R&D project / Chess variant focussed site - feedback required

If you like chess variants (and I appreciate that not many actually do*), you can sign up to a long-standing R&D project that is now a bare-bones stand-alone site **here.

You can still play regular chess. And the more people who do, the sooner and more confidently I can migrate the work into RHP proper.

It has been great exercise for prototyping new ideas, new technology, and testing code that will be rolled into RHP once stable. (RHP had received some significant backend updates as a result of this project already.)

So, if you are curious, sign up, play some games, and post here what you like👍 / dislike👎. (Mobile devices not recommended.)

For example,

-Is a more conventional chat system preferred to the RHP system of one message per move?

-The RHP new game page is about to be overhauled, so any feedback on starting a new game on Evo? (Daily/Correspondence chess). The "play a friend" shared link will definitely be making it to RHP soon.

If you are curious what is so different about this site, it is nearly all API driven, with mostly reactive pages - for example, you can update your My Games table without the actual page reloading. This results in a faster and more responsive user experience.

*The live chess offering on RHP currently has a handful of variants - and no one chooses to play them.

**This was previously discussed here as BlitzcChess dot net/but that name has been abandoned in favor of the EvoChess name.

@russ said
If you like chess variants (and I appreciate that not many actually do*), you can sign up to a long-standing R&D project that is now a bare-bones stand-alone site **[=https://www.evochess.com]here[/].

You can still play regular chess. And the more people who do, the sooner and more confidently I can migrate the work into RHP proper.

It has been great exercise for p ...[text shortened]... iscussed here as BlitzcChess dot net/but that name has been abandoned in favor of the EvoChess name.

First of all,I like the way you are always looking for improvements and take all requests on board.
Regarding the "live chess" option, I assumed that was exactly what it was until I read your comments about nobody playing the variants.
I, for one,didn't realise any "variants" were on there because not really wanting to play live chess I've never looked there!
I wonder if anyone else is in the same boat so to speak?
Suggestions wise, I enjoyed playing Shogi with a friend of mine when we came across it years ago but I'm not sure it would be popular enough here.
We even made our own board and pieces!
However I think most members here just enjoy playing chess for fun and contributing to the forums.
It'll be interesting to see what feedback you get

Signed up as divegeester, offered an open invite and sent one to a regular member here.

Looks fun.

First of all: Thank you, Russ!

Then I am surprised by the sheer amount of variants

I registered as "Ponderable" (suprise, surprise) and am open for challenges.

And a remark: I frequently play Chess 960 games here (correspondence)

@Ponderable

The reason we don't have Chess960 rules here already is because of the board interface requirements for Chess960 castling.

This is supported by the board code on the Evo site, of course, which was built to be super flexible, by necessity.

This new board code will be used for non-core elements of RHP first, before finally replacing the existing board code. Then full 960 rules and ratings can be supported here too.

This new code was designed to support as many variants as possible without future modification, so I had to use a large sample of variants to test 'coverage'.

More hours than I care to mention were spent supporting specific castling rules for individual variants. (And Seirawan chess / S-Chess - never again....)

Crazy house is also disabled due to a breaking UI bug that needs to be fixed.

I should say too that the live chess here at RHP is now a few iterations behind the Evo live code, so the board fixes not present here will arrive soon.

@venda said
I, for one,didn't realise any "variants" were on there because not really wanting to play live chess I've never looked there!

One more thing, any variant with "fairy" pieces (that is, non-standard pieces) will not be supported by RHP any time soon (or at all), because of the additional pieces required over the different sets offered here already.

@russ said
One more thing, any variant with "fairy" pieces (that is, non-standard pieces) will not be supported by RHP any time soon (or at all), because of the additional pieces required over the different sets offered here already.

I assume you are referring to my Shogi suggestion and I understand why it won't be included on RHP.
There are sites available to play the game if I have the inclination and time so fair do's.
The work you do here is highly commendable.
If you ever need any financial support I'll ask Greenpawn to send you some money!

@russ said
This new code was designed to support as many variants as possible without future modification, so I had to use a large sample of variants to test 'coverage'.

More hours than I care to mention were spent supporting specific castling rules for individual variants. (And Seirawan chess / S-Chess - never again....)

Crazy house is also disabled due to a breaking UI bug that needs to be fixed.

I'm keen on Crazy Horse. I am happy to beta test with you, if you need a recipient for troubleshooting (Safari, Opera, and Firefox running on Mac OSX).

Registered as moonbus.

One request for the UI: in the drop-down menu which lists variants (e.g., when challenging a player), please list the variants alphabetically.