iPhone Chess 1.5 released
Even though we made version 1.4 with Quartz precision, the board was upside down. This version fixes that. Thanks shev for letting us know. This releases fixes the problem.
Robota Softwarehouse Release Log
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Hi, thx for your new fixed version but still some issues are present:
1.
Once set the difficulty to 8, the game take more than 4 minutes to take a decision and do its first move. If it takes so much even at the beginning of the game, the max difficulty available should be 5 to have the game difficult and at the same time playable.
2
when “captured” (I am sorry but I am italian and I don’t know how to say when one of my pieces moves on an opponent piece :( ) an opponent piece, it moves on the top of the screen overlapping the Chess title
3
the pieces look pixelated… it was much better before when the board was smaller and the pieces look fine. now with a bigger board they are not very “good looking”
4
it would be nice to have the letters and numbers on the side of the boards so to understand the HINTS given… if they take too much space it would be better to reduce a little bit the board or maybe an option to display or hide them
5
the moves coordinates on the bottom of the screen are sometimes useless without the letters displayed on the side so it might be good to remove them or give an option to show/hide them and put the pieces “captured” on the bottom of the screen how it was before
6
save and load don’t work if exit the application!
do a couple of moves and press Acion - Save then exit the game. re launch the game and press Load to notice the issue
the Load… and Save… buttons are the only one working… the normal Save and Load don’t work
7
if the user keeps saving matches it would be nice to have the chance to remove them too to save some space in the hard drive
8
promoting issue I think it’s well known but what I would fix too is the color of the available promotion pieces… the Queen has a black background while other pieces has a white background (very minor issue)
9
volume bar doesn’t work
it was observed that in the settings menu there is a volume bar… well if set to 0 sounds are still being played, and if put it to the maximum no difference will be heared. Also when selecting any piece on the board and then instead of moving it choose another piece, the selection sound will be played louder on the second piece.
10
No hit sound is heared in game as the Move sound is played on the top
11
Donate or About button looses the status of the current game once resumed. it should save the current match before launching safari
The current test has been dopne on an iPhone fw 1.1.2
I hope you’ll fix these issues very soon because it is actually a great game :D
@davide: thanks for the nice bug list, appreciated, we will soon bring an update.
np :) I hope I can help and I have to say that I might have been too peaky on some bugs ;)
Hi!
I like your chess app, and hope you will continue to make it better (will probably be easier once the SDK is released).
I have a few feature requests, in no particular order. Many of them work together, but I decided to split them up.
1. Being able to play against another human.
I consider this to be the most important missing feature. It would be very convenient to be able to play a game of chess on one’s iPod instead of on a chess board. It shouldn’t be too hard to implement. An option could be to rotate the board 180° when changing players.
2. Update the size of the icons.
Enlarging the board while keeping the same size of the icons makes them look pixelated and rather ugly. I’d suggest you find a graphic designer and design your own board and pieces with just the right dimensions (and make them more like the Apple eye candy we’re used to! ;-) )
3. Improve the user interface for actions.
Having all the actions stuffed in a tiny grid is not user friendly, nor is it good-looking. My suggestion is to remove the white stripes above and below the board and add a standard iPhone toolbar at the bottom for the most common actions, like New, Save/Load, Undo and Hint. This would mean removing the information text.
4. Move the notations to another page.
Most people do not need to keep track of the notations, and I dare say many won’t even use them. Therefore, I would move them to another page, accessible through a button somewhere.
5. Instead of the text “White/black player to move” there could be a little light or something resembling a chess clock to show whose turn it is.
6. A chess clock.
Display the time using the space above and below the board. I probably wouldn’t use it but I’m sure someone would. This only really applies when playing with another person, so that has higher priority.
7. Fix the “Show last move” function.
Right now, when undoing, the blue squares indicating the last move made doesn’t change. This makes it harder to see what move was made, sometimes requiring additional undos.
8. A simpler hint system.
When using the hint function, instead of printing the coordinates of the move, highlight the piece to be moved and its destination.
9. A more “touchy” interface.
Let me explain. When moving pieces, the most intuitive way to do it on the iPhone would be to drag the pieces to their destination instead of tapping twice. In order to make this work well the piece would need to be enlarged when moved, as when customising the toolbars in the music and youtube apps. Some way of highlighting the square one’s currently hovering over, and somehow convey whether it’s a legal move or not would also help.
I understand well that it isn’t plausible to implement all of these suggestions right now. A lot of them would probably benefit from having the SDK, especially when it comes to making the app more clean-looking. But some, especially Human vs. Human play (to me), are important and will require the same amount of work, SDK or no SDK.
With all that said, you guys are making a great app, I hope you continue to improve it and I wish you the best of luck! :-)
What i suggest is needed:
steering buttons below the board, to play forward,backward,beginning and end.
Furthermore not to play one whole game, but place figures for analysis (even manual)for manual drawing
Hi,
a 2-player mode would be awesome, because 2-player-games are rare on the iPhone. And I think it´s not very difficult to implant a human vs. human-modus, because you don´t have to teach an AI…
Hi! I was wondering how you put the game on the ipod and if there is a 2-player mode
hi.
i love using this app., but i can’t seem to castle the king(switching the king and the castle). the AI can, but i can’t, kind of makes it unfair.
maybe i am missing something?
How to install iChess on iPod Touch?
I have the .zip application file, but I don’t know how to install.