Android apps by Aart Bik

Chess for Android

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:58:59 +0000

Chess for Android consists of a chess engine and a GUI. The application accepts moves through the touch screen, trackball, or keyboard (e2e4 pushes the king pawn, e1g1 castles king side, etc.). An optional "move coach" highlights valid user moves during input and last played engine move. Full game navigation buttons enable users to correct mistakes or analyze games. Games import and export as FEN/PGN to and from the clipboard, load and save as file, are set up through a position editor, or import as application/x-chess-pgn MIME type on startup. A draw by stalemate, insufficient material, the fifty move rule, or threefold repetition is recognized. The engine plays at various levels (including random, against itself in auto-play, or free-play, where the game can be used as a "magnetic chessboard"). The user can play either side and, independently, view the board from the perspective of white or black.

The application supports the Universal Chess Interface (UCI) and Chess Engine Communication Protocol (WinBoard and XBoard), which allows users to play against more powerful third party engines or even play tournaments between engines. Engine setup features pondering, infinite analysis, hash tables, multiple threads, endgame tablebases, and opening test suites. A list of available engines is given at http://www.aartbik.com/MISC/eng.html

Recent changes:
Direct sharing from and to other chess applications.

see http://aartbik.blogspot.com/ for details

Reversi for Android

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:59:29 +0000

Reversi for Android consists of a reversi engine and a GUI. The application accepts moves through the touch screen, the trackball, or through the keyboard. An optional "move coach" shows all valid moves as ghost stones and highlights the new and flipped stones after each engine move. An undo feature can take back up to eight half-moves to correct mistakes. The engine plays at various levels (including random and free-play). The user can play either side.

Recent changes:
Code optimizations

Checkers for Android

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:59:03 +0000

Checkers for Android consists of an 8x8 checkers engine and a GUI. The application accepts moves through the touch screen or trackball. An optional "move coach" shows all valid user moves and highlights each last played move. An undo feature can take back up to eight half-moves to correct mistakes. The engine plays at various levels (including random and free-play). By popular request, an option was added to select between mandatory captures (the official rule) or optional captures (a common home rule, but without "huffing", where the piece that should have performed the capture is forfeited; instead the game simply continues). The user can play either side and, independently, view the board from the perspective of white or black.

Recent changes:
Capture animation control