Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

I also thought of modular plugin based system. Here is a rough overview of how the components we may need.

Logic:
Game - the logic for a particular game, right now that would be just chess, but other board games could be possible too. (Chess based or other)
Pre-Game - How to find players, select a server or engine

Domain:
Board - Represents the data structure of the board (duh)
Player - information about the other player, like online status, skill level

Communication:
ICS
Bluetooth
Telepathy
Computer Chess Engine - an offline engine should be accessed the same way any online game is, the engine does not have to be in the same task

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Maemo status area is smaller than normal. Why? Either

• Have it on top and live with the lost space. From the Maemo status area middle part is also where you see all buttons normally, such as Resign/Draw/Options.
• Allow and recommend fullscreen.
• Make the small status area a valid use modus operandi. Must keep in mind modifications or different usage from default Maemo status area.
• Allow and recommend portrait mode. Have Maemo status area on top. Not sure how is being dealt with regarding non-default Maemo status area and size of Maemo status area. Does allow more area of screen where X=Y.

This reads like Chinese:

From my memory logs went like:
Black: Source -> Destination (-> denotes normal move without interference)
White: Source +- Destination (+- denotes king is checked)

There was a symbol to show if some piece got killed too but I forgot which one.

Could also show small icon of piece of Source (and killed piece on Destination, or killed piece inbetween Source and Destination with a red stripe through it).

I suggest to resemble that style of logging. It is a mini-log after all. It could be a button too, allowing one to see full log. Allowing logs to be saved seems cool feature too. Although this can be in Settings or Options menu.

What is also confusing to eye is that black and white are written in same color (white) with background same color (black). Instead, use actual color to describe who is black or white. Just like done on board.

Between the times use a clock or stopwatch symbol. Make clear which time is for which player.

What is C60a Spanish (Ruy Lopez)?

Resign/Draw/Options should follow the Maemo theme.

I assume time mode is optionable, or may have high setting not to be taken too seriously.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

The view (GUI) of course will be decoupled from the core.

I think the first step should be a flat 2D view.
But a more fancy 3D look can be added later.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

A fancy 3D look is nice to have, but it should be nothing more than optional.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Agreed, I didn't imply otherwise. Just keep in mind some people prefer a less serious, easy going game of chess.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

I think qgil is on the right path for a simple but functional gui.
Here are my altenative suggestions.

http://wiki.maemo.org/images/c/c1/Mi...lternative.png

comments?

EDIT: I just realised, the black and white should be flipped to match the board.
Or should the board be flipped and my color (here black) should always be facing me?

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Nice. Much better.

Caveat: does not include last move or ability to see log.

Also, show rest of Maemo status bar on left bottom. Or use 2 rows. Clicking there gets to Draw/Resign/Options.

Or show the whole Maemo status bar vertically.

There is also no 'cross' to kill the application.

Good Q. IMO flipped.

23 more suggestions:

Don't use grey on white (top right, the time at Qgil)

Outline to middle. IOW, your 'box' should go little bit down giving Qgil half of the screen, and you the other half.

Actually... let them mirror each other. Your time right bottom, his time right top. Your name left bottom, his name left top. Inbetween is chat log.

Hello
.........Hi
Good move
.........Woosh!

Problem is then those goddamn colors again... I have this problem too with my current desktop (Ubuntu with Humanity theme). Dark gray icons on light gray background. OK... but if I use black background instead of light gray its ugly or not usable, and the black text on light gray is then not usable. Not only black, any color too dark is not usable. A too light color is either much like default light gray, or just ugly. I don't know how to solve this... maybe, in your case, use default theme's colours. We know who is black and who is white because position on screen tells us this. Otherwise a small (inverse) icon behind name is telling. Like this one in attached picture on right part of it, can use the icons, with the it lined out inversed, to add dimension. Screenshot simply from MS Paint.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

You guys should check out Scid's ECO system. It's by far the best opening systematization I've seen. And it's also my personal chess (.pgn files) viewer of choise.

I'd be nice to have a built-in opening database which automatically displays the current opening's name.

http://scid.sourceforge.net/download.html

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Should the last move be part of the chat log?



Why would you want to kill this beautiful app ;)
But yes, good point, how is this handled in other fullscreen apps/games like Bounce? Don't have my N900 yet. I will check the HID guidelines.

Do you mean the board or the player cards?

Yeah, maybe the grey needs to be darker. I do not want it to be black since it is constantly changeing and I do not want to distract from the game.

My player card needs to contain the buttons which is why it is bigger. But maybe we have buttons / actions for the other plyer too.

Could be good. I will see how it looks.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Is the engine smart enough to determine whether it's worthy to accept an offered draw (by the player)? This shouldn't really be difficult to implement; if the position is evaluated as superior to the player, then the draw offer should be accepted; however, if the position is evaluated as inferior or equal to the player, then the draw offer should be declined.

There should be different degrees of the engine's "will" to draw (a parameter that should be adjustable for the player): whether the engine will accept a draw if the position is evaluated as equal.

Keep in mind that the engine's evaluation isn't always spot on either!

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Since "Resign" and "Draw" are not commonly used functions during a game, I suggest removing them from the screen. Perhaps a button named "Actions" would be enough.

I also remember a 'pause' function when playing FICS that required the agreement of both players. That should be a far more common action that may be worth of a quick-access button.

my 0.02€

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Makes sense. Allows one to put chat into context.

Background.

Did not understand your statement well enough though.

You on bottom. Opponent up. Always. Reason is you are physically on bottom too (behind the device). If you are white, you are on bottom, and white background on bottom. If you are black, you are on bottom, and black background on bottom.

Background is bold because that was how I interpreted in my last reply. The last part of my post (the part I modified while you were replying) negates this suggestion though...

Ah yes, makes sense, why I not want to have seconds on digital clock. On analog clock I care much less. Maybe use an old fashioned clock instead?

Yes, but his part has the Maemo status stuff. Which is smaller than the buttons.

I modded post while you were replying sorry for that.

IOW:

• Comform to Maemo theme.
• Use color (with around it inverse) to show color user is playing.
• Let them mirror each other.
• Analog clocks.
• In middle chat and log.
• Use chat style as I suggested. There where you see space, put the user's avatar, perhaps downscaled. Not sure if time sth said matters. Maybe X minutes ago is more useful.
• (BTW, where is input for chat??? Where is undo or confirm??? Reason I say is because noobs may play, but also because the 8x8 is maybe too small for touch UI!!)
• For online or offline can use icons too. Not sure.
• For the AD(H)D we allow to hide clock in Options.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

I just say in your quotes of my post how many spelling mistakes I made. I guess I should go to bed...

I will redraw the layout tomorrow.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

I tried to be closer to the Maemo Interface Guidelines.

This could be the normal (not fullscreen) mode:

http://wiki.maemo.org/images/d/de/Mi...ormal_mode.jpg

Maybe the white and black background was not the best idea. Instead, I think we should go with chess conventions, my color is the color faceing me. In this case white. If I am black, the board and the player display would be switched. So qgil would be on the left side in the area above the chat.

I also went with 'Me' instead of my name, since normally I know who I am. ;)

The Options will be visible when tapping the title bar:
http://wiki.maemo.org/images/5/52/Mi...al_options.jpg

Double tapping the board or choosing the menu option would switch the game to fullscreen mode. Basicly the same layout but without the titlebar.

The moves are integrated into the normal chat flow and are displayed as normal text, eg 'Pawn to B2', 'Check', 'Castling king's side'.


For the other ideas:
In a 'noob' mode, my last move would display a cancel option in the chat log for 5 seconds.
Analog clocks could be an option, I was just to lazy to draw some right now ;)


Also, the last position of the last moved piece could be still visible as a ghosted image.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

This is evolving great!

- It needs to be clear which player has the move now. Addison did something basic yet efficient at http://images.appshopper.com/screenshots/300/592059.jpg highlighting the timer of the active player.

- Something that I'd say is essential no matter whether it's for novices or experts is the type of game: time, increment rated/unrated... See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pa..._FreeChess.png

- Maybe the timer should be a bit bigger?

- "Me" has also the advantage of leaving more space for opponents with long nicknames. The "VS." doesn't need to be in the middle.


An idea comes to mind:

- Landscape = easy going chess. You have time to chat. You don't mind a slightly smaller screen. "King to B2" is fine.

