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- - Miniature development: Play chess games online (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=34242)

jukey

2010-02-03 09:44

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil (Post 504238)

Should we pull a font with chess pieces as dependency?

In the long run this would be a good choice. It could be used for all kind of PGN visualization or a possible game comment function too.

jukey

2010-02-03 10:07

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil (Post 504189)

Quote:

Originally Posted by jukey

Last but not least there is a "stop" button which will bring up the menu options. I think the current square icon is not the best because most of the people would assume thaat the game is stopping after they pressed the button. My proposal would be a "menu" button.

But it is common sense that there are different ways to stop a chess game, isn't it? Thy show up when you press Stop. Also detailed in the workflow:

Indeed, there are several possibilities to end a game but most of them need a confirmation while the clock is running until the confirmation was given.

Quote:

Pressing the stop button a player requests some kind of resolution for the game. The options appear in his dashboard without overlapping the board:

1. "Pause" button requests to stop the clock.
2. "Draw" button requests a draw.
3. "Resign" button leads to a confirmation dialog to resign the game.
4. "Adjourn" button requests to save the game.
5. "Exit" button simply closes the application.
6. Moving a piece cancels the dialog and the game continues.

That's right but in case 2. and 4. the clock is running until the opponent reacts. In case 3. and 5. the clock is running until the player itself confirms (or declines) the action. A stop button which not stops the clock but requests an action is not a stop button IMHO. :)

Case 1. is a special case which should be not available in this style in FICS online games because in most cases you play with foreign peoples and pause a game is not common sense.
Sitting in a chess board free pub and playing against a friend is an other thing. :)

In the other points of your comment, Quim, I agree.

just my 2 cents,
Uwe

mikhas

2010-02-03 18:55

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by jukey (Post 508185)

In the long run this would be a good choice. It could be used for all kind of PGN visualization or a possible game comment function too.

kanishou found this link for me: http://www.enpassant.dk/chess/fonteng.htm Could someone with an understanding for fonts look for a good maemo-fitting chess fonts there? Then, because freeware is a vague term regarding distribution rights: Please contact the author about the chosen font and ask for a license update (CC-by-sa is our preferred license for arty contributions).

The thing is, there wont be a font package for them, so we'd need to a) bundle it with Miniature (for <100kb that option doesnt look too bad), b) make a .deb from that (and this .deb should be free by debian standards). B is of course better since it might be useful to other apps, too. In any case, re-distribution of copyrighted material (and make no mistake, "freeware" is still copyrighted) needs clarification!

qgil	2010-02-03 20:18

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by jukey (Post 508222)

A stop button which not stops the clock but requests an action is not a stop button IMHO. :)

Works just like in real chess and FICS, actually. When you request a draw or adjourning a game the clock is still running and if your opponent stays silent and you don't move you will run out of time.

Quote:

Case 1. is a special case which should be not available in this style in FICS online games

FICS has this command available:

Quote:

> help pause
pause

Usage: pause

A "pause" request asks your opponent that the game you are playing be paused --
though not adjourned. An accepted pause request has the effect of rolling
back the clocks to the time of the last move. If your opponent has given you
a pause request, using the pause command (or accept) will accept the request.
You may decline a pause request by using the decline command. To unpause a
game use "unpause".

qgil	2010-02-03 21:24

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikhas (Post 509102)

I'm trying to find the author of the Cases font - ARMANDO HERNANDEZ MARROQUIN

First email sent & bounced (the address was from 1999...)

I found 2 guys with the same name + 2 surnames in... Facebook, so I gave it a try :P

mitweeeeh

2010-03-01 11:00

Portrait problem

Hello,
thanks for all this job. I appreciate the lot of work to obtain a very cool chess program for n900.

I have a problem reported in bugzilla. I have no portrait mode.
So it's unplayable because the chessboard is cut. White doesn't appear. I have the last version of Qt.
Any solution?

I'm not a programmer at all but if you are interested, i can help you to translate Miniature in french, without any error.

Regards

mikhas

2010-03-02 20:43

Re: Portrait problem

Quote:

Originally Posted by mitweeeeh (Post 550834)

Hello,
thanks for all this job. I appreciate the lot of work to obtain a very cool chess program for n900.

I wished development would go faster though, I am sorry for the delays.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mitweeeeh (Post 550834)

I have a problem reported in bugzilla. I have no portrait mode.
So it's unplayable because the chessboard is cut. White doesn't appear. I have the last version of Qt.

