Iphone Chess Apps

[mpurland]

This is one free app that I have just tried,Chees O has poor features,only drag and drop imput, no set up board, if you lose on time that is game over (can't carry on game), slower to load, no analysis functions.
I guess I will be deleting this app when I next sync.

I am the developer of the app. Thanks for trying it out. I hope that you stay with the app and may stay tuned for future updates. The unfortunate thing is that I don't have a ton of time to develop this app to where I'd like it to be. I have recently received a review posting from a user saying that should I hire more programmers. 1) The app is free and I'm not making any money 2) I'm sacrificing personal time to develop it and am actually losing due to the opportunity cost. I plan on continuing development and have a list of many future features including unlimited timed games, board setup, select and move input, and improving load time. The 1.01 Fix release should speed up the load times. I welcome feedback and you can post enhancement requests on the website if you like.

A hard thing in developing for the iPhone is that it takes many days for an update once posted to Apple to be approved. The 1.01 Fix release was posted on Tuesday 12/9 but it wasn't available on the App Store until Sunday 12/14. I freely welcome beta testers, but due to the fact that this is a free app I don't have the time and resources as the other app developers may have.

Seems like the program causes a lot of phone crashes. The reviews were pretty bad...

The initial version of the app had some crashing related bugs. Most of these issues should be fixed with the latest 1.01 Fix release. Many of the issues arose due to the use of a larger hash table (32mb). It also contains an experimental feature for saving current game status, but is not complete yet.[/quote]

[Cubeman]

Sorry Matt, for sounding a bit to critical.It is just that I am a hard person to please.Since it was free I can't complain too much and I hope the critizms will lead to further improvments.

[abik]

I am the developer of the app. Thanks for trying it out. I hope that you stay with the app and may stay tuned for future updates. The unfortunate thing is that I don't have a ton of time to develop this app to where I'd like it to be. I have recently received a review posting from a user saying that should I hire more programmers. 1) The app is free and I'm not making any money 2) I'm sacrificing personal time to develop it and am actually losing due to the opportunity cost.

I can relate to this completely. I released a couple of games for the Android G1 phone recently (chess, checkers, and reversi; see http://aartbik.blogspot.com/) that I developed in my spare time. The applications are simple and lack many features found in commercial programs. But I only have so much spare time and they are free! Nevertheless, besides the positive feedback that keeps me going, I was very surprised to receive quite a few complaints too, some rather rude. In addition, many complaints are not even valid, such as, your game cheats by swapping a king and a rook (yes, that's called castling) or it takes a pawn the wrong way (yes, that's called en passant). So hopefully you find some comfort in the fact that all authors that release games for free must apparently suffer from this phenomenon. Don't get discouraged and keep up the good work!

[Cubeman]

I have just got a 2nd generation ipod touch and compared the speed of Chess Genius to 1st generation.The 2nd runs slightly faster.Will have to do more testing as the output on CG does not give time info in analysis.But at a rough guess it is about 1.25x quicker.

[tomker]

Hi pavel, gang,

Tom Kerrigan here, author of TSCP, Stobor, and now tChess for the iPhone.

This is bringing back some memories. If anybody remembers, I used to be very active on CCC years ago when it still had the older software. I guess they didn't port over the user database... I spent the past few days waiting on a new account to be approved so I could post to this thread.

Anyway, I'm not surprised that the CCC crowd is going straight for Genius on the iPhone, but I would like to call more attention to my game, tChess.

I think Genius is a nice game and has the stronger engine but overall I think tChess is superior for a few reasons:

1. The UI. I think the organization of my commands and settings is cleaner and easier to understand and use.

2. The range of difficulty levels. I spent a lot of time working on different algorithms to play a weak-but-not-stupid game. It seems Genius dumbs its game down by picking non-optimal moves with varying degrees of randomness. This works too but I find it less satisfying to play.

3. Analysis mode. Genius only seems to display its engine output when it's selecting a move. With tChess you can turn on "Analysis Mode" and move forward/backward through a game and watch the engine output for each position.

4. No offense but I think tChess just looks better.

5. tChess is $2 cheaper.

If you want to try out the tChess UI and the lower levels of playing strength (up to 2 ply searches at level 5), the Lite version is available for only $1.

I've tried almost all of the other chess games and while some are nice efforts I think it's clear they haven't been written by people/companies with much computer chess experience. So far it looks like Mr. Lang and I are the only engine developers who also wrote UIs and are selling their games.

Looking forward to your guys's feedback,
Tom Kerrigan

[tomker]

I just wrote a long post below about my game (tChess) but briefly, I spent a lot of effort dumbing down my engine so it's fun to play at the lower levels. In this regard especially I think my game is superior to Genius.

[tomker]

Or you can put it another way, that the number of people in the world that know how design an interface for the ipod,pda etc is probably in the order of magnitude of 100x larger than those that know how to create a working chess engine.

This might be true, but is not particularly relevant, as any average programmer can easily acquire the necessary knowledge. It is neither more difficult nor more time-consuming than mastering the iPhone SDK.

I think the myth that chess engine programming is difficult is a very harmful one, because it probably scares away many who would have been able to write world-class chess engines. Please don't perpetuate this myth!

I think they are all very different skills: UI programming, UI design, and chess engine programming. I think you are taking the latter for granted. I have a friend who's working on a strategy game. He is good at UI design and has quickly mastered the iPhone API, but now he's trying to write the AI for his game and his questions have really opened my eyes to how much knowledge is involved in writing something like a chess engine. (Or an engine for anything.)

I also think you're taking for granted the amount and depth of resources someone has today when starting out with chess engine programming. There are many web pages and sites about it today, and many open source engines, including my tutorial engine TSCP. When I started in ~1994, it was WAY more difficult to get information about how to write an engine. It's nice that everything is in place now for it to SEEM easy to make an engine.

Richard Lang has done a good job on the iphone with ChessGenius.

Quite predictably, he has. Chess Genius for the iPhone is, as expected, an excellent product, and by far the best available iPhone chess program at the moment.

I wonder if you've tried tChess Pro?

-Tom

[tomker]

The iPhone CPU runs at ~400MHz and the 2nd gen iPod Touch CPU runs at ~550MHz.

The iPhone CPU is reportedly capable of running at ~600MHz but is underclocked, presumably in order to increase battery life.

[Mark]

The iPhone CPU runs at ~400MHz and the 2nd gen iPod Touch CPU runs at ~550MHz.

The iPhone CPU is reportedly capable of running at ~600MHz but is underclocked, presumably in order to increase battery life.

That's the first I heard about the iPhone processor being underclocked. I always thought it was 624MHz. (I guess technically it is...)

I have Chess Genius and Caissa Chess. I'll pick up a copy of tChess Pro soon. (I'll probably get an iTunes gift card for Christmas, so I might as well wait until then.) It seems like the app store is getting flooded with chess games. If someone is not a computer chess fan and doesn't know about the programmers, it'd be tough to know which programs are the best.

If you don't mind me asking, how are the sales of tChess going? I noticed that you have more reviews than Chess Genius (if that's any indication of sales).

btw, thanks for TSCP. I spent a lot of time with it when I was writing my program!

[tomker]

tChess has been doing very well. Lite has been the best-selling chess game on the App Store almost since it was released. I think Pro has been doing the best in its price bracket. Most customers really like my UI, graphics, and easier levels.

At one point both games were in the Top 100 list of paid games, but last Thursday Apple changed the search order algorithms on the App Store so now when you search for "chess," my games are towards the bottom of the list. That's really hurt sales and it's very frustrating.

Thanks for the nice feedback about TSCP. Glad it helped.