Hey kanishou!

Let me first say, WOW! Those screen shots of yours look absolutely gooey!

I sure hope you'll be able to package together a version for us lowly N8x0 owners.

Even if the chess project in this thread won't support Maemo 4, your viewer would be more than enough to keep me happy!

Also, is it possible to include some type of "chess puzzles" feature with this current build as well? It sounds doubtful but thought I would ask anyway.

@qgil
I really like the way you think!

Your ideas are pretty much spot on and there's not that much for me to offer. Seems like you already know the direction you want to take with this.

I do like the concept of the board being in the middle of the screen, especially in landscape mode. This way you could have player information on each side of the board creating an overall visual balance to the screen instead of one side being too overloaded.

Great stuff so far!

This was posted quite some time ago, but for those who didn't catch a couple of random posts in the gaming forum, I'll mention it again.

There's Bobby Fisher Teaches Chess


And also Fritz 2.51 (available now as freeware)


Both of these play quite well in Dosbox with the correct settings.

Just something for others to consider while we all patiently wait the 19 months for this current chess project to get a crap turd, beta release. *lol*

Addison, thanks for the comments. Well, a product manager or a marketing guy risks to be totally useless (incapable of coding or designing properly) unless he finds ways to be actually useful in a project. This is what I try, here and in my job.

I got a suggestion from a kind soul in the Qt team: the Qt Declarative UI could be a good path to combine code simplicity purely working in the UI layer + fast responsive bling + cross-platform code.

http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/author/qtdeclarative

The binaries have been just released and apparently you can start playing with it with Qt Creator.

The Declarative UI API is part of the Qt Kinetic project.

Perhaps we can even get not only the advice of a good soul but also some hands with free time and chess love...

Thanks!

I don't think I will port it to Diablo, but if Mer adds the new hildon API functions, it should just work.

This is probably out of scope for Chessmonk, in fact I see very little code that could be shared between a chess puzzle app and a PGN viewer, other than the board display. Aside from that the UI would be completely different, so I would just make it a stand-alone app.


But the sides are much easier to reach with a single thumb, and I think that's important for a fast-paced chess game.

A feature I really like in eboard is automatic pawn promotion. In the rare case that you don't want to promote to a queen, you press a button before-hand. This is much less intrusive and faster than popping up a dialog for something which gets the same response in 98% of the cases.

This is harder to do in a mobile UI, since you wouldn't want to have the "piece to promote to" picker button on the UI permanently.

Requesting a draw shouldn't be hidden behind the application menu in my opinion. I lost many no-increment games because I had no quick access to a draw offer with other clients, when I could have claimed a draw due to repetition or insufficient material.

Please don't put chess engine output in the match UI, as I am pretty confident that this classifies as cheating. Even the score. Evaluating the current position is also a chess skill.

Are you planning to offer direct access to the telnet console? Unfortunately servers such as FICS rarely work too well without in my experience. Which is partly why I didn't find the prospect of working on such applications very tempting.

I agree about the cheating. Many many times I thought I was "winning" a game but then I lost. Then scid would tell me how bad I was doing already when I thought I had an advantage.

And this helped me to play better much more than a real time score telling me already "Man, wake up!!"

Kanishou, you kept me thinking about the draw request button in the main UI or behind the menu. My personal conclusion: still better in the menu. There is two clicks away (Menu - Request draw). In the main UI the button is always there... but precisely because of this you might press it accidentaly, so a "Confirm" dialog would be probably recommended. That's two clicks again, and now the button takes space in the main UI that could be used for something more useful most of the times.

telnet console. It shows a lot of nformation and it is your door to plenty of commands. But in reality, why do you needed? What useful information is giving you? During the game or between games? Also what actions are you quering through it? During the game or between games?

Depending on the answers to these questions we will see whether the telnet window is a full separate window more for landscape mode (text input friendly) or if it's taking some real estate in the area below the board in portrait mode (for instant reading while playing games.

Automatic Queen for pawn promotioin sounds good. Perhaps a simple setting to start with? I have only used the knight or another piece in Chess exercises or giving some mor hope to my little son.

Addison, about the board in the middle in landscape mode. Actually my first sketches with pensil and paper were done that way. However, as soon as I jumped to Gimp and realistic images seen from the device itself I abandoned the concept.

I don't think the problem is having the board at reach (with the N900 that is not a big issue). It's the text strings that are more constrained in two thin areas than in one area wider. You get a user with long nickname and the single text area in a side cdan handle it. If you have two thin areas you will start having double trouble. The chances or loosing valuable space are also double.

Besiden, you can have a remote checkbox in the settings allowing you to have the board in the left, useful if you are left-handed.

A quick suggestion:
What if we use the keyboard to make our moves, too? like pressing C5D4 would move piece C5 to D4. This would make it much faster and accurate, probably.
I realize that there is supposed to be a chat, but typing a message could be activated by tapping the chat bar.

Good job, so far!

I don't see how typing "c Fn+t d Fn+r" is faster.

About accuracy, I have commented that probably a way to solve this is:

1. One tap highlights the piece to move.
-- If the tap went to the wrong piece just tap again.
2. Next tap highlights the aimed square.
-- "ok" style highlight (e.g. blue) if the move is legal
-- "wrong" style highlight (e.g. red) if the move is ilegal
-- if the tap went to the wrong square just tap again
3. Next tap moves the piece to the desired square.

Easier done than said. Comments?

Autopromote to Queen is a must, as suggested. Qgil's description of making a move is probably the best way on a tablet. It's way too slow for 3 min or faster chess, but as I said, I don't think tablets are really usable for fast chess, which I define as 3 min and faster.

It's nice to have a choice of chessboard colors and styles. I will never use a board unless it looks pretty standard, and telling the light colored pieces from the dark colored pieces is important Of course, one huge advantage of Internet play is that you and your opponent can be looking at completely different chess sets.

Computer chess is really not fun unless you happen to have a sophisticated program that sacs like Tal; that would be interesting. Computer chess IS useful for analyzing games you are watching online, to answer the age-old question: Who's winning?

The ability to set up positions is essential. Say you are looking at a positions with just pawns, kings and knights; you don't want to have to play from the beginning to get there.

Couldn't you just have a completely separate window for chatting? I haven't read some of the comments closely. (Trivia: on ICC, channel 97 is occupied by many political fanatics who mostly talk politics and rarely play chess!) Disclosure: I worked for ICC for a few years and was a member for many.

As qgil mentions, seeing a player's rating is important. I primarily use a Linux program called Jin for playing chess, and I often have a problem in that I can't see the rating of players who have very long names, because the rating displays on the same line.

For faster games, it would sure be handy to have a sound warning to remind the player that only a user-defined interval of time is left for him to make his moves. Example: a three-minute warning, for longer games.