Yeah, I am aware of this. The names of some window attributes have changed in the latest Qt versions, which means that my portrait mode request has no effect anymore. It's fixed in master, and I just pushed 0.1.7-1 to the buildbots, let's see if we get a new release soon (WARNING: this release will have very hackish UI elements).

Quote:

Originally Posted by mitweeeeh;550 834

I'm not a programmer at all but if you are interested, i can help you to translate Miniature in french, without any error.

Thanks! Though I doubt we will have that much in-game strings. Just an idea we might want to work on a translated manual (wiki or shipped with the app). In any case - if you want to help you could register our project to transifex.net already =)

mitweeeeh

2010-03-02 23:18

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Hi!
Happy to see that the project is not dead...(no news since a month :().
I'll help for the translated manual for sure.

Regards

mikhas

2010-03-03 06:13

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Yeah, not dead - just slow. Anyway, the new package got imported to extras-devel - feedback welcome!

qgil	2010-03-04 19:05

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

This last release has attitude! Congratulations mikhas. Basically you tried to cover the whole scope of the first "real" release even at the expense of taking shortcuts and creating bugs in the way.

I like your plan. It's like a burndown chart: we need to take that scope and polish it until everything works well enough.

Again, congratulations. There are several people around the Miniature project but it looks like currently mikhas is the only one with the skills, time and will to produce some code. Bravo!

jukey

2010-03-05 17:08

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

A few days ago I was on a train together with a college and we played some games using Miniature.

First of all: It was possible and we had no crash and don't closed the game accidentally. We also don't saw problems in the game logic itself but we don't had a very accurate view (the goal was just playing!).

The board itself looks nice and the whole application feels very good since it is running in full screen mode.

Other things worth mentioning:

In the 3 or 4 games we never used the "back" button
Sometimes we had to press the "play" button several times. It was hard to decide what seems to be the reason: I think on the one hand the button is to small but on the other hand the game logic sometimes seems to need some time until the requested move was done.
Sometimes we felt it a little bit to much to press play after each move but I think I we need some more impressions to decide if it is a good or not so good idea.

Anyway, thank you very much Michael for bring forward the development. The thanks button in this forum is way too small! :) I also want to thank all the other contributors. I can't wait for my first P2P match!

Ciao jukey

mitweeeeh

2010-03-05 23:26

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by jukey (Post 557061)

[*]Sometimes we had to press the "play" button several times. It was hard to decide what seems to be the reason: I think on the one hand the button is to small but on the other hand the game logic sometimes seems to need some time until the requested move was done.[*]Sometimes we felt it a little bit to much to press play after each move but I think I we need some more impressions to decide if it is a good or not so good idea.[/LIST]Ciao jukey

Same feedback as far as i'm concerned.
Personnaly, I don't like to press "play". For me, it's like grab a piece, move it on a square and wait...to see if i play this move or not. It's not the rules (nor beauty) of the game. In fact, not realistic. But it's IMO.

All in all, miniature is very very cool, and eye candy. Bravo!
Thanks for this beautiful job!:)

Regards

mitweeeeh

2010-03-18 16:04

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Hi,
i wanted a pgn viewer for my N900 and i found Chessmonk, by Kanishou. I would very happy if i could work my openings with.

Is there any package for it? Nor sources? I posted on the old thread but i've no answer. The dev said it was functionnal, so?

Thanks a lot.

qgil	2010-03-23 15:59

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

The other day we had a transatlantic flight and at some point we decided to play some Miniature chess.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jukey (Post 557061)

In the 3 or 4 games we never used the "back" button
Sometimes we had to press the "play" button several times. It was hard to decide what seems to be the reason: I think on the one hand the button is to small but on the other hand the game logic sometimes seems to need some time until the requested move was done.
Sometimes we felt it a little bit to much to press play after each move but I think I we need some more impressions to decide if it is a good or not so good idea.

True about not using the Back button. Maybe we can remove it and bring it back only when we have a setup to analyze games.

True about Play button sometimes not very responsive. No pattern found. Could be bigger and/or perhaps have a bigger clickable area.

Until now I think there has been always a situation in every game when a click when to the wrong square, and thanks to the Play button confirmation the correction could be made. Also novice players use it as a help to think of the next move, which I find it fine if your opponent is fine with this. I'm for keeping it.

