piecepackr comes with built-in configurations for a variety of dice via the game_systems() function.

Information (and opinions) on piecepack game licenses.

Thoughts on the essential elements of a piecepack.

Version 1.5.2 of piecepackr comes with built-in configurations for Go boards and stones in a variety of colors and sizes via the game_systems() function. Here are some example diagrams for a game of Multi-player go.

Relativity is a piecepack game by Ron and Marty Hale-Evans. It is a two-player abstract game with interesting movement mechanics. Being able to distinguish ranks is important while being able to distinguish suits is not important so a piecepack design optimized for playing this game may consider coloring ranks instead of suits.

Looney Pyramids aka Icehouse pieces is a game system invented by Andrew Looney. The package piecenikr provides a looney_pyramids() function that provides an icehouse_piceces configuration to make Looney Pyramids graphics with piecepackr.

Version 1.3 of piecepackr comes with built-in configurations for checker boards and checkers in a variety of colors and sizes via the game_systems() function. Here is an example of the setup for Dan Troyka’s game Breakthrough as well as Robert Abbott’s game Crossings.

piecepackr comes with built-in configurations for double-18 dominoes in six color schemes as well as Chinese dominoes in two color schemes via the game_systems() function.

James H. Vipond is a 3D artist who has created high quality Wavefront OBJ files and associated textures of piecepack game pieces. Although Vipond has created some nice png textures to go with his OBJ files you may want to be able to use other piecepack designs. Here is some example code that given a particular piecepackr configuration will allow one to generate appropriate png textures for use with Vipond’s OBJ assets.

In the game of Reversi one player is represented by the suited side of piecepack components while the other player is represented by the unsuited side of piecepack components. A reversi-friendly piecepack design makes it easier to distinguish between the suited and unsuited sides of piecepack components. We also show how to play reversi with a piecepack stackpack.

Jonathan C. Dietrich is a notable piecepack designer who has written several piecepack games, developed VASSAL’s piecepack module, and designed the JCD piecepack. In this demo we’ll be making a starting diagram for the game Triactor that he co-authored using a piecepackr configuration that directly uses his JCD piecepack images contained in VASSAL’s piecepack module.

The package ppdf contains functions that generate the starting piece arrangements for several piecepack games. These functions return data frames that can be used directly with piecepackr::pmap_piece() or ppcli::cat_piece() to generate piecepack game diagrams or they can be used with ppn‘s Portable Piecepack Notation parser read_ppn() to initially setup the game pieces.

Some demos of chess-ranked piecepacks as well as the starting diagrams of several chess variants playable with a piecepack.

Everest is a piecepack game by Mark A. Biggar featuring programmed movement. It is a “King of the Hill” game that features a visually striking board with the tiles physically arranged as a hill. Here is the starting diagram for it using an “icy” piecepack tile color scheme to match its snowy Himalayan Yeti theme:

This article includes details on how to make piecepack game diagrams using just Unicode. The ppcli R packages has a prototype function cat_piece() which generates piecepack Unicode text diagrams. Game Bit Mono and Duo are a pair of bitmap fonts with with special piecepack support in its Private Use Area.

Tables of potentially useful Unicode symbols for making piecepack graphics.

Portable Piecepack Notation (PPN) is a human-readable plaintext file format for storing board games. The default Movetext parser is designed to be provide a fairly flexible notation system out of the box for playing a large variety of games but the structure is designed allow support for parsing alternative notation systems in the future as well. Originally intended for notating piecepack games, it also provides some support for other game systems as well. There is a prototype parser for this file format written in R that can be used to generate 2D/3D graphical images, plaintext Unicode diagrams, and animations for the games saved in this file format.

The Hexpack is a piecepack expansion by Daniel Wilcox and Nathan Morse that essentially introduces hexagonal tiles and triagonal coins. In this demo we’ll show how to configure a hexpack that matches our default piecepack and make a simple diagram using it as well as show how to use the built-in hexpack configurations that come with piecepackr.

The orthodox piecepack ranks are a tad abstract and my toddler son is Chinese-American so I think a Chinese Zodiac ranked piecepack could be a design that is a little more approachable for my son. The Chinese Zodiac‘s 12 animals are divided into 4 trines so we’ll make a piecepack using all the animals from two of the trines as ranks and another piecepack using the remaining animals from the other two trines as ranks. For suits we’ll use the Five Elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water.

The Rainbow Deck by Chen Changcai is a cardgame system that can be used to play hundreds of games. It has 12 suits divided by 6 suit symbols with each suit symbol having a dark and light color associated with it. It is straightforward to make six-suited piecepacks to use as an accessory to the Rainbow Deck.

Tak is a two-player abstract designed by James Ernest and Patrick Rothfuss that is best visualized in 3D. We show an example of configuring piecepackr to draw standard Tak game pieces. We also show how the game of Tak can also be played with a piecepack stackpack.

piecepackr has some basic support for projecting 3D board games onto a 2D diagram. It can make diagrams using an orthographic or oblique parallel projection using R’s grid graphics library. It can also render images using the rayrender, rayvertex, and rgl 3D graphics packages. These latter packages usually use a perspective projection but can be configured to produce parallel projections.

A demo of emulating of Daniel Ajoy‘s Dingbats suited PiecePack Design Variation using piecepackr.

For a number of reasons the default piecepack made by piecepackr does not comply with the Anatomy of a Piecepack standard. But not to fear - one can easily configure a piecepack that looks like one of the original piecepacks.

Backgammon is one of the oldest known board games. Like other classic board games like checkers and chess it is also possible to play with a single piecepack. We illustrate the starting diagram for playing a game of backgammon with a piecepack using a paired suit-color design.

Tablut is a historical (hnefa)tafl game played by the Sámi people until at least the 1700s whose rules were written down by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus in 1732. Below is a starting diagram for playing a game of Tablut with a piecepack.

Cribbage is a popular two-person card game that usually requires a special cribbage board to keep score. Below is a diagram of using a piecepack to make an effective cribbage board.

Although using piecepackr‘s configuration lists provide a powerful high-level way to alter the appearance of your piecepack graphics piecepackr also allows one to modify the appearance of your piecepack graphics even more with the use of custom grob functions.

piecepackr allows one to alter the appearance of one’s board game pieces through the use of configuration lists.

piecepackr is an R package to easily make piecepack graphics. It can be used to make piecepack game diagrams and animations as well as Print & Play layouts so you can make your own piecepack.

An example of making an animation directly using the {animation} and piecepackr packages and an example using ppn‘s animate_game() function that can be used to animate games recorded in Portable Piecepack Notation.

This is the demo of the six piecepacks that were included in the “dual piecepacks” proof-of-concept: one piecepack-suited piecepack, one latin-suited piecepack (inverted color scheme), two french-suited piecepacks (one ‘black’ suits, one ‘white’ suits), and two swiss-suited piecepacks (one dark grayscale color scheme, one light grayscale color scheme).

A demo and description of piecepackr‘s default piecepack design.