yairchu / chess2

A cool multiplayer RTS game based on chess

Chess Chase

Chess-Chase is a multi-player real time strategy game based on the classic game of Chess.

Installing

Installing on macOS and Windows

Download the app from the releases page

Other platforms

• Install Python (version 3.3 or above)
• In your terminal:
• python3 -m pip install kivy --pre --extra-index-url https://kivy.org/downloads/simple/
• python3 -m pip install pystun3
• To run the game type python3 main.py from the game's folder

Playing

Chess Chase is played vs friends over the network.

• Both players need to open the game
• At the top of each player an address such as "BASK DAWN ALAN" will appear
• Such an address can be sent over to the other player via any chat platform
• The other player should type the address to connect

Internals

Networking setup

• During the game its communication is direct peer to peer over UDP (for minimum latency a la RTS games like Starcraft)
• To establish a UDP connection the peers first need to find their external ip address and port, which they do using a STUN service
• To connect without each typing the other's address, they connect to the matching server over HTTP which assigns each player a three word identifier
• When the identifier is entered the game asks the server for the address it represents
• The host also polls the server until a connection is established, and the server tells it the ip address and port of the other player
• Then both players send UDP packets to each other and in such scenario Routers/NAT allow the communication to happen

Building

Building a macOS app

python3 setup.py py2app

# Remove unneeded resources to reduce app size
cd dist
rm Chess\ Chase.app/Contents/Frameworks/lib*.dylib
rm -rf Chess\ Chase.app/Contents/Resources/lib/{tcl,tk}*
rm -r Chess\ Chase.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python3.8/numpy

# Sign and notarize (One needs to join the apple paid developer program for this)
codesign --timestamp -s "Developer ID Application: <YOUR-SIGNING-ID>" -f --deep Chess\ Chase.app
zip -r "chesschase-mac.zip" "Chess Chase.app"
xcrun altool -u <APPLE-ID-EMAIL> -p <APP-SPECIFIC-PASSWORD> --notarize-app --primary-bundle-id org.yairchu.chesschase -f chesschase-mac.zip

To find signing id, run:

security find-identity -v -p codesigning

(this worked for me on macOS 10.14.6 with Python 3.8.2 and kivy v2.0.0rc1)

Building a Windows exe

pip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller -F main.py
copy chess.png dist
copy <PYTHONPATH>\share\sdl2\bin\libpng<VER>.dll dist

Build the iOS app

• Clone a clean project directory without any build artifacts
• Copy the stun python module to the project directory
• Follow the instructions at https://kivy.org/doc/stable/guide/packaging-ios.html and use the clean source directory
• Tick the "Requires full screen" check-box in Xcode's "General" tab
• brew install Nonchalant/appicon/appicon
• Use appicon to generate the icon from a png source and add it in Xcode
• In chess-chase-Info.plist, add a NSCameraUsageDescription field explaining that the app doesn't use the camera, and it's due to kivy

chess2's Issues

[macOS] Hang on quit

Test system: MBP 13.3" 2018 / 10.14.6 / #01dcc210
Steps to reproduce:

1. open dist/Chess 2.app
2. wait until you have established connection / got code.
3. From Chess 2 Menu, click Quit (or Cmd+Q).

Expected:
App should quit

Actual:
App stuck, not responding requiring force quit.