PS: ref Bug 8141 we didn't have problems with the logics of the pieces but (coincidentally?) we didn't move the King much.

geneven

2010-03-25 21:01

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

I tried Miniature just now and it was almost usable. The lower right part of the screen said 42. rc1 or something similar. I had a hard time figuring out how to complete a move. Otherwise it was promising, though not yet approaching scid or eboard or most chess software I know about. It does have a pretty board.

geneven

2010-03-31 01:48

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

As far as I know, no one has put together a usable adaptation of working chess programs such as Eboard or Scid suitable for the N900, correct? (Unless you install Easy Debian, which I can't use at the moment for excellent technical reasons beyond my control (see the Mugen battery thread).

mitweeeeh

2010-04-06 09:06

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by mitweeeeh (Post 572082)

I quote myself. Any possibility to contact the author?

Thanks

mikhas

2010-04-10 17:39

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by geneven (Post 589087)

... Scid ...

Interfacing with Scid is very high on my wish list. The idea is to make a minimal (but useful!) Miniature UI extension on top of Scid (but this is nevertheless *hard*). Anyone who wants to start with this, or has ideas on how to approach this (read: familar with Scid codebase, willing to contact Scid devs, Scid power user, etc) can help to make this happen!

In other news: 0.8.1-1 is out, mostly a cleanup release with new bugs =p I fear it might not install properly without PR1.2, sorry :(

mikhas

2010-04-11 00:43

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by mitweeeeh (Post 597400)

I quote myself. Any possibility to contact the author?

Thanks

Yeah, I'll ask him - he's a colleague of mine, after all :)

jukey

2010-04-14 09:06

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Hi,

mikhas (thank you very much!) has created a RFC for the way how P2P functionality could be implemented:

Quote:

Protocol draft for Miniature-P2P
================================

We will assume that P1 and P2 have already found each other and are able to
chat ("match nick" in FICS).

A Chat
======

* "tell [nick|#channel] msg"
Why nick and #channel? Because later we migt want observers in P2P (so
there'd be a channel #obs, because you dont want the players so see the chat
of kibitzs).

* http://www.freechess.org/Help/HelpFiles/tell.html

* This command is the *only* one that will work in every situation, without
exception. It does not change the current game state.

B Game mode negotiation
=======================

* Both of the players can now propose a game mode, similar to
http://www.freechess.org/Help/HelpFiles/seek.html

* We can skip the parameters we dont support yet, so we need at least be able
to send/parse this:

"seek [time inc] [rated|unrated] [white|black]"

* Examples:
"seek 5 0 r w": 5 minutes, no incr, rated, seeker wants white,
"seek 5 0 rated white": same as above,
"seek 2 10 u b": 2 minutes, 10s incr, unrated, seeker wants black

* When the other player receives a seek, he can either accept the offer or
ignore it. Both players could propose game modes sending as many seeks as
they want, and at any time! But that would be silly in our case, so let's
simplify this dramatically:

1 host player (P1) sends seek,
A client player (P2) accepts seek: send "play" → 2
B P2 ignores seek: P2 can now send a seek
A P1 accepts seek: send "play" → 2
B P1 ignores seek: → 1
2 game starts (http://www.freechess.org/Help/HelpFiles/play.html)

C Moves
=======

* In FICS, once it is your turn, it is sufficient to enter "e2-e4" to move your
pawn, for example.

* FICS sends the new position to each player, obviously this simplifies sync
issues. So I think we should send sth like "move e2-e4; fen
rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/4/P/3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR b". The FEN position string
can be seen as checksum for the move, so we are able to always detect sync
issues. In case of an sync issue, the FEN position *overrides* the move, and
the error is logged (maybe even send "sync error" back to sender, so both
peers are aware). How to handle that beyond logging the error, I do not know.
Let's see if it really happens first. The more general approach is to have
the receiving peer always confirm a move with a checksum, based on the
position info it was able to compute, and the sending peer then compares this
checksum, and complains.

* The peers compute the status (check, checkmate, ...) themselves, based on the
position info send

* Move requests that are sent when it is not the player's turn should
be silently discarded.

D Takeback
==========
* FICS is a bit funny here, showing its age wrt verbose & racy protocol
implementation "takeback 2 - accept - withdraw", note how accept and withdraw
can happen at the same time.
http://www.freechess.org/Help/HelpFiles/takeback.html

* Again, let's simplify:
"takeback n", request to take back n moves, answered by "takeback n" (the
same n) to accept. Now it doesn't even matter who sends it first.
1 P1 sends "takeback n",
A P2 accepts: send "takeback n" → 2
B P2 declines: nothing happens → 3.
2 N half-moves are taken back.
3 P2 or P1 sends his next move (notice how this can clash with a "takeback n"
confirmation in case it was P1's turn, in which case the takeback
confirmation should win, as P2 is free to ignore P1's move after confirming
the takeback).

