
Show HN: Chess and Video Chat, no login required - shireboy
https://rootshirechess.glitch.me/
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GPUboy
I'm excited that we developed the same thing so close together. I'd be curious
what your inspiration was, because maybe it was similar :) We found an article
that showed a grandma facetiming to play chess.

We'd recommend checking out Janus webrtc. It worked well for us, and will work
on mobile/firefox. We've used it for years, and it's well developed. Video
rooms up to 6 people too, so you could have more options for games

~~~
shireboy
Just made it so my kids stuck at home for quarantine could play with
grandparents and friends. Will definitely check out Janus. Jitsi was easy to
drop in, but mobile would be great.

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kylek
Had a shower thought today for a video conferencing dating app, to meet people
and have virtual dates with activities (like chess? or watching synchronized
youtube together? i don't know, what do people do for fun?).

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myaccount80
There was once ChatRoulette

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serial_dev
These platforms are quickly taken over by nudity. I just tried chat roulette,
3 out of 6 videos were dicks, that gets boring very fast.

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radicalriddler
The heights seem to be broken on firefox developer edition. I don't have
Firefox installed to test on there, but I assume it'd be the same.

The chess board and the camera space are about 100 px of height.

~~~
shireboy
Yeah, Chrome only atm. The chat software it uses (Jit.si) doesn’t work in FF
either..

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detaro
Jitsi has some issues with Firefox, but "doesn't work" is a bit much.

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vegardx
It seems like you had the same motivation as me, connecting with the family.
For quite some time it has bugged me how bad the UX on some things are, like
photo sharing or video calling. Try to explain to your grandmother how to see
shared photos on an iPad, and then try to do look at the same picture while on
a call. Impossible!

I voiced this to a friend and he suggested to just create a simple webpage
that has a controller and viewer, nothing fancy. Tied together with Shortcuts
I was hoping to make a one-click button that initiated a FaceTime call and
opened the webpage in fullscreen. The latter part seems harder, due to
limitations in Shortcuts, but so far I've successfully been able to have her
press the Home-button and then click the bookmark for this service to open the
viewer. Perhaps a Jitsi Meet integration is just what I need.

Being able to view pictures this way has been truly amazing. My dad has
digitized a lot of old pictures, and it's so engaging for her to explain what
farm a given picture was taking on, and who is in the picture. Things like
that. She really enjoys it. I don't understand how this isn't built into
FaceTime or something similar. Seems like such an obvious thing.

Shameless plug, and be warned it's quite bandwidth intense, in true disruptive
start-up fashion it lacks everything, like optimization and security:
[https://github.com/vegardx/abuela](https://github.com/vegardx/abuela)

~~~
CameronBanga
Too complicated I think. Needs to be an easy install AND run on a raspberry
pi.

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vegardx
Takes two minutes to install if you know what you're doing.

The whole point here wasn't to make a slick single click install, but a
prototype that works. And then iterate from there.

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sfj
Not exactly the same, but checkout Tabletop Simulator. It's a 3d play
environment which can play very many board games, card games etc. The steam
workshop must have tens of thousands of popular board games created within it.

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zzo38computer
It won't even load the root page at all for me (the connection times out),
although if I want to play chess I can just use any communication, even just
by telephone. I do not even have a camera on my computer and I don't use video
chat, but even by IRC, telephone, radio, anyone, you can easily play chess by
computer. However, card games (such as poker) are more difficult to do.

I might later make a telnet service for playing a card game (including also
tarot cards, mahjong, Fanucci, etc), so that you can play a card game too,
rather than only a chess game.

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pmontra
I open a video call on Skype or Jitsi when playing with friends on
boardgamearena. I don't play chess, I play go and never opened a video call
when playing with a friend. Of course no video call with strangers. Yet a
video call with a large field of view could help to prevent cheating. The
setup to gey help from a bot becomes more complex.

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11235813213455
Interesting, why did you use a canvas for the chess board? I would probably
have used svg/html and mouse events

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shireboy
It’s just an embedded board from chessbase. I just dropped their embed in and
didn’t write that part. If it looks like there’s interest I may write my own
that is more mobile friendly.

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saghul
Good work!

You may whant to set this override on the iframe API:
[https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-
meet/blob/master/interface_co...](https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-
meet/blob/master/interface_config.js#L209)

~~~
shireboy
Nice. That confused some users. Will definitely be doing that. Thanks!

