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

This is quite off topic, but there's "only" one unbeatable strategy for chess, or any other competitive game for that matter: do not draw! ;)

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

Well, if you have 1500 points and you play against a 1800 player (or something notably higher) have no doubt that you can consider a draw like a personal victory, and this will be reflected in the points you will earn.

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

The wiki page was growing fast, so we have split it.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature is focused on end users, even if we have none now. ;) Are you missing anything essential at this level?

http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Development is focused on... development. I have just dumped the sections moved from the main page.

The next step is to detach a subpage for the current development phase. This way we also get a quite nice and well established Development wiki page, while most of the chaos goes to the wiki page of the current sprint/phase.

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

Would it be possible to think/develop it in a way that would allow me to plug gnugo and a go board to make miniature more of a "board game framework" than a chess game ?
I've been thinking about building a fremantle go game for a while but it seems both games have the same requirements : online/offline gaming, chat, replay/analysis.

Scp

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

eboard an crafty also are working out of the box on the N900. Fullscreen mode doesen't work and it's hard to use the menus without a stylus. If you want to store stetting, played/watched games, ... you have to create the folders:
I am using eboard nearly every (working) day while commuting.

You can use the diablo build to install it. The .deb could be found there:
http://www.v7f.eu/public/n810/

Beside of this I'll have a look how I (also no developer) can help to bring this chess on N900 project forward.

Thanks for this thread! :-)

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

Go support, next to chess, is probably very interesting to think about.

But personally, I'd rather have a Miniature/MiniatureGo package with two apps that maybe share some core components. I'd feel restricted if I program a chess app and always have to think on a higher abstraction level whether this certain feature is go-compatible, as well. There is value in abstraction, and there's overdesign ;)

See the chess-devel ML, Andy brought up the idea of a board game framework [1] as well. Perhaps we should discuss it over there?

[1] https://garage.maemo.org/pipermail/c...er/000018.html

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

Yes, porting the UI is exactly why we take the approach of a complete UI rewrite: Instead of starting with Non-Maemo technology (and in case of eboard and co, very outdated, too) we want to use "the new cool stuff" [1], since it will enable us to create smooth move animations and hopefully a good fingertouchable UI.

In case of support: Of course I don't want to write a complete chess app from scratch, I want to reuse the best chess engines possible. For that I imagine to either implement the FICS/ICC [2] protocol and/or to have a generic PGN file reader. That would enable us to ask an external chess engine about valid moves, check mate, etc ... So if anyone wants to port something usable to Qt, say for example this perl CPAN module [3] (a PGN-to-EPD/FEN converter) it would help us a lot! (Disclaimer: we haven't really decided on the architecture, it needs discussions and fancy diagrams ;)).

[1] QGraphicsView, see http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009...uxury-version/ and http://doc.trolltech.com/4.5/graphicsview.html

[2] ftp://ftp.chessclub.com/pub/icc/formats/formats.txt

[3] http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/HSMYE...-PGN-EPD-0.24/

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

http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Development

I'm half way and therefore it looks messy and ugly. But I'm going to sleep now and I wanted to share the direction.

This page should be more and more static as the project consolidates. The dynamic parts should update themselves. For instance, can someone help getting the feed just like http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer has?

Each roadmap item will be addressed in one or more development phases. Each phas has its own wiki page where contributors should point what are they doing, what they plan to work... This way we avoid dupolication.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve..._Project_setup
http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve...e_chess_basics

Let's see if I finish tomorrow. Ideas welcome.

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

mikhas did http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve...t/Instructions (apparently after announcing on #miniature IRC channel that he would go to sleep - never trust this guy).

I haven't tried the step by step guide myself but I will once I'm done with the wiki work. If you want to follow the real Miniature even before having the first .deb package here you have a good chance.

In fact that long wiki page has three segments and I wonder if they should correspond to three wiki pages, 2 of tbeing common Maemo documentation:

- Setting up the stock Maemo 5 SDK.
- Getting the Qt environment (4.5 now, should be updated to 4.6 when available in extras-devel)
- Miniature specific environment, first git repository cloning and running the app.

