Chess for Android v3.0

[AartBik]

Chess for Android v3.0 is available from the Android market or as direct download.

New features include:

(1) The possibility to play engine tournaments from both sides of any external book in PGN format, as explained in this blog posting.
(2) Layout and formatting improvements in the UCI analysis output window. Light grey board color.
(3) Relaxed FEN parsing to accept non-standard, but frequently occurring omissions in the FEN string.
(4) Ability to view simple cross-table while tournament is in progress (>> button).

[wooh]

Hi Aart,
CFA 3 runs fine - thank you
I've got a question on engine import.
I import the engine, play chess, let the program go to sleep.
After wakeup all information about the game is still there,
but the imported engine is gone - I have to import again.
Is there any possibility to keep the imported engine when sleeping
Regards
Wooh

[AartBik]

Hi Aart,
CFA 3 runs fine - thank you

Good to hear. You are welcome.

I've got a question on engine import.
I import the engine, play chess, let the program go to sleep.
After wakeup all information about the game is still there,
but the imported engine is gone - I have to import again.
Is there any possibility to keep the imported engine when sleeping

Well, the UCI engine is not 'un'imported while just sleeping, but only when the user exits the application altogether. I may implement the option to replace the built-in engine permanently by an imported UCI engine though.....

[wooh]

please help me in understanding the difference between sleeping and exiting.
e.g. CFA is running, I switch back to the main android menu to look after my e-mails,
and I go back to CFA - is this sleeping or exiting

[AartBik]

please help me in understanding the difference between sleeping and exiting.

The lifecycle of an Android activity is subtle, but in this case I meant with exiting when the user actively navigates away from the application and with sleeping when the phone is simply not used for a while. In any case, restoring an UCI engine when the application restarts seems a good idea.

[thorstenczub]

in webos, i do press the button, the application is shown in a window and i can start another app. now i can do the same with the 2nd app and make it small in a window and shuffle between the apps like a game with cards.
it is multitasking, and i can change between the apps like ALT+TAB on windows machines.

why is it different in android ? is android no multi-tasking OS ??

[AartBik]

why is it different in android ? is android no multi-tasking OS ??

Of course is Android multitasking, as you very well know! But because starting a potentially heavy weight UCI engine is atypical, I made a conscious decision in Chess for Android to stop that process on exit events, so that users are not unpleasantly surprised with engines claiming CPU cycles, battery, and memory while they are off making a simple phone call.

[wooh]

Hi Aart,
a wibni (wouldn't it be nice) for CFA 4 - switch on/off background UCI running in case of sleeping CFA
Regards
Wooh

[Michel Van den Bergh]

I may implement the option to replace the built-in engine permanently by an imported UCI engine though.....

This is something I would like. Of course it should not really be permanent. It should be possible to reimport the built-in engine.

Also: I am often confused which engine is currrently running (asking myself if I imported the right one). So a method to see the name
of the imported engine would be nice too.

[AartBik]

Also: I am often confused which engine is currrently running (asking myself if I imported the right one). So a method to see the name
of the imported engine would be nice too.

I made a note of the feature request to keep the engine permanent (or at least re-import it at restart).

As for identifying the currently active engine, that feature is already in the v3.0 version!
As long as an engine is imported, its name appears at the bottom (that is, when there is no UCI analysis output displayed of course).

See a sample screenshot below.