Devlog 8

Sorry again for the long devlog, some things took a bit longer than I expected. Anyways, icons/glyphs have been added in this devlog. I’ve also fixed some issues with move backtracking. Additional classifications such as miss and great have been added, which took a while since I had to do a lot of refactors to store all the data in cache, and I also didn’t realize I sometimes was tracking the evaluations for the next moves, not the ones just played, which took a while

New classifications

Miss: Miss is when the previous player makes a bad move, but the next player fails to capitalize on it causing the evaluation to drop back to near where it was before.

Great: Great moves are the only moves in the position that work, provided that the outcome is drawn or winning and you are not already winning had you not played the move. It compares 2 lines of stockfish to evaluate the evaluation difference and check for the conditions outlined above.

Roadmap

• Stockfish Web Worker
• Chessboard/Gameplay
• Basic Classifications
• Opening Names
• Evaluation Bar
• Site Styling
• Board Controls
• Importing from other sources (FEN, PGN, Chess.com, etc.,)
• Playback Controls
• Board Themes/Styles
• Miss and Great moves
• History View (In Progress)
• Full Game Review/Engine Analysis (In Progress)
• Play In Person
• Play Against Engine
• Custom Position Setup
• Brilliant Moves

Devlog 7

Lots of QOL features and fixes added today, i’ve added a basic view of move history, and added a settings page where you can change the theme of the website or board. Next, I do want to work on features that do not involve the game review, such as pass and play or engine play.

Move History

You can now properly go through a game’s moves and view all played moves in the side pane.

Themes

Website theming has been added, alongside being able to choose the colors you would like the board to be.

Roadmap

• Stockfish Web Worker
• Chessboard/Gameplay
• Basic Classifications
• Opening Names
• Evaluation Bar
• Site Styling
• Board Controls
• Importing from other sources (FEN, PGN, Chess.com, etc.,)
• Playback Controls
• Board Themes/Styles
• History View (In Progress)
• Full Game Review/Engine Analysis (In Progress)
• Play In Person
• Play Against Engine
• Custom Position Setup
• Advanced Classifications (Miss, Great, Brilliant)

Devlog 6

Second devlog today, this is more of an extension of the previous devlog since a lot of features were not fully polished yet. Since then move playback has been added and I also added a game review container. Most of the logic has now been implemented, all thats left now is a little polish and styling. The only logic thats left is trying to find a way to add proper move history and advanced classifications. I also attached a demo video this time since I forgot to last devlog.

Move Playback

It is now possible to use arrows to traverse forwards and backwards if a PGN file is imported.

Game Review Container

I added a little side container which will be used to show the stats of the game review. Currently it only shows the opening and move feedback, but it will be expanded to show accuracies and a full breakdown of the analysis and position similar to chess.com.

Roadmap

• Stockfish Web Worker
• Chessboard/Gameplay
• Basic Classifications
• Opening Names
• Evaluation Bar
• Site Styling
• Board Controls
• Importing from other sources (FEN, PGN, Chess.com, etc.,)
• Playback Controls
• History View
• Board Themes/Styles
• Play In Person
• Play Against Engine
• Custom Position Setup
• Advanced Classifications (Miss, Great, Brilliant)

Changelog

• 0e4db3c
• e2552b0

Devlog 5

Sorry for the long devlog, some things took longer than expected. First I decided to waste time trying to improve the UI until I remembered I suck at design and just decided to revert to the original design. Then I spent forever wondering why my input textbox would not work properly just for me to change e.target.value to e.currentTarget.value. Although I guess where would the fun be if there was no struggle. Anyways, here are the features I added.

Board Controls

It is now possible to flip the board and go forwards and backwards through moves.

Importing from other sources

This one took a bit of time, but now you can import games from Chess.com, or provide your own PGN/FEN. Later on I’ll probably also add Lichess as an import source as well.

Roadmap

• Stockfish Web Worker
• Chessboard/Gameplay
• Basic Classifications
• Opening Names
• Evaluation Bar
• Site Styling
• Board Controls
• Importing from other sources (FEN, PGN, Chess.com, Lichess, etc.,) (In Progress)
• Playback/History Controls (In Progress)
• Board Themes/Styles
• Play In Person
• Play Against Engine
• Custom Position Setup
• Advanced Classifications (Miss, Great, Brilliant)

Devlog 4

Site Styling

Site styling has been added in this commit, and it also comes with light/dark mode. The evaluation bar has also been added, and is responsive based on the win probability formula.

Roadmap

• Stockfish Web Worker
• Chessboard/Gameplay
• Basic Classifications
• Opening Names
• Evaluation Bar
• Site Styling
• Board Themes/Styles
• Play In Person
• Play Against Engine
• Playback/History Controls
• Importing from other sources (FEN, PGN, Chess.com, Lichess, etc.,)
• Custom Position Setup
• Advanced Classifications (Miss, Great, Brilliant)

Devlog 3

Move Classifications

Move classifications have finally been added. I thought it wouldn’t take this long but instead I spent hours trying to deal with react asynchronous state and trying to coordinate different hooks to play along nicely. Thankfully it works properly now (hopefully).

The classifications added are best, excellent, good, inaccuracy, mistake, blunder, and theory. Opening names have also been added as well.

Next Steps

Next, I’ll work on making the site actually look pretty and have functionality. Importing games should also come next after that. Towards the end i’ll add other classifications as well such as miss, great, and brilliant, however, I expect them to be more difficult as they have slightly stricter classifications.

Devlog 2

Playable Chess!

There is now a playable UI to play Chess games. This was done using a mix of chess.js for the logic and react-chessboard for the UI. Most of the logic was handled by the board, however click/drag to move took some time to add. There is also positional evaluations and engine feedback now.

Next Steps

Next, I plan on creating the actual site design and controls. I also want to add a way to import games from sites like chess.com, and have the ability to load a full game rather than just a position. Move classification is also something that should be implemented soon.

Demo Video

Devlog 1

I started work on Tempo, a chess analysis site to review your games. Chess engines such as Stockfish are easily self-hostable anyways, so there is no reason for sites like chess.com to limit game analysis to 1 per day.

What’s New

Added move analysis using Stockfish, which is fully selfhosted. Figuring out web workers and UCI was pretty time consuming, but eventually I got the hang of it and figured it out.

Next Steps

Next, I plan to work on creating the chessboard and site UI. Later I’ll add move classifications such as “Blunder”, “Mistake”, “Excellent”, etc. Maybe i’ll add “Brilliant” moves, but there seems to be no clear definition of one other than “a good sacrifice”.