Kevin Pacey wrote on Mon, Aug 8, 2016 02:16 AM UTC:
Hi Fergus.
A big barrier to people starting to play chess variants more often (especially novel ones) may be the low or non-existent production of fairy (non-chess) piece types, and/or boards (other than 8x8 size), since they may want to be able to play a particular variant offline, or perhaps have a [decorative] chess variant set (even if plastic) that may occasionally interest guests who notice it.
As far as CVP goes, Game Courier is good (even essential) since many variants can be tried, in case members ever tire of their favourites (do many who play regularly just stick to a small number of tried & true ones normally?). I haven't figured out yet whether, say, 5 minute live server-style variant game play is currently supported or easy to perform (if I even have the machine capability or computer savy that may be required). I'm fine with slow correspondence style play, if I return to it eventually, but I suspect many people out there on the internet prefer server-like fast same day time controls. Having many more rule-enforcing variant presets would also be cool, as might be having chess variant engine(s) available directly on CVP, but I know that's hoping for a lot. Some people might have trouble navigating their way around CVP to webpages of interest, with the current setup, but I've been able to find my way eventually to things of interest. One thing I'm not sure of is whether Diagram Designer's webpage should be mentioned somehow in the main menu, or a secondary menu page to it. A guest may not find out about it unless he decides to try out being a contributor, and Diagram Designer is a cool feature once one sees all of the fairy piece sets to choose from when diagramming.
Hi Fergus.
A big barrier to people starting to play chess variants more often (especially novel ones) may be the low or non-existent production of fairy (non-chess) piece types, and/or boards (other than 8x8 size), since they may want to be able to play a particular variant offline, or perhaps have a [decorative] chess variant set (even if plastic) that may occasionally interest guests who notice it.
As far as CVP goes, Game Courier is good (even essential) since many variants can be tried, in case members ever tire of their favourites (do many who play regularly just stick to a small number of tried & true ones normally?). I haven't figured out yet whether, say, 5 minute live server-style variant game play is currently supported or easy to perform (if I even have the machine capability or computer savy that may be required). I'm fine with slow correspondence style play, if I return to it eventually, but I suspect many people out there on the internet prefer server-like fast same day time controls. Having many more rule-enforcing variant presets would also be cool, as might be having chess variant engine(s) available directly on CVP, but I know that's hoping for a lot. Some people might have trouble navigating their way around CVP to webpages of interest, with the current setup, but I've been able to find my way eventually to things of interest. One thing I'm not sure of is whether Diagram Designer's webpage should be mentioned somehow in the main menu, or a secondary menu page to it. A guest may not find out about it unless he decides to try out being a contributor, and Diagram Designer is a cool feature once one sees all of the fairy piece sets to choose from when diagramming.