Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

At this very point of time we need more work on interface / interaction design than pure graphics design. Although if someone provides better graphics than the ones currently in use we won't reject them. :) But the app looks ok already.

For instance, how does the Settings page look like? How are we going to organize the Menu options? Nobody knows for sure today and it would be good to have someone able to play with Qt Designer or at least faster than me producing purely visual mockups for discussion.

There are Miniature builds that run on the Maemo 5 SDK, the N900 and the Ubuntu desktop. Give them a try, any proposals for improvement are welcome in any form!

Another example: hopefully one of these days Miniature will learn the legal moves, and therefore will be able to identify the illegal. How should they be reflected in the UI? My current assumption is:

1 - User selects a piece with one tap. Piece shows highlighted.
2 - User selects destination square with a second tap.
3 - Destination square turns red with some transparency for 0.2 seconds.
4 - Original peace is still selected and highlighted.
5 - Repeat 3 if user selects a wrong square again.

However, discussing UI without mockups is slow and prone to fail due to different people drawing differently in their minds even if reading the same text. I can play with GIMP / Inkscape but I'm damn slow. I have the ideas and some skills to express them in text fast, but beyond that...

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

Hm, my gut feeling was that tapping on any illegal square should cancel the move. But failing that, I think that after a square/piece is selected, the entire area outside of the board should be blurred, and allow to cancel the move by tapping on it.

mikhas and I were also discussing a reversed mode of entering moves earlier. First you tap on the target square, then all pieces which can move to this square (if any) are highlighted. Tapping closest to any of the highlighted pieces would move it to that square. The idea is that it's harder to make a mistake with the second tap, and you don't necessarily need a third tap for confirmation (also it can still be tricky if many pieces are close to each other and can move to the same square).

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

I would personally sort this differently, into just four possible outcomes, and an optional "reason". E.g.:

* White/Black Wins
- Checkmate
- Resignation
- Time
- Lost connection (if noescape flag is set)

* Draw
- Draw agreed (does it matter who requested it?)
- Threefold repetition (don't forget three times the same position)
- X moves without captures
- Stalemate
- Insufficient material

* Aborted
- Abortion agreed (does it matter who requested it?)
- Insufficient moves (quitting or disconnecting the game before X moves are played, freechess will abort the game instead of resigning/adjourning)

* Adjourned
- Adjournment agreed (does it matter who requested it?)
- Connection lost

There is also the possibility of a game being decided by a referee (adjudication), but I don't think that the interface has to be aware of this.


Also a quick note regarding accept/deny confirmations. Whatever you do, do NOT show a modal dialog, or otherwise interrupt the player's move or even concentration. Agreeing or denying must be possible at the player's leisure. It's much better to miss a draw request by making a move before answering it, than to be disrupted in your move and possibly losing on time (let alone opening the door to abuses).

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Development/Strings created. I believe the use cases of Phase 1 are all covered, and even a little more. Or do you miss anything?

How is the engine progressing? Is Miniature starting to learn some proper chess?

What about teaching only about the first move of the pawns? The logic can't be simpler, and once implemented we can start experimenting with the UI around the move of pieces, legal/wrong squares and so on.

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

I've been away for a bit due to some personal issues, but I'm back! What artwork can I help out with?

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

kore is teaching Miniature to play some chess:

http://gitorious.org/miniature/minia...13536f62e2e187

Now the pieces are supposed to know how to behave alone. The next step is to make them interact with each other correctly. kore explains more at
https://garage.maemo.org/pipermail/c...er/000072.html

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

Good to see you back: :)

See my post above: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...8&postcount=31

Artwork in the sense of icons etc is not a big need anymore.

Can you also design animations? What about defining a nice effect for the selection of pieces and squares, and for the movement of pieces? I guess it's ok to discuss proposals over Flash or SVG, but the programmers might have better tips for you.

Check the wiki page for current screenshots and binaries you can install in the SDK, the N900 or Ubuntu, with all the current graphics available. Ask here if you need more information to get the source graphics.

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

What format would the animations have to be in? I can animate in Flash np, but I what should I output as?

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

Yeah, difficult question for us. So far we tried to keep everything scalable. I am not sure how well animated SVG would work for us; we'd have to extend the Webkit hack we currently use (since QtSvg is not very capable).

How is proper scaling for different resolutions approached in the Flash world?

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online
 

Flash is vector based, so it's just the same as with animated SVG.

The way it's done in Fremantle is that designers produce flash mockups and instructions, which the programmers then manually turn into Clutter effects. I don't know if Qt GraphicsView has any ready-made format for defining animations?