Chess for Android with UCI support released

[abik]

I just released version 2.4 of Chess for Android at the Android Market with the following new feature:

• basic UCI engine support (ability to replace built-in Java engine with any third party UCI engine compiled "natively" for Android)

Instructions on how to setup an UCI engine are given at http://www.aartbik.com/MISC/uchess.html. As far as I know currently only BikJump is available as stand-alone UCI engine for Android. Although stronger than the built-in engine, I hope I will be able to add links to much stronger third party UCI engines on this page soon. Please note that support is still rather basic (only tested on one engine, GUI does not support engine options, time control is restricted to fixed time-per-move, no tournaments, etc.). Nevertheless, I hope it is an interesting start.

[abik]

To use the limited screen size effectively, I am prototyping a way to display the current move considered by the UCI engine. A small animation can be found at http://aartbik.blogspot.com/2010/08/ani ... moves.html.

[ernest]

I see jumping circles, are they representing moves?...

[abik]

I see jumping circles, are they representing moves?...

Admittedly, the lines denoting the currently considered move were somewhat thin compared to the circles. I have uploaded a new demo with a hopefully better way of displaying the "currmove" (in addition to other information shown at the bottom of the screen). In any case, I am just goofing around with the GUI. I still hope my efforts to get UCI working on Android will spark enthusiasm for this platform and result in more UCI engines compiled natively for Android.

[gerold]

Welcome to the forum Aart.
Looks like Google will be going into tv soon.
The google Android appears to be growing
very fast.

Best,
Gerold.

P.S. I see you been here for some time.

[ernest]

Admittedly, the lines denoting the currently considered move were somewhat thin compared to the circles.

I once was blind, but now I see!...

[abik]

Because I have not received any natively compiled UCI engines from others yet, but I remain nevertheless enthusiastic to test Chess for Android on other engines, I downloaded a few UCI engines that have source code available. Code is not always easily portable, but Zach Wegner's ZCT gave relatively little trouble, and I was able to compile the ZCT engine "natively" for Android and successfully import it into Chess for Android. So, if you think your UCI engine code is portable as well, why not give it a try on Android?

[abik]

Thorsten Czub suggested other interesting UCI engines with sources and I tried Crab1.0, which compiled successfully for Android as well. I now have four UCI engines compiled for Android, which all import well into Chess for Android:

• Crab1.0 Beta by Tord Romstad, Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski, Adam Kleng
• ZCT0.3.2500 by Zach Wegner
• BikJumpv1.8 (mailbox representation)
• BikJumpv2.1 (bitboard representation)

[abik]

Here are some nodes-per-second ratings for the different versions on a G1 phone and a Nexus One phone. Android 2.2 (aka Froyo) features the Dalvik JIT compiler, which benefits the built-in Java engine, but not the native UCI engines.

Code: Select all

                          G1             Nexus One
                          Android 1.6    Android 2.2
BikJump Java built-in      2 KN/s         23 KN/s                  
BikJump v1.8 native       15 KN/s         85 KN/s
BikJump v2.1 native       28 KN/s        116 KN/s

[michiguel]

Here are some nodes-per-second ratings for the different versions on a G1 phone and a Nexus One phone. Android 2.2 (aka Froyo) features the Dalvik JIT compiler, which benefits the built-in Java engine, but not the native UCI engines.

Code: Select all

                          G1             Nexus One
                          Android 1.6    Android 2.2
BikJump Java built-in      2 KN/s         23 KN/s                  
BikJump v1.8 native       15 KN/s         85 KN/s
BikJump v2.1 native       28 KN/s        116 KN/s

I am almost a luddite when it comes to phones, but your post made google what droid was about. Sorry about my ignorance, but I see that android OS is a Linux derivative! wow! does it support pthreads?

Miguel