Converting scale to world measurements

[SuperTank]

Hello,
I have a 3D cast member (which originally is made in Maya) and I have cloned
it into my 3D world. The model is a chess board more precise.
And what I want to do now is placing objects onto the board. Like peons,
kings, queens etc. But the problem I am having though is a good way to
calculate their positions.
Since the chess board don't have a width and length property I can't figure
out where in the world one of the boards edges are, to start placing objects
there.


I hope I was clear enough to make myself understood. :)
Any suggestions how I should solve this?

Thanks.

[ensamblador]

When you are modeling te board, put a box model, six poligons, twelve faces, in
each position of the board, centered, in the same place where a piece must be.

Name as: "A1", "G2", etc. You mus complete the board.

In Director make this Dummies invisibles (visibility = #none), and use its
worlposition property to know where to move the piece.

Luck!

[SuperTank]

Thanks for the tip. :)
But what if I for some reason would want to rearrange the the setup differently? This way does not feel that dynamic.

[Roofy]

SuperTank,
I think the easiest way to do this is for you to build a table list, not only
because you want to place the chess peices for their inital positions, but also
because you are going to need to know where all of the 64 blocks positions are
locatated at. In addition, If you are also building the game so that a player
could play against the computer and if you do the table list correct, then this
will also make things easier for you when you build your AI (Artificial
Intelligents) for the computer's move. This is because when I did some
reasearch before on how to build the AI, the 2 articles that I have read said
that they where basically giving each type of chess piece a point system of the
following....
Pawns = 1 pt
knights = 2 pts
biships = 3 pts
rooks = 4pts
queens = 5pts
kings = 6pts

. then by having this point system you would place the point system according
to what each chess piece value is in a matrix which the matrix would be your
table list.

Now on to building a position calculation.
The best way to do this is to do it in you 3D application, by creating a plane
and set the divisions to 8x8, and think to yourself how many units you want
each block to be. Then all you need to do is set the width and length of the
total plane to the amount of units each block is equal to and multiply it by 8.
For example, if you want each block to be say 2 units by 2 units, then the
total width of the plane would be 2 units * 8 and length of the plane would be
2 units * 8. Then it is just a matter of using a little math to figure out
where each block is located and write them down on a piece of paper so that you
can apply that to your table list.

As to making the checker board, just apply a a black and white material to
each block by alternating them with the black material and then the white
material. Also, if you are worried about the poygon count, then you should be
able to bake the polygons onto the chessboard without messing up your position
calculations of where each block is, by baking the polygons onto a texture.
Then delete the unneccessary edges from the chessboard and apply the baked
texture.

[Roofy]

I also for to mention somthing very important. When seting up the chessboard,
it has a specific setup so that the white king is always on its right side of
the queen in addition to the white queen is always positioned on its own color,
and the black king is aligned with the white king and the black queen is
aligned with the white queen. If you do not do this, then the game isn't
played correctly. I forget what happens but I think it is because one of the
player's either it is white or black who has a better chance of winning, and
you can not castle correctly. If you are confused about how the chess peices
are setup here is a a reference for you....
[url]http://www.hixoxih.com/games/chess/images/2d-chessboard-plain-16.gif[/url]