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Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikhas (Post 398870)

A big "confirm" button below the board then? Or clicking anywhere *on* the board to confirm, and outside of the board to abort? I think
kanishou already proposed that, together with the reverse piece move (which I definitely want to try out, at a later point).

There are two schools of thought currently: http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve...id_false_moves

- You tap directly a destination square and then the pieces that can go there get highlighted. You tap on the desired piece and done. Very interesting but I'm not aware of other software doing this so let's be prepared for experimentation and initial user resistance.

- you tap first on the piece and then tap twice in the destination square. If the first tap goes to the wrong destination you still can tap on the right one more carefully, twice.

Any preference?

ok to the rest of points about boot up time and snappy feeling.

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

After some more solitaire chess games...

I believe most of the reliability problems are consequence of the information gatherd by the finger press. In portrait mode and with your hand is going to be the thumb, most of the times without nail help. I guess the resistive screen still has to calculate one dot and in many situations when playing fast this can go over the edge of the desired square.

Frequently that square is not valid, resulting in a no-move. The.piece perhaps doesn't get highlighted anymore and you need to start again. Or maybe that square is valid, and you get a missed move.

After playing a bit youcan see that things are just fine even at comfortable blitz speed. For fast blitz and lightining you want to use the stylus. But all this makes sense, actually.

Still, the method to avoid false moves is needed, if only to reassure the user that a game won't be messed just because of one missed square.

It also looks like having the board more on the top, right below the status area, would be better handling the device and playing with one hand. This way the squares on the bottom (the ones you hit most of the times) are reached more comfortably. My reason to separate the board from the top was to avoid false clicks to the menu and status area but probably this is a minor problem.

Good that we can start having discussion and progress based on real testing! And all this only one month after I sent the first post proposing the idea of an online chess game. Amazing!

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil (Post 399038)

It also looks like having the board more on the top, right below the status area, would be better handling the device and playing with one hand. This way the squares on the bottom (the ones you hit most of the times) are reached more comfortably. My reason to separate the board from the top was to avoid false clicks to the menu and status area but probably this is a minor problem.

Wow, nice observation. And I can confirm this! If I use the device in portrait mode with my left hand I can reach row 3-8 easily, but not 1-2. It probably depends a lot on the size of your hands! So we need two (three?) layouts, I guess:

A)

Code:

.-----------------------.

|      Player info      |

|-----------------------|

|                       |

|                       |

|                       |

|        board          |

|                       |

|                       |

|                       |

|-----------------------|

|            move info  |

'-----------------------'

Code:

.-----------------------.

|                       |

|                       |

|                       |

|        board          |

|                       |

|                       |

|                       |

|-----------------------|

|      Player info      |

|-----------------------|

|            move info  |

'-----------------------'

Code:

.-----------------------.

|      Player info      |

|-----------------------|

|            move info  |

|-----------------------|

|                       |

|                       |

|                       |

|        board          |

|                       |

|                       |

|                       |

'-----------------------'

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Why 2-3? Just B looks enough.

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikhas (Post 399082)

would it be a lot of work implementing all three possibilities and make it a menu option to decide which to use? That way we (those who have devices) can test and we can ask people which is most comfortable (usability tests). In the final application I would only include the best option though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil (Post 398974)

- You tap directly a destination square and then the pieces that can go there get highlighted. You tap on the desired piece and done. Very interesting but I'm not aware of other software doing this so let's be prepared for experimentation and initial user resistance.

- you tap first on the piece and then tap twice in the destination square. If the first tap goes to the wrong destination you still can tap on the right one more carefully, twice.

Any preference?

I would discard the first option as this could be again interpreted as cheating (call me a CSU voter, tbf...)! It's more or less the same as clicking one piece and highlighting possible destination squares. maybe an option in human vs computer or training mode or if agreed. but in a standard internet game not an option at all, imho.

The second option is better, but still not good imo: I'm pretty shure you would get used to that and just double tap quickly everytime you want to move a piece. Although what you should do is tap once, check, and then tap the second time. You might say this then is the users fault, though...

I like mikhas idea of showing a confirm button somewhere outside the board. the time the user needs to get there with his finger might be the time he needs to check if his move was correct. although this might slow moving down, i admit.

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Look what mikhas has been playing with:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Image:Miniatur...-excorcism.png

We started discussing a release aiming at least to Extras-testing concentrating on offline chess. Useful if you miss a board to play with your friend in a bar. Useful also to start getting user feedback about usability and UI improvements, while starting to fight for the online thing.

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Today in Barcelona I jumped on the train. A man sat in front of me and took a magazine from his bag. Blody hell, it was a chess magazine! A real printed chess magazine.

Tomorrow I will meemikhas face to face, I think for the first time (?) and definitely for the first time as Miniature team members.

(PS: I just wanted to write my post 2000 about something nice) ;)

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil (Post 398974)

Option 2 seems most intuitive to me.

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil (Post 400581)

One comment on the screen shot; having the black pieces upside down looks wrong to me. I'd prefer, If possible, to have this as an option and default to them being t'other way up.