- Portrait = tough chess. Chatting is a distraction. Biggest screen possible. KB2 please, and why not annotated history of the game, scores, opening type, related stats and other technical data useful to play better and learn.

Also portrait is better for displaying games, where chatting is not a primary use case and the sole action of watching / reviewing a game shows a user advanced or willing to be advanced in chess.

It's the standard chess notation. Get any newspapers with a chess quiz and you will see it, leave alone all the chess books. But why not an easier talk in landscape mode.

The simple and standard way to show the last mov in a computer chess game is with simple squares, as Addison did at http://images.appshopper.com/screenshots/300/592059.jpg

Usually it's optional. Could be default in Landscape (I always play with it enabled and I'd go for it as default in Portrait as well).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruy_Lopez and actually the screenshot should have been exactly the position shown in that page, corresponding to 3. Bb5.

It would be nice if Crafty/Scid would give you optionally the opening in Portrait mode as the first moves are made. Although this could considered cheating...

Speaking of cheating, Miniature should be a fair online chess player. Maybe it's me, but things like requesting a pause in chronometred a game or being able to have a move back go against the basics of chess. If you think this is too strict we could go again for allowing them in Landscape but not really in Portrait.

:) Vertical status area for a landscape mode is something that never came to my mind. It's an interesting idea (seriously, would solve the problem of showing the biggest board in landscape mode but a) I believe you should cheat to the accelerometers and b) the menu windows would show up vertical as well. Anyway, horizontal status area with option to go fullscreen is simpler and better.

Sure, Scid is one of the references and I have used it for many years. In fact the screenshot of my mockup is made with Scid and the "c60A Spanish (Ruy Lopez)" reference was provided by this old and lovely app.

Scid powering the Display Games mode in Portrait is something I'm looking forward.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

What about defining the content of the first release - v0.0.1?

For instance. We are chasing the 1st use case: Play games at http://www.freechess.org/ . A first iteration should have the basic UI in place, demonstrated without any Internet connection or local engine.

REQUIRED
- Qt 4.6 for Maemo 5.
- Maemo 5 UI within possibilties (the bindings are alpha now)
- Portrait mode.
- Pieces can be moved manually.
- Only legal moves are possible.
- "Black/White Wins!" banner after a mat.

OPTIONAL
- Resign.
- Pawn promotion, piece selection.
- Draw request/accept.
- Timer

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Okay, like I mentioned before, it's been 10 years since I last went to chess.net

Back then it was just as much a social event as it was at getting a good evening of chess in with other players.

It had a chat room, simple way of requesting a game (time/settings), there was private chat within the game as well as spectators who also could participate, rankings, fairness in ratings for those who disconnect, take back moves, excellent sound and voice statements (God, I hope they haven't changed those), bots, tournaments, etc,.

Just a whole chess virtual world that was very enjoyable.

For brainstorming and ideas, I would definitely suggest checking it out for inspiration rather than rifle off many ideas that might be difficult to visualize or hard to remember.

My main request outside of changing the coloring and pieces would be game scoring in real time. It's something that's still not featured in many chess engine releases to this day.

And no, I don't think that it's considered to be cheating like qgil mentioned. Not at all.

In fact, I think it offers more of a chess commentary experience throughout the game than anything else.

Oh wait, this is only going to be released for Maemo 5?

This thread can now burn for all I care! *lol*

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

I am porting my simple PGN viewer to Maemo, and it's almost finished. It does nothing but display PGN files, but it looks good and has really good finger usability. I will blog about it as soon as I find time to finish it up, but these shots should already give the idea:

http://dborg.files.wordpress.com/200...026-125943.png

http://dborg.files.wordpress.com/200...026-125721.png

Those are SVG pieces, so they can be used for any display configuration. Feel free to use them. The board is scalable too, but I'm using pixmaps for the wood grain pattern.

It's an interesting idea to have a chess client just for displaying games. Perhaps it would even be a suitable addition for Chessmonk (which is the name of my utility), I will have to think that over. I also had the OCR idea right before I saw qgil mentioning it. I wonder how reliable it could be, but it's definitely worth investigating. It would have saved me a lot of hassle when I was still studying the game.

