Enhancing the variants editor

  I've been trying to make variants lately. And it's so infurating that there are many features not available that I need. Such as,

• Bigger board sizes. We are currently limited to 14x14-and it sometimes it feels tiny. And it is annoying.
• Koth squares. Why can't we have Koth squares that only apply to a certain color?
• More players. I don't think I have to explain this one.
• Different lives. Right now both checks have to be the same.  Why?
• Atomic range. Should'nt we be able to control the radius of atomic?
• Zombies. Like, in stories, zombies seek shelter in the morning. So, why not have a "timer" for zombies? So that for a certain period of time zombies are active and another period of time they just disappear?

That's all I can think of for now. Thx for reading!

Half of these are already possible and the other half has roundabouts.

Which are possible?

its avaliable

How?

Responding to your points one by one:

• Bigger board sizes likely wouldn't result in a very good mobile experience, or a PC experience, for that matter. There is an extremely limited amount of situations where anything larger than 14x14 would be necessary. There are ways to use exploits to make a larger board but the CGA team does not endorse this practice.
• Not a bad suggestion, but there are ways to make this kind of game work without color-specific KOTH squares. 
• Custom games with 4 players already take forever to fill up as is. The concept of more players has been explored through chess.com sponsored projects such as 8PC but they had to shut down their website a while back and interest has been declining since.
• Lives do not have to be the same. You can modify the FEN4 to change individual player lives, and this is an intentional feature that is already implemented.
• I guess this is also not a bad suggestion? Again, there are limited scenarios where it would be necessary though.
• This is starting to get into complex mechanics territory where it would feel like making a video game rather than making a simple-to-use and simple-to-understand interface.

Let me try to combat every single one of your points.

1. I think even 14x14 is too big for almost all variants, and is ONLY practical if chess.com had >4 players supported. Like, there is a reason why NONE of my creation's boards exceed 10x10. You don't need that.

KoTH squares: Circumvent the issue. Do something like Acheron, or Self-destruction.

More Players: Yay, for non-standard FFA games it takes about 10 xonnaanums to get 1 match, I wonder how long 8 will take! If player count is 6, that makes custom FFA positions awfully hard to make.

Atomic Range: the current is already too vast and measures like a meat wall like in Barricade is used. Experienced creators can and will circumvent this issue.

Zombies: Laby 6724 wants to say hi

fen4 is avaliable here

and you see the "{'lives': (3,3,3,3)}" right?

change the 3's for diffent N-check

i can do this https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/76393789 where the zombies lose 4 pawns for 3 lives

Well maybe he wants more players so there can be more bots. Like maybe we can have 4 players teaming with 4 bots (that's a bad example).

@imchesspro0930, I was making a variant that needed seperate Koth squares!

make a royal pawn..?

Test it to see if there are any ways to circumvent it.

perhaps he trying to make orda

so why not skip that and see Chak lol

What are 'separate KOTH squares' lol

Zombies aren't actually 'zombies', really; just AI bots that are conveniently named 'zombies'. That's like saying since baby oil is called 'baby oil' it has to come from babies in some sense 😅

Squares that only is Koth for a side

@Cmeregeorge but what do you think about the limited piece selection the variant editor offers? I don’t see boards larger than 14x14 being useful without additional pieces, especially long-range ones.