Rendering engines

The renderer property selects specialized layout engines. Default is default (flat board, no stacking).

Engine Use case
default Most games
stacking-offset Stacked pieces, slight offset
stacking-tiles Side-view tile stacks (Volcano-style)
stacking-expanding Top-down stacks with expandable column view
stacking-3D 3D tile view
homeworlds Homeworlds systems
entropy Entropy side-by-side boards
freespace Free placement coordinates
sowing-numerals / sowing-pips Mancala-style pits
conhex ConHex dot boards
multicell-square Rectangular piece groups
polyomino Polyomino placement
isometric Isometric 3D pieces
tree-pyramid Tree/pyramid layouts

Full list: Schema reference — engines.

Default

Simple pieces on boards.

Example games: Arimaa, Go

Stacking offset

Simulate stacks by offsetting additional pieces slightly.

Example games: Abande, Accasta

Stacking tiles

Show a side view of pieces in a stack. Best for smallish stacks.

Example games: Byte, Focus

Stacking expanding

This engine is basically deprecated. It's a top-down view with a column to the side that shows the hovered pieces (doesn't work in the preview snippet).

Example games: Volcano, Mega-Volcano

Stacking 3D

The preferred way of showing stacked pyramids on a flat board.

Example games: Volcano, Pylon

Homeworlds

A bespoke engine specifically for Homeworlds.

Example games: Homeworlds

Entropy

A bespoke engine specifically for the game Entropy, but could conceivably be leveraged for other games played in a similar "duplicate" style.

Example games: Entropy

Freespace

Gives the game designer complete fine-grained control over placement of elements on the canvas.

Example games: Armadas, Calculus

Sowing numerals

Example games: Bao, Oware

Sowing pips

Example games: Bao, Oware

ConHex

Example games: ConHex

Multicell square

Let's you stretch pieces across multiple cells (only rectangular configurations of cells supported).

Example games: Fightopia

Polyomino

Example games: Four

Isometric

Height-mapped boards with 3D piece glyphs. Set board.projection to choose camera elevation and ground-axis foreshortening.

Example games: Bide, Carnac, Terrace

iso

Classic 2:1 isometric (default when projection is omitted).

Example games: Bide, Terrace

shallow

Raised viewpoint — less vertical foreshortening.

Example games: Carnac, Druid

very-shallow

Even higher viewpoint.

compressed

Iso azimuth with the depth axis at half scale.

cabinet

Cabinet oblique — east–west undistorted, depth at 45° half scale.

dimetric

Both ground axes foreshortened equally at the iso azimuth.

trimetric

Ground axes foreshortened unequally at the iso azimuth.

Tree pyramid

This is a specialized engine used only in Siege of Jacynth where there is no board, but trees of pieces are laid out based on child/parent relationships.

Example games: Siege of Jacynth