Miniature

m (→Roadmap)
m (→Project status)
Line 17: Line 17:
Kicking off. Nothing exists. Just a [http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33764 Talk thread], a [https://garage.maemo.org/projects/chess/ Garage project] and this wiki page.
Kicking off. Nothing exists. Just a [http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33764 Talk thread], a [https://garage.maemo.org/projects/chess/ Garage project] and this wiki page.
-
 
-
The developer mailing list is [https://garage.maemo.org/mail/?group_id=1107 chess-developer@garage.maemo.org]
 
== Mockups ==
== Mockups ==

Revision as of 07:20, 3 November 2009

You love chess. You love Maemo and its devices. You believe they fit so well... yet you haven't found a convincing implementation of a chess game for Maemo. Miniature to the rescue!

Contents

The concept

More or less:

  • The main use case is playing online against other players at freechess.org
  • Now imagine that you can also chat with the other player.
  • Playing against the computer is a given (chat is optional)
  • Learning is important and it would be great to watch games, review stored games and also process offline the lessons given at certain times in freechess.org
  • A variant would be to play against othe player with a compatible device via local network or bluetooth.
  • I guess if we got at this point then implement variants such as suicide chess, random house, etc is peanuts.

Basing this on Qt 4.6 would be useful to assure the Fremantle - Harmattan path, be fully compliant with whatever the Ovi store brings and have ports for Symbian, Windows Mobile and desktop OSs (Linux, Windows, Mac).

Project status

Kicking off. Nothing exists. Just a Talk thread, a Garage project and this wiki page.

Mockups

These are the current sketches.

caption caption


Old ;)

caption caption

Features and roadmap

Draft. Sorted by priority.

Current features

None. Minuature is currently vaporware. :(

Roadmap

  1. Play games online
    1. Chess game basics, demonstrated off-line.
      1. Finger friendly UI.
        1. Mechanism to avoid false moves. First tap to point squeare, second to confirm?
      2. Portrait mode.
      3. Pieces can be moved manually.
      4. Only legal moves are possible.
      5. "Black/White Wins!" banner after a mat.
      6. Resign.
      7. Pawn promotion, piece selection.
      8. Draw request/accept.
      9. Timer
    2. Online chess basics, targeting http://www.freechess.org/ first
      1. Log in & out
      2. Register
      3. Search challengers / by time
      4. Propose a game
      5. Timeseal support.
    3. Online chess advanced
      1. Join tournaments
      2. Full access to FICS console (might make sense only in landscape mode)
  2. Chat with your opponent.
    1. Landscape support.
  3. Play with other opponents P2P e.g. via Bluetooth.
  4. Learn chess lessons with moves + text.
  5. Play local tournaments e.g. via Telepathy Tubes.
  6. Play against computer.
  7. Chess variants (suicide, randomhouse...)
  8. Display games by you or others, live or stored (moved to back since Chessmonk is concentrating on this for Maemo 5 - not that urgent)
    1. History of an opening.
    2. Take a picture of a printed game, process the notations with OCR and display it.
    3. Display several games at a time.
    4. Watch game via webcam stream

Technology selections

How to make the most from existing free projects avoiding forking and duplicated work as much as possible.

  • Qt 4.6 for UI layer. The goal is to have Maemo as primary development platform, aiming for straight ports to Symbian and other Qt compatible platforms.
    • Can we save work by looking at pacaq and Knights? Others? --qgil 06:22, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
  • What starting point to get the online chess features?
  • What starting point for chatting?
  • What starting point for game analysis?

Architecture

Logic:

  • Game - the logic for a particular game, right now that would be just chess, but other board games could be possible too. (Chess based or other)
  • Pre-Game - How to find players, select a server or engine

Domain:

  • Board - Represents the data structure of the board (duh)
  • Player - information about the other player, like online status, skill level

Communication:

  • ICS
  • Bluetooth
  • Telepathy
  • Computer Chess Engine - an offline engine should be accessed the same way any online game is, the engine does not have to be in the same task

References

  • Crafty is a free, open-source computer chess program.
  • EBoard and Crafty for the N810/N800/N770 - OS2007 Downloads page.
  • Knights aimed to be the ultimate chess resource for the K Desktop Environment... years ago.
  • pacaq is a chess game visualizing and analysis tool done with the Maemo 4.1 Qt4 port - Talk thread.
  • SCID, a chess database application for Windows, Linux and Mac OS operating systems.
  • Xboard is a graphical user interface for chess in all its major forms.
Retrieved from "http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature"