Date:	1994-01-22
		From:	John
		Subject:	More Piece Design Quandries

I stand corrected. We have indeed agreed upon 18x14 with gray gridlines added every three units - I am starting to forget things in my old age. I'm beginning to wonder, though, whether 18x14 is just too damned small!

Attached is a (stuffed) PICT file with a few design possibilities. If you study it carefully I think you will see the problem. 18x14 is tiny, about ONE QUARTER the size of an ordinary icon (and it's hard enough fitting a battleship into an icon). It's a real challenge to work on this scale.

I had hoped to try a beveled look. Beveled marble would provide a classy, 3-D effect like solid pieces placed atop a playing board. However, as you can see, this is just not possible at 18x14 if we wish to maintain non-abstract pieces. The smallest size I could comfortably work with turned out to be 24x20. This would nearly double the total area of the map (from 2.6 million pixels to 4.8 million).

On the other hand, it would look really cool.

What do you think?

Yours in haste,

Epicurious