Pictures of me

Android Chess Interface for chessclub.com ICC

This is a free program to connect to ICC on your android phone, version of android 1.6 or greater needed. It can be used by anyone, copyright to software held by me, Mike Adams, chess pieces author is Maurizio Monge, and he holds all rights to his pieces(more on that below, in Board section). This program should be downloaded here, and may not be redistributed, though you can mail a copy to a friend, if not publicly distributed on the web or otherwise. Today 8-1-2010 is the programs first release and it should be considered beta, but it's been well tested by me and others.(links to screenshot at very bottom of this page)

download

Current release 1.4 on 8-17-2010. New in 1.4 -- a list of all seeks you can play. screenshot at bottom of this page.

http://www.adam16mr.org/AndroidIccInterface1.4.apk

Older http://www.adam16mr.org/AndroidIccInterface1.3.apk

Read this definitely before you try to play

I recommend to learn to enter moves you type examine then a board yourname vs yourname comes up. You can move for both sides. Then hold the phone tall not sideways, and try touching squares to move like touch e2 then e4. If the squares are too small you have two options. In board window click menu button (it’s a button on my phone) then choose zoom move or elongated board

zoom move will magnify the 4 by 4 squares around where you touch, and the square you touched in blue. and you touch again to confirm the move on the bigger 4 by 4 board

Elongated board will stretch the board to make it bigger. Please read the section on typing commands to get more use and learn to get games

Scroll back

On phone next to and to the left of where you type, there is a button that says scroll now. touch this and it says scroll off and you can scroll the text up on console. touch again to resume new text forcing scroll to bottom

timestamp status

currently no timestamp to compensate for lag, so play medium blitz or slower. ICC has a java timestamp made, and I’m waiting for them to make a version of it available to me. Early indications are they are willing to do that. The version they have has to be turned into a new build to identify with my program. I will put it in market when i get timestamp, though it will stay here as well for countries without access to market.

A word on security

There has been a lot of talk about unsafe applications on android. Android applications are by default safe. Android is a UNIX system and each application gets its own user name and can only touch its own little folder where it lives, not the rest of the phone. Turn it off and it's done. The issue if you follow these android threads on security is that to do more than some basic things applications have to request permissions to go beyond their sandbox and utilize the full phone. when you install an android application it always lists the permissions asked for. Be careful here, enough permission an application can do anything. But what about my application? My android interface will only request One permission. Only one. That is internet, needed to connect to chessclub.com

Using the application

There are two tabs at top, Console and Board. You can hit the menu button in either tab and see a menu. At first it logs you onto ICC and you see text asking you to input or type your handle and password. Do this to log on. To not have to do this again, click the menu in the console view, and select one at a time, handle and password, and enter them. Then you auto login. It’s possible to only set handle. then you log in with that handle but still have to type password.

Board

The board used chess pieces (a combination of the fantasy and spatial set) made by Maurizio Monge. They are released under Lgpl, and in my case used with permission of the author, that i have sufficently satisfied all requirements to use them as best I can with an android application. LGPL technically requires you be able to re-link an update to the pieces to the program, and that from my research can be done, but its a bit tricky to re-sign an android application once you make the changes. Hence i sought permission of the author for my method of deployment.

while I use pieces from fantasy and spatical set, the 6 Monge pieces set's i've found are made available here http://www.adam16mr.org/monge-pieces.zip,and i may include more sets in the program at a later date. Each folder for the different piece sets contains author and license info.

The board normally is square, and should be used in vertical phone mode. Since the width is shorter than the height, a square board is not as large as a rectangular board. Choose from the menu elongated board, for a bigger board. it will stretch down more. I find it easier to move the pieces. Some insist on a proper aspected board.

movement is touch square then touch next square. in the menu if not using elongated board you can choose zoom input. touch and it zooms to the squares around the touch, highlighting your touch in blue, and touch again to select. 4 touches needed.

Typing commands

All commands must be typed. After typing text, hit enter key on android keyboard to send command.

here is a short list of how to do things by typing.
To play an ICC computer type:
play trainingbot
play wimpb
play slowmoe

New in 1.3 or higher click the menu in board window, go to more menu item, then in menu that comes up pick play bots menu, and there are some icc computers like trainingbot and wimpb to select to play. Also an observe menu.

Essentially if a person has one seek, typing play name is the same as clicking on that seek in the seek graph. So type play icchandle to play your favorite computers.

To issue a seek:
seek time inc r/u where time is time to start, inc is increment in seconds (can be 0) and use r or u for rated and unrated. If you normally play rated you can omit the r, as your rated variable is probably set to r, but to change or guarantee what you get, use the r or u.
seek 7 1 u
seek 15 0 r

Optionally you can add a rating range, for example 1300-1700:
seek 7 1 1300-1700 u
seek 15 0 1300-1700 r

to see your finger type:
fi
or you could type finger
to see recent games type:
history
or type his

To observe the high rated game type:
observe *
or type just ob *

observe name can be used to watch anyone. or observe # like observe 1. typically the top relay game is observe 1, as you will see below, you can watch several relay games. so you might type observe 1, then observe 2 then observe 3.

watching multiple games, switching boards

At the very top, of board window, yet below tabs, there are 3 lines of text. the middle one has the clocks and the game listing like 3 0 blitz r. the top one says something like game 390 of 1, touch here to switch games. the 390 in this case is the ICC game number. observe 390 would let others watch. the of 1 means you have one game up. This could be of 2 or of 3! Say you were observing 3 games. touch that text or anywhere in the limited space above it yet below the tabs, and if you are watching more than one game, it will rotate through your games with each touch, kind of like you had hit a tab to switch to another board.

Chatting

to talk to opponent type the say command followed by the message
say gg

to talk to anyone type tell username blaha where blahblha is changed to your personal message to them.
tell mike great application, thanks

To talk to a channel use tell
tell 1 hi I have a question
tell 250 hi! I’m on android!

250 is the lobby. everyone is put in there at account creation. you can spot the channel number if you see chat because the messages coming in console have the number next to name like mike(2): anyone use android?
that means tell 2 yes I use android! -- would be appropriate.

Shutting down

Easy enough to close the program, just back out of it. But I use a task manager program or task killer, to make sure it completely shuts down. This should be done before restarting the program, unless you happened to have powered on and off the phone in the meantime. Within the program if you disconnect or idle out, there is a reconnect menu option that will reconnect you to ICC in the consoles window. Hit menu button.

bell issue

This interface requires bell be set to 0. It does this at login. With bell at 0 no move sound prompts are sent by ICC. when back on Dasher or BlitzIn, type /set bell 1 to always here move sounds when both paying and observing or type /set bell 2 to only here move sounds when playing and not when observing.

Screen Shots

this screen shot was taken in the emulator. It looks better on the phone, and the board stretches and fills out more, but to have an idea what it looks like, in the board view, go to http://www.adam16mr.org/android-about.html this next one is an actual photograph, from close up, of my phone running the android chess interfacve http://www.adam16mr.org/android-phoneshot-3.jpg

Here is a screen shot of the play bots menu, notice you can see at bottom a kib from trainingbot on board window. Last two kibs/says/whispers print to bottom of board. they may cut off, but full text in console, also try flipping to landscape if you want to read a longer message on board. http://www.adam16mr.org/android-phoneshot-4.jpg

For the seek list view, new to 1.4 go here --- http://www.adam16mr.org/android-seeks.html

message Mike on ICC with any questions or comments on this program, include an email if you want a faster response in the message body. I'm interested in hearing comments on the interface.

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adam16mr's android interfaceMike Adams