* Same as with moves, we send: "takeback n; fen current/fen/pos/ w|b", so that
the fen position is the one to be expected after takeback n would be
performed (assuming we go without the general approach of sending checksums
after every position change).

* A takeback request can be simply ignored without further actions.

E Draw
======
* http://www.freechess.org/Help/HelpFiles/draw.html

* We don't support claiming a draw yet, but that will be easy to implement:
before the other peer gets chance to say ok, "draw", we query the logic
analyzer, which is entitled to enforce a technical "draw".

* Otherwise, same as in takeback, without position sending:
1 P1 sends "draw",
A P2 accepts: send "draw" → 2
B P2 declines: nothing happens → 3.
2 Game ends in draw.
3 P1 sends his next move (P2 is not allowed to demand a draw if it is not his
turn, also, same conflict resolution as in takeback: draw confirmation wins
over P1's move, and P2 is free to ignore the move).

F Resign
========
* http://www.freechess.org/Help/HelpFiles/resign.html

* Players can resign at any time, I guess? No confirmation by other player
needed, game ends.

G Adjourn
=========
* http://www.freechess.org/Help/HelpFiles/adjourn.html

* I like the 2 cases presented on FICS, esp. the courtesy adjourn which handles
time-outs gracefully.

* Similar to draw and takeback:
1 P1 ran out of time, unresponsive
A P2 sends "adjourn" → 3
(B P2 claims the win, not important yet for our case)
2 P1 sends "adjourn"
A P2 accepts: send "adjourn" → 3
B P2 declines: nothing happens
3 Game is adjourned, both sides save the current position locally, game ends.

Source: https://garage.maemo.org/pipermail/c...il/000133.html

Please feel free to comment the draft or to ask questions.

mikhas

2010-04-15 18:40

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

jukey went ahead and pushed the discussion over here. If you are unsure about working on the wiki page directly then just post your comments here.

mikhas

2010-04-19 09:07

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

This weekend I made the P2P UI orientation-aware so that typing messages becomes easier:
http://taschenorakel.de/pictures/scr...te-message.png

As a consequence, I am back to manually positioning my graphics items, this QGraphicsLayout stuff just never really worked for me.

jukey

2010-04-23 15:12

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikhas (Post 617360)

This weekend I made the P2P UI orientation-aware so that typing messages becomes easier:
http://taschenorakel.de/pictures/scr...te-message.png

This looks very good to me. Do you think the input field on the bottom could be half transparent so that the user has a chance to see that one row is missing?

mikhas

2010-04-23 17:25

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by jukey (Post 624561)

This looks very good to me. Do you think the input field on the bottom could be half transparent so that the user has a chance to see that one row is missing?

That usually doesn't look very nice, especially when you start to type letters (does anyone really like this transparency effect in karmic, when you hover over a desktop notification?). But yes, can be easily done.

I am surprised you find the look of this appealing, because my blurring effect looks like sh^W it could be improved :D

Also, the plan for this message bar is to have a nice send button and this smiley chooser you know from the conversations app.

geneven

2010-05-05 01:12

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikhas (Post 604408)

The Scid devs are extremely easy to contact. They have an active mailing list. If you go to the Scid site, it is easy to find. If you can't find it, let me know.

geneven

2010-05-05 01:54

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by mitweeeeh (Post 572082)

A pgn viewer is basically what I want as well. I think I requested something like that six months ago, but technology hasn't been able to arrive at that point. Someone suggested that Xboard or Scid be used, but the graphics aren't sophisticated enough for our tablets.

So it's better to have nothing.

The N800 and N810 had xboard and eboard and scid but it's more than the N900 can manage so far.

jukey

2010-05-08 13:14

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Quote:

Originally Posted by geneven (Post 643780)

A pgn viewer is basically what I want as well. [...]
The N800 and N810 had xboard and eboard and scid but it's more than the N900 can manage so far.

Again: eboard works well on your N900: http://wiki.maemo.org/Chess/Eboard

You also can use eboard as simple pgn viewer or as archive of the games you made.

geneven

2010-05-19 21:37

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Right, eboard does work. I had a hard time logging on to fics till I made a user button for my user name and another for my password. Then I just typed examine + enter and I had a usable chessboard. Otherwise, I think I would have had to use a scratch board to look at chess games, not as good because it allows illegal moves and doesn't keep track of whose move it is. There is probably a better way, but I don't know it offhand.

