Abstract Play Renderer

[1.0.0-beta] - 2023-04-30

Initial beta release.

Abstract Play Renderer

[0.8.0] - 2021-12-27

Added

• Column labels are now infinite and fully customizable using the columnLabels renderer option. Just pass a string of characters.
• Added buttonBar to the areas property. This lets you create a vertical bank of buttons for use by the click handler. Button text can be arbitrarily styled. Example added to the playground.
• Added the key feature back, but it is now in the areas property and can only be arranged vertically and placed on the left or right. Other orientations may be added in the future. Example added to the playground.

Changed

• The static property has been added to the eject annotation if you don't want each consecutive notation to be wider and wider.

Abstract Play Renderer

Breaking Change

• Yet another breaking change. Found an issue where nested glyphs (symbols within symbols) couldn't be reused because of how the IDs got duplicated. So I completely refactored the glyph loading code. This has vastly simplified the <defs> section. It now only contains the glyphs defined in the legend. It means that glyphs in the sheets may not have hard-coded IDs. Let the renderer auto-assign them. More documentation on this is forthcoming.

Added

• Documented the API. This involved adding full TSDoc comments and using TypeDoc to generate the HTML. Also included an API description from Microsoft's API Extractor. The JSON schema is still documented manually. See the /docs folder.
• A new playground/demo site is now available at https://abstractplay.com/renderer/.
• Added tileSpacing property that, when combined with tileWidth and tileHeight, will break the tiles apart and space them from each other. Only works for squares* and vertex* boards.
• Added a glyphmap: [string,string][] option to the renderer (where [string,string] is the old glyph name mapped to a new glyph name). This lets the user swap any glyph for another. Say they prefer the square pieces to the default round ones. The front end could let them map piece to piece-square.
• Added glyphs for Alfred's Wyke.

Abstract Play Renderer

[0.6.0] - 2021-12-15

Breaking Change

• The renderer now works correctly in both Chrome and Firefox. The glyph sheets have now all been converted to symbols instead of basic groups. This has vastly simplified the layout code, though it required extensive code changes. Further testing is planned on other browsers.

Added

• Added a new glyph marker for incorporating glyphs defined in the legend into the board itself. Only works in the default and stacking-offset renderers. This marker applies no extra padding around the glyph like it does for pieces. That would have to be added in the legend.

• Added a new text property to glyph definitions. This allows you to create arbitrary text glyphs using all the standard colour and layout options. It is mutually exclusive with the name property. Because not all implementations of JSON schema handle this sort of validation equally, validation is not handled at that level. If name is present, it will override the text property. If neither are present, a runtime error is thrown.

• Added a new buffer property to the board schema to create adjustable buffer zones on given edges of the board. The intent is that these would be used by the click handlers to do things like bear pieces off the board or other such interactions. Only works for square*, vertex*, and go boards. If a click handler is attached, they will all return the coordinates -1, -1 and the label _buffer_[DIR], either N, E, S, or W. Rotates correctly.

  Note: To avoid the buffer click handlers from interfering with the generic click handler on vertex boards, if a buffer is present at all (regardless of whether it is shown), the generic handler ignores clicks outside of the board's outer edge. This reduces the sensitivity of clicks along the edge, but it's still quite functional.

Removed

• Removed the key feature for now. It is a decidedly nontrivial task to generalize this in a way that works cross-browser. Its only use so far has been for Volcano, and that is now obviated by the click handler. This is something I may revisit.

Abstract Play Renderer

[0.5.0] - 2021-12-10

Added

• You can now render individual glyphs using all user settings by setting board to null. See the docs for details.
• Added player as a colour option in annotations.
• The pieces fit too snugly in the hex-of-hex board style. A 15% reduction has been baked in.
• Added a fence marker for drawing thick lines between cells. Only works for squares* board styles.
• Added a dots annotation so you can add dots on top of pieces as well as just on the board itself.
• Added a squares-beveled style that simply draws very faint gridlines, for use with fences. Will make this nicer later.
• Added a stackOffset property to the schema for manual adjustment of stack offsets in the stacking-offset renderer.
• Changed annotations to allow an empty list. There's really no reason to disallow it, other than to minimize JSON size. Still a good practice to cull it from the output if there aren't any.
• Added boardHover callback that triggers on mousemove. It is only applied to stacking-expanding boards and is intended to trigger the cell expansion feature.
• Attached boardClick handler to pieces in localStash areas and the Homeworlds global stash. It returns coordinates of -1,-1 and the name of the piece.
• Adjusted stacking-expanding renderer to allow for the board and pieces attributes to be null to render just an expandedColumn area. This is an attempt and improving performance of stacking-expanding games in live use.
• Added house, palace, and tower glyphs to the core sheet for Urbino. Also added a dragon glyph that ended up not being used, but there it is.

