TestFlight beta: The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton

[Tord Romstad]

I'm looking for new testers for The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton, my new chess app for Apple platforms:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/mqfhpmHY

This is probably more interesting for serious chess players than for pure computer chess enthusiasts, but I hope some of you will still enjoy it. Here is a partial list of features:

• State of the art (but not quite top level, as of yet) built-in chess engine.
• A very smooth and easy to use remote engine feature, allowing you to connect to Stockfish running on your computer at home. You install a small app on your computer, start it, scan the QR code displayed by the app on your phone, and you're connected.
• Database functionality.
• Opening repertoire editor with spaced repetition training and PGN import/export
• "Opening simulator" allows you to try out your openings against simulated Lichess opponents.
• PGN viewer and editor
• Support for courses in PGN format, like those available from modern-chess.com. You can easily import individual lines or entire chapters from the courses to your opening repertoires.
• Support for ChessNut e-boards, both for local play and for online play on Lichess.

The main platforms for now are the iPhone and the Apple Watch. The app also runs on the iPad, but the user interface still needs some adjustments before I am happy with it. Versions for macOS and visionOS are planned for later.

[Steve Maughan]

Wonderful — I'd be happy to test. How can we make this happen.

— Steve

[Tord Romstad]

Wonderful — I'd be happy to test. How can we make this happen.

There is a TestFlight link in my post. Just install Apple's TestFlight app on your phone and open the link in my message, and it should just work.

[cpeters]

Moin Tord!

Even in its beta-stage this seems the most polished/functional multi-purpose chess-app for the idevices available - so thanks for that! A hard to find (google and other) open-source-implementation for the gottlose chessup-thing (e-board) is located here: https://github.com/atomice1/bluecheese. Maybe it's useful and not that much of a distraction.

Thanks+greetings!

N.B.
Didn't look yet in the remote-options..

[Tord Romstad]

Moin Tord!

Even in its beta-stage this seems the most polished/functional multi-purpose chess-app for the idevices available - so thanks for that! A hard to find (google and other) open-source-implementation for the gottlose chessup-thing (e-board) is located here: https://github.com/atomice1/bluecheese. Maybe it's useful and not that much of a distraction.

Thank you, Christian!

I don't like trying to add support for hardware I don't own, so ChessUp support will probably have to wait until they are willing to send me a board for development. I think it's safe to say that my app needs to become a lot more popular before they are likely to consider doing that. Still, I'll save the link and see if it is useful if and when ChessUp support actually looks realistic!

[mclane]

What is the app doing on the apple watch ?

[Tord Romstad]

What is the app doing on the apple watch ?

It plays 5x5 shuffle chess! Rules as in Gardner Minichess – the modern Italian version without castling or double pawn pushes – but from a random starting position, Chess960 style. Because the majority of the 120 possible back ranks makes the game a forced win for White, less than half of them are used in the app.

The 5x5 watch games started out almost as a joke. I got the idea of supporting all Apple platforms, but I couldn't figure out a way to make 8x8 chess playable on the small screen, so I decided to make a minimalist, simple 5x5 engine for the watch only. But then I somehow got hooked and started spending way too much time making the 5x5 engine as strong as possible, even though I'm pretty sure nobody except myself cares. I find it oddly fun to play against the engine at full strength, I'm fascinated by how it's somehow always able to put me in zugzwang within the first five moves or so.

5x5 games played on the watch get automatically synced to the phone and can be replayed and analyzed there. 5x5 gameplay directly on the watch is also possible, but currently only through an Easter egg style mechanism (tap five times on your own king before making your first move) that most users will probably never discover.

[Tord Romstad]

5x5 gameplay directly on the watch is also possible, but currently only through an Easter egg style mechanism (tap five times on your own king before making your first move) that most users will probably never discover.

I meant that 5x5 gameplay directly on the phone is possible, of course.

[mclane]

There is a method for a board to input 8x8 conveniently on a small graphical interface.

It was e.g. established by chess 7.5 on the c64.
When the human wants to play a move, the human presses
(On the c64 keyboard) right arrow. Chess 7.5 shows a hint which legal move is possible. And then user presses Enter to confirm this move.
So by continuing to give hints, one of them is the one the user wanted to input because the program shows each move from the move list, until it begins again with the 1st branch of the move list.

All the watch has to show is the 8x8 board and you patch the button outside the display
for

——->>>
Enter


Or you make 2 buttons in the display for the functions,

Similar chess 7.5 is doing options such as level or any other feature.

It scrolls through the options until enter chooses it, and scrolls though the levels until enter chooses the level.

[Tord Romstad]

Hi Thorsten,

Thank you for the suggestions! I think that would be way too awkward and non-intuitive on the watch, though. And there are other issues as well: The 8x8 board would be so tiny that it would be very hard to see it clearly on the small watch screen. There is also the issue of game length: The watch is best suited for quite short interactions, and I think the typically very short game length of 5x5 chess makes for a good game on the watch. Users who want a longer and more serious game will just grab their phone and play a regular 8x8 chess game instead.

I must admit that the watch app doesn't seem to be a great hit so far, though. As far as I can remember, none of my current testers have given me any feedback about it at all, which makes me suspect that I'm the only one using it. But I think it's cute and great fun, and it doesn't cost me much time to maintain it.