Variant pages

[benjaminpjones]

Currently, the only option is to link to an ongoing game.

For example, govariants.com/variants/baduk

Each page could have a blurb on the rules, screenshots, and a create game form. Maybe instead of screenshots, an analysis board (see #13) and/or example game.

[merowin]

I would like to work on this in future, and have some ideas on how this could be structured. What do you think of the following?

New page available from nav-bar called "Tutorial" or maybe "Rules"

Users can select a variant that they want to learn about. Then the page contains rules explanations and demo boards where users can try it out by playing moves.

The rules explanations could be divided into modules that are potentially reusable by multiple variants (and have their own components). For example a module about parallel moves could be included in both pages for Parallel and for Fractional.

Nice-to-have: cross-reference links between module sections

We'll need to keep these updated though, whenever we change the rules of a variant.

[JonKo314]

Sounds like a lot of work, but also very nice!

[benjaminpjones]

Awesome! I think that plan sounds good to me :)

When I wrote this issue, all I had in mind was a page with:

• Description and/or links to resources like Sensei's library
• game creation form (shouldn't be hard to pull this from the home page)
• example game (more work, but could be useful to have these for testing anyway)

I didn't think much about how it should be linked from the main page, but menu item, as you suggested, sounds nice. Or potentially a link near the game creation form on the home page after you've selected the variant.

---

I should say, I dont feel strongly about any details of these pages. The main use case I envisioned was to be able to share new variants:

I just added Quantum Go to the website! Check it out! https://govariants.com/variants/quantum

[merowin]

Ah, so each variant should get their own page then. I was thinking of one page where users can select a variant, but that wouldn't be easily linked.

[benjaminpjones]

That's what I had in mind at least, but if it's preferable to have all this on one page, maybe we can support linking with query params?

https://govariants.com/rules?variant=quantum

And that would automatically set the selector to "quantum".

[merowin]

I'm not sure if its preferable, but I think it should be one page that's linked from the navbar. We could use a similar structure as this site: https://gamerules.com/browse-all-rules/

[mgrider]

Is someone is still working on this?

Here's a checklist for which variants have rules pages that I could find just by trying to plug the name into the URL. I also included the short description for each one.

• Baduk
  Traditional game of Baduk a.k.a. Go, Weiqi
  Surround stones to capture them
  Secure more territory + captures to win
• Capture
  Baduk but the first player who captures a stone wins
• Chess
  Baduk with different types of stones
  the goal is to capture a specific stone
• Drift
  Baduk, but the entire board drifts on every turn (What does this mean?!)
• Fractional - Seems like it's missing some details: How many colors are there per player (or total?), for example.
  Multiplayer Baduk with multicolored stones and parallel moves
• Freeze
  Baduk but after an Atari, stones can't be captured
• Keima
  Baduk but players play two moves that must form a Keima (Knight's move) shape
• One Color
  Baduk with obfuscated stone colors
• Parallel
  Short description is useless, IMO: Multiplayer Baduk with parallel moves
• Phantom
  Baduk but other players stones are invisible
• Pyramid
  Baduk with pyramid scoring
  Center is worth most points, edge the least
• Quantum
  Two boards whose stones are entangled
• SFractional
  Stones have a secondary colour that also requires liberties to avoid capture.
• Tetris
  Baduk but players can't play Tetris shapes
• Thue-morse
  Baduk with move order according to Thue-Morse sequence

I think the simplest possible version of a rules page should have the above content (with my comments removed, and links to the full rules page if one exists). IMO, such a page should get added to the site and navigation ASAP!

Other ideas and opinions:

• Would be great to link to some example games (and maybe that "variant demo" page) on each of the rules detail pages.
• IMO, it's not necessary to be able to create a new game from these rules pages. Everyone reading one will know how to get back to the homepage and create a new game.
• It would be ideal if each variant's rules are in some easily editable format (markdown seems good), so that anyone could put in a PR to edit one.

[merowin]

Hello, thank you for the checklist!
I'm planning to add more detailed rule descriptions. I've been hesitant to add navigation to these because I'm not sure yet how the variant pages should ultimately look like, and because we don't have a lot of rule descriptions to show off yet.

It would be ideal if each variant's rules are in some easily editable format (markdown seems good), so that anyone could put in a PR to edit one.

Good points, and thanks to @benjaminpjones feedback, this is the case currently. If you want to take a look at the markdown: https://github.com/govariantsteam/govariants/tree/main/packages/shared/src/templates

My thinking is that once the detailed description of a variants rules are accessible, maybe we don't need the short description any more.

[merowin]

We could put the demo board next to the rules. My thinking is that users can immediately try playing some moves. Here's a quick mock how it would look like:

There's definetely some layout problems here, e.g. the seats are off-screen, but I think that can be improved. And on mobile the right column would move below.