Greetings. I had a few questions about Chess, and some possible bug reports as well.

First, regarding bugs, mostly in the Chess context menu displayed on the web:

1. While a game is in progress, there are 4 options called "Change to view #%d". I suppose here %d should be replaced by a number so you know what option switches to which view.
2. There is an option to import/export a FEN string, with the shortcut ctrl o. However, on the web client, the corresponding context menu option seems to instead perform the ctrl p shortcut, thus allowing you to propose a stream instead of performing the action you wanted.
3. Technically not a bug, but just a design flaw in my opinion. When a checkmate occurs, the game just ends without allowing you to look at the board one last time or at least the game history. Could you make it so the shortcut shift h still works so you can at least export the final game history? Possibly leaving the board on the screen would be nice as well, but I understand that might cause some problems.
4. There are of course still some situations where illegal castling is allowed. This sometimes creates conflicts between players, who sometimes don't have bad intentions and don't immediately realize that the move they performed was a bug. First, should I send the history of such games so it can be corrected or is that not very useful? Second, would it be possible to add a shortcut to undo the last move? Of course, both players would have to agree for this to be performed, but in addition to preventing such bugs where both players realized the mistake, it can also be very helpful when newbies are practicing Chess.
5. Finally, this was already asked several times, but can you finally fix it so that when abandoning a game your opponent does not need to accept the request? This should only be the case for draw games. When abandoning, it should be exclusively your choice. In addition, I have not tested this with the latest updates, but in the past there was a display bug where if you do abandon the game and it is accepted, the wrong winner is announced. So if white abandons and the opponent accepts, the game would display that the white have won while it should of course be the opposite.
6. This last one is pretty minor, but if a Chess game is saved and restored, clocks are incorrectly displayed when pressing C, usually in some very high and inaccurate numbers.

Thanks for a great game and for your time spent making it even better.

My solution for your problem is to bookmark a game which would allow you to go back to that game at any given point. Maybe it would allow you to play the game from that saved point. This solution is used for talking books but there is no reason why it wouldn't work for a PR game, and maybe make it more interesting. You could mark the game at the end but you may need say a 10 second pause before a games end.

I didn't quite understand. I talked about many things in my post, so not completely sure which problem you were trying to solve, but I assume the problem I mentioned about being unable to view the game history after it is complete. Bookmarking something is done where something has a clear beginning and end so you can keep your position. However, you obviously don't know when a game of Chess is going to end until that happens. Yes, in some situations this is more obvious then others, but there is no universal clear point to save the game history. We already have saving of tables as well as the ability to export our history, of course thanks to Aminiel for implementing these great features, we just don't have a way to do so after the game is over.

Also is it not possible to add bot option in the chess? That is the one thing most needed in the chess nowadays.

The main reason given for no bots is huge usage of server resources, since Chess AI probably requires a powerful server to handle. 1 player possibly might not be an issue, but let's say 10 people playing with a bot could be problematic. However, I do wonder was the option of client side bots considered similar to the way it is done in connect four and reversi? That could be a possible way to do it even though they have a minor limitation of not working on the web client.

Hello,

Thank you for your suggestions.

1. It seems that, in fact, the 1-4 view thing is partially broken, even on the windows client. I should have a look at that.
2. It will be fixed in the next server update; that's really a stupid one. However, it let me discover that, in fact, the FEN export is broken; it will also be fixed in the next update.
3. I'll try to do something for it; I find that's a very good suggestion
4. If you can send some game histories where castling is allowed but shouldn't, yes, it will certainly be useful.
5. I thought I had fixed this one long time ago. I'll check.
6. Is this permanent or only lasts a few seconds after the table is restored ? Because as far as I have tried, everything comes back in order after a short while, so it isn't that important.

About bots, I were thinking about doing the same thing as C4 and Reversi, but I'm uncertain about my right to include an external chess engine in the client distribution. I don't have the time and experience to write one myself, if you want a sufficiently decent opponent to play with.

While we are talking about chess, would you be interested in new options among the following ?

• 4 or 6 player blitz, a.k.a. american chess, where when you capture a piece, you can give it to your parthner to put it on his/her board
• Ping-pong blitz, where every second used for your thinking is added to the opponent's clock
• Random start position a.k.a. 960
• Uncommon/special pieces

Hello,
There are several open sourced chess engines strong enough to beat World chess champions, and they can be customised to play at a lower strength.
I recommend you to check Stockfish, for example.
https://stockfishchess.org/

Hi. Thanks as always for a very detailed and helpful answer. In fact, what are the 4 views when spectating? 1 from the white perspective, 2 from black, so what are 3 and 4 supposed to do? In regards to clocks, it seems to only happen if doing this in a game with time limit enabled, but yes it's possible it comes back to normal after some time and in that case it's not so important indeed. The options you proposed seem interesting, even if I never heard it before, but this can be said about many of the variants Playroom proposes making games very unique. Finally, I conclude with a short transcript of an incorrect castle:
1. Pd2-d4. pd7-d6
2. Ng1-f3. nb8-c6
3. Bc1-f4. ng8-f6
4. Pe2-e3. bc8-e6
5. Nf3-g5. be6-f5
6. Pd4-d5. nc6-e5
7. Bf4xe5. pd6xe5
8. Pf2-f4. nf6xd5
9. Pf4xe5. nd5xe3
10. Qd1-h5. ne3xc2+
11. O-O-O.

Here, the white king was in Check, and the Playroom still allowed the castle when of course this should not happen.
Thanks also to Soundarya for proposing a possible open source solution, since I don't personally have so much experience with Chess engines, but with so many Chess programs out there both free and paid there is probably something that can universaly be used without any complicated licencing involved.
Edit: I also wanted to mention one more thing. Would it be too complicated to inform about the castle type in the history as well? What I mean, in Serbian we call the E1-g1 castle a short one and E1-C1 a long one, I believe in English those are castle on the king's side and on the queen's side. So instead of just saying white castles, it could be more useful if it said white castles on the king's side or in the other case on the queen's side so it can be a little faster and avoid having to manually check.

Hi.

Thanks for the great suggestions, Nikola. On the 5th point: the message displayed is still wrong, although the result is correctly reflected in the stats.

Really like the suggested variants Aminiel. The first is also known as bughouse I think, and 960 is the Fisher random. I haven't played the other two so cannot say much about them. Could I ask how the 4th one works?
Also, it would help if there was an option of time limit. I hope it's not too complicated to introduce. It would make these variants more fun to play with as well.

Putting here another game history where castling is illegal, if it helps, thanks Dayan for a quick help with the same.
Explanation below,

1. Pe2-e4. pe7-e6
2. Pd2-d4. pd7-d5
3. Pe4-e5. pc7-c5
4. Pc2-c3. nb8-c6
5. Ng1-f3. qd8-b6
6. Bf1-d3. pc5xd4
7. Pc3xd4. nc6-b4
8. Bd3-c2. nb4xc2+
9. Qd1xc2. qb6-b5
10. O-O.

White should not be able to castle here, as queen b5 targets f1, the square which king passes through.
This is a second scenario where castling is illegal

Thank you for your two histories. It will for sure help me fixing the illegal castling.

About the views 3 and 4, in fact, it was for a second board, in case you were playing a 4 player blitz. It has never been implemented.