Could someone make me a Chess game with no AI if I paid them?

As someone who mostly plays Chess 960 I think this looks really cool! I would love to try this. It would just be hard to remember what everything can do, at least at first.

Hi - I just wanted to offer a couple of words of advice, as a computer game developer.  (I'm not offering to take on this project as unfortunately I don't have the time.)  Firstly, unless money is no object to you, get a quote for the total price of the project, payable on completion.  I wouldn't agree to pay somebody an hourly rate, especially if the developer cannot tell you precisely how long it's going to take.  Secondly, I would strongly recommend only hiring somebody who has previous experience of making an online multiplayer game.  There is a massive difference between making an online game, and making an online multiplayer game, and without wanting to offend anybody, any developer who thinks "that's probably only a minor implementation detail" really does not know what they are talking about, and is in for a big shock.   

May I suggest that you take a look at the 'jobs'  forums on fgl.com where you will find a lot of game developers hang out.

Well I had my hopes up..... Personally as long as it don't cost more than $100-150. I would be happy. I'm not even sure what a good price, to ask of them would be. To be honest.

I think I understand everything that's been explained for me. Thank you all a lot for all the info. I really appreciate it. So from what I'm gathering. Making a two player game without AI is easy. Not necessarily very quick to do, but easy. The main hard part is putting a two player game online?

So can I ask one of you if this site could make, making the game faster? Mainly could rules be coded?(it says they can be if you know how to program them) Because this site makes hosting, & playing two player, very easy. Would someone (even Sqod if you can quote it to some degree) be able to use this sites PBM system(what ever that means) to make and host the game for me?

http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/

As a developer, I looked at the programming language on that site, it looks like something from the 70's, it would be hard to find a modern day programmer who would be willing to learn and code with that I think.

http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/devguide.html#gamecode

150 dollars? Wow... 

I don't think any programmer would be willing to create your game for such little money.

Actually, maybe it's not that bad, there is a working sample for chess itself

http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/includes/chess.txt

You may be able to start with that, get it working, then play around with it attempting to add the new pieces, board and any rules

Zillions of Games might be of interest. There already tons of chess variants for it.

I was curious as to what other sites might be out there and I ran into Board Game Arena, there is a platform to host your own games as well.

http://en.boardgamearena.com/#!doc/Studio

AUTHORITATIVE ANSWER:

Dammit, I'm a web developer. Quite good, actually. I have 3 years of professional web development experience and solid software development skills. I'm certain I could do what you want in a reasonable timeframe. But to be frank, this is a lot of work I'd have to do (in my free time) and while it does look interesting I don't think anyone skilled enough to do it would move a finger for under 1000 $ cash in hand (this is a low estimate) as this doesn't require just the frontend JavaScript part but also some AJAX or Comet/Push backend/server implementation to exchange the moves reliably, which, can be quite some fuss.

BTW, what's with the weird layout with pieces outside of the board? I didn't read it all, too much text.

Save yourself the effort and money: Make a screen shot of the thing and tell your friend to do the same then use Microsoft Paint to edit in the moves that you send each other in some notation system via Facebook or whatever. Hey its very crude but its FREE. 

I tend to agree with the guy above, for the money it will cost you you'd be better off making do with some non-programming workaround. You could use microsoft excel or something and cut and paste the images to move them.

             So your in the same position as NASCAR.  Where do you find sponcers   Get 7 more friends at $150. ea, and give it to Benzo.

Here's a 10x10 board I made for you, no pieces on it, yet, though:

http://jsfiddle.net/13ezk8kh/1/

Looks cute, huh?

If you cutted out your pieces as pictures in say 60x60 Pixels as transparent PNG graphics, I could set them up on the board. And, perhaps, make them moveable sometime.

Also, give a name for each piece.

Is this a 14 x 12 board though?!

What's the naming convention for the squares!?

Just some interim comments...

I'm just starting to look into the references posted. If that site has code that merely needs to be modified for number of squares, piece icons, and rule checking, that could go very fast. The resulting board might be restricted to that one site, however.

As I said, you can always find other programmers, and many will be faster than I am, though not cheaper unless you find somebody who will code it for free. Currently I am working only a few hours a week, so I have plenty of time and little money, and I do want some recent experience behind me for not only my resume but for an oDesk rating, too, so I am highly motivated, not to mention that I'm obsessed with chess and chess-like games. I am very well qualified, academically, in years of experience, in number of languages, etc.

You could always just post moves in text via a chat program, and each of you can then update your own boards at home, move-by-move.

I agree that it could cost hundreds of dollars, most likely over $150, but again, I am currently looking at that site you mentioned. If it goes fast enough, and if Benzodiazepine doesn't volunteer to do it for free in the mean time, then I might just offer to do it for a flat rate of around $150.

Note that this is how it would look when you used WinBoard as a client:

So if you don't want a turn-based server for the general public, but just want to play 'live' with your friend, why don't you just use WinBoard with the p2p connection adapter to connect with each other?

Note that WinBoard does allow you to configure the piece graphics. (You would have to supply them as Windows .bmp files, though.) So if you are not happy with WinBoard's standard pieces, you could always supply your own images for the exo-pieces you use.

Note that to make WinBoard look this way I just started it in Game Viewer mode with the 'Additional options'

-pieceToCharTable "PNBRQJG.OW..U.....D..LKpnbrqjg.ow..u.....d..lk" -boardWidth 12 -boardHeight 14

and then pasted the position in it with the FEN

*oul********/w****jj****w/*rgnbqkbngr*/*ppdppppdpp*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*10*/*PPDPPPPDPP*/*RGNBQKBNGR*/W****JJ****W/*OUL******** w KQkq - 0 1

Ace569er:

One thing you could do yourself that would be very easy and would cut the cost of paying a programmer is to cut out all those icons you need for the pieces, into a separate file for each, with the same number of pixels on each file. No programming is needed for that, just a little practice with a free editor like IrfanView or (God forbid) Microsoft Paint, and some tedious work.

I'd wagger that HGMueller's WinBoard is superior to anything in this thread.

Not by its looks though. But by the fact that all you need to do is set it up and be done with it. No silly programmers = no money spent.

I looked at several of those links, and I agree with Benzodiazepine: WinBoard combined with bitmap files that you create yourself from your existing image file with p2p would do the trick nicely, with no need to involve a programmer. Great find, HGMuller! I was totally unfamiliar with WinBoard.

As for chess variants (http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/), they said they have to add your image files to their site, but other than that minor inconvenience, that looks like a good way to go, too. Their custom language for board game development sounds good to me.

No matter which way you go, though, somebody's going to have to chop up your image file into icons, one icon per piece type.