Play backgammon on FIBS with 3DFiBs

With a little time and effort, you can create your own custom style board and you don't have to be a graphic artist to do it. The boards included in the original download were created with nothing more than cut and paste, resizing and some simple color replacement tracing. To make it even easier, there are no restrictions on the size of the board. Checker placements are now configurable and saved in a separate file (data.txt) in the folder for that particular board. Match it up with a nice wallpaper background that you can download from the many free wallpaper sites, and you have an aesthetically pleasing and relaxing scene to enjoy your backgammon games.

Creating a custom board begins by duplicating the graphics in the 3dfibs pics subfolders. Each subfolder within the pics folder holds all the graphic elements for a theme. Make as many themes as you like and place them in their own pics subfolder and you will be able to select them from a list from menu options->preferences.

Here is one way to create a board from scratch..

The information below is not necesarily the best way. It is just the way I happened to do it with the programs that just happened to be on my machine. If you have your own graphic editor button maker etc, you can use them instead.

Step 1 These are the programs you will need. They are all free.

GnuBG GnuBG has user configurable settings for color texture and lighting on a board. If you can get GnuBG to create a board you like, you dont need to do anything else but just copy it and use it in 3DFiBs. I had to resort to a few extra steps to get it to resize without losing quality.

MS Paint Included in Windows you can find it in Accessories folder.

IrfanView A popular free picture viewer with some good features we need but dont have in MS Paint.

ZPaint An easy to use button maker with color and texture. Good for drawing the checkers

MWsnap A screen capture program

Step 2 Open Gnubg and go to Menu Settings->Appearance and change the option on the general tab to 3D. Put a check mark in "plain view" setting to get rid of the checkers and you will have an empty board that is small but looks very nice. From here it is up to you. Play around with the colors. textures and lighting settings until you see something you like, and dont forget to save it.

Step 3. Use the screen capture program to save the sample board.

Step 4 Use IrfanView to scale it up to the size you want.

Step 5 Open ZPaint, load the board into it and click some 3D buttons (undo click again) with different texture and color settings until you see something that looks good. Save.

Step 6 Open the board with MSPaint and copy a square area around button and save it . Enlarge the button to maximum size and trace around it to make the background black. If the checkers are already dark, use a lighter color to trace and when done, fill it in with MS paint fill brush.

Step 7 Once you have a board and 2 colored checkers that look good, the rest is easy. Use the existing pics folder as a templace to place the images you will need into your own pics folder. You new folder should contain the same number of images with the same names and types and alignment as the originals. board.jpg, checkers.bmp etc..Checkers.bmp placed one on top. Dice aligned in a row and cubes the same way. Use an existing data.txt file for starters. If you are creating a small board, use the data.txt file from the "original" folder.

Step 8 When you have all your pics in the folder, open 3DFiBs preferences go to boards and select the name of the folder from the drop down list. Use the Configure new board button to read the data.txt file. Change the numbers in the data.txt file click configure to see the changes and repeat until everything lines up. When you are done, click save.

Thats it. 8 simple steps for a professional looking board. If it sounds hard it really isnt..it is actually quite simple since you are not doing anything that requires any graphic arts skills. It is all cut paste resize copy save. Pretty much what toddlers do in kindergarten. Very simple and you can generate a very nice looking board that you will enjoy for a long time. If you create a nice board, share it at fibsboard.