

Show HN: My 6 Weeks Project, MultiplayerChess.com - diamondhead
http://multiplayerchess.com

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jonp
Very nice. It looks great and seems really easy and intuitive to use.

A few suggestions:

1\. When playing against the AI (on Chrome/Vista) after a move the piece
briefly stays where I put it (not centred on the square; and with two pieces
visible if I capture the opponent's piece). It only properly completes the
move once the AI has moved.

2\. When I promote a pawn it asks me to choose from a set of pieces which are
black, even though I'm playing white. Might be nice to use piece icons of the
same colour as the player.

3\. Are there any open source AI players you could use? I'd be tempted to come
back if there were some reasonable ones, but the current AI player is no
challenge, even for a real amateur player like me.

~~~
diamondhead
thanks for the ideas and suggestions jonp. I asked Oscar Toledo
(<http://nanochess.110mb.com>) permission for use of his javascript ai (a.k.a
1k chess) yesterday, guess I'll use a fork of his work

~~~
metachris
You could also have GNUChess run on the server:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/chess/>

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grammaton
How on earth did you get the domain? I'm shocked that it wasn't already taken
:)

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petervandijck
Do you want a job? :)

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yakto
Forget job, do you want to co-found something? :)

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petervandijck
My email is in my profile page, get in touch (yours isn't yet) :)

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absconditus
<http://lichess.org/>

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JoachimSchipper
Nice. The single-player mode is a bit slow, though (client-side - FF seems
pretty busy.)

[EDIT: also, the AI tries a bit too hard to lose.]

~~~
diamondhead
hi all, I hope that AI won't make your browsers crash. I've disabled its
deeper search, it was accumulating time limit of search after every move.

BTW <https://gist.github.com/889174>

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Your AI does work for me, although I'm still not sure it's not trying to lose.

BTW, have you seen <http://www.turbulence.org/spotlight/thinking/method.html>?
It's not great as a chess AI, but the "wow" factor is definitely there.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
That's really cool. It was strange to see the thinking simplify as the game
progressed, but I guess chess is a game of eliminating possibilities.

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raarky
So, give us the lowdown :)

What did you use, etc?

~~~
ndunn2
Until the original poster gives us more info, you can read the source here:
<http://multiplayerchess.com/mpc.js>

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dbz
You need to allow people to resign. Instead of just letting them leave.

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steg132
great game, feature request: add chat

~~~
noob007
+1

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oomkiller
You should try doing modern renditions of the Yahoo Games card games. They are
all getting really long in the tooth now, and are completely inaccessible (for
disabled people), as they are Java applets. It would be nice to see someone
put together a nice site with classic card games, like Pinochle, Hearts, and
Bridge. There are many older players out there that would even pay monthly for
such a service, for example OKbridge ($100/yr) users. Let me know if you do,
my grandmother and her group of players would be happy to try it out! :)

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psb
From the domain name, I was under the impression that there would be an option
to join a "team" and vote on moves or something like they did for Kasparov vs
world

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ricefield
Seems pretty awesome, I like it! I don't suppose you would consider making
something similar for us go players, would you? ;P

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masylum
I was thinking about doing that for the next node knockout :)

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ricefield
You're awesome. Keep me posted. The go world needs more apps!

~~~
cjbprime
Seems like it'd be easiest to work on extending <http://eidogo.com/>, which is
open source.

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lacker
It's probably a bad idea to put new players into an already-existing game when
someone disconnects. If I win a queen, my opponent will disconnect, and then
everyone else who gets my opponent's position will disconnect after they
realize they're so far down. Just let someone win the game when their opponent
disconnects.

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mraybman
Hi, great work! Very clean and easy to play.

I just played a game against your AI - I should've lost but it got stuck at
the very end. I had a king and 2 blocked pawns, AI had queen, king and 1 pawn.
It should've moved in for a checkmate at that point, but it just kept moving
the king right and left on the spot.

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joebo
Fun. I think the AI is fairly simple. I managed to beat it on the first try. I
typically don't play chess because I thought I was pretty bad. That's one way
to get me to come back though.

