Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

I believe Play, Stop & Rewind are good metaphors in this context.

Using the Figurine Algebraic Notation saves localization hassle and looks easier for newbies.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_notation :

(sorry for missing the Unicode fonts of the chess figures in the quote)

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

There is a new developer interested in contributing to Miniature: Malcolm. Welcome! He is interested in the P2P online use case (playing against a contact without a chess server in between). This is why we have started to work on the Phase 2.x planning.

Phase 2.0: Play P2P online against other Miniature users
Phase 2.1: Play P2P online against non-Miniature users
Phase 2.2: Play over Bluetooth

Phase 3.x Chat with your opponent is the natural continuation. :) Check the updated roadmap.

Feedback welcome, as usual.

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

A new version has been released. It fixes the engine bugs that have been reported so far.

I'd like to ask the reporters to check their reported bugs and confirm that they're fixed (if not, re-open them). Thanks for your feedback, it's appreciated!

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

This is very cool! All in all it looks like you *can* play offline games now, providing that both players know chess rules. :) Just like it happens with a physical board.

En-passant, castling and pawn promotion seem to be solid enough to play. All chess moves are now covered. Still some glitches on legal moves but nothing that you opponent couldn't remind you not to do. While the glitches get fixed....

... now all the attention turns to the UI!

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

Fellas, I have stumbled upon this thread due to curiosity, and the hope that facing a human will be much, much easier then the default setting on the N900, and whilst I haven't really got a clue how your doing it, id like to say thank you for doing it.

So thank you. If we ever get online chess going on the N900, id be more then ready to lose embarrassingly to you all :)

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

mikhas and I had similar thoughts right now in the #miniature IRC channel: we will start working on a next release aiming to reach Extras for the first time.

3 items are missing:

- Play button on each side. No name.

- Chess rules applied. Please play real games with Miniature and report any problems you find. Detecting checks is the current weak point. Weird scenarios around castling and pawn promotion are needed too.

- "Game over" banner after checkmate. For this release is not even essential to detect stalemates or draws.

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

Hi! There are unpolished but satisfactory alternatives already now. Check http://wiki.maemo.org/Chess

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

This evening Iván (of Tracker hacking fame) and I tested Miniature with a real pub-chess game. Overall result: SUCCESS! One hour playing passed away just like that.

Posing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/quimgil/4270188306/
And the real one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/quimgil/4269447455/

He liked the rotations of the game. The display dimming was an interesting side effect, like a polite silent voice telling you to stop thinking and make your move. The game ended abruptly after one hour due to a human mistake but one of us got already enough advantage... The app itself was stable and solid.

The test was very useful to proof the fluent workflow: select piece -> select destination cell -> validate. Iván felt it was natural and useful. In fact he could save his queen once thanks to this. :) Observing him playing was useful to find also a tiny UX improvement.

Please, find a friend and give Miniature a go in real life. Even if it's in Extras-devel and contains some bugs the app behaves quite well with your system. Just enable Extras-devel, download the app and disable Extras-devel again to avoid potentially ugly updates of other apps you might have installed.

Share here the results!

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

How could I miss this: jump directly to 1:28 to meet mikhas and see Miniature's 5 seconds of fame: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq_30AKgVAE

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

My neighbour sister taught me play Chess when I was 12 years old. I am working these years in another city where far away from my native village. So now, I haven't enough to play chess. But I know, I will play chess again after I return home.