Chess for Android 2.5

[AartBik]

is the tournament handled by chess itself, or do you present the stats by your own?
because a tournament feature would the next i would wish

No, this tournament was done by simply starting three eng-eng matches.
I have a long list of features I want to implement, if only I had some more spare time

Loading PGN files from SD card is next (saving PGN to SD is already released).

[Jeremy Bernstein]

is the tournament handled by chess itself, or do you present the stats by your own?
because a tournament feature would the next i would wish

No, this tournament was done by simply starting three eng-eng matches.
I have a long list of features I want to implement, if only I had some more spare time

Loading PGN files from SD card is next (saving PGN to SD is already released).

When you start working on that: there are currently no android chess programs which permit loading a "database" of games and playing through them. Scid on the Go kind of does, but it doesn't support PGN files, and it has some weird "study mode" which doesn't lend itself to doing tactics exercises. It would be great if you would support a game browser (inside of a PGN file), go to previous, go to next game, go to game #. Variations + annotations support is naturally always welcome, although rare on mobile devices.

Bonus would be a training mode, where you can't see the moves, but can get back to the main line if you want to check your version against the version in the file...

Jeremy

[thorstenczub]

there are currently no android chess programs which permit loading a "database" of games and playing through them.

Hi Guys,
sorry but i have to disagree:
Chess genius for Android is capable to LOAD and play through the PGN game.
e.g. i have tried it out with a pgn-database from my SD-card that is with 1795 games
and 3913951 bytes size.
Also Chess Genius for Android is completely translated e.g. in german.
there is also a feature: load next game.

Also Shredder can read from SD-card.

Droidfish can also load PGN games.

And Chess from Aart can also load games.


I would say so far Chess Genius is doing it the best.
there are things i miss in genius:
variations. comments. and a better format for the game score and header.

but... there is still time enough for adding something in the programs.
we are in the BEGINNING of computerchess for tablet - pc's and mobiles.
not in the end.

[Jeremy Bernstein]

there are currently no android chess programs which permit loading a "database" of games and playing through them.

Hi Guys,
sorry but i have to disagree:
Chess genius for Android is capable to LOAD and play through the PGN game.
e.g. i have tried it out with a pgn-database from my SD-card that is with 1795 games
and 3913951 bytes size.
Also Chess Genius for Android is completely translated e.g. in german.
there is also a feature: load next game.

Also Shredder can read from SD-card.

Droidfish can also load PGN games.

And Chess from Aart can also load games.


I would say so far Chess Genius is doing it the best.
there are things i miss in genius:
variations. comments. and a better format for the game score and header.

but... there is still time enough for adding something in the programs.

I didn't try Chess Genius for PGNs. Will do so. Thanks.

In any case, I think that this functionality tends to be an afterthought. It would be nice to have a real interface for this database functionality.

jb

[Jeremy Bernstein]

there are currently no android chess programs which permit loading a "database" of games and playing through them.

Hi Guys,
sorry but i have to disagree:
Chess genius for Android is capable to LOAD and play through the PGN game.
e.g. i have tried it out with a pgn-database from my SD-card that is with 1795 games
and 3913951 bytes size.
Also Chess Genius for Android is completely translated e.g. in german.
there is also a feature: load next game.

Also Shredder can read from SD-card.

Droidfish can also load PGN games.

And Chess from Aart can also load games.


I would say so far Chess Genius is doing it the best.
there are things i miss in genius:
variations. comments. and a better format for the game score and header.

but... there is still time enough for adding something in the programs.

I didn't try Chess Genius for PGNs. Will do so. Thanks.

In any case, I think that this functionality tends to be an afterthought. It would be nice to have a real interface for this database functionality.

jb

Oh, nice, Chess Genius is pretty good. It's not great, but it's much better than I expected. Lots of button presses necessary to go to the next game. Lack of variations and annotations is too bad. Shredder isn't good at all (you only get the first game, I think). The others require that I place the games in a specific place, rather than being clever searchers, and I haven't tried them yet.

Jeremy

jb

[thorstenczub]

yes there is still much to do.
i am in contact with some programmers.
but of course... most programmers are more interested in the PC programs.
i think they make a mistake. tablet pcs or mobiles are the future.

the question is: do we wait for a chess database program or do we enhance the
chess programs for our purposes...

we will see. at least there is fluctuation, variation. there are interesting different programs.

imagine chess players all over the world want to study pgn's, replay games.
will they use a mobile ?? no. i don't think so. mobile is too small.
a notebook ? too heavy. a pc ? too loud, not mobile enough.
a tablet pc ? yes.
it makes no sound(noise).
it is big enough. it has internet to download more games.
it is strong enough.
we now need tools to replay chess games. study chess data.

there is no chessbase android version, isn't it ?
so there is space for all the others. there terretory is yet not sold.

[pj+]

Aart,

when I am trying to import client program in Chess for Android, which is suppose to connect to port of external computer and behaves for all purposes as uci engine running on that computer, client program is not getting imported. On the other hand, on android I can run client in the shell,, and it is working very well. What is the problem here? Is Chess for Android somehow blocking external connections, permission problem or something else? Do you know how to solve it?

In shell I was running client as root

[AartBik]

Is Chess for Android somehow blocking external connections, permission problem or something else? Do you know how to solve it?

Chess for Android and its child processes (the UCI engines in this case) are bound by the permissions requested in the manifest. Since the application only requests permission to use the SD card, opening connections will fail. If you want to experiment with UCI engines that open connections, I would have to ship you a Chess for Android version that requests more network permissions in its manifest.

[pj+]

Yes, please create application with network permissions. I think connecting to another computer is a perfect solution for phone.
It is of course always possible to connect through vnc, but having app on the phone talking directly to uci engine is much more convenient, and traffic should be much lower.

[JesseGersenson]

Yes, please create application with network permissions.

I agree, the capability of using remote uci engines would be a huge advantage for this application over other similar programs.

This effectively gives chess players the mobility of a hand-held phone with the processing power of a desktop!

Netchess is an application which connect a client-machine to an ENGINE/SERVER machine:
http://home.arcor.de/bernhard.wallner/netChess.html

note: i am considering buying a mobile device and the single criterion for my decission is whether the device allows this sort of remote engine.