I believe that making a good app for chess playing on the phone will be much harder, partly because the complexity of chess servers can't simply be ignored (you may get in trouble with other players if you do...). But also for the reason you mentioned, that it requires really fast and precise input. Good luck to anyone who tackles this problem though. :)

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Addison, I guess one problem with online chess is to offer a common UX across different servers with (perhaps) different features using different protocols or APIs. Should we aim to squeeze the compatibility with one serve first or go first to get the basics about the 3-4 most popular servers?

Let's aim to get the basics of freechess.org, leaving the door open to both ways. Hopefully we will reach this first goal and hopefully in the meantime we will get enough feedback and contributions to know where to go next.

Actually Qt 4.6 is currently not even in good shape for Maemo 5! I believe nobody has tried it with OS2008 and the Qt team has explicitely said that it's out of their scope. The reason for this choice (see my first posts here) is compatibility with different platforms sporting Qt 4.6 at some point next year.

I have no idea about how easy will it be to get 4.6 to the N8*0 or port the game to a previous Qt version. Keeping things simple (e.g. not relying in OpenGL ES for graphics) will definitely help.

kanishou, Chessmonk looks very sweet! Congratulations for the work done.I guess is http://code.google.com/p/chessmonk/

Knowing that this will exists for Maemo takes away the immediate pressure to have such features in Minuature.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

From my experience, forget knights.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Your pgn viewer looks great, and I will certainly try it out when it is finished.

The nice thing about SCID is that it has a zillion and one features, can be used as a chess database (SCID stands for Shaun's Chess Internet Database, or something like that), can be used to play on FICS, is in active development (has a mailing list with comments every day) etc. The people writing it are Debian folk, I think. (Shaun disappeared a few years ago, but was tracked down and gave permission for the newer people to takeover the project, which they have been doing for a couple of years now.) And it is set up to work with chess computing engines too. Maybe you all would rather work from scratch instead of using more than a decade of development experience, though.

But something like a simple PGN viewer would make me personally pretty happy! Some of my favorite chess software is incredibly simple and has very few features.

Xboard, mentioned above, is one of the oldest fast chess interfaces out there. I think that it can't display more than one game at a time, though, which is one of the things I was hoping for beyond a pgn reader.

I have no experience with the python chess games mentioned in the thread; apparently they are not widely popular in the FICS/ICC world.

I suppose everyone in this thread knows about stuff like Timeseal and the necessity to correct for net lag? Just thought I'd mention it to make sure.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Well, I might not be able to think of everything at once. It would be great to have a lot of games loaded and be able to flip from one to another instantly. It would be nice to have some sort of screen showing the names of the opponents and if you clicked on Kasparov-Topolov you would see the current state of the game and could easily display the game score, and you could do that with a large number of the participants in the tournament.

Players might be watching the Chess Olympiads, with literally hundreds of players.

Something that is not done now that would be innovative would be to be able to display information from several chess sites at once, so you could see lots of commentary from all over. That might require too big a screen, however.

Webcams are common these days, and if they are available you would want to have that video somewhere.

What people like to do with chess databases is see the history of the opening, so you know that this variant of the Ruy was played a bunch of times in 1997 but not much since then, and that move 13 is a theoretical novelty. People like to see computer analysis as well.

If you are playing on FICS, you of course want to see the window showing graphically who is challenging under what time.

So, there's a lot you could wish for in a viewer.

I hear that ICC has "cheat detectors," increasingly important as players learn to integrate computers into their online play. My impression is that ICC has one technique that detects impossibly rapid moves.

I'm not exactly sure how that works, because I am a firm believer in the 'premove' feature, which means you can indicate beforehand the move you will make as soon as your opponent moves, and your interface makes the move instantly after the opponent moves. To me, this is essential in fast games.

These are some random ideas, of varying quality and in no order.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Thanks geneven for priceless feedback.

I suggested Knights only to see if we can save Qt code work. That is for andybehr to decide since I'm useless at that level.

And for sure we shouldn't reinvent what Scid and others have been providing for years. It was good news to know that there are active maintainers again! They even came up with a Pocket version: http://scid.sourceforge.net/scidpocket.html

Scid lacks finger UI and apparently also chat, so there is a possibility for nice combination. I have linked to the dependences at http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature#Technology_selections , also for Crafty. I have no clue about how well separated they have engine and UI layers but hopefully someone will be able to see and decide.

