[qgil]

(HTML version of this announcement - jump to Miniature 0.4 posts in this thread)

2011-09-13 - Miniature finally plays real chess online! You might find rough corners and room for improvement but the basics are in place. This is why we have decided to call this release after Luis Ramírez de Lucena who, without being apparently a great master, had the patience to document the modern rules of chess at their birth five centuries ago.

Now users can login to http://freechess.org (aka FICS) as guests or registered users and send / take challenges to & from other players. This already fulfills the needs of many, but those expecting even more fun will be happy to know that chatting with your opponent is also supported.

We are aiming to publish this version in the Ovi Store for the Nokia N9 and N950. Packages ready for other Qt enabled OSs are welcome!


INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

1. Open the browser of your Nokia N9 / N950.
2. Tap on http://taschenorakel.de/files/michae....0-1_armel.deb
3. Accept the download and installation of the package.

That's it! The Miniature icon will appear in the application grid of your device.


DE LUCENA RELEASE FEATURES

• Select and confirm game challenges.
• Create a new game seek.
• Play with online opponents with all chess rules in place.
• Have a chat with your opponent while playing.

See Miniature/0.3_Berlin_Defence to check previously implemented features. The full changelog is available at http://gitorious.org/miniature/miniature/commits/master

BUGS FIXED

ID Severity Status Resolution Summary (27 tasks) ⇒
12342 blocker VERIFIED FIXED Miniature can't play chess
12368 critical VERIFIED FIXED Grave issues handling times in OnlineBoard
12374 critical VERIFIED FIXED Sometimes User Interface does not respond anymore after joining SeekGames window
12382 critical VERIFIED FIXED Miniature doesn't handle end games
12347 enhancement RESOLVED FIXED When chat overlay extends, text entry should gain focus
12355 enhancement VERIFIED FIXED List of games: Change possible time control filter options
12361 enhancement VERIFIED FIXED Create a new game: "+" Button instead "new" button
12375 enhancement VERIFIED FIXED FICS login textfields should jump to next when pressing Enter
12395 enhancement VERIFIED FIXED MainPage: Avoid upper case for the first letter in username input field
12336 major VERIFIED FIXED Multiple instances of Miniature can be opened
12337 major VERIFIED FIXED Miniature UI can't handle incorrect FICS login
12339 major VERIFIED FIXED Miniature logs to FICS already in MainPage
12344 major VERIFIED FIXED Miniature chat in FICS doesn't work
12357 major VERIFIED FIXED Castling does not work
12358 major VERIFIED FIXED Miniature UI doesn't handle user's new seeks
12364 major VERIFIED FIXED Frontend allows illegal moves in general
12365 major VERIFIED FIXED Promotion does not work
12369 major VERIFIED FIXED Disconnection not handled correctly
12372 major VERIFIED FIXED Miniature local timers don't sync with the real remote FICS time
7829 normal RESOLVED FIXED Checkmate not announced
12335 normal VERIFIED FIXED A reboot is needed in order to see the Miniature icon in app grid
12340 normal VERIFIED FIXED Selecting a FICS game in Miniature needs usability love
12343 normal VERIFIED FIXED Local timers should stop at 0
12363 normal VERIFIED FIXED Signals for seeks cancelled and games started
12389 normal VERIFIED FIXED About dialog button moves up when virtual keyboard is invoked
12397 normal RESOLVED FIXED SeekGame: Show ratings of non-guest players
12409 normal VERIFIED FIXED Miniature doesn't handle rating values properly after the first move

There are some known issues. Your feedback is welcome if you want to report problems or enhancement requests. We will work on them for Miniature 0.5.


NEWS & FEEDBACK

• https://twitter.com/#!/miniaturechess
• User forum: http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?t=4301
• Developer list: https://garage.maemo.org/pipermail/chess-developer/
• http://miniature-chess.org/ (coming soon)

Let us know your impressions on Miniature. And if you want more, there is more for anybody willing to test and contribute new releases. This is just the beginning!

The Miniature Team

[qgil]

Scoop: timoph got Miniature kind of running on the N900 with MeeGo CE.
Proof: http://timoph.fi/miniature/

Deeper analysis to come soon. Thanks timoph for your first step as official maintainer of the MeeGo upstream version (one more step and you'll get the badge)

[qgil]

And here goes the deeper analysis for Miniature running on MeeGo CE & N900: https://garage.maemo.org/pipermail/c...st/000185.html

[timoph]

Originally Posted by qgil

Scoop: timoph got Miniature kind of running on the N900 with MeeGo CE.
Proof: http://timoph.fi/miniature/

Deeper analysis to come soon. Thanks timoph for your first step as official maintainer of the MeeGo upstream version (one more step and you'll get the badge)

Updated the packaging and the patch attached to it so that we actually have a visible chess board in CE now

http://timoph.fi/miniature/board.png

[qgil]

Project news

- First real & unstable FICS games played. First it was mikhas against himhelf, then mikhas-qgil.
- How quick I got started with Qt Quick - blog post from qgil featuring Miniature.

If you want to follow the development in detail you can CC yourself to any of these bugs: http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/Deve...Project_status

PS: and we have started marking easyfix bugs for new contributors.

[qgil]

We have started playing chess with the development branch and things are looking bright for a 0.4 release that will allow early testers to play real games online.

Apart from our chess love, a main motivation of the Miniature team is to try out "the Qt promise" in practice. This is why we are looking for Qt devs willing to try Miniature in Symbian and Android (and Maemo 5 as soon as Qt Quick components are available there). I just sent a call out and you are all encouraged to take the challenge or redistribute:

Looking for Qt devs with a Symbian or Android device at hand willing to run Miniature and report back. No need to be good at Chess.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/10092006...ts/NyirYtKTzfq

(also on http://twitter.com/#!/quimgil but why on Earth can't I find the direct link to the tweet where Twitter used to have it?)

[qgil]

Warming up the marketing machinery... https://twitter.com/#!/miniaturechess

[qgil]

Miniature 0.4 plan frozen: play online games at FICS and make it to the Ovi Store for the Nokia N9 & N950

http://wiki.maemo.org/Miniature/0.4_De_Lucena

[rzr]

it did rebuilt on shared repo , and start faster than battle chess on n950 ..

Thank you all for your efforts ...

--
http://rzr.online.fr/q/harmattan

[qgil]

Thanks for trying!

What is the URL of this shared repo (this might be a too obvious answer, sorry).

About starting fast... the comparison will be more fair with Miniature 0.4 which actually plays real games. Still, I don't see the booting time as a bottleneck in Miniature, although I'm sure there is room for improvement. Miniature is relying solely on dependencies available in the platform (the Qt stuff) and I guess that helps.