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

I'm going to hijack this thread for a single post only because it's the most active chess thread here.

I've added 31 new pieces and boards to Eboard since it only comes with 3 after installation.

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/9577/boards.png

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/4651/desertk.png

They need to go in

/usr/share/eboard/

while in root.

The only file that needs to be overwritten is
eboard_themes.conf

Sorry I don't have a command to do this since I don't know any coding. If anyone knows the command line to copy all of these files over, could you post for others?

I'm also trying to package together a compilation of sounds as well but I'm running into a little difficulty.

Under Preferences, I can choose the sounds but I'm not getting anything from them.

It's stating that I need Device and Filename, sox must be installed under the play WAV option along with
Device: /dev/dsp

Anyone here care enough about me to take a look at this?

@qgil
What are you thoughts on building a perfect port of Scid?

Cheers!

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

That looks promising. I will check that out.

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

you made me play chess again!
the onboard chess game isnt really finger friendly, it expects a tap grag action for moving your piece.

to be friendly, the ui needs the tap..tap really and for beginners should highlight valid end points when you first tap a piece.

great that this is being discussed :D

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

Wow. The N900's 3430 chipset as the power for the AI of a chess game.... Frankly, my chess skills are so bad, you could use the discrete chips from Pong and it would still kick my *****.

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

If you ask me, that perfect port could be the Scid engine with the Miniature UI. It would be nice to know whether engine and UI are well layered in Scid or not. The pragmatical proposal would be to concentrate on the current phases in order to have a first shot to the Miniature UI and them contact them with questions. Asking now while we are still vaporware...

If in the meantime someone wants to make an ugly but fully functional port (stylus UI etc) it might be relatively feasible (says me, a non-developer). See the dependencies: http://packages.debian.org/lenny/scid

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

http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature refreshed and Game Play view in portrait mode updated:

http://wiki.maemo.org/images/2/26/Mi...e-portrait.png

This is the first realistic mockup that can be taken for the first step in the roadmap: Play games online. The previous ones had elements like chat or avatars that either were not provided by FICS or come later in the roadmap.

Is this all the information you want to see? More, less? Comments, please.

I'm still a bit hesitant about the exact situation of the board and the size of fonts, but we can fine tune this when there is real code and therefore real usability checks to be done. In the meantime a developer has all what is needed to get started.

Speaking of developers, there is three of them in the Garage project but (except andybehr) we haven't done presentations yet. Hello!

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

Wow. That looks great.

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

One thing that could be added for a more elegant screen presentation is to use an arrow rather than highlighting two squares.

http://www.bennedik.de/images/ASilve...mage_thumb.png

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

Why not tweak a better and more current build of Eboard? Seems like there's everything there already and it is immediately available for use.

If you were to simply change the place where the player and game information is located that would free up a huge amount of space to fit a 480x480 board.

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/4...9110609363.png

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

I think the information level is about right for now. I especially like how you indicated the playing side with the clock background. We shouldn't add too much information only because we *can* ...

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

Could we please get a set of SVG chess figures with a free license? CC or LGPL stuff. I looked in the eboard sources, which lacks any license information. It only mentions that it was taken from xboard. There, the copyright over some parts of the code go back to DEC so that's a potential minefield.

Of course I could just go and rip it directly from the latex font in the diagram package (same original author as for xboard it seems).

Ideas?

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

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/St..._chess_diagram

All the pieces shown there are svg with GFDL & BSD & GPL licenses e.g. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...hess_pdt45.svg

If we want to have nice text notations we can also use a free font with them:

♔ ♚
♕ ♛
♖ ♜
♗ ♝
♘ ♞
♙ ♟

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

I think arrows might be good for displaying games to watch or review, but not for playing. An arrow is an object more on the board and you want all the concentration on the existing objects, the pieces. Highlighting the squares are enough not to miss the last move, I think.

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

Kind of a "out there" idea but what if you also rotated all the pieces by 90 deg to switch the perspective as if its being viewed by the opposing side of the device?

*sigh* The problem with the more projects you want to work on, the more projects you maintain making it harder to help with efforts like this. Anyone one want to take over maintainership?

EDIT: The rotating could be animated rather than immediate. Some would call this eye candy but it helps draw attention to the change.

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

About the "Me", a problem can be that people might have different users in the same server? Or that at some point you don't remember anymore what was your login? Anyway, perhaps it's better to display your username. Now space doesn't seem to be a problem.

I'm starting to work on the options available under the menu. This brings the need for more details.

For instance, the UI for seeking a game would be better in the main screen, below the board.

And for instance perhaps we can avoid regular buttons for login / logoff. In the first boot of the app we can offer a dialog offering to store the login & password, create a new account or "later". Once the app has login & password booting will imply logging in and the way to log out will be to simply close down the app.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature#Ideas_for_future_phases

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

It's Friday. It's late. And I don't get it. Do you mind explaining this again? :)

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

As someone previously mentioned, it'd be nice to have an option of playing Fischer Random Chess (Chess 960).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess960

It shouldn't really be a problem or anything like that... it's just like normal chess with different starting positions (where "the normal position" is 1 of the 960 different starting positions). It might be some trouble with the castling rules though.

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

Okay. I personally think that arrows look sexy though. :)

Just be aware that if this project is also going to include highlighting legal moves for newbies that it might interfere with the last position highlights.

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

Someone PMed me mentioning that some icons and design is needed, as always, I'm down. What can I do to help?

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

The chess interface I use is called Jin. You can choose how you have the moves displayed. I always choose red arrows to display what move was made last. It's very easy to look at a position and not see what your opponent has moved. A great big arrow is very helpful. When you are trying to play fast, obvious is good.

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

Screenshot from Jin setup attached.

