King Attacked Warning

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It is minor, but the latest release 2.4.3 of Chess for Android now shows a red circle around the king as an in-check (or mate) warning when the move coach is enabled. A sample screenshot is shown below. This version also improves UCI engine unloading on exit.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Congratulation's on citizenship. Welcome.
Incidentally, I can't get the computer to play White in Android chess program. No doubt there is a way but it is certainly not intuitive.
Thanks, MH
September 27, 2010 at 7:28 PM
Aart Bik said…
Thanks MH. To switch sides, simply press "Menu => Switch Side". Then the computer will play white. Use the option again to let the computer play black.

Independently, you can rotate the board by toggling "Menu => Options => View from White". If you let the computer play white, you may want to view the board from black.

Hope this helps.
September 27, 2010 at 7:49 PM
Anonymous said…
It would be great if you could also fix the bug where ai treats pawns who have moved two slots as if they've only moved one. I just had a pawn kill my pawn by moving sideways. Other that you've done great job keep up the good work.
October 8, 2010 at 2:43 AM
Aart Bik said…
Anonymous, this is not a bug, but a valid chess move that is called en-passant. Please have a look at an earlier posting:
http://aartbik.blogspot.com/2009/11/en-passant-and-castling.html
October 8, 2010 at 7:14 AM
Andrew Case said…
Feature request... when the AI is "thinking..." have the "<" button be able to break the "thinking..." cycle.

When I'm playing with minute think time and I decide I want to undo a move I have to wait in upwards of a minute for the AI to make it's move before I can do so.

Have you considered open sourcing this so users can help contribute?
October 18, 2010 at 2:08 PM
Aart Bik said…
Hi Andrew,
That feature is already in! When the engine is thinking, the "<-" (UNDO) button stops the engine and takes back the last move. Likewise, when the engine is thinking, either the ">" or ">>" button forces the engine to stop thinking and move immediately. The "<" and "<<" button are ignored while the engine is thinking, and only make sense during game navigation.

I have no direct plans for open source yet.
October 18, 2010 at 2:23 PM
Angelo DePalma said…
Hi Aart,

I'm an avid chess player, interested in your chess program's features. Do you list them anywhere? Can I store games? Does the program read .PGN files? What is the approximate playing strength?

Thanks,

Angelo
October 22, 2010 at 6:26 AM
Aart Bik said…
Hi Angelo,
You can save/load games as files and export games/positions to the clipboard as PGN/FEN. Details can be found in this manual. You can also import third-party UCI engines into Chess for Android and I am constantly adding new features.
October 22, 2010 at 7:45 AM
Matias said…
I very much enjoy your chess game, thank you :)

Today I found a minor bug:
The program reports "white mates in #3" in this position:
Black: King h5
White: King f3, Queen g8, pawn h2
White moves.
It is however mate in 2 (Qg7)

I like the feature though, so please don't remove it, even though it's not always correct.
November 9, 2010 at 5:22 AM
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