Aart's Blog

To improve endgame play, I have added a few "distance-to-win" endgame databases to Checkers for Android (K-K, p-K, p-p, KK-K). These databases are small enough to reside in memory and are queried during the engine search. In the screenshot below, for instance, the engine (playing black) announces that it will win in 20 moves. If you are up to the challenge, just download version 2.4 of Checkers for Android from the market.  

A movie of a robot having some fun fetching and throwing a ball.

Through Google, I signed up as volunteer for a Lego engineering mentoring/outreach program in a local school. This was a very good excuse for Karina and me to get reacquainted with our Lego Mindstorms NXT kit (also see our earlier Mindstorms adventures ). As you can see, we had lots of fun together.

It is long overdue, but I finally wrote brief manuals for Chess, Checkers, and Reversi for Android that explain the full menu structure of the games. I plan to add more explanation here over time. Please let me know if you have suggestions.

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.