Carballo Chess for Android (Chessdroid)
THIS APP IS NOW HOSTED AND SUPPORTED BY MOBIALIA ON http://www.mobialia.com/chess/
This is a chess application for the Android Mobile Platform with lots of possibilities:
Play against AI
- Five playing personalities (Baby, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Chess Master)
- Selectable time per move: changing the personality and the time per move, lots of difficulty levels can be selected
- Opening book with more than 30.000 positions: ensures variated funny games
- Can take back all moves (you can also take back moves by making a gesture from right to left on any unused part of the screen)
- Send PGN by email: This way, you can analyze later your games on your PC
- Also can edit position’s FEN notation
- On closing, saves the current game and it is loaded when the application is restarted
Play Online
- Play on internet at freechess.org (FICS)
- Play as guest or as a registered user
- View seeks or create a your seek modifying time settings and color
- Console to see FICS output and to send commands
Chess Problems
- 2900+ chess problems to solve looking for the first move of the sequence: problems collected by Uwe Auerswald, from Germany
- Selectable problem difficult (Easy, Medium and Hard Problems)
The Best Interface
- Clean, simple and intuitive interface (all the options appear after pressing the “MENU” key)
- Move by dragging and dropping the piece with useful guide lines
- Also move by tapping the origin and the destiny squares or with the trackball
- Portrait and Landscape mode
- Shows legal moves (as yellow traslucid squares)
- Highlights last move (with a yellow arrow), also move hints (as a green arrow) after a request in the menu
- Four piece sets (Merida, Leipzig, Berlin and Staunton) and five board styles (Blue, Brown, Gray, Marble and Wood)
- Shows a dot on the side to move (the point is of the moving side color) and can show board coordinates
- Shows captured pieces advantage for each one of the sides (as an example if black captured 3 pawns and whites 2, it shows an advantage of 1 white pawn for blacks)
- Speak moves, checks and game results
- Vibration
It is on sale at the Android Market by only EUR 0.99. This price is limited to the first 500 units sold. There is also a free version “Carballo Chess LITE” with the following limitations:
- Only the “Chess Master” personality
- Only the “1 second per move” level
- Play on FICS only as guest
- Supported by Ads
It’s proudly powered by my Open Source Chess Engine Carballo, so any comments about its gameplay will be welcome.
Support
Please send to alberto@alonsoruibal.com all the comments, bugs and feature request.
History
- Version 2.4: New hint dialog (like an analysis mode), new startup screen, solved many bugs (FC’s & promotions not working on fics)
- Version 2.3: Rebranding complete from Chesdroid to “Carballo Chess” due to trademark issues with the word “Droid”, improved Carballo Engine (sync with 0.4 release)
- Version 2.2: Rebranding, bugs on Carballo PGN parser. Improvements on online play (rematch, console…).
- Version 2.1: First stable release on 2.x series. New icon, updated Carballo chess engine, more bugs solved.
- Version 2.0.2: Another urgent update trying to stabilize version 2.0. Crash report added. Many bugs due to the new threading system.
- Version 2.0.1: Version 2.0 had two important bugs when moving (thanks to Joe Tama) and when playing human vs human, this was an urgent update, sorry
- Version 2.0: Online play at freechess.org (FICS), auto flip, alternate color when playing against AI (Thanks to Thomas Marr), player names on board. Bug solved: when returning to a played game, sometimes the game was a few moves before (Thanks to Ollie Purkiss)
- Version 1.7: intro screen, chess problems, edit FEN, Staunton piece set, general rewrite.
- Version 1.6: support for Droid, Nexus One and devices with different screen sizes. Gesture to take back moves. More protection against crashes on loading damaged preferences.
- Version 1.5: speak moves, vibration, arrows instead of lines. Spanish translation. Bug if rotated when loading.
- Version 1.4: new wood texture, bigger clocks, better coordinates. Updated chess engine.
- Version 1.3: adds guide lines and clocks. Lite version now shows and ad on the new game dialog. Many bugs solved.