Dollyknot

2010-05-19 22:20

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

I had a similar experience and solved it when it was pointed out to me that, my problem logging into FICS was probably caused by the lazy option of the Maemo OS to automatically begin a sentence with a capital letter, once I disabled this unnecessary feature, I was able to login to FICS because my password did not get a capital letter automatically added to the beginning of my FICS password when I tried to log in.

Having got that out of the way I challenge you to a match, my handle is korzybski, I don't play blitz only 30 minute standard, no take backs and no disconnections.

I am an honourable player, so don't cheat by using a monster to win for me :)

What is your handle?

qgil	2010-07-09 22:44

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Hi, as explained by mikhas:

Quote:

thanks to the work of Dariusz and Alban it looks like we have something
demo-able for the P2P stuff. So I decided to push out an overdue release
[1]. Do not expect *too* much though, it really is bleeding edge stuff.

Thank you to the developers making possible to play online chess P2P!

You can find Miniature in extras-devel, which is a repository of highly unstable software. Don't play with it unless you are willing to test far from perfect software!

jukey

2010-07-30 13:18

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Now where the possibility to make p2p games is available it would be great to have someone to play and test(!) with! Who is willing?

Please send me an private message or make you contact details public in our little maemo miniature user directory.

extendedping

2010-07-30 14:22

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

I don't like the way if I just want to practice, (say playing white) that every time you enter the moves for black the black pieces switch around. It makes you totally lose focus on the board.

qgil	2011-07-05 08:32

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature never made it to a proper release but the few people that I found that tested it and followed the project said that there was some good stuff in there. mikhas had a non-easy time back in the day dealing directly with QGraphicsView but now with Qt Quick the UI part should be simpler. How much of the backend can be reused, I don't know.

Bumping up this thread, just in case there is some steam left.

qgil	2011-08-24 04:58

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Today we have released Miniature 0.3 Berlin Defence. The wiki pages have been updated accordingly with new info and plenty of screenshots.

This is a total restart, having MeeGo Harmattan as primary platform. I someone is interested in working on a Maemo implementation please contact us. Miniature is based on Qt & Qt Quick, and there is an ongoing project to port Qt Quick Components to Maemo 5, so there is a possibility.

We have also made an announcement in the MeGo context, hoping to get someone interested in making Miniature work in MeeGo upstream, which would be another way to have it running in the N900.

As always, feedback is welcomed.

qgil	2011-09-12 19:22

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

How to get Miniature to work in Maemo 5: http://wiki.maemo.org/QtComponents/Miniature - you can see the icon of the app installed in an N900 at http://vimeo.com/28927228

End users: don't worry, it will be eventually a single click to install just like any other app. That wiki page shows the changes needed at a code level, which are little details considering how big and complex Miniature has grown.

Miniature 0.4 is not that far and it does play real FICS games (with real chat with your opponent). We are still chasing a couple of features and some bugs, but the current version in master is fully functional already.

By the way: Twitter users, please follow and promote https://twitter.com/#!/MiniatureChess

qgil	2011-09-13 22:54

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Miniature 0.4 De Lucena released! Now the Nokia N9 and N950club can play chess games online. It looks like Maemo users will be able to enjoy it soon as well!

The release notes can be found at http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/0.4_De_Lucena

bingbings

2011-09-14 12:34

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Great news, thx!!
Will boot less on NITdroid if it'll be available for the N900...always cool to play against another human on line...

Tried to install the last version available for the N900 (guess it's 0.3, with the link in meego forum you gave) but for now I have only a black screen; will try again later to see if I'm missing some dependencies or smth.

bingbings

2011-09-15 06:35

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

Well finally installed on my N900 and played a few games as guest....

First impressions - it's pretty neat, love the interface (who the hell was involved in the weird chess program for maemo5 ??), easy to use, no problem in finding players, overall great experience for maemo chess players, big thx!!.This miniature program will not leave my N900 from now, well done Sir!!

I was experiencing some rotations problem - unable to play if I turned my N900 in portrait orientation, will try next time whitout having forced rotation enabled.

Not necessarily on the downside but (for me) : the 3 click needed to move might be too waisting time when playing blitz chess and I was wondering if the notification when the oponent move (actually the slim blue bar) couldn't be modified showing exactly the last opponent move (a classic square modified color could be an option).

edit : yeah forgotted - the version I installed is the 0.4 and I did it by adding the catalogue showed in the link in the meego forum (thx inean), need to install qt-components too.

qgil	2011-09-15 16:56

Re: Miniature development: Play chess games online

bingbings, thank you very much for your feedback.

I have answered you at http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...11#post1089011 - let's use that new thread specific to the new Miniature and let's put this one into rest.

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