.
Janzert
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