- Version 1.2: adds Berlin piece set. Other bug solved: under certain saved positions, the program crashed on start.
- Version 1.1: adds send PGN by email. A bug prevented starting new game after winning.
- Version 1.0: first public release
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I bought this fr my Motorola Droid. I love it. Thanks. – It would be a nice feature to have an option to: 1) save your played games in pgn files so they can later be moved to a PC to be analyzed with fritz or shredder. 2) For the interface, an option to alternate start play between black and white and to auto flip the board. 3) An option to random start your game in either black or white.
Great job!
Thanks Thomas:
1) You already can send a PGN of the played game on MENU->Send PGN. It is sent by email. You can read the email and download the PGN file on your computer.
2) The auto-flip, a must-have, it will be under Rotate Board (also will be renamed to “Flip Board”), a new option “Auto Flip”
3) Great Idea, I will include this under Preferences->Opponent, there will be a new option “Alternate play”
All this will be included in the next ChessDroid version, v 2.0. Iit will also include online play at Freechess.org and will be released in about one or two weeks.
Hi,
I cannot find this on the market ( 27/Jan/10). Searching from my HTC Hero which is still on Android 1.5 – is this the reason. Wd like to try this – looks better than the other chess programmes on Android so far.
Thanks
Epee Sharkey
Hi, Epee:
Sorry, at the moment, it needs Android 1.6 to speak moves. I’m studying how to support android 1.5 devices, maybe with another independent version without voice announcements or removing completely voice announcements from the main version…
When will you support uci engines and analysis mode?
UCI engines cannot be supported because at the moment there are no UCI engines which can be run on Android Phones. My chess engine Carballo is also a UCI engine, and I could port it to Android because it is programmed on the Java Language, but each other engine will need a lot of work to be ported. Analysis mode is an interesting feature and some similar will be included in a future release (2.4) as an modification of the current Hint feature.
Love the program, but why did you design it to where the user only makes the first move in your puzzles? Far more knowlege could be gained by the user if they hot to make every move until the end of the puzzle.
Thanks Luke, when I designed it, I was trying to do it the most simple possible. I thougth that this was enought for most users, thinking in it like the chess problems on a newspaper, you evaluate it and when you think you got it, you see the solution so see if it was right.
This is an excellent FICS client, very glad to have purchased it. (This may be a duplicate post, but the first one isn’t showing, delete this if it does)
It needs more FICS functions wrapped into the gui though:
1) Seek dialog needs time controls, ratings range, and whether to use the stored formula
2) Needs a match dialog, including selection from the stored notify list
3) Option to notify new matches that you are on a mobile device. Otherwise, a lit up icon to let you know if you have any tells from the player and touch to temporarily display them and/or reply
4) Currently, it automatically declines offers to draw.
5) Formula wizard and server variables menu. See babaschess.
Thanks Steve for your good ideas. This is a young app and I am adding more features on each release:
1) Ok, I willl add ratings range, and will study the formula
2) Ok, will try to include this in the new version
3) Will be good to add chat support, and also to notify the other player with a text message “I am on a mobile!” when starting the match
4) This is a bug, it must show a dialog asking to accept or reject draw, will solve it on the next version
5) I am not very familiarized with formulas, I will see babaschess. You can set server variables on the console, but is a very rudimentary method.
Two important things I forgot to mention:
Indicate whether a game is rated or unrated in all places they are listed. Match and seek should have rated/unrated options.
Most importantly, games require an abort command button.
- If a game is on move 0/1, it should automatically abort if you leave a match (especially in the case where someone just doesn’t want to make the first move and you have to leave). Currently, it automatically resigns. This is a big bug since the server allows aborts in those cases without confirmation from the other player. It should never resign at that point.
Thanks a lot again, Steve. Upcoming version 2.5 has already rated/unrated ererywhere. It also aborts on move 0/1 and has also the option to offer an abort (on the menu).
I am testing 2.5 before releasing, I also already solved draw offers, and it now can accept match offers or make match offers. I think that ratings range and formulas will be let for the 2.6 version, because too much changes can make things crash a lot…