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+--- Thread: More stack styles (/showthread.php?tid=272)
More stack styles - Michael - 11-21-2020
I would love some more stack styles. I have three suggestions in particular:
• I would love a parameter for making the pieces more elliptical (short in the stacking direction). I like that there is a parameter for stacking tighter, but I feel like I need to also make that top piece look more «sideways-on» to save some space.
Edit: I didn’t explain this fully. I don’t want single pieces (1-stacks) to look scewed. I want the top-piece to be scewed more as the stack grows. The parameter would set by how much it is scewed per added piece.
• I would like a MindSports-like representation where they show the top piece, and on that piece there is a field with a column of colored numbers. They represent how many pieces of that color are bunched together.
• I have never seen the following, but it might be my favorite representation: Segmented consentric cirlce areas. The outer ring is the top pieces, and all bunched-together same-colored pieces follow clockwize from 12 o’clock. When there is a new color there is a new ring. I have attached a mock-up of a stack of size 10 where the top 3 pieces are grey, then comes two white pieces, then five grey at the bottom. The numbers in the one image is not a suggestion for representation, but only to show you what I mean about the order of pieces. This style will have to override the piece-image chosen. So it’s a bit different.
The point of this is to have a way of representing the composition of stacks in games where this matters, and in a way that doesn’t take up too much space.
RE: More stack styles - cambolbro - 11-21-2020
Hi Michael,
I don't think any of those three styles you suggest will generalise consistently over all possible stacking scenarios, which is an important consideration for Ludii. But we could implement them as custom stacking styles that the user specifies through a metadata item (much as we have a custom stacking style for Backgammon and other games).
If you can provide images and specifications of what exactly you have in mind then we can check whether they are feasible and whether we can/should implement them. For example, I can't visualise the benefits of the skew stacking you mention.
And please keep in mind how these more complex representations will scale with reduced piece size. For example, have a look at Taikyoku Shogi with its 36x36 board and hundreds of tiny pieces. I can't see any way to sensibly draw columns of numbers for each piece, or the more complex sub-piece encoding you suggest, when each piece only has a few pixels to play with.
Regards,
Cameron
RE: More stack styles - Michael - 11-21-2020
I see. But I think a perspective-parameter as I describe would go well with «Default».
Edit: It could be a boolean parameter with a cap on how scewed a piece can get, though.
RE: More stack styles - Michael - 11-21-2020
An example of the MindSport-style can be seen here. I can’t see that this is much less generic than the Count style already implemented. In the case where there are only one color in the stack it would look the same, except the number would be colored. Every game needs to find its solution, of course. For a game with a billion tiny pieces, dont use the column numbers. But there are many games for which the existing «generic» styles are unfeasable as well. If stacks get as tall and the board gets so filled as in Tumbleweed, don’t use Default.
The point of the perspective style is just to make the stacks shorter, so they don’t get in eachother’s way as easily.
I would think it is better to have a good selection of quite generic styles that work for many games, rather than a bunch that work for one game each. No style will work for everything, of course.
RE: More stack styles - cambolbro - 11-23-2020
Hi,
We'll keep an eye out for games that the coloured column approach would be useful for, and look at adding this as an stack option if we find enough cases.
One reservation I have about it is that that numbers would have to be printed on a background colour that is different to every piece colour. Mindsport solves this by drawing grey blobs behind the coloured count values. Maybe there's a more elgant solution.
Regards,
Cameron
RE: More stack styles - cambolbro - 11-23-2020
Hi,
Matthew has now implemented the coloured number column style as an alternative stacking type. You can use by adding the following UI metadata:
(stackType CountColoured)
This will be available in this evening release.
Regards,
Cameron
RE: More stack styles - Michael - 11-23-2020
Wonderful! Thank you!