This patch which allows switching between different sets of pieces in 2D mode. The pieces themselves are stored as SVG drawings.There are two sets currently available: "simple" (essentially the same ChessSophia font, but with contours slightly cleaned up) and "fancy" (this is my original work based on chess diagrams from old books).
Note:- this patch might break your system (Only for advanced users)
Download this patch from here
To install the patch, do the following:
1. Apply the attached patch, placing it into your gnome-games directory.
2. Unpack the pieces.zip archive into gnome-games/glchess/ . This will create a subdir called pieces/ .
3. In glchess/src/lib/scene/cairo delete the files pieces.py and COPYING.2D (no longer needed).
The patch probably needs some polishing (in particular error handling may be improved), but at least it works and I hope the board with new ‘fancy' pieces looks much better than the current design. Note that the new drawings have a white background, so it is now possible to use darker colors for black cells.