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Show HN: Family Chess: Play across firewalls and Internet cultures (github.com)

58 points by kelvinquee ↗ HN
Hi HN! I built a simple chess game so that my son in Singapore can play chess with his grandfather in China.

Why? There is currently no service or open source software that has all of the following:

* All processing and assets on a single server (Critical to workaround a firewall) * No email account required (Chinese Internet services typically login via WeChat) * Works on Android browser * Simple to install and config

I built it, together with Claude Code, using simple and boring technologies (Django + Client-side JS). I hope that when you use it, you will find it simple to understand (everything is done server-side), deploy, play, and maybe even hack. :)

Live demo: https://family-chess.quee.org (Please be gentle, it's a tiny 2GB VPS!)

5 comments

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rd
This is awesome! Very smooth. I love when people build things to solve their own problems. Hope your son and grandfather enjoy the games :)
utopiah
Nice but AFAICT one can self-host lichess https://github.com/lichess-org/lila so I'd imagine based on how active it is, how inclusive it is (including languages like Chinese) I would provide some comparison with it. In terms of long term maintenance I have a hard time, and sorry to be so negative, to imagine it will last longer solely based on the size of the existing community.

PS: even has container images, e.g. https://github.com/lichess-org/lila-docker so before I could finish writing this message I had my own instance running.

spapas82
This is very good. One recommendation would be to include a docker image so people can run it easily!
pepa65
It would be nice if you can click on the piece you'd like to move, and then click on the square you'd like to move it too. Currently there seems to be some selecting and then dragging involved..?