Here's the moves: <https://gist.github.com/894826>

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csomar
Good Design and neat execution. I'll just add: I don't know how to play Chess,
I would prefer that I find a tutorial in the site itself that offers the game
rather than looking in Google.

Design Note: It would be better that you add a hover effect. It feels more
user-friendly and realistic.

~~~
zacharycohn
I don't think that's really necessary. It's targeting a niche of people who
want to play chess. If you want to learn, there are plenty of other resources
out there.

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nopassrecover
Fantastic design. Only issue at the moment is people leaving after 3 moves or
seemingly permanently idle, but no doubt that's due to people trying it out.

Great domain by the way! I think this could have massive numbers of users if
you want it to (like other far less appealing chess sites).

~~~
ndunn2
I second the design comment. Extremely easy to jump in and start, no log-in
bs, nothing to get in your way. The minimalist aesthetic is nice as well. If
only I knew how to play chess..

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zipdog
It looks nice. A couple of issues occur when using Opera 11 on Vista. The
pieces are not centered on the square, they're about 5px up and left. And when
pieces move they leave blue or green backing square artefacts for the next
turn.

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jschuur
Seems to not be iPad Mobile Safari compatible. In a singleplayer match, says
it's white's turn, but I can't move pieces (presumably I need to be able to
drag them), and the site doesn't warn m that I don't have a compatible
browser.

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VinzO
With Internet Explorer I see only an empty chessboard. Is it working only wiht
Chrome/FF/Safari?

Just before anyone start a rant on decent browser, this is my office PC and I
can't install anything else than IE :-(

~~~
diamondhead
Which version? It's working with IE7 and IE8 but I haven't tried yet with 9

~~~
VinzO
I tried with IE8

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markkat
Fantastic site. I think I am going to pick up online chess again. Really nice
work.

Could you put some contact info in your about? I'll send some feedback after I
use it for some time.

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sc00ter
Nice work. I just got trounced! Chat would be good, or at least a few
communication buttone ("Nice Move", "I resign" (!) etc). I'm sure some players
would like a game timer.

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moblivu
Great simplistic design! Just a question, I havent done some more twsting but;
is it normal that the game doesn't work on iPad Safari? Do you need to drag
the pieces ?

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amourgh
That looks great diamondhead.I have web game with mutiplayers.can you tell me
please what tools,langauges did you use for MultiplayerChess.com.Thanks in
advance

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impendia
Using Safari on a MacBook, the site briefly flashes a white knight, and then
just a blank, black background where I can do nothing.

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samuel1604
Pretty nice, I did beat the AI pretty easily but I guess that's because you
disabled the deep search. Is the AI made in Javascript?

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burrows
Your rules for a draw are broke.

<http://i.imgur.com/KH91X.jpg>

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Gobitron
When I tried to start a game, it put me in a game that was in progress
already. How can I just start a new game?

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sarp
Great job, tried the single player, it was very slow on Safari and the AI
couldn't beat me :)

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allanchao
When I saw the domain name, I thought it would be about bughouse. Great app
nonetheless!

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albox
I had never finished a chess game before. Well done!

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webholics
Seem like HN killed your site? ;)

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webholics
Ok it's working again. UI looks clean and simple. I would center the layout,
not left align. The AI opponent plays very badly ;)

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zyfo
Sleek and simple interface. Where did you find the AI though? I know you
aren't supposed to play the AI, but it doesn't seem to be aware of anything
happening on the board.

    
    
      1. e4 Nf6 2. Nc3 g6 3. e5 a6 4. exf6 d5 5. fxe7 b5 6. exd8=Q+ Kxd8 7. Nxd5 f6 8. Nxf6 h5 9. Qe2 Nd7 10. Qe8#
    

Also, it would be great if "White/black disconnected" was shown in the session
log as well.

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noob007
Would be great if you added a time limit, like zynga poker

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noduerme
Javascript fail. Crashes Firefox 3.6.16. Screenshot:

<http://tinyurl.com/627mftb>

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bmnbug
Is it just me, or is the computer incredibly bad? I played the AI and I'm
really bad at chess. I beat it easily.

