Here are the features we are rolling out with each release. These are in expected order of release, but things may change.
These are not the complete feature list (i.e. stuff like puzzles, daily games, family accounts) will be done as well. But the features in the table below are more urgent.
We will seek community input on the remaining features and there will be ability to prioritize those based on demand.
For the table below, we are setting the priority. Also - these are all highest priority and urgent.
Also, there will be in-between releases for minor elements and bug fixes. This is just an outline of major items.
This is also the release order, does not mean work is not started on any of them. Each has a different amount of work to finish and different internal resources dedicated to it. i.e. Lichess is more work than adding Chess.com time formats, so it releases later.
Thanks Jeff, it’s reassuring to know there is a plan to address these issues/features.
I gotta say, I do wish there was much more transparency up front that the product would be so limited upon release. I really don’t feel like that was communicated at all. I never expected perfection, but to be lacking significant modes and features is a bit of a let down. Speaking for myself, I would have rather waited to receive a product that delivered on everything (or at least most of everything) I signed up for out of the box rather than hopefully at some point in the future.
For what it’s worth, the issues that are most important to me are in 4.0.0. I was super bummed to find I couldn’t even start up a game against my brother, who also got a Chessup 2. And a lack of chess.com bot analysis was also quite disappointing. I’ll be looking forward to the updates and fixes and hope they come soon.
Can you please attach some timelines to the roadmap?
Saving local OTB games has to be a working feature as of right now, but it’s not. Great to know that’ll be fixed, but would also be great to know when approximately.
The thing that I don’t understand is, why the new board doesn’t have the features the older one has. I expected it to have all the older features + new ones. Instead it started at almost zero for the full price and we are expected to wait a few years for the board to be as good as advertised. Until than the board will probably not work anymore and we have to buy another.
I’ll start by saying I truly appreciate the intent and interest. And out of respect for that - I will share the reality of this notion:
We do not open any of our code, but not for the reason people think. It is actually because counting on volunteers for critical functions is not a winning strategy. I am sure people want to volunteer to write fun things like castling for Chess960 (a couple of hours of fun work), but no one wants to volunteer to write test routines, troubleshoot undocumented behavior of a microprocessor, disassemble 3rd party machine code to work around a crash, research WiFi channel regulations and licensing in 72 countries, get online to troubleshoot what broke with the Chess.com API on Christmas day.
Professional staff is required to do this. The worst thing we could do is say “hey guys, we are giving away the fun stuff to some volunteers. I know you got us this far, but I want you to do only the crappy work from here on out. And when the volunteer quits because it was fun for 12 hours, but not for 4,000 hours, I want you do clean up their mess”.
These projects are 20,000+ man-hours of development. Writing the new feature is < 5% of the work. Making something work bulletproof for 100 moves per chess game * 20,000 users * 100 games per user = 200 million times in a row… across every user’s WiFi… that is 95% of the work.
I am not making excuses, we are late with some features and that is on us. I am just explaining why taking volunteers doesn’t work. Writing features to work as a demo is not the bottleneck. Making a feature work 200 million times in a row is what eats time. We have a tremendously talented staff - Average 20 years of experience across our team of developers and designers. We also maintain the 2 highest rated smart board apps (iOS and Android), two embedded smart board platforms, a cloud platform, and a website.
^$2mil crowdfunding campaign, open source promises, >4 years late on delivery (spoiler, it is never delivering). Turns out you need pay dedicated engineers to launch a real product.
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ChessUp utilizes both of these projects - both are amazing products and proof that open source can work with the right conditions. But those conditions are very specific.
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Again - just sharing the reality rather than just blowing off the comment. I am sure you are a great programmer, understand chess concepts, and could write code. But that is not what the bottlenecks are in commercial products.
Thanks a lot for your detailed replies and for providing context in this thread. Would you also be able to address a question about the timelines for the roadmap?
Please prioritize OTB clocks, OTB games saved/export, and OTB save and resume. It’s the main reason for buying the board for me and my wife who play OTB. Thank you.
I was so excited telling my family when ordering the board that we’d be able to analyze any game played on the board, I couldn’t imagine such feature is not available.
It is likely we forecast the next couple out, and as we finish, forecast the next couple, etc.
@Jeff I understand that committing a strict timeline to features way down the road may not be the best choice. In this case, it’d be great to know at least some high level estimates.
E.g. for us to see an update 5.0.0, is that weeks, months or quarters ahead? If you could lay out a more precise timeline for updates 2.0 and 3.0, having at least a month or a quarter attached to the rest would still be a good information to share.
