Revolutionizing handheld chess: Glaurung 2 for the iPhone

[Max]

Hi Tord,

Sigh. It would be nice if just once in life, some of the work I do would turn out to work for at least a tiny fraction of other users. It doesn't seem that it ever does. It's getting more and more tempting to keep it all private and just enjoy my programs myself.

did you miss adding this smiley? Hoping so seriously .. cause many users LOVE your programs and got no problems. I'm sure remaining issues can be fixed.

BTW, only a WLAN connection should work out of the box. In this case the iPhone client and the Glaurung server share the same network. As most people are connected through a router to the internet, an access via GSM/UMTS to your local ip space (192.168.x.y) needs additional configuration.

All the best,
Max

[Mark]

Sigh. It would be nice if just once in life, some of the work I do would turn out to work for at least a tiny fraction of other users. It doesn't seem that it ever does. It's getting more and more tempting to keep it all private and just enjoy my programs myself.

Yikes, don't think like that! This is a revolutionary idea and everyone appreciates your efforts! I think it's natural that you hear more about users that need help than ones where everything is working fine.

[Mark]

I downloaded the 64-bit windows server, but haven't gotten it to connect yet. I added the port to the firewall exceptions, but I still get the "Unable to connect to server" error. Any ideas?

Almost certainly because your computer doesn't accept connections from the outside to that particular port number, for some reason. It might have something to do with network settings on your computer, with how the local network it's connected to is configured (if, for instance, this is a computer at your job and not a private computer), or restrictions imposed by your ISP.

I realize that this is not particularly helpful. You could try a wide range of different port numbers and see if you could get some of them to work, perhaps something in the range 49152-65535.

If someone with more network expertise reads this, I hope you can give some advice. The remote engine server is a plain TCP server which listens to connections on a port chosen by the user, port 1685 by default. The chess program running on the phone tries to connect to this port.

Thanks, I'll try some other ports and do some experimenting. (This is my home computer, not a work computer.)

[Tord Romstad]

Hi Tord,

Sigh. It would be nice if just once in life, some of the work I do would turn out to work for at least a tiny fraction of other users. It doesn't seem that it ever does. It's getting more and more tempting to keep it all private and just enjoy my programs myself.

did you miss adding this smiley? Hoping so seriously .. cause many users LOVE your programs and got no problems. I'm sure remaining issues can be fixed.

I hope so. Sorry to be so negative, but sometimes this hobby is just too frustrating. The remote server problems by themselves don't bother me that much -- after all it's a new and very experimental feature, and must work across several platforms. But these problems on top of the fact that a significant minority of users experience mysterious crashes in almost every single game, and that all my attempts to reproduce this bug have failed, is a little too much.

BTW, only a WLAN connection should work out of the box. In this case the iPhone client and the Glaurung server share the same network. As most people are connected through a router to the internet, an access via GSM/UMTS to your local ip space (192.168.x.y) needs additional configuration.

Interesting. A GSM connection worked right out of the box for me, but perhaps there is something unusual about my network configuration.

Could you please give some hints about what sort of additional configuration would be necessary for the average user?

[Max]

Could you please give some hints about what sort of additional configuration would be necessary for the average user?

Well I'll try to explain the problem,

lets assume an home user with notebook, desktop, iPhone and wlan-router. While installation the router got i.e. the "free to use" private network range 192.168.100.0. With the routers DNS-server, or via static ip addresses, we have this situation for example:

Code: Select all

ip router          = 192.168.100.1
ip notebook (WLAN) = 192.168.100.101
ip desktop (LAN)   = 192.168.100.102
ip iPhone (WLAN)   = 192.168.100.103
ip iPhone (3G)     = 83.99.1.2
ip router (ISP)    = 79.85.3.4

A WLAN connection from the iPhone (192.168.100.103) to the GlaurungServer, runnning on the dektop (192.168.100.102) or notebook (192.168.100.101) is now possible (most likely) without additional config. Because both are living in the same local network and default options for a firewall on the notebook/desktop should allow this.

Things change, when you try to connect the iPhone via 3G (83.99.1.2) to your LAN. Now you can't simply connect to 192.168.100.101 or .102 because these ip-numbers are not related to "your" local network. As they are free to use, they exists many times in the real word. The only unique adress is the one, which your router got from your internet service provider (in our case 79.85.3.4).

You have written in the Server doku

Before you can connect to GlaurungServer from your iPhone, you need
the IP address of the computer the server is running on. If you are
not sure what your IP address is, you can find it by visiting the web
site http://www.whatismyip.com.

The response from www.whatismyip.com is the isp-ip address of your router! Likely the router has to be configured allowing these outside connections from your iPhone forwarding them to your desktop/notebook. Depending to the OS GlaurungServer is running on, also some firewall settings has to be done there.

BTW, get the info about your own local ip address in a terminal with ipconfig command.

Hope this helps a bit,
Max

[Max]

With the routers DNS-server, or via static ip addresses, we have this situation for example:

sorry .. should be
"With the routers DHCP-server, or via static ip addresses, we have this situation for example:"

[Tord Romstad]

Hi Max,

Thanks a lot for the info. It seems that I have never found myself behind a router, and had no clear idea of how the world looked from there.

After some Googling, I've found that enabling port forwarding of the server port through the router should solve the problem. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a standard way to do this, it depends on what router you use.

[petero2]

Any plans for an Android version?

No, not at the moment. Supporting multiple GUI platforms is hard work, and as an amateur with no financial motivation, it is most fun to develop for devices I own myself.

Of course, since Stockfish is free software, anyone who wants is free to develop an Android program based on it.

Hi all,

I have a working alpha version of my stockfish port to Android. I'm using stockfish 1.8 unmodified source code, a bleeding edge version of stlport and a simple GUI based on my own toy chess program "CuckooChess".

There is no opening book yet, but the program is surprisingly fast on my HTC Desire, so it will probably be very hard to beat. When running the equivalent of "./stockfish bench 16 1 1" on the phone, I get almost 120kN/s.

Download here: http://web.comhem.se/petero2home/droidf ... sh.apk.bin
Source code (eclipse project): http://web.comhem.se/petero2home/droidf ... sh.tar.bz2

Screen shots:
http://web.comhem.se/petero2home/droidfish/fish01.png
http://web.comhem.se/petero2home/droidfish/fish02.png
http://web.comhem.se/petero2home/droidfish/fish03.png
http://web.comhem.se/petero2home/droidfish/fish04.png

[Tord Romstad]

I have a working alpha version of my stockfish port to Android.

Awesome!

There is no opening book yet, but the program is surprisingly fast on my HTC Desire, so it will probably be very hard to beat. When running the equivalent of "./stockfish bench 16 1 1" on the phone, I get almost 120kN/s.

Very impressive. On my iPhone 3G, powered by a 440 MHz ARM CPU, I get about 10 kN/s.

[Robert Weck]

I have a working alpha version of my stockfish port to Android. I'm using stockfish 1.8 unmodified source code, a bleeding edge version of stlport and a simple GUI based on my own toy chess program "CuckooChess".

Thanks Peter!

I just installed it and it works fine! (Milestone 2.1)

Ok, the GUI is lacking some features, that i would like to see (pgn-database, setup mode, analyse mode), but thats by far the best chess program on Android that i found!

Thanks again! You made my day!

How about some cooperation between you and Tord?


Robert