Feedback and direct edits both from experts and novices is very welcomed. The simplest is to get Miniature running in your PC the more contributors and feedback we are likely to get.

PS: don't thank this post. Thank mikhas twice instead. :)

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

Sounds reasonable.

To everyone trying this out, please be careful. If you get error messages, be extra careful and rethink what you did. If in doubt, abort the whole procedure. There are instructions on how to remove scratchbox, too (cant find the link), and that's sometimes useful if you want to start over.

To me, those instructions are more of a checklist, but that's because I went through the sb installation procedure several times now, and I still manage to make stupid mistakes.

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

On it. I'll spend some time catching up on this thread, and start working on designing stuff as early as wednesday. Sounds like this is going to be fun, I'd work now but 5 hours sleep in 72 hours is a bit much

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

Actually, we only have figures, no board. The one that you see in all the screenshots is just taken from the mock-ups, modified by me [1]

So actually, we could really need two polished boards (one portrait, one landscape), with a *fixed* pixel size and a high pixel density (the device has what, a 200 DPI display?). Make it look better than the one we currently have :) As always, stay clear with the license. If it is media you might want to use a CC-style license (GPL doesn't really fit, perhaps MIT license does). For our figures, the GFDL is accurate since SVGs are, in fact, text documents (from a certain point of view).

Another task: The squares to indicate last move/current move, arrows maybe, too. You already know that the cell size of our board is fixed (60px in portrait mode, if we use no border), so you could already start there.

Yet another task: The timer background which indicates whose turn it is (white rectangle with very round corners). It should have had more AA, but I failed.

Also, someone could check the Qt doc and look for a good UI font, maybe? Moves, timer, names - this all needs a visual appealing font. I have no idea whether we could ship fonts with Miniature, though. The current one (plain default, whatever it is) doesn't bother *me*, but then again I am no artist or font expert. The only requirement, for a font: It has to support the Unicode chess figures.

[1] http://gitorious.org/miniature/minia...ds/default.png

EDIT: added license remarks.
EDIT2: Font info added

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

There were some generic posts and the only reason why I didn't commnet further was the will to stay on topic. Suffer no more though because The Chess thread is born!

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

http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Development has been cleaned with all the information available distributed in subpages.

Phase 0 looks like basically DONE...
http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve..._Project_setup

What about concluding this thread with the Phase 0 and start a new one to concentrate on the first item in the roadmap: Play Games Online. 3 phases full of fun. We could create it in the Games forum.

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

Having the cross-platform compliance in mind, wouldn't it be better to avoid completely fixed sizes, offering always a fluid UI? Alright, something like an avatar might be an exception but the board willing to take as much real state as possible on different form factors might be a problem.

What if we discover at some point that we just need a recompile to have Miniature running in a Symbian, Windows Mobile or Moblin device that has less/more than 480px screen?

Also just checking: are we doing things right to allow localization when the right time comes?

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

Yes, you are absolutely right. I didn't think about this properly. So the question is: Is it possible to create a crisp "as-if-it-were-fixed-size" looking board while using SVG?

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

This might be a better question for the ML, I doubt Boris is following this thread (and he probably knows the answer).

I'd just make sure to wrap every translatable string into tr() calls. Then a .ts/.qm resource file should be enough. Anyone having experience with Qt Linguist perhaps?

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

We have just concluded the Phase 0: Project setup.

Let's continue the discussion at Miniature development: Play chess games online

Thank you for all the people that has helped in this thread!

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

This was actually my goal with the Chessmonk board, and I think it was fairly successful. Despite using some pixmaps for the wood grain pattern, it is completely scalable. Border lines are drawn with Cairo at pixel precision, the SVG pieces look good at any size.

Of course everything which is redrawn frequently should be cached as pixmaps.

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

Hi!
I'm very interested in this pgn reader. Is there any fremantle package?

Thanks

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

I'm definitely not a chess player, however, I do know checkers...
Could you ask the developers to add an option to play "checkers", and maybe even an option to also play "4 in a row"

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

I am sorry that Miniature for the N900 was never finished. BUT! We're making good progress on MeeGo Harmattan now, and I also had a couple of test games @ freechess.org with the new Miniature.

