Since "Resign" and "Draw" are not commonly used functions during a game, I suggest removing them from the screen. Perhaps a button named "Actions" would be enough.

I also remember a 'pause' function when playing FICS that required the agreement of both players. That should be a far more common action that may be worth of a quick-access button.

my 0.02€

Makes sense. Allows one to put chat into context.

Background.

Did not understand your statement well enough though.

You on bottom. Opponent up. Always. Reason is you are physically on bottom too (behind the device). If you are white, you are on bottom, and white background on bottom. If you are black, you are on bottom, and black background on bottom.

Background is bold because that was how I interpreted in my last reply. The last part of my post (the part I modified while you were replying) negates this suggestion though...

Ah yes, makes sense, why I not want to have seconds on digital clock. On analog clock I care much less. Maybe use an old fashioned clock instead?

Yes, but his part has the Maemo status stuff. Which is smaller than the buttons.

I modded post while you were replying sorry for that.

IOW:

• Comform to Maemo theme.
• Use color (with around it inverse) to show color user is playing.
• Let them mirror each other.
• Analog clocks.
• In middle chat and log.
• Use chat style as I suggested. There where you see space, put the user's avatar, perhaps downscaled. Not sure if time sth said matters. Maybe X minutes ago is more useful.
• (BTW, where is input for chat??? Where is undo or confirm??? Reason I say is because noobs may play, but also because the 8x8 is maybe too small for touch UI!!)
• For online or offline can use icons too. Not sure.
• For the AD(H)D we allow to hide clock in Options.

I just say in your quotes of my post how many spelling mistakes I made. I guess I should go to bed...

I will redraw the layout tomorrow.

I tried to be closer to the Maemo Interface Guidelines.

This could be the normal (not fullscreen) mode:



Maybe the white and black background was not the best idea. Instead, I think we should go with chess conventions, my color is the color faceing me. In this case white. If I am black, the board and the player display would be switched. So qgil would be on the left side in the area above the chat.

I also went with 'Me' instead of my name, since normally I know who I am.

The Options will be visible when tapping the title bar:


Double tapping the board or choosing the menu option would switch the game to fullscreen mode. Basicly the same layout but without the titlebar.

The moves are integrated into the normal chat flow and are displayed as normal text, eg 'Pawn to B2', 'Check', 'Castling king's side'.


For the other ideas:
In a 'noob' mode, my last move would display a cancel option in the chat log for 5 seconds.
Analog clocks could be an option, I was just to lazy to draw some right now


Also, the last position of the last moved piece could be still visible as a ghosted image.

This is evolving great!

- It needs to be clear which player has the move now. Addison did something basic yet efficient at http://images.appshopper.com/screenshots/300/592059.jpg highlighting the timer of the active player.

- Something that I'd say is essential no matter whether it's for novices or experts is the type of game: time, increment rated/unrated... See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pa..._FreeChess.png

- Maybe the timer should be a bit bigger?

- "Me" has also the advantage of leaving more space for opponents with long nicknames. The "VS." doesn't need to be in the middle.


An idea comes to mind:

- Landscape = easy going chess. You have time to chat. You don't mind a slightly smaller screen. "King to B2" is fine.

- Portrait = tough chess. Chatting is a distraction. Biggest screen possible. KB2 please, and why not annotated history of the game, scores, opening type, related stats and other technical data useful to play better and learn.

Also portrait is better for displaying games, where chatting is not a primary use case and the sole action of watching / reviewing a game shows a user advanced or willing to be advanced in chess.

It's the standard chess notation. Get any newspapers with a chess quiz and you will see it, leave alone all the chess books. But why not an easier talk in landscape mode.

The simple and standard way to show the last mov in a computer chess game is with simple squares, as Addison did at http://images.appshopper.com/screenshots/300/592059.jpg

Usually it's optional. Could be default in Landscape (I always play with it enabled and I'd go for it as default in Portrait as well).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruy_Lopez and actually the screenshot should have been exactly the position shown in that page, corresponding to 3. Bb5.

It would be nice if Crafty/Scid would give you optionally the opening in Portrait mode as the first moves are made. Although this could considered cheating...

Speaking of cheating, Miniature should be a fair online chess player. Maybe it's me, but things like requesting a pause in chronometred a game or being able to have a move back go against the basics of chess. If you think this is too strict we could go again for allowing them in Landscape but not really in Portrait.

Vertical status area for a landscape mode is something that never came to my mind. It's an interesting idea (seriously, would solve the problem of showing the biggest board in landscape mode but a) I believe you should cheat to the accelerometers and b) the menu windows would show up vertical as well. Anyway, horizontal status area with option to go fullscreen is simpler and better.

Sure, Scid is one of the references and I have used it for many years. In fact the screenshot of my mockup is made with Scid and the "c60A Spanish (Ruy Lopez)" reference was provided by this old and lovely app.

Scid powering the Display Games mode in Portrait is something I'm looking forward.

What about defining the content of the first release - v0.0.1?

For instance. We are chasing the 1st use case: Play games at http://www.freechess.org/ . A first iteration should have the basic UI in place, demonstrated without any Internet connection or local engine.

REQUIRED
- Qt 4.6 for Maemo 5.
- Maemo 5 UI within possibilties (the bindings are alpha now)
- Portrait mode.
- Pieces can be moved manually.
- Only legal moves are possible.
- "Black/White Wins!" banner after a mat.

OPTIONAL
- Resign.
- Pawn promotion, piece selection.
- Draw request/accept.
- Timer

Okay, like I mentioned before, it's been 10 years since I last went to chess.net

Back then it was just as much a social event as it was at getting a good evening of chess in with other players.

It had a chat room, simple way of requesting a game (time/settings), there was private chat within the game as well as spectators who also could participate, rankings, fairness in ratings for those who disconnect, take back moves, excellent sound and voice statements (God, I hope they haven't changed those), bots, tournaments, etc,.

Just a whole chess virtual world that was very enjoyable.

For brainstorming and ideas, I would definitely suggest checking it out for inspiration rather than rifle off many ideas that might be difficult to visualize or hard to remember.

My main request outside of changing the coloring and pieces would be game scoring in real time. It's something that's still not featured in many chess engine releases to this day.

And no, I don't think that it's considered to be cheating like qgil mentioned. Not at all.

In fact, I think it offers more of a chess commentary experience throughout the game than anything else.

Oh wait, this is only going to be released for Maemo 5?

This thread can now burn for all I care! *lol*

I am porting my simple PGN viewer to Maemo, and it's almost finished. It does nothing but display PGN files, but it looks good and has really good finger usability. I will blog about it as soon as I find time to finish it up, but these shots should already give the idea:





Those are SVG pieces, so they can be used for any display configuration. Feel free to use them. The board is scalable too, but I'm using pixmaps for the wood grain pattern.

It's an interesting idea to have a chess client just for displaying games. Perhaps it would even be a suitable addition for Chessmonk (which is the name of my utility), I will have to think that over. I also had the OCR idea right before I saw qgil mentioning it. I wonder how reliable it could be, but it's definitely worth investigating. It would have saved me a lot of hassle when I was still studying the game.

I believe that making a good app for chess playing on the phone will be much harder, partly because the complexity of chess servers can't simply be ignored (you may get in trouble with other players if you do...). But also for the reason you mentioned, that it requires really fast and precise input. Good luck to anyone who tackles this problem though.

Addison, I guess one problem with online chess is to offer a common UX across different servers with (perhaps) different features using different protocols or APIs. Should we aim to squeeze the compatibility with one serve first or go first to get the basics about the 3-4 most popular servers?

Let's aim to get the basics of freechess.org, leaving the door open to both ways. Hopefully we will reach this first goal and hopefully in the meantime we will get enough feedback and contributions to know where to go next.

Actually Qt 4.6 is currently not even in good shape for Maemo 5! I believe nobody has tried it with OS2008 and the Qt team has explicitely said that it's out of their scope. The reason for this choice (see my first posts here) is compatibility with different platforms sporting Qt 4.6 at some point next year.

I have no idea about how easy will it be to get 4.6 to the N8*0 or port the game to a previous Qt version. Keeping things simple (e.g. not relying in OpenGL ES for graphics) will definitely help.

kanishou, Chessmonk looks very sweet! Congratulations for the work done.I guess is http://code.google.com/p/chessmonk/

Knowing that this will exists for Maemo takes away the immediate pressure to have such features in Minuature.

From my experience, forget knights.