I've just recently testet the chess module and it is pretty neat!
However, one thing's really bugging me: How come a member (allowed to create a chess game) can create a game between two other members where he himself isn't even participating? E.g. User A can create a game where the players are User B and User C. I can only see how that line up for disaster. User A should be promted to be in the game he creates.

Also some further improvements that I would find useful is these three:

  • A button so a user can forfit the game.
  • Some sort of confirmation message where the challenged user can either Accept or Decline thi challenge of a chess game.
  • Further rules integration. I would like to see specificly the options where actions can be given if a user lose/forfit a game, win a game, lose a chess piece/takes a chess piece. This would open up a lot for Userpoints!

    • Comments

    Tim_O’s picture

    Tim_O commented
    Component: Miscellaneous » Code

    (1) Surrender-button
    Is it a "surrender-button" that you mean? If so, definately yes, that's one of the few things missing for a release as I see it.

    (2) Handshake at Start
    That would be kind of a handshake (do you want? -> yes i want! -> start). Neat idea and should be doable with not too much effort.

    (3) Further rules-integration
    This sounds good, although I am not familiar with those user-points. And shouldn't be too hard to do either ...

    I will try to get 6.x to a release-state, which will include (1). But I cannot say if I will get to do the other things. If anyone else is up to it ...

    Tim_O’s picture

    Tim_O commented

    (1) is fixed in the Beta - the "checkmate"-checkbox now also functions as a "surrender-button" :)
    (3) there is "a game has ended" trigger now with a rule to send an according e-mail. You should be able to create a userpoint-rule out of that. And concerning "taking pieces" - the move-description contains whether a piece has been taken or not (Pd4 e5 vs. Pd4 xe5), so with some parsing for that x you should be able to that, also.

    Tim_O’s picture

    Tim_O commented

    I have included some additional triggers for rules in the current dev-version. So now we have the following triggers to play with:

    • move
    • move undo
    • piece taken
    • check
    • game ended

    Hope this is of use for you - thx again for the input :) If you can, let us know, what you are doing with the userpoints so we can get an idea how this can be used.

    Weka’s picture

    Weka commented

    Just wanted to comment on the choosing players functionality.
    It may be a better if a user could just create a game without selecting any players. The node/game creator would automatically become the 'Light Player', make the first move and the new game would become available to any user with the 'Join a Game' permission to join the game as 'Dark Player'.

    Advantages:
    1. The issues brought up by Melot in his original post would be avoided.
    2. Site admin does not have to expose the list of current accounts on the site.
    3. Much easier for anyone to play a game without finding or coordinating with other chess players before starting a game.

    I can't think of any disadvantages at this point.

    Tim_O’s picture

    Tim_O commented
    Title: Choosing players and further rules integration » Alternative ways to start games

    Thank you Weka, and that is another neat idea indeed. However, this would completely disallow to choose with whom you want to play (as someone else could always accept the invitation to play), which is why I tend to see that as another (different) feature. The starter of the game would also always play the light pieces, which doesn't sound nice to me. That could be addressed by giving the second player the choice of the side though.

    An implementation however is a bit of complicated. The create-form needs to be modified, potential second users need to be allowed to change a chess-node if (and only if) there is a player-slot open (they'd need to edit and set themselves as the second player, then save to start the game). To fully utilise this we would probably further need another block ("Open Games" or something?) to show those games to the interested people.

    But talking about ways to start games, here's another idea: having a challenge-button on the other users profiles would be neat also, eh? However for now this all looks like too much effort for me, so I will concentrate on making this a release now. I just made the user-list sorted as a little improvement (for now only in the dev-version though). Might look into this sometime after the release.

    Weka’s picture

    Weka commented

    Thank you for your reply Tim.
    You are right, it may be better if the Starter of a game had an option to either select an opponent or leave the game open for someone else to join. The starter of the game could also have the choice of letting the opponent choose light or dark pieces.

    I really like your idea of the challenge-button on users' profiles.

    I understand that this type of module is quite challenging and appreciate how far you got with the Chess module already.
    Thank you for your time.