Re: Question to Aart Bik
Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2018 1:02 am
Thanks for your question Peter. I actually started to work on integrating a FICS client in Chess for Android, so expect more on that soon!PeterO wrote: 1. Can you make/compile interesting UCI engines that are not to strong and have an interesting playing style? Brendan Norman has an interesting homepage: chessncognac.com. He has created GREAT engines (Johnny Hector ...). Can you integrate this UCI engines in your app?
2. I would love to play online game with real people on: chess.com, FICS, LICHESS ...) with the Chessgenius exclusive. Can you realise this in your app?
As for your first question, please allow a bit of history in my answer.
When I pioneered integrating UCI and XBoard engines in Chess for Android back in 2010, Jim Ablett and myself compiled most of the engines for Android, since at that time no chess engine author would provide binaries for that platform. In fact during two Android tournaments I ran on talkchess in 2011 and 2013 (see 2011 tournament and 2013 tournament; or combined at all tournaments), I joked that I was playing the role of tournament manager, GUI author, engine author (bikjump), engine compiler, and, given the amount of initial response, probably even the role of audience. Below you can see the list of engines I gathered around that time.
The idea was always to keep the engine completely separate from the GUI. This is good software engineering practice, allows for independent releases, avoids copyright issues, etc. At first, importing the engine was somewhat awkward, and required "adb pushing" the binary to the right place. Soon this became easier using the "install from SD" feature. Then, with the introduction of the "Chessbase compatible format" and the "open exchange format" this became easiest since after installing an engine package, such as chess engine package, or a single engine, such as Komodo, any GUI that supports these formats automatically finds all engines installed on the device.
After a while, as I had hoped, chess engine authors started to compile for the Android platform themselves, and others started to run tournaments for Android as well. For example, Chesstroid is nowadays an excellent resource for anything related to chess on Android. This is why I started to be less active in compiling engines myself and focus more on GUI work (and my desire to get back to bikjump at some point), although I have always been willing to assist other engine authors that needed some help. In fact, around Android 5.0, some engines stopped working and required a new way of compiling, as I discussed in this posting.
So hopefully you can find interesting engines for Android somewhere on the web, or in the list below (we may have to revisit if they are still working). In fact, since my engine package has become somewhat stale, I would love to provide an update with more and new engines. Any chess engine author that is interested in packaging an engine in this Android app, please contact me.
List from the good old days:
Code: Select all
UCI:
adroitchess-03-ja cyrano-061-b17-ja egbbso.so greko-90-ja redqueen095 stockfish2.1
apilchess-106-ja daydreamer-075-ja egbbso.so.orig greko98-ab redqueen098 stockfish-211-android-ja
arasan-174-ja diablo-051b-ja egbbso.so.static iota redqueen-098-ja stockfish-21-android-ja
arasanx diablo-501-ja fruit-reloaded-armeabi iota-ab redqueen110 stockfish231-ab
arasanx141 discocheck3.5.1 garbochess3 IvanHoe-999947c redqueen111 stockfish_crab1
armtester.cc discocheck3.6 garbochess3-ab IvanHoe-999947c-robbo redqueen112-ab suff-03a-ja
bikjump1.8 discocheck371-ab garbochess-3-ja jazz-444-ja robbolito0085e4l sungorus
bikjump1.8_old discocheck401-ab gaviota0.80 jazz-uci-501-ja robbolito0085g3l TJchessARM_UCI_101
bikjump1.8_pie discocheck-401-ja gaviota0.82beta komodo-13-ja rocinante-101-ja toga2
bikjump1.8_static doublecheck1.1 gaviota0.83.0.3 komodo201-ab rotor-04-ja toga2.orig
bikjump2.1 doublecheck1.2 gaviota-android-v0.83 komodo203-ab rotor0.6a Umko_1.2_arm
bikjump2.1_old doublecheck1.3.1 gaviota-android-v0.84 komodo-203-ja rotor0.7a virutorChess_6_12_2011
bikjump2.1_pie doublecheck2.0 gnuchess-5.07.153.3b komodo2-ab simplex-097-ja virutor_chess_android_1_0
bikjump2.1_static doublecheck2.3 gnuchess-5.07.170b.5b komodo3-ab simplex-098-ja x
cassandre-026-ja doublecheck2.5 gnuchess-5.07.173b-android Makefile sissa-20-ja xandroid
cheng-107-ja doublecheck-26-ja gnuchess-6.0.2-uci-android pawny-031-ja stockfish1.8 zct032500
client-android-cli doublecheck2.7 greko8.0 pawny_1.2ab stockfish1.9 zct032500-ab
critter-12-arm doublecheck3.4 greko8.2 pepito-159-ja stockfish2.0
XBOARD:
amundsen danasah-488-ja gfc-08-rev5-ja mizar-30-ja phalanx sjeng-112-ja tscp181-ab
bruja danasah.ini gk-090-ja mskcp-145-ja phalanx-xxii-ja sloppy tucano104
buzz-os-11-27-08-ja dirty-android gullydeckel-215-pl10-ja myrddin0.85j prophet sloppy-023-ja tucano104-ab
chess-one-201-ja exchess-054-beta-ja kiwi-06d natwarlal-014-ja scidlet-261b2-ja surprise-43-b13-ja umax48w
crafty fairymax48l-ab kmtchess-121-ja olithink-530-ja scorpio TJchessARM_XB_101 x
crafty-234-ja fairymax48q knightcap-36-ja olithink-531-ja scorpio-27-ja toledo-nanochess-2010-ja zeta-dva-0202-ja
danasah-466-ja fmax.ini Makefile p2p scorpio.ini tscp181 zzzzzz-351-ja