I have also started to list priorities in the roadmap: http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature#Features_and_roadmap

andybehr, where do you think we should aim for a first shot?

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

I have removed the link to the mailing list at http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature#Project_status since there are no posts and at least yesterday I was the only one subscribed.

Let's add the link to the list when it's active. I guess at some point we will use that list for pure development discussion, using Talk for announcements and discussion of new features & user feedback.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

The first thing we should do is get up a basic QT project... I am still wrestling with the SDK, :)

Phase 1

• Setup development environment
• Implementing the Board. The Board represents the current state of the game and is equivalent to a real physical chess board. It has no knowledge of legal or illegal moves. For now it will only accept chess pieces. The board does not know about the future or the past, any logic will be in the Game.
• Creating a basic GUI to display the Board and the pieces. A piece can be moved by tapping on it and then tapping on the destination.

Phase 2

• Implement a basic chess Game adapter. The basic Game adapter knows the starting position of every piece and can determine if a move was legal. The concept of alternating player moves is also implemented here. It also recognizes checkmate, stalemate and threefold repetition thus ending the game.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

It hasn't been mentioned in this thread explicitly, but there are hundreds of chess engines available.

Usually these are distributed as binaries and the vast majority of those binaries have been compiled for Windows.

But there are still many engines whose source code is available, which can be compiled for Linux and used with Winboard- and/or UCI-compatible interfaces.

I hope that Miniature will be written in such a way that it's as easy to switch engines as it is on a desktop PC. And, for a very different experience than described by Quim initially, I hope it will take the extra step to allow two computer engines to play each other, thus enabling computer chess tournaments.

Also, unlike some of those who have posted earlier, I like to change the fonts used for the chess pieces and to alter the colors on the board with some regularity. It's fine by me if the first version has one set of colors and one design of chess pieces. But please don't omit the logic to be able to change these as the program is developed further.

After all, what's the satisfaction in refereeing a computer-chess tournament if every board looks the same?

Thanks,

Roger S

PS: Yes the Winboard link above is really to an improved-Winboard and not the original-Winboard information site. But the improvements described there ought to be considered for the Miniature requirements list I think.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Good plan, Andy.

Does it make sense for you to start targeting the Portrait mode? Do you agree on the specialization of modes portrait/landscape proposed some posts above?

Just in case it helps:

- Preview of Qt for Maemo Developers Guide
- The Qt 4.6 packages are about to land in extras-devel
- Official Qt 4.6 port for Maemo 5, including mailing list for developer feedback.

There is more Qt related documentation at http://forum.nokia.com/maemo but I don't know how relevant it is for your work e.g. QSolitaire Game Example and Noughts and Crosses Game Example.

RogerS, I have added your feedback to http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature#Roadmap

- Customization
- Download and select different boards and pieces.
- Download and select different engines.

Do you really need this on a mobile device? I hope nobody has strong requirements on system responsiveness and power management with a CPU busy with 2 chess engines fighting each other...

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

I have started playing with the portrait mode: http://wiki.maemo.org/Image:Miniatur...e-portrait.png

- Keeping the status area because it's overall useful and doesn't each that much space.

- No borders in the board. You loose the coordinates and some beauty but this is how you get the maximum surface possible for the squares = better usability.

- The position of the board is very usable (I have tried viewing the image in full screen in the N900). Your thumb reaches all the squares.

- The area above the board: I still believe that seeing the players ratings next to the names is important. Bigger timers can't hurt. Should we put there the basic info of the game? "15 0 Rated Standard"

- What to put in the area below the board? We can't assume an engine in the first phases of development and all the info should come from FICS. Of course in the lack of better ideas we have the notation of the game.

And some operational details producing mockups:

- Please let's create 800 x 480 images of the pure screen. This way they can be checked easily in the real environment (in the N900 via Image Viewer) and it's easier to manipulate them to cut/paste elements from other mockups. There will be time for the marketing adding the N900 around. ;)

- png better than jpeg to keep all the "real" flat colors of the screen.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

I think portrait or landscape will not be that much different in the first iteration. I think the GUI that renders the actual board should not care about that. So yes we can start with portrait. ;)
But I am not sure if the app should behave differently just because you turn the device. The mode of the app should not change because of orientation.