Check http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?t=4301 for the latest annoucement. Some of you may have noticed that the wiki @ http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature got a facelit, too.

Now that the UI is pure QML, perhaps it is not too hard to get it to work on the N900?

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

[Announce] Miniature chess for Maemo

Please post further comments in that new forum thread - and let's put this one into rest.

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

Is it possible to install PyChess on Maemo 4?

Thanks!

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

At the beginning of this thread, I asked for a chess game that can play games from chess books. Newcomers to this site will be surprised to find that I made this request literally years ago, and a decent way to do so was not achieved and the makers of Miniature essentially paid no attention to my repeated requests in this direction, and no decent chess display program was achieved for the N900. Well, a decent chess game display program has finally been achieved for the N9. You can actually play moves, take back moves, and examine variations. What an amazing thing.

The program is called Josemobile, or perhaps Jose mobile would work better on the Nokia Store where I found it a short while ago. It might have been discovered earlier by me if it had the word "chess" somewhere in its name!

It may have some flaws that I haven't yet discovered, but it at least satisfies the minimum request that I have been making over and over for years, and I chose this thread to commemorate this fantastic result because it boasts about a "killer" chess program to be developed, but of course "killer" did not include the ability to play moves from books and examine variations.

For those who follow world chess, you will probably be happy to learn that Vishy Anand recently successfully defended his chess World Championship title against Boris Gelfand, who I think might actually be better. Anand was defeated late in the short match after a bunch of draws, but surprisingly came back to win the very next game. The match of slow games ended in a tied result, and this automatically led to a series of fast games, which was won by Anand.

Unfortunately, this trend, of matches for World Chess Champion to end with fast games and thus the winner being the best speed player, is quite common these days, which almost feels like the players are throwing dice to decide who wins the championship. This is the sort of trend that worried Bobby Fischer when he was sane and alive.

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

Hello geneven,

i am the author of StandByMee - Chess which displays a randomly chosen chess position given by a FEN (Forsyth-Edwards-Notation) on the standby screen of the N9 using an included chess database consisting of more than 120.000 mate in #2 positions. Maybe this is of interest for you.

Though i am doing my first steps with development i can imagine to write a simple GUI for loading and displaying chess positions in future for analysis purposes. But before that i have to realize at least two other projects:)

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

Thank you for the tip! Downloading...

And it is open source: http://projects.developer.nokia.com/jose Very interesting. I will contact the developer to see whether we can have a common path forward with Miniature.

Nothing personal, just a matter of time. We haven't paid attention even to our own bugs and top priorities. We could say we dismissed you as much as we dismissed ourselves.

Summer is approaching again. Maybe I can scratch some time as I did last year... As usual, developer stepping in are welcome. Even if Miniature is lacking features it has a very good foundation to add to.

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

I saw it but then I felt lazy that day about dealing with deb packages alone. Are you considering to publish this to Nokia Store or apps.formeego.org? Are you aware of http://wiki.maemo.org/2012_Device_Program ?

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

I wrote StandByMee-Chess in Python and the code for displaying chess positions is really, really simple, also for an absolutely beginner like me:) Just uncompress the deb file and have a look at standbymee-chess.py.

Concerning the "killer" chess application i think its a very good idea to use the GPL'ed appplication josemobile. I like the UI very much and it should be possible to add a "Load" button in between "New" and "Settings" and the logic behind it.

Initially i really wanted to push myself by applying for Summer '12 Device Program / Community Awards. But i dont know if this is a good idea if i look at the submissions and the "big" names appearing there. I started about three months ago as someone told me something like "bull**** .. if you really want to realize your ideas you will find the spare time for it". So i started learning Python.

On the other hand as far as i know all standby screen applications need a modification of a certain system file. I dont know if its okay to handle this via preinstall / postinstall scripts. What happens if the application is installed and Nokia modifies this file thereafter with a PR update? Or when something goes wrong and the file is corrupted? Just excuses not to publish it there, i know, hehe :) I will find something different.

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

[ __ ] You understand how open-source works.