Personas

About Personas

First, Personas are OPTIONAL -- you do not need to use them. If you want to personalize the game, read on. The Persona functions are found under the Edit -- Player Persona menu.

A Persona is a simple profile with information about a player. Create personas for players you commonly play. Then before starting a new game, assign a persona to each player. The Screen Name is the name that appears on the game display and for logging player activity.

Manage Personas

Before you can apply a persona, you need to create it. You can literally create a new persona in less than a minute. Open Edit -- Player Persona -- Manage Personas to bring up the Persona List Editor. Pick an existing Persona in the list, then click the Edit button to edit that Persona. Or click the Add button to create a new Persona. Insert creates a new Persona and places it in the list at the current selected position.

Assign Persona to Player

When you start a new game, Player 1 generally takes the first turn, then Player 2, then Player 3, etc up to the number of players for the game. You can assign a persona to each player. You will be prompted to select a Player number, then prompted to select the Persona to assign to that player.

View Persona Assignments

This lists all the current assigned Personas by player. And shows the default personas used if you do not assign a persona to a player.

Reset all players to default persona

This effectively removes all the Personas assignments you have made and sets all players to the default Personas.

Edit Persona

The only field is that is required for a Persona is the Screen Name (see Figure 2). Fields are as follows:

• Name  - Player name, nickname or initials. Printed in the Game Stats.
• Screen Name  - Player screen name displayed at the top of the Game Display.
• Rating  - Player ELO rating if known. ELO is a skill rating generally used in chess and is printed in the Game Stats. In general, 1200 is considered a bright beginner. A regular competitive chess player is rated at around 1750.
• Avatar File  - Image file to be displayed in the player image box on the lower section of the Game Display. Click the Browse folder button to locate your image file. Click the Remove image button to remove the reference to an image. This button does not delete the image file itself from your hard drive. If no image file is specified, the default image is displayed. The program keeps the folder address location and file name of the image. So if you move the image to another folder or delete it, the default image will be used on the Game Display.

Avatar Image Formats and Size

Most photo images you take with a digital camera will work as is. But for optimal results, the image should be cropped to a square size (ex. 96x96 pixels). Images that are not square will be streched or squeezd to fit the square box depending on the width to height ratio. It won't hurt anything to try an image. Most graphic formats will work ( bmp, jpg, png, gif, ...) including animated instant messaging icons.