Manchu+ Banner(super chariot) hard to distinguish from regular chariot

[Arpan90]

1. For the Red side: Banner(super chariot) hard to distinguish(it only has a slight yellow circle around it) from regular chariot. Also, the learn page says that Red side has the superchariot, whereas in-game it is the black side.

2. The learn page for Manchu+ says that the Red side will have only one chariot with extra abilities, but the actual game available has 2 chariots, one with extra abilities and one with regular abilities. I heard that the regular chariot was introduced to balance the game, if so, please update the learn page to reflect the same.

[gbtami]

Indeed our docs was not updated for manchu+
Thx for the report.

[gbtami]

Regarding the banner piece, we have lots of xiangqi piece sets and nobody wanted to draw a new piece for all of them, so I just added a CSS styling here https://github.com/gbtami/pychess-variants/blob/master/static/extensions.css#L326
Any better solution is welcome, of course.

[Arpan90]

Also, just to clarify: aside from whatever the docs say, is it intentional that Black(the side that goes second) is to have the super-chariot, rather than Red(the side that goes first) ?

I will see if I can think of a better solution regarding the piece.

[gbtami]

Yes, that is the most balanced start position according to tests. You can read about it on our Discord here https://discord.com/channels/634298688663191582/634327888275177482/1281954184262062201
Btw I suggest to join pychess discord where you can chat with all of the variant lovers including the developers of the site.

[gbtami]

The docs is fixed now in git via 6a558a0

[Arpan90]

@gbtami Thanks, and I have joined the discord channel.
Regarding an improvement for black manchu+ super rook:
You can add a crown, star, or emblem overlay over the piece(while keeping the colored boundary that you are using). Can be positioned in a corner or top of the rook image.Something along these lines:

<div class="piece super-rook">
  <img src="rook_black.svg" />
  <img class="overlay-icon" src="star.svg" />
</div>

.piece {
  position: relative;
  display: inline-block;
}

.overlay-icon {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  right: 0;
  width: 30%;
}

We can also make the boundary color neon-ish, such that it glows. But that can feel too loud.

[gbtami]

This will not work because we don't create piece div ourselves but use https://github.com/gbtami/chessgroundx to draw the board and pieces from FEN. So we have 2 options here:
style the banner piece in CSS or
create some chessground drawable, something we do in https://github.com/gbtami/pychess-variants/blob/master/client/gameCtrl.ts#L263 to stick the check counters to the kings in 3check variant.

I myself feel the latter is too much for this tiny thing, but any PR is welcome :)