Aart's Blog

We are doing our part with these electric vehicles! :-)

A quick update right after the previous one to fix some issues with the new time controls and a few other issues. Improvements include. start clock on first move in tournament mode rigid check prior to sending engine's ponder move back eng-eng tournament corner case bug fixes cleanup logs option network socket engine bug fix (network version only) added more choices in time control

After some delay, I finally released version 5.0 of Chess for Android, available on Google Play or as direct download . New features include: Time control to define a chess clock for both sides with a choice between the number of moves between time control (possibly the full game), thinking time per time control, and an optional time increment per move. Double engine analysis lines during tournaments, especially useful with pondering on. Re-factored a lot of the engine handling code, with improved cleanup of hanging engines. This is a relatively major release, so please let me know if you encounter any issues. Also, as usual, suggestions for improvements are welcome.

Teaser: almost ready to release!

Long overdue, but I finally published an update for Chess for Android: version 4.5.1. No major new features, but simply a few minor improvements: localization of the spoken text (so hopefully no longer a funny mixture of English and the local language while announcing moves) and some under water improvements to engine management. As usual, available on my Android website and Google Play . Also as usual, comments welcome.

Luckily, the feedback on the first release of Chess for Glass has overall been positive. Criticism I have seen, and also agree with, focus on (1) mistakes made by voice recognition with similarly sounding files (since b, c, d, e, and g all sound similar) and (2) placing the voice menu over the chess board. The next release addresses the first issue with the ability to enable a  phonetic alphabet for voice input. In this mode, voice input uses the phonetic alphabet for files (alpha, bravo, charlie, etc) without further from or to designation. Example: "ok glass, pawn, echo two, echo four" plays the pawn from e2 to e4. Although uncommon in chess notation, this form of voice input is less prone to sound ambiguities. As for the second issue, I am afraid that showing the voice menus over the board will stay for a while though. One of the reasons I wrote Chess for Glass was to demonstrate some features of the GDK (the Glass SDK) since I work in that team in Google[x]...

Because Komodo 8 , the world's #1 engine, is distributed as an Android Chessbase compatible engine, it is immediately available for import in Chess for Android on your phone, tablet, or smart-watch, and in Chess for Glass on your Glass device. Many thanks to Mark, Larry, and Jeremy for making this amazing engine available. I wish I could have shared my excitement over this with Don too.

The extremely strong Komodo 8 chess engine is now available for Android (see the playstore link and the developers website ).  It runs directly in Chess for Android and potentially even in Chess for Glass (by sideloading the APK). How exciting to see this powerful engine available on my favorite platform!

Besides Chess for Android, I have been working on another project, which has been officially released today! Chess for Glass Chess for Glass is Glassware that runs directly on Glass. You can enter moves by simply saying the moves, or by using the touch pad. Other features include a choice in board color, spoken move announcements, and the ability to import any third party chess engine to replace the friendly built-in Java engine. Chess for Glass recognizes all Android Chessbase compatible engines that are installed on the same Glass device, and supports both the popular UCI and XBoard/WinBoard protocols.

Some clips I took together with Karina during the long weekend.