Should additional chess variants be a new project or extend chess?

[ghan42]

I'd like to develop some (perhaps many) public domain chess variants. Some of them are just setup different from chess. But others would require significantly different rules. Would these variants be better as their own projects? Or should they extend chess as variants?

[Victoria_La]

should be separate project. Chess is well known game and has very little ambiguity about the rules.

[junibegood]

There is no right or wrong answer here (unless BGA admins give their opinion, in that case they're always right of course )

I see two reasons whay a separate project would be better :

• Players who want to play a regular chess game may not accidentally engage in a variant
• Chess is locked away from arena and tournaments on BGA. By going separate, your variants may have access to competitive play

A single project with all variants as options is, in my opinion, enough. I suppose the variants you have in mind are different starting position, or maybe replacing some pieces by "fairy" variants. I think that would make these variants too similar to one another to require a separate project for each.

[ghan42]

Thanks for the input. I agree with what's been said. The existing chess game does have 1 variant already implemented (960 chess aka Fischer-random), which is part of why I was was considering starting from there and just adding more variants.

I suppose the variants you have in mind are different starting position, or maybe replacing some pieces by "fairy" variants. I think that would make these variants too similar to one another to require a separate project for each.

Some variations are more different from FIDE chess than just 'what if rooks could also move like knights' or whatever. There are different board shapes and player counts, you can have hidden information or randomization, or any number of things. People have been playing chess-like games for millennia. Most of those games are pretty terrible, but there is a lot to pull from. Would you think that categories of variant should be separate projects? I don't know how much interest there will be in these. So unless a significant number of people are playing them, it kinda makes sense to me that they all just be smooshed together as one project. I also recognize that I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, since I haven't coded anything yet

[Victoria_La]

For purposes of maintainanance it better in one project, so just create another project and ad your variants there.
And also can some "preferences" on user side - on how chess piecess looks like - bunch of option can be there too