Ask for guidelines for building a Chinese chess with tikz

Question

I want to build a showcase to demonstrate to my friends how powerful Tikz is. LOL But I am still new to Tikz, not sure how to handle this.

I want to draw a Chinese chess (Xiangqi) with latex and tikz. See links on wiki or google image or this link, http://history.chess.free.fr/xiangqi-figures.htm enter image description here

It could be simplified to this:

enter image description here

with Chinese character circled.

You see, this is a 5*9 grids on each side. And there a seven characters on each side. By using latex, I hope it can easily handle the game notations, for instance, if a Chariot (Che) is on the third row, seventh column, then I could simply do some macro programming to have something like "che{3,7}", which will give me great advantage in quickly generating high quality images during the gameplay.

Any ideas where should I start? And any suggestions? Thanks

You can take a look at Chinese checkers board using TikZ, maybe that could help get you started. — Jake, Aug 02 '13 at 20:24
Hmm, by the way, Can tikz generate gif animation? Or I have to make it afterwards? — Daniel, Aug 02 '13 at 20:28
Yeah, there's ways of doing that. See Converting beamer slides to animated images, for example — Jake, Aug 02 '13 at 20:32
I have a backgammon package in progress (not released) which might give you some ideas too. See Typesetting boardgame positions using ttf font, but check the GitHub version for more up-to-date code. — Alan Munn, Aug 02 '13 at 20:36
I used TikZ to draw this for three parties which allows for easy placement of the tiles: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/616927/47927 . — Jasper Habicht, May 18 '23 at 18:58

DJP · Answer 1 · 2013-08-03T21:09:48.387

Are you aware there are already 2 LaTeX packages for chinese chess? The cchess package is covered in "The LaTeX Graphics Companion". A PDF with excerpts is here; chinese chess is on page 61. If you download the zip file at the CTAN link above there's sample code for the board, too (cchessboard.tex file). Likewise there is an xq package which (unlike cchess) might already be installed on your computer. The "example of use" link shows it in action. It records the moves using letters but the cchess package has moves with a picture of the piece.

mbert · Answer 2 · 2023-05-18T18:22:37.243

3

Here's an option using the customizable chinesechess package. Compile with lualatex or xelatex.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{ctex}
\usepackage{chinesechess}
\cchessset{resize/type=real,resize/width=0.5\textwidth}
\begin{document}
Default:
\cchessboard
With some options:
\cchessboard[
    boardtype=x,
    piecetype=o,
    blkupper=black,
    blkpiece=white,
    redupper=black!10,
    ]
\end{document}

See the documentation for more options and how to place individual pieces.

edited May 18 '23 at 18:22

answered May 18 '23 at 18:16

mbert

4,171

It works but the red canons not display the correct symbol: instead shows a F inside a square. Do you know what problem it could be? – Rafael Bluhm Nov 09 '23 at 13:30
@RafaelBluhm I don't understand your question. You should ask a new question on the site with a complete non-working example – mbert Nov 09 '23 at 17:45

Ask for guidelines for building a Chinese chess with tikz

2 Answers2