I agree, I like the coordinates, but I don't like they space the take up. Maybe we could superimpose them over the board on demand?


Yes, I forgotten to add that.

We can display the status messages the FICS server sends. In the beginning that might helpful for debuging.

I don't have my N900 yet. ;) I just wanted to pretend a little. But yes, I agree, the screenshoots get to big with the N900 around it. I just looks cool...

I will not be able to work on this again before the weekend. But I don't have to be alone in programming. I think one or two more programmers would be a good idea. So anyone want to help?

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Typing in portrait mode on the N900 is going to be a pain no matter how. In practice players willing to type (chat) are going to stay in landscape.

Chatting is less frequent in blitz / lightning chess for obvious reasons. There is where you need more real estate in the board to have less risk os mistakes in moves. Also you want to save as many unnecessary processes as possible to save CPU and bandwidth, improving the responsiveness of the system when every tenth of a second count.

So yes, I believe it makes sense to have specialized functions for portrait and landscape. I'm not sure at all about changing orintation during a game, but at least the difference should be clear before starting.

I wil keep promoting the project in order to find more developers. Most of the developers I know come from the GNOME side, though...

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Hey kanishou!

Let me first say, WOW! Those screen shots of yours look absolutely gooey! :D

I sure hope you'll be able to package together a version for us lowly N8x0 owners. :)

Even if the chess project in this thread won't support Maemo 4, your viewer would be more than enough to keep me happy!

Also, is it possible to include some type of "chess puzzles" feature with this current build as well? It sounds doubtful but thought I would ask anyway.

@qgil
I really like the way you think! :D

Your ideas are pretty much spot on and there's not that much for me to offer. Seems like you already know the direction you want to take with this.

I do like the concept of the board being in the middle of the screen, especially in landscape mode. This way you could have player information on each side of the board creating an overall visual balance to the screen instead of one side being too overloaded.

Great stuff so far!

This was posted quite some time ago, but for those who didn't catch a couple of random posts in the gaming forum, I'll mention it again.

There's Bobby Fisher Teaches Chess
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/6051/bobby.png

And also Fritz 2.51 (available now as freeware)
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/1149/fritz.png

Both of these play quite well in Dosbox with the correct settings.

Just something for others to consider while we all patiently wait the 19 months for this current chess project to get a crap turd, beta release. *lol*

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Addison, thanks for the comments. Well, a product manager or a marketing guy risks to be totally useless (incapable of coding or designing properly) unless he finds ways to be actually useful in a project. This is what I try, here and in my job. ;)

I got a suggestion from a kind soul in the Qt team: the Qt Declarative UI could be a good path to combine code simplicity purely working in the UI layer + fast responsive bling + cross-platform code.

http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/author/qtdeclarative

The binaries have been just released and apparently you can start playing with it with Qt Creator.

The Declarative UI API is part of the Qt Kinetic project.

Perhaps we can even get not only the advice of a good soul but also some hands with free time and chess love... :)

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Thanks!

I don't think I will port it to Diablo, but if Mer adds the new hildon API functions, it should just work.

This is probably out of scope for Chessmonk, in fact I see very little code that could be shared between a chess puzzle app and a PGN viewer, other than the board display. Aside from that the UI would be completely different, so I would just make it a stand-alone app.


But the sides are much easier to reach with a single thumb, and I think that's important for a fast-paced chess game.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

A feature I really like in eboard is automatic pawn promotion. In the rare case that you don't want to promote to a queen, you press a button before-hand. This is much less intrusive and faster than popping up a dialog for something which gets the same response in 98% of the cases.

This is harder to do in a mobile UI, since you wouldn't want to have the "piece to promote to" picker button on the UI permanently.

Requesting a draw shouldn't be hidden behind the application menu in my opinion. I lost many no-increment games because I had no quick access to a draw offer with other clients, when I could have claimed a draw due to repetition or insufficient material.

Please don't put chess engine output in the match UI, as I am pretty confident that this classifies as cheating. Even the score. Evaluating the current position is also a chess skill.

