A Suggestion for GUI makers. Double-Click a Piece to Capture

[Zagalo]

Sorry for repeating this post. I think this is the correct forum for it

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32304

Here is a small suggestion for GUI makres, Arena..etc.

During a game between you and an engine (or someone), and its your turn:
If you Double-Click a piece (of your own), then:
- That pice will Capture the Only piece it can legally capture
(the normal procedure if 'Allow one-click input' option is checked, in Arena 2.01)
- If there are more than one piece it can capture then another Click is needed on the piece to capture (the normal procedure)

If you Double-Click a piece of the opponent, then:
- That pice will Be Captured by the Only piece it can legally capture it
(the normal procedure if 'Allow target square first' option is checked, in Arena 2.01)
- If there are more than one piece that can capture it then another Click is needed on the piece to capture it (the normal procedure)

Of course there should be an option, check-box, in the GUI like : 'Allow double click to capture' to allow this behavior

I think this will significantly speed up the play to say the least

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

Shredder (Classic) allows reverse move entry: you click destination square or piece. If there's only move possible, it gets executed immediately. If there are multiple possibilities, you then click on from square.

This is an order of magnitude faster than forward move entry and comes close to what you want, I think.

[hgm]

Indeed, why limit it to captures?

[mjlef]

Shredder (Classic) allows reverse move entry: you click destination square or piece. If there's only move possible, it gets executed immediately. If there are multiple possibilities, you then click on from square.

This is an order of magnitude faster than forward move entry and comes close to what you want, I think.

Zillions of Games has had this feature since 1997. And like Shredder, it need not be a capture. If only one piece can move to that square then that move is made instantly. And another fast move feature is if you click on a piece with a single legal move available, it is made instantly too. You can turn off these "Smart Moves" features, of course.

Mark

[hgm]

OK, WinBoard/XBoard now has this to. (Only in case of a single move; not yet the reverse entering in case of multiple choices.)

It uses normal left-click, though. I might still change this, as it seems a bit risky. It works playing against ICS and Engine, but the (persistent) option -oneClickMove true must be used to enable it once (as the default is false).

See http://hgm.nubati.net/news.html for more details,
and http://hgm.nubati.net/seekgraph.zip for a WinBoard download,
and http://hgm.nubati.net/cgi-bin/gitweb.cg ... /sgcollaps for sources.

[Zagalo]

Thank you all for the replies.
I think my second part of the suggestion is not necessary 'If you Double-Click a piece of the opponent', hence a single click will do.

Here is an example of the first part of the suggestion (which I think no GUI can do):
Assuming using Arena 2.01 and the options 'Allow one-click input' is checked

Here is a position that I made up
[D] 8/8/b2r2k1/5p2/6n1/2KB2R1/5N2/8 w

Now applying the suggestion, which is : (If you Double-Click a piece of your own then That pice will Capture the Only piece it can legally capture)

If its whites turn:
- Double-Clicking the white Rook will instantly capture the black Night
- Double-Clicking the white Night will instantly capture the black Night
Note that without the Double-Clicks, you must click on two separate squares to capture the black Night

If its blacks turn:
- Double-Clicking the black Rook will instantly capture the white Bishop
- Double-Clicking the black Bishop will instantly capture the white Bishop
Note that without the Double-Clicks, you must click on two separate squares to capture the white Bishop

So the advantage of the 'Double-Click to Capture' in the above situations is that you dont need to click on two separate squares to execute the same move that you can do just by Double-Clicking a single square

[jwes]

Try SCID. It has a single click move entry that works pretty well. Put the mouse over a square and it shows the move it would make to or from that square, click on it and it will make that move.

[hgm]

OK, I implemented half of this in WinBoard, now. When the option -oneClickMove is set, a second click on an own piece will make the only capture that piece can do. (If it had only a single legal move, that would lready be done on the firt click.)

[Albert Silver]

Sorry for repeating this post. I think this is the correct forum for it

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32304

Here is a small suggestion for GUI makres, Arena..etc.

During a game between you and an engine (or someone), and its your turn:
If you Double-Click a piece (of your own), then:
- That pice will Capture the Only piece it can legally capture
(the normal procedure if 'Allow one-click input' option is checked, in Arena 2.01)
- If there are more than one piece it can capture then another Click is needed on the piece to capture (the normal procedure)

If you Double-Click a piece of the opponent, then:
- That pice will Be Captured by the Only piece it can legally capture it
(the normal procedure if 'Allow target square first' option is checked, in Arena 2.01)
- If there are more than one piece that can capture it then another Click is needed on the piece to capture it (the normal procedure)

Of course there should be an option, check-box, in the GUI like : 'Allow double click to capture' to allow this behavior

I think this will significantly speed up the play to say the least

In a real live game, not just against an engine, this would be justifiably considered cheating, as you are now allowing the interface to choose a possible playing move (which is different from playing the only legal move). On top of this, I personally wouldn't want this feature, simply because I can easily imagine many situations where this would lead to a disaster.

[hgm]

Actually it seems that on FICS they do consider use of 'smart-move' cheating. I am not sure I want to go along with that. For one, their server accepts 'e4' in stead of e2-e4 as the opening move. They do not consider that cheating, and it is exactly the same. You rely on the ICS knowing the rules, and deciding that it is only the Pawn on e2 that can get there, and not those at c2 or g2, and then playing the move. SAN is the text-equivalent of smart-move cheat.

Now you are not supposed to have help from a computer, which is a silly statement, as you cannot even log onto FICS without a computer. As a cheat to gain time, using a graphical interface where you just have to click squares, rather than typingthem as the native ICS interface requires, is already an enormous help. Yet hey allow it.

Well, if SAN is allowed in text mode, and using mouse clicks to indicate squares, thn clicking just the destination square for a move should be allowed. The computer just does the disambiguation of the move, and disambigiuation is allowed. The notion that you could cheat with this for actually finding better moves, or letting the computer help you find moves, is plain ridiculous. How would they imagine that? Of course I will click only a to-square because I see that there is only one move leading to it. It would be a pure waste of time to do it in other situations, as the click would be ignored, and I would have to enter a move the normal way. Do they expect people that cannot see the difference between a Pawn and a Bishop to start clicking randomly on empty squares in the hpe a surprise piece will suddenly mterialize there???

The same for speeding up captures at a distance by double-clicking a piece. Of course you would only do that if you had seen that the piece could only do one capture, and you want to make it. Double clicking any other piece would simply deselect it again, and be a loss of time. And randomly clicking your own pieces in the hope they do a surprise capture is an absolutely losing strategy, sacking a piece for a Pawn most of the times where it 'works'.

And as for doing the only legal move on clicking a piece: would there really be players that pick up a piece to do an illegal move with it? And if they do, what would happen? The server would _help_ them by telling them it was an illegal move, and let them do another. At least the smart-move enforces touch = play rules...

So all this is just user-friendliness of the interface, and user-friendliness indeed saves you time, like typing SAN saves you time over typing long-algebraic.

Actualy, the feature that highlights possibe squares you could move to can more justly be a cause for accusations of cheating. Perhaps I will disable that in ICS mode, for wild numbers below 36.