Fixed

• Fixed renderStatic() to work properly now under SVG.js 3.x and respect the size and id options.
• Fixed bug in entropy renderer that caused only the first character of pieces to be recognized.
• Fixed renderglyph().
• Boards now finally rotate properly.
  • Homeworlds rotation has always worked and supports rotating in increments of 90 degrees, allowing players to see the board from their own perspective.
  • For the default renderer, rotation by 180 degrees is all that will ever be supported.
  • Rotation is disabled for the stacking-expanding renderer.
  • For the default renderer, all board styles are now fully supported, including click handlers, annotations, and markers.
  • The stacking-offset renderer also appears to work correctly.

Abstract Play Renderer

[0.4.0] - 2021-11-17

Added

Boards

• Entropy board added as a special renderer. I want to minimize the number of special renderers, but there may end up being a few.
• Added basic hex maps. Right now the labels are designed for pointy-topped grids. As more games get added, some convenience options will be added to the schema and implementation adjusted.
• Added click handlers to the rest of the boards.
• Added better board rotation (180 degrees only) to all except the stackingExpanding renderer.

Schema

• stacking-expanding renderer added. It's the same as the default renderer but supports displaying an expanded column of pieces in a stack alongside the board.
• Added an svgid option to the main option set, letting you assign an id to the containing svg element. By default it is _aprender.
• Added a showAnnotations option to the main options set. When false, last-move indicators will be hidden.
• Added a key attribute that you can use to give players a key to the colours and pieces on the board. This is sometimes necessary if there are a lot of colours on the board and you want to make move entry simpler. Or if you want to indicate which player owns which colour. This is still in development. See "Known Issues" section.
• Added an eject annotation meant to show consequential movement (like eruptions in Volcano).
• Added localStash areas for rendering things liked captured pyramid pieces in Volcano.
• Added markers attribute to schema for adding three things:
  • small circles at given points
  • shaded polygons directly on the board (showing ownership, perhaps)
  • highlighted board edges (showing goals or ownership)

Glyphs

• Added flattened versions of the Looney pyramids. They all share a baseline instead of a centre.
• Added glyphs for Accasta. The horse is "wrong," but it's the closest I could get for now. Will adjust later.

Changed

• Breaking Change: boardClick handler now moved into the options object for consistency. All that's changing is how you pass it to the library. It should only require a single change to client code, but let me know if the impact is much larger.
• area definitions changed to include a type field to simplify coding.

Known Issues

• The key still needs positioning code tweaked for top and bottom, and for some reason I cannot move the glyph within each entry. I can move the text, but not the glyph. That will need to be sorted before a new release.
• The key also needs to be built and placed for all renderers. Right now it's only rendered by the stacking-expanding renderer.

Abstract Play Renderer

[0.3.0] - 2021-10-21

Added

• Homeworlds renderer added, including proper rotation of the board.
• You can now adjust the height and width of the generated image within the container.
• Public API documented.
• boardClick callback now available.

Abstract Play Renderer

[0.2.1] - 2021-10-17

Added

• tileWidth and tileHeight are now supported. This lets you draw thicker lines at intervals, simulating tiles.

Fixed

• Rotation now works properly.

Abstract Play Renderer

[0.2.0] - 2021-10-05

Added

• Most boards are now implemented:
  • squares: Grid of squares with no checkered pattern.
  • squares-checkered: Grid of squares with checkered pattern.
  • vertex: Grid where the pieces are placed at the intersections instead of the squares themselves.
  • vertex-cross: Same as vertex but with lines showing diagonal movement.
  • go: A standard Go board.
  • hex-of-hex/tri/cir: A hexagonal field composed of either hexes, triangles, or circles.
  • snubsquare: A unique topography where most cells have 4 or 5 connections.
• The lines making up the boards can now have their opacity, colour, and weight adjusted.
• Basic stacking renderers are now implemented.
• Composite pieces are now supported, including colouring, rotating, scaling, and nudging.
• The glyph library has been significantly expanded, including Piecepack icons, Looney pyramids, dice, and modern chess fonts.

Changed

• Annotations have changed. There are three now supported:
  • move: Draws lines between the selected cells.
  • enter & exit: Both currently do the same thing. Different options will be added later.

Known Issues

• Rotation of pieces can sometimes cause bizarre misalignments. This is mostly a problem for Looney pyramid glyphs. Rotation in increments of 90 degrees works fine most of the time.

Abstract Play Renderer

First minimally viable release of the rendering engine! Playground will appear eventually.

(Rereleased after fixing build errors.)