Notices

We can easily use this: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.6-snapsho...n.html#details

But it doesn't do very much. You probably achieve the same results/performance by connecting to a QTimeLine's signal emission and apply the animation steps directly to a QGraphicsItem. In fact, that's what I naively did to create the fading selection frame: http://gitorious.org/miniature/minia...tem.cc#line126

Then there is of course the Qt Animation Framework: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.6-snapsho...-overview.html
It briefly mentions how to interact with QGraphicsItem, though I haven't tried that yet (it looks a lot like WIP to me).

N8xx support please. I would love to have this in my N800

Well as long as I don't include any pngs or import layer styles from Ps.

This is the way done in many places: visual designers work with the visual tools they master in order to express a visual proposal. Then everybody can discuss about that proposal just by looking at / interacting with a Flash file or something equally easy to access.

In the meantime the developers join the discussion looking at the feasibility of the proposal from a technical point of view, potential drawbacks (e.g. looks good but will give us 3 months of work, will hog the system and will drain the battery, etc).

About running Miniature in the N8*0. There are no official/community plans I'm aware of for porting Qt 4.6 to Diablo. Therefore, either the Mer project gets a Fremantle-ish platform for the N8*0 or someone backports Miniature to the Qt 4.5 bindings available for Diablo or perhaps there are other workarounds.

I agree Miniature would be very interesting in the N8*0 but anyway we need to get it done first in Maemo 5 before thinking of alternatives.

A little status update:
mikhas and myself have just commited quite a bit of code in the area of move logic/ move analyzers. We managed to get a working example of Rooks and Knights. They can be moved by the user and only legal moves are accepted: rooks cannot jump over other pieces, knights can, only pieces of the opposing colour can be captured, etc. If you wanna see it in action, checkout my git branch in our repository:
http://gitorious.org/miniature/miniature/commits/kore

I think it shouldn't be to hard to add the other pieces. So I hope I can do that in the next few days and we will be able to play some real chess in miniature.

cheers
kore

So how can I help :S lol

Make an animation with your preferred tools showing how selecting a piece and moving it to a square looks like. One example for an empty square and one example taking a piece. Be prepared for discussion.

Being the program called Miniature, probably a minimalistic animation will fit. At the end it's for mobile devices and it needs to be good fo fast playing without slowing down the app itself. No pieces fighting and eating each other like in Star Wars.

Some changes proposed to the Miniature roadmap:

- P2P games between 2 players online go up to the next item in the roadmap after we finish the current "Play games online" and before we start with "Chat with your opponent. We are getting more interest and requests about this almost every time we mention the Miniature project to someone. The good news is that some of this interest comes from developers familiar with the technologies involved and keen to contribute some time... We'll see. Also, it come before chatting because we can re-use the same portrait UI. The changes are more in the connectivity side.

- Added Asynchronous P2P chess (via email or SMS?). Yes, the good old correspondence chess with a technology refresh for the XXI century! Most of the UI and backend pieces are there and it's a good format for a mobile chess game, since you can think of your next move e.g. while commuting, waiting for someone, etc.

- Added Real-time P2P chess - 1 device, as proposed by Jukey. You meet a friend, you are in a bar, they don't have a chess board, he doesn't have a compatible/capable device... You still have a chance to play some chess face to face! Miniature needs to be all about playing chess so this scenario makes sense. We need to sort out the visual concept: is it 180 degree rotatio or a neutral zenital graphic? Sketches welcome!

http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve...e_chess_basics cleaned so everybody can see where are we currently.

btw #miniature @ freenode has regular activity, at least I see it when logging in the European evenings. mikhas, korius and tbf are quite regular.

Seeing these designers bored willing to help in something (more concrete than a piec move animation?) I was thinking...

... we had discussed that when we implement the chats, the movement of pieces could be also communicated as a chat comment. Imagine this "conversation" in mikhas' Miniature generated just by playing, not typing anything manually:

We could introduce natural language strings in certain moves e.g. "Time to castle", "Here goes my 1st check", "Pawn promoted: one Queen please!". If you prefer silence then an option in the Settings will be there for you. Anyway we will need an option to disable chatting when we have it.

Anybody willing to take http://wiki.maemo.org/images/f/f0/Screenshot00.png and make a proposal for the chatting look & feel in the space below the board?

If the intention is to have all of Miniature's user interface to be entirely finger friendly, I'd like to make a suggestion.

Since the screen is limited in size perhaps implementing some form of kinetic scrolling for such things as chats, menus, etc. could be an acceptable idea.

You would be able to retain the current layout only that certain parts of the screen could scroll left or right for these added features.