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

Jin screenshot from game. This shows more clearly how the arrow works while playing.

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

Alarming statistic: I have played more than 30,000 1-minute games on FICS. That doesn't count other time controls, and it doesn't count my activity on ICC of maybe eight years :)

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

How about letting the user decide whether he wants arrows or highlighted squares for showing the opponents last move? Make it a user setting. Maybe go for the square-highlighting for starters and add second feature later?

I would second the idea of showing the users login instead of 'Me', i think it's more natural.

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

Miniature has some source code already!

http://gitorious.org/miniature

I guess only Mikhas knows whether it is functional at all, though. :) If you give some instructions about what to do in order to get something running on the N900 I will follow and help with testing and feedback since the earliest stages. I'm not familiar with git repositories and etc but I'm willing to learn.

About the arrows. ok ok, let's give us some time and tests to see what are the right defaults and alternatives (if any) for representing moves. Showing legal moves is not even in the roadmap yet.

We just need to find the right balance between all the things that could be done, the priorities to make happy the first wave of users, the resources we have, the simple/complex UI we wish for settings etc...

joshua.maverick, thanks for the offer! There is two things you can start with:

- We need a logo/icon. The application is called Miniature, I suggested we could go for something based on a humble and simple black pawn. A starting point could be http://gitorious.org/miniature/minia...black/pawn.svg - oh sorry, I mean http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...hess_pdd45.svg . But feel free to go your way as long as you keep a clean track with copyrights / licensing.

- You can help creating a nice-looking yet simple and very usable UI for Miniature. See http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature#Mockups - even if the sketches there look nice, they are actually not intended to represent final look&feel. The attention now is put on the UI layout (what elements are where) and the usability.

I recommend you not to touch the board/pieces themselves by now since we are going first for the very standards. Custom boards and pieces appear later in the roadmap and even then there is a lot of freely available artwork.

Let us know if you have other graphical ideas.

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

The humble and simple black pawn is a great idea, that's why Scid seems to have adopted it as its icon :) Except it's more like a brown pawn. Maybe the pawn could have waves indicating motion or speed? Artists may know what I mean; I'm not an artist so I'm not sure :)


I hope that several chess interfaces come out of this drive; I like to have choices. I am ready and want one NOW on my N810! I need a chess interface so I can read chess books purchased for my Kindle -- since the Kindle doesn't have a chess display I need my tablet to make the moves!

(For me, the era of using more than one computer at a time has arrived...)

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

True! http://scid.sourceforge.net/img/scid.gif

But joshua can do a lot better than that. ;)

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

Hey qgil. Are you firmly attached with the name Miniature?

Maybe you could open up some discussion and have us brainstorm on this.

As of right now, I don't have much of a creative idea for a name either.

I was thinking of some kind of play off of the word "Notion".

Like a word hybrid of motion, (chess) notation, N or No for Nokia, maybe the number 9 in there possibly.as well.

Just a thought to possibly chew on. :)

Cheers!

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

Miniature is now in project names and code repository. We will need a concrete strong rival to even consider a change of name.

What problem do you see in Miniature?

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

None. It was just a thought for added discussion, that's all.

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

What does Miniature mean? Eboard means something. Xboard means something. Scid means something. Blitzin means something. I don't get Miniature.

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

Yeah, I don't get it either but didn't want to come across as sounding offensive. :(

I wouldn't even mind going with something really simple like "Chess Cutie", a play off of the Qt language it will be written in.

Oh well, it's his call. :)

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

To me "miniature" is a variation of "Problemschach" (sorry, I don't know a good translation for this), that is, "Problemschach" with only few figures.

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

If we use PGN as our generic adapter, we should be able to interface with whatever engine we want. Scid is certainly great as a engine, but looking at the code I wouldn't want to port it (it uses TCL for the UI) :)

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

Yes, I agree with that; we call them 'studies'; also, in chess we refer to miniatures, as in very short games.

But I still don't see how it refers to this program.

I don't care that much, either; I think it will be considered a weird, not so good of a name, but it's the program that counts more than the name.

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

Yes, a miniature is a short chess games generally below 20 moves when a master makes a mistake falling into the trap prepared by another master. The original latin word means "something small". It's a reference to the pocketable format of this chess game.

see http://www.superajedrez.com/escuela/celadas/index.htm It's in Spanish but maybe you know an English squivalent. At least by the names and notations you should be able to see what are we talking about.

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

Just a quick status update: Using the QGraphicsScene framework I tried to recreate the latest mock-up. Sadly, I could not trigger the portrait mode yet. The currently available Qt4 packages for Maemo don't seem to have support for it, but I've seen relevant changes in the gitorious repos (perhaps we could get more regular releases please?). So yeah, the screenshot might not be too impressive, but it's a start.

http://taschenorakel.de/pictures/scr...re_on_n900.jpg

The figures are actually QGraphicsItems, so fingertouch should be possible soon. Also, the board already understands FEN to draw itself.

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

Let's see, "a game tactically decided in twenty moves or less". Yep, more or less exactly what I just said. It's good to have the Spanish reference, though. I think this is a site I checked daily when I had a site called ChessWatch for a number of years!

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

mikhas, this is excellent! So are you saying that this is based on the Qt 4.5 community port and can be run in the SDK?

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

Yes, Miniature is using Qt. To be precise:
For the device you also have to install it from the terminal (the version number there is 4.5.3~git20090, further instructions are here).

Also, the graphics look wierd in scratchbox/Xephyr, therefore I took the screenshot above directly from the device (SDK != N900 :)).

EDIT: If anyone can point me to a working example for activating portrait mode in Qt (I don't mind if I have to use the latest git version for now) I'd be very thankful.