Chess for Android 2.8

[abik]

I just released version 2.8 of Chess for Android, available from the Android Market or as direct download.

New features include:

• (1) full PGN support (clipboard import/export, file load/save),
  (2) improved layout for xlarge screen sizes (api 9 and up)
  (3) 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 all the actual games in that file. Simply scroll and select to the desired game. Very large PGN files may take a while to download (or even run out of memory), but the idea here 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.

[Albert Silver]

Shouldn't this be posted in the General Topics?

[abik]

Shouldn't this be posted in the General Topics?

You are probably right. I usually post here when I mention some technical terms
Moderators please feel free to move if I misplaced the announcement.

[bhlangonijr]

I just released version 2.8 of Chess for Android, available from the Android Market or as direct download.

New features include:

• (1) full PGN support (clipboard import/export, file load/save),
  (2) improved layout for xlarge screen sizes (api 9 and up)
  (3) 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 all the actual games in that file. Simply scroll and select to the desired game. Very large PGN files may take a while to download (or even run out of memory), but the idea here 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.

Thanks Aart.

No updates on BikJump? Looking forward to download BikJump 2.1P.
BTW, are you going to use OpenMP in BikJump's parallel search?

Regards,

[abik]

No updates on BikJump? Looking forward to download BikJump 2.1P.
BTW, are you going to use OpenMP in BikJump's parallel search?

I realize I keep on saying this, but after my Chess for Android "detour", I really want to go back to BikJump development. I don't use OpenMP for the parallel search, but wrote a small threading library that works on Windows, Linux, and MacOS (nothing more than a small abstraction to the underlying threading model really). This works quite well, but I have not finished the parallel search yet unfortunately. Also, I really need to improve BikJump's evaluation function, it is quite bad sometimes.....


BTW, I see on your website that redqueen is an UCI engine that should be easily ported to another OS. Interested in making an Android version?

[bhlangonijr]

No updates on BikJump? Looking forward to download BikJump 2.1P.
BTW, are you going to use OpenMP in BikJump's parallel search?

I realize I keep on saying this, but after my Chess for Android "detour", I really want to go back to BikJump development. I don't use OpenMP for the parallel search, but wrote a small threading library that works on Windows, Linux, and MacOS (nothing more than a small abstraction to the underlying threading model really). This works quite well, but I have not finished the parallel search yet unfortunately. Also, I really need to improve BikJump's evaluation function, it is quite bad sometimes.....


BTW, I see on your website that redqueen is an UCI engine that should be easily ported to another OS. Interested in making an Android version?

RQ is a bit dependent on GCC stuffs. Although, JA was able to produce some MSVC compiles (I use MingW for Windows). Some people are using it on Mac also.

It would be great to have an Android version.

[abik]

It would be great to have an Android version.

I compiled your engine for Android (ARM) and put the binary on my website (assuming you are okay with that). I will post some screenshots and the results of a tournament later on my blog and on this forum (again assuming you are okay with that).

[bhlangonijr]

It would be great to have an Android version.

I compiled your engine for Android (ARM) and put the binary on my website (assuming you are okay with that). I will post some screenshots and the results of a tournament later on my blog and on this forum (again assuming you are okay with that).

What a nice thing Aart! I gonna try that on my Android.

And yes, I am okay with that and actually very much appreciate it.

Thanks,

[abik]

What a nice thing Aart! I gonna try that on my Android.

My pleasure. I had no difficulties compiling RedQueen whatsoever and I am glad to have another nice chess engine available for Android!

[abik]

Next release will support setting up RobboTotalBases as well (in addition to Nalimov, Gaviota, and Scorpio endgame tablebases).