Aart's Blog

It is nice to hear that others sometimes find my toy projects useful. As I reported in an earlier blog entry , a while back I implemented a 6510 cross-assembler to relive the good old times of programming a Commodore 64. Today I got an email from Antonino Brisindi who is using this assembler to burn an EPROM for his home-made 6502-based microcomputer. Below you see a picture of his impressive project in progress.

Marc F. Ferguson is writing about experiences with rooting the Nook Color on his blog FergyTech and he kindly emailed me the following pictures of Chess for Android running on the Nook Color. It is cool to see so many new devices running Android. Thanks Marc!

I compiled Ben-Hur Carlos Langoni's UCI engine RedQueen for Android (ARM), and put the binary on UCI engines for Android . Below screenshots and results of a few quick matches against other engines on a Nexus One (1GHz Snapdragon) with 32MB hash and Nalimov/Gaviota/Scorpio endgame tablebases on SD card. RedQueen 0.9.5 - Stockfish 2.0          0.0 - 10.0 +0/-10/=0    0.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - Toga II 1.4.1SE        0.0 - 10.0 +0/-10/=0    0.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - IvanHoe-Beta v999947c  0.0 - 10.0 +0/-10/=0    0.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - Rotor 0.6a             3.0 - 7.0  +3/-7/=0    30.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - GNU Chess 5.07.170.7b  3.0 - 7.0  +1/-5/=4    30.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - gaviota v0.80.0.107    3.5 - 6.5  +3/-6/=1    35.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - BikJump v2.1P          8.0 - 2.0  +8/-2/=0    80.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - ZCT-0.3.2500           8.5 - 1.5  +8/-1/=1    85.00%

I just released version 2.8 of Chess for Android, available from the Android Market or as direct download . New features include: full PGN support (clipboard import/export, file load/save) improved layout for xlarge screen sizes (api 9 and up) bug fix in draw detection after FEN import To load a game from a file in PGN format, long press the notation window, select "Load Game from SD", and navigate to the file. This opens another window with the actual games in that file. Then select the desired game. Very large PGN files may take a while to download (or even run out of memory), but the idea is that future versions will be able to navigate quickly between successive games. I have tried to make the PGN parser reasonably robust (it accepts sloppy SAN for instance), but certain non-standard constructs are rejected. Please let me know if you encounter bugs though.

User PJ+ at the OpenChess forum implemented a nifty client utility that converts Chess for Android to a client for a remote chess server. To make this work (assuming you already have a remote chess server running at some hostname and port), simply do the following steps. Download the version of Chess for Android that grants network permission to its UCI clients (the default version at the market does not do this for obvious security reasons). Download PJ+'s client-android-cli utility. Construct a file, for example uci_client , that contains the single line ./client-android-cli <hostname > < port > for the hostname and port of the remote chess server. Copy 2. and 3. to SD card, then install these from SD just like the first-time install of UCI engines. Finally, the single line file uci_client can now be imported as any other UCI engine, and will connect to the remote chess server. I tried this method myself connecting Chess for Android as client to a remote c

Jan Brouwer ported his UCI engine Rotor  to Android. Below the results of a few matches against other engines on a Nexus One (1GHz Snapdragon), one second-per-move, 16MB hash, and Nalimov/Gaviota/Scorpio endgame tablebases on SD card. Rotor 0.6a - Stockfish 2.0           0.0 - 10.0    +0/-10/=0      0.00% Rotor 0.6a - Toga II 1.4.1SE         0.5 -  9.5    +0/-9/=1       5.00% Rotor 0.6a - gaviota v0.80.0.107     5.5 -  4.5    +5/-4/=1      55.00% Rotor 0.6a - GNU Chess 5.07.170.7b   7.0 -  3.0    +7/-3/=0      70.00% Rotor 0.6a - BikJump v2.1P          10.0 -  0.0    +10/-0/=0    100.00% Rotor 0.6a - ZCT-0.3.2500           10.0 -  0.0    +10/-0/=0    100.00%

I don't have a tablet myself yet, but Roel from Belgium kindly emailed me this picture of Chess for Android running on a 7 inch tablet. As you can see, he was running an engine-engine match between UCI engines at the time. Thanks Roel!

Because not all Android devices support the Android Market yet, I decided to made my Android applications available as direct downloads: Chess for Android Checkers for Android Reversi for Android After the download completes, simply click the apk to start the install (make sure to check "unknown sources" under settings=>applications).

I ran an engine-engine match between Michel Van den Bergh's two latest GNUChess engines in Chess for Android , playing 100 games (50 fixed book opening lines from both sides) on a Nexus One (1GHz Snapdragon), one second-per-move, Hash 16MB, TB cache 8MB, complete 3- and 4-piece Gaviota endgame tablebases on SD card (only  5.07.170.7b  supports Gaviota).              1   GNU Chess 5.07.153.3b-32        +42/-33/=25 54.50%   54.5/100 2   GNU Chess 5.07.170.7b-libgtb-3  +33/-42/=25 45.50%   45.5/100

Several folks who use Chess for Android to play against another human have requested a feature to auto rotate pieces towards the side to move, so that they can use the phone or tablet as a chess board without constantly having to pass the device around. I have added this feature and also made cautious steps towards some animation in the application. The following clip shows the results. Expect this feature in an update soon. Comments welcome. Auto Rotation Clip