Notices

Guys, seems like you have a nice thing going here. Too bad I am not that into Chess, but I noticed a mention that this could be extended to cover other games as well. That got me interested. I would be up for contributing to making a Backgammon version and even working on a Go version. There really needs to be a version of these as well for N900 and this project could help to jump start the development for those as well.

So, I just wanted to let you know it would be great to have the general stuff done so that it can be used for other similar projects.

To those willing to help on the common parts for other games, you could help by starting to work on such common parts at http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve...e_chess_basics

Or whatever common part you find in the roadmap http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Development#Roadmap

I'll help in "Methods of connectivity to play against human - Bluetooth", since I'm starting something similar for other game, but will take a while, because I don't have much spare time atm

It will be an honor to get BT related patches from the BlueMaemo lead developer!

I don't see much in common between different board games, other than some basic application infrastructure, which would probably be more effectively shared via copy and paste.

I for one am very interested in working on a Go application, so I am keeping an eye on this project to learn from it. But I would rather share code than attempt to work on a board game abstraction layer.

Question: with pacaq and Chessmonk having good looking vectorial boards... do we really need joshua to put his time in another board. I would rather put his creativity in the logo/icon, improving the look&feel of the mockups.

If the square highlighting (or the arrows, whatever we do now) can be also borrowed from these apps I would do just that. Or the movement animations. Let's concentrate the work in whatever doesn't exist and needs to be done.

I went through my current task of defining possible game endings. I was amazed about the amount of possibilities!

Please check whether you still miss a potential game ending at http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve..._after_a_match

An opportunity of contribution for native English speakers (or equivalent) with a clue of chess: proposals for text strings accepted. The shorter the better. The more chess standard vocabulary used the better. Let's make life easy for translators.

First approximation to a Miniature first boot UI:
http://wiki.maemo.org/images/c/cf/Mi...rait-start.png

It is provisional for the offline situation that we have now in the Phase 1. No matter how happy we are with it now it will chance once we are able to connect to FICS.

PS: note the glossy keyboard we got from Matthias. Nice!

If pacaq's arrows are easy to recycle and you are happy with them then we could recycle that code.

Hi, the Miniature project keeps running at an impressive path!

- We have a binary! Thanks Matthias. http://maemo.org/packages/view/miniature/ It's in Fremantle extras-devel and plays chess as good as my very little son (puts pieces in the board, moves them randomly). But it is already useful to see that the board at max size (480 px wide) is usable and quite reliable. I tested with a storm of fast moves to random positions and the right pieces always landed in the squares my subconscious had chosen.

- We have an application icon! Thanks Ekaterina. Without it the packages doesn't show up in the Application Manager (or something) and you need to install via apt-get.

- We have architecture and good technical discussion in the developer list! So good that it escapes my knowledge. But the guys are even providing diagrams so I guess we are in a good path. http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve...t/Architecture

We continue with http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve...e_chess_basics and there are some shortcuts we will take in order to cover the basic functionality faster:

- There is basic move highlighting now and it's fine. We will leave the arrows for later.

- No double tap to select-confirm the landing of pieces. We might not need it at all if the usability of the portrait board is good enough.

- Draws will be assigned whenever there is a reglamentary chance to assign one.

- Pawns will be promoted automatically to Queen.

With these shortcuts we will be able to start earlier with online chess at FICS, which is the immediate real deal.

This is a commitocracy: if you disagree your patches are welcome.