Are you planning to offer direct access to the telnet console? Unfortunately servers such as FICS rarely work too well without in my experience. Which is partly why I didn't find the prospect of working on such applications very tempting.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

I agree about the cheating. Many many times I thought I was "winning" a game but then I lost. Then scid would tell me how bad I was doing already when I thought I had an advantage.

And this helped me to play better much more than a real time score telling me already "Man, wake up!!" :)

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Kanishou, you kept me thinking about the draw request button in the main UI or behind the menu. My personal conclusion: still better in the menu. There is two clicks away (Menu - Request draw). In the main UI the button is always there... but precisely because of this you might press it accidentaly, so a "Confirm" dialog would be probably recommended. That's two clicks again, and now the button takes space in the main UI that could be used for something more useful most of the times.

telnet console. It shows a lot of nformation and it is your door to plenty of commands. But in reality, why do you needed? What useful information is giving you? During the game or between games? Also what actions are you quering through it? During the game or between games?

Depending on the answers to these questions we will see whether the telnet window is a full separate window more for landscape mode (text input friendly) or if it's taking some real estate in the area below the board in portrait mode (for instant reading while playing games.

Automatic Queen for pawn promotioin sounds good. Perhaps a simple setting to start with? I have only used the knight or another piece in Chess exercises or giving some mor hope to my little son. ;)

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Addison, about the board in the middle in landscape mode. Actually my first sketches with pensil and paper were done that way. However, as soon as I jumped to Gimp and realistic images seen from the device itself I abandoned the concept.

I don't think the problem is having the board at reach (with the N900 that is not a big issue). It's the text strings that are more constrained in two thin areas than in one area wider. You get a user with long nickname and the single text area in a side cdan handle it. If you have two thin areas you will start having double trouble. The chances or loosing valuable space are also double.

Besiden, you can have a remote checkbox in the settings allowing you to have the board in the left, useful if you are left-handed.

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

A quick suggestion:
What if we use the keyboard to make our moves, too? like pressing C5D4 would move piece C5 to D4. This would make it much faster and accurate, probably.
I realize that there is supposed to be a chat, but typing a message could be activated by tapping the chat bar.

Good job, so far!

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

I don't see how typing "c Fn+t d Fn+r" is faster. :)

About accuracy, I have commented that probably a way to solve this is:

1. One tap highlights the piece to move.
-- If the tap went to the wrong piece just tap again.
2. Next tap highlights the aimed square.
-- "ok" style highlight (e.g. blue) if the move is legal
-- "wrong" style highlight (e.g. red) if the move is ilegal
-- if the tap went to the wrong square just tap again
3. Next tap moves the piece to the desired square.

Easier done than said. Comments?

Re: Contributors needed: the killer free chess game for Maemo
 

Autopromote to Queen is a must, as suggested. Qgil's description of making a move is probably the best way on a tablet. It's way too slow for 3 min or faster chess, but as I said, I don't think tablets are really usable for fast chess, which I define as 3 min and faster.

It's nice to have a choice of chessboard colors and styles. I will never use a board unless it looks pretty standard, and telling the light colored pieces from the dark colored pieces is important :) Of course, one huge advantage of Internet play is that you and your opponent can be looking at completely different chess sets.

Computer chess is really not fun unless you happen to have a sophisticated program that sacs like Tal; that would be interesting. Computer chess IS useful for analyzing games you are watching online, to answer the age-old question: Who's winning?

The ability to set up positions is essential. Say you are looking at a positions with just pawns, kings and knights; you don't want to have to play from the beginning to get there.

Couldn't you just have a completely separate window for chatting? I haven't read some of the comments closely. (Trivia: on ICC, channel 97 is occupied by many political fanatics who mostly talk politics and rarely play chess!) Disclosure: I worked for ICC for a few years and was a member for many.

As qgil mentions, seeing a player's rating is important. I primarily use a Linux program called Jin for playing chess, and I often have a problem in that I can't see the rating of players who have very long names, because the rating displays on the same line.

For faster games, it would sure be handy to have a sound warning to remind the player that only a user-defined interval of time is left for him to make his moves. Example: a three-minute warning, for longer games.