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awb
My kids entered the same room and can see each other but when the first person
selects a blitz game type it automatically matches them against a random
person.

So they're playing two different games while watching each other.

The room name is sufficiently long and unique. What might we be doing wrong?

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shireboy
Hey, thanks again for reporting this. I _think_ I have it sorted now. I wrote
my own chess room.

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awb
Awesome! It worked for us today. Thanks for putting this together :)

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sixQuarks
I want to create a similar one with multiple videos for poker. Would this be
possible with Jitsi?

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jvm_
My friends and I played euchre at Playok.com and then just made our own Euchre
room on Jit.si. We even had a main room and then sub rooms 00, 01, 02 and
you'd just join the main room, get assigned a table and jit.si room and then
just join both.

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askvictor
Will it scale if a lot of people start using? Is the video P2P or via a
server?

~~~
shireboy
We’ll see :). The chat is jitsi’s hosted service. The chess is chessbase’s
embedded app. So all server work is 3rd parties who are used to some load. The
site itself is just a client side webpage hosted at glitch.me. Could put a CDN
in front if it took off.

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emmelaich
Can I make a request here ...

Does anyone know a good app or website for private poker games?

Must support up to 12 players.

I know of pokerrr2 and apparently pokerstars had something (but requires
facebook ugh).

~~~
justinchen
Donkhouse.com

~~~
emmelaich
Thanks!, will check it out.

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quezzle
My son is playing chess with his grandfather by sending SMS photos of the
board to each other.

Yes there’s any number of chess apps. This felt more personal and real.

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fourseventy
How the times have changed! I used to play with my grandfather but we played
chess-by-mail using special chess postcards where you can write your move and
the board position!

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Onesleepygenius
Woah.

Made one similar a few days ago.

tablegame.org

It requires login, and is based on webrtc.

Free for up to 6 people.

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pmontra
The home page has no information about which games it supports and how it
works. You could screen record a session, post it to YouTube and embed it in
the page.

~~~
GPUboy
Thanks! We'll def do that. Do you have any suggestions on what games should be
added?

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pmontra
I'm not 100% sure about how it works but I guess that you can't include a
board game ff you don't have any kind of agreements with either the authors or
the publishers. Traditional games should be fine.

Maybe if your video technology is good you can work at an agreement with the
sites that already have them. A video chat could be something they could pay
for.

~~~
GPUboy
Thanks! Yes we were only looking at public domain games at first.

A partnership would be great, since we could cross promote, and I'm sure a lot
of people are looking to try new games.

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caseyf7
Would love to see this for card games

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steerablesafe
Idea: video chat and just a deck of cards, without tying the rules.

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hauxir
My product Kosmi does exactly this, mentioned above.

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sgt
Spun my CPU's up to high when playing this in Safari.

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ahnick
Don't get me wrong, I love chess, but I really can't see the chess and video
chat demographics overlapping much. I mean I think there is a reason why ICC
never added such an option to their client.

~~~
shireboy
Hah, maybe not. But My dad and daughter used it to play today, and my kids
have used it to play with cousins. Maybe not competitive play, but for
quarantined folks, I wanted to replicate playing at a park bench.

~~~
ahnick
That makes a lot of sense. I can see it working well in those scenarios and
sounds like it is already a hit. Kudos! :)

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aabbcc1241
Good to see demo on how far can we go with Jitsi

~~~
shireboy
Yeah, pretty sweet to be able to drop in video chat with just a few lines of
javascript. I just wish it worked better in Safari and FF.

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hunter2_
Why does this remind me of a certain other game...

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DeathArrow
Doesn't work properly in mobile Edge.

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tgdn
How is this different than lichess?

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askvictor
one-to-one (no login required, just a shared room name), no rankings, includes
video chat. Simpler and more personal.

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villgax
Video chat works across all browsers mobile or PC as of today, author seems to
have been asleep for long.

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drzel
in a room called chess lets try it

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drzel
[https://rootshirechess.glitch.me/?roomname=chess&view=room](https://rootshirechess.glitch.me/?roomname=chess&view=room)

