Chess for Android

par Aart Bik

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:
Extended PGN parser to accept non-compliant formats
Keep screen on during game play
Removed finger swipe feature

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