That is actually designed for Maemo4 and windows.
edit: bah, could read the links. Runs in N900 too, but UI would need some polishing

Links to the already mentioned EBoard and Crafty for the N810/N800/N770 - http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2007/chess

I agree with geneven: portrait mode is much more appropriate for a chess app, both for better usage of the screen and more suitable for casual play.

What are the features that would define "good"? Feel free listing them here and/or http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature#Use_cases under "Display games by you or others, live or stored."

otoh there seems to be a crisis in terms of contemporary chess games based on Qt... http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=6538

What project resources do we need? Proposal:

- Garage mailing list for development.
- Thread in Talk Games subforum to gather user feedback.
- wiki.maemo.org for project documentation.
- gitorious.org for code repository.
- bugs.maemo.org when we are in shape to produce bugs.

Question for users: what information is ESSENTIAL for you see while playing chess online with someone? For instance, a board with pieces.

And proposal for a very original Miniature logo: a black pawn.

-Chat window that works well with touchscreen keyboard.
-Game score. There's number algorithms out there that show if you're winning or losing. There's not that many chess programs that feature this.
-Biggest preference is to allow simple screen tapping to move pieces. I tend to stay away from anything that forces you to slide the stylus since it will eventually chew up the screen.

I used to play speed chess quite a lot over at chess.net.

That was like ten years ago. I still consider myself to be a world champion though.

The pawn could have an ethernet cable or radio waves coming out of it.

About the data to be seen in play mode: which information of the game do you want to see at all times? Which information about your opponent? For instance, is it relevant to see the pieces taken, the history of last moves - or can these be retrieved through additional screens e.g. overlayed with some transparency?

Addison, chat might come later so we need to think a user interface for playing games without it.

Game score yes, Crafty can give you this but might be expensive in power manager. I still remember the fan of my laptop calculating those ratings N moves ahead. Perhaps better optional or even only in display mode. At the end... isn't a bit like cheating (o demoralizing) for normal game play?

Tapping to move, yes.

How modular should or could Miniature be? It would be nice to have a light core providing the minimum most players want: play chess online. And then provide the rest through additional modules or plugins.

Imagine this use case for the future: take a picture of a chess problem in the newspaper, get it processed thanks to and OCR module. Ready to be displayed in Miniature!

A couple of URLs found, just in case there is something interesting in there:

http://chessx.sourceforge.net/
a chess database. With ChessX you can operate on your collection of chess games in many ways: browse, edit, add, organize, analyze, etc.

http://chessratingcalc.sourceforge.net/
This is a free and open source calculator of chess rating for tournament players. It has features like saving calculation with details

http://ajonsson.kapsi.fi/cutechess.html
http://gitorious.org/cutechess

I think it should be playable in landscape mode as well as portrait if there is to be a chat window; it would allow thge use of the keyboard for chatting while one plays.

The right way is (IMO) to have the chess engine in libraries, and allowing a UI client to use these. A UI client can be written in Qt or GTK or whatever.

I remember a really funny chess game called Battle Chess:



Depending on which type of piece was attacking which kind of other piece some kind of animation was shown. For example the bishop used magic, or the pawn used its lance to stick on the toes of the other piece, or the king would drink a potion. It was funny! And it got me into chess. Nowadays, on N900, such aspect would require nice artwork and OpenGLES, but maybe there is already a project like Battle Chess in existence?

Another important factor with games is that often they're not compatible with each other when running on different platforms. Which is cool on PyChess:

Also some kind of saving state of game I think is important, so you could play a move during your break on work and resume the rest next day. This is important in other interactive games as well, such as stuff like Boggle.

Just my 2 ct...

@allnameswereout: I had Battle Chess on the Amiga 500. That game was fun.

Anyways.

When this project is more developed I might pitch in and add P2P playing over Telepathy tubes. TelepathyQt4 should be ready by then.