achess.js

Chess tournament (Arena format) organizer using Node.js, Mongodb and Express. In this design the server acts as a "middleman" thereby simplfying state-restoration when the player disconnects --> reconnects.

Live demo

Project was deployed directly from github with Heroku here.

Build instructions

Windows

1. Install MongoDB
2. Install node.js and npm
3. Make sure that the "Path" environment variable has the entries for MongoDB and npm (Mine has C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.2\bin;C:\Users\avaidya\AppData\Roaming\npm)
4. Install bower through npm

$ cd "C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.2\bin"  (the path will change depending upon your installation folder and version)
$ mongod.exe

You may also want to install git for easy checkout. And then from a different command-prompt checkout, build and run the project in a following way,

$ git clone https://github.com/grunfeld/achess.git  # or download and extract the achess folder from github
$ cd achess
$ npm install
$ bower install
$ node achess.js

Ubuntu

1. Install MongoDB
2. Install node and npm
3. Install Bower through npm

MongoDB runs as a service in the background (sudo service mongodb start). The build instructions for the web-app are then same as those for the Windows.

$ git clone https://github.com/grunfeld/achess.git  # or download and extract the achess folder from github
$ cd achess
$ npm install
$ bower install
$ node achess.js

IMPORTANT NOTE - chessboard.js bower repository problem

chessboard.js's bower repository only contains chessboard.js file. So the bower_components needs this update after the install.

$ cd public/bower_components/chessboardjs
$ cp -r ../../chessboardjs/* .

views/layout.hbs refers to public/chessboardjs folder instead of public/bower_components for this very reason.

How to play?

1. Server starts at http://localhost:3333/
2. First create an account by the name "admin" and logout. Only admin can start the tournament.
3. The next time when you log-in as an admin, you will see a red button to start the tournament. Click on that and logout.
4. Create a bunch of player accounts. These players can now participate in the tournament.

Thanks!

1. chess.js
2. chessboard.js
3. gamehub.io
4. Garbochess JS
5. realchess

The project was inspired by lichess.org's tournament format.