Draughts program Maximus available as tablet/smartphone app

[jj]

Draughts program Maximus now available as app for tablets and smartphones

Enjoy the game of international draughts at a yet unprecedented level for tablets and smartphones. Maximus, the 2011 Dutch Open and Olympic computer draughts champion, is now available for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. An Android version will follow soon. In 2012, Maximus played a match against former draughts World Champion Alexander Schwarzman, resulting in a narrow defeat (five draws and one loss). Maximus was running on a desktop computer, which is of course more powerful than a mobile device. Nevertheless, you will find Maximus to be a fierce opponent on your tablet or smartphone.

You don’t have to be an expert player to enjoy Maximus, however, as there are many levels of difficulty. Starting with a level to explore the rules of the game, at which Maximus always plays a random move. Then there are seven training levels, from beginner to expert, that you can try before you start giving Maximus more time to think. Improve your play by analyzing your games with Maximus and learning from your mistakes. You can also use the program as a draughts travel set or as a draughts notation booklet, or even in your draughts competition if you are one player short.

Features:
* Available in 4 languages (Dutch, English, French, German)
* Strong engine with 4 playing modes: 1) rules of the game plus 7 training levels; 2) seconds per move; 3) time schedule; 4) Fischer system
* Multicore processor support and adjustable memory usage
* Pondering option (thinking in the opponent’s time)
* Player vs. Maximus, Player vs. Player, and Maximus vs. Maximus modes
* Intuitive interface with drag & drop or tapping to enter your moves
* Move input support, move hint and help function
* Undo and redo moves; browse your game using the Notation screen
* Replay and analyze your game afterwards
* Save, load, e-mail and import games and positions in Portable Draughts Notation format (PDN)
* Randomly selected opening book moves provide a wide variety in games
* Display of draughts clock, square numbers (optional), and engine information and principal variation (optional)
* Other options: turn board, setup position, automatic replay
* Main differences with the PC version (not available): smaller opening book, no endgame database
* No Ads

Tournament Base, Results and games of Maximus: http://toernooibase.kndb.nl/opvraag/uit ... 1&Nr=11535

Price for iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch: € 5,49
Price for Android: € 4,49

App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/maximus ... 46870?mt=8

Jan-Jaap van Horssen

[jj]

Moved to viewtopic.php?f=65&t=4093&p=99070#p99070

[Krzychumag]

I need a favour Jan Jaap, and perhaps you will make the program available under Windows.

[jj]

I need a favour Jan Jaap, and perhaps you will make the program available under Windows.

I don't have plans to make the Windows version available in the near future (before improving). There are many good programs available for Windows: Kingsrow, Dragon, Damage (soon?), and of course Truus and Flits, and even the free Dam 2.2. Maximus would not add much to that in terms of playing strength or endgame database size, which is a different story on mobile device platforms.

[edit:] To clarify a bit more, making a program available to the public (for a certain platform) involves a lot of work, work that a programmer does not have to do if the program is (still) a hobby or research project. Thinks like a user manual, supporting multiple languages, distribution of large database files, giving support, etc. So for a Maximus Windows version you need te be patient.

[jj]

Maximus is now also availiable for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... com.jj.max

Jan-Jaap

[BertTuyt]

Jan-Jaap, I downloaded Maximus (for my iPad), and ...... I really like it !!
I'm looking forward to future update versions.

Bert

[jj]

Jan-Jaap, I downloaded Maximus (for my iPad), and ...... I really like it !!
I'm looking forward to future update versions.

Bert

Bert, thanks. I hope that you are going to play against it, and not Damage!
Jan-Jaap

[BertTuyt]

JJ, i couldn't resist playing a few matches Damage Maximus, as I'm myself not a player on this level...
Anyway think Maximus plays a very good game.

As i dont have the time to focus and learn on multiple platforms , I wont start any time soon with something for iOS.
But is seems fun programming for iPAD/iPhone, as at least the XCODE development environment is for free.
Only think you need to register for $99,- a year to post applications to the app store.

But maybe i cant resist it.
As I still want to have a client for Damage, so basically a dumb GUI which just interfaces via TCP/IP and GUIDE with the program running somewhere else...
Think that Walter is also working on something similar, but I'm not sure if this is iOS and/or web-based.

JJ, could you share some tech details about your implementation (couldn't find for example nodes/second), and I also have seen that you dont use Endgame DB's yet (think a 4P DB is do-able?)..

Think a direct Damage port is not straightforward as most likely the iPad/iPhone is resource-constrained, in terms of memory, speed (even dont know if the ARM processor is 32bit or 64bit, and i heavily base Damage on BITBOARDS). But maybe a straightforward console type of app is something in reach....

Bert

[Rein Halbersma]

[edit:] To clarify a bit more, making a program available to the public (for a certain platform) involves a lot of work, work that a programmer does not have to do if the program is (still) a hobby or research project. Thinks like a user manual, supporting multiple languages, distribution of large database files, giving support, etc. So for a Maximus Windows version you need te be patient.

I'm interested in hearing your experiences coding for Android/Apple: which platform was the easiest for you? I'm guessing that since your pc program is in Java, that Android was easier. Could you tell us a bit more about how much code you were able to share between the 2 platforms? In particular, is there some Objective-C wrapper around your Java engine, or did you have to rewrite everything?

I have been dabbling with Android a bit (i.e. installed Eclipse/SDK/NDK tools and build the tutorial examples on my Nexus 7). But I need the NDK stuff to compile my engine, and have zero experience in Java GUI building, so a competitor for your app is quite a long way away

[jj]

I used a great new tool, http://www.codenameone.com, which allows you to write your program (once) in Java, and run it on any mobile platform. On Android, it runs in a Java VM, for iOS it is compiled to Objective C and then to native code. Which is probably why Maximus runs faster on iOS devices compared to Android.

Maximus "mobile" was far from planned. But after buying an iPad (for half the price, an action) and discovering Codename One (a NetBeans -or Eclipse- plugin), I decided to try. Because Maximus is already written in Java this would involve "only" rewriting the GUI and I/O. This was not a small task! Mobile device programming is rather different, e.g. the user interaction and a different (UI) threading model. I'm glad I have to do this only once (the same program runs on iOS and Android). Future engine updates I can easily port to the mobile version, with only a few minor changes because of differences in the Java edition (mobile vs. standard).

@Bert, have you considered using a web interface, or even something like the TeamViewer app to control your PC from your tablet? Then you can avoid developing a separate app for that.

[jj]

But is seems fun programming for iPAD/iPhone, as at least the XCODE development environment is for free.
Only think you need to register for $99,- a year to post applications to the app store.

Yes, it is fun and yes, you pay Apple 65 euro per year (and they take 40% of the store price per app).
For Android, you pay 25 dollar (and Google takes 30%).
For Windows Phone, you pay 75 euro (and Microsoft takes 30%). Considering the Windows Phone market share, 2.4% or so, I decided not to make a Windows Phone version available.

JJ, could you share some tech details about your implementation (couldn't find for example nodes/second), and I also have seen that you dont use Endgame DB's yet (think a 4P DB is do-able?)..

The kN/s I don't show because otherwise the PV would be too short on phone screens. On my Google Nexus 7 (Android, 4 cores) I get less than 200 kN/s. On my iPad 4 (iOS, 2 cores) more than 700 kN/s on average. Of course Maximus also uses bitboards, but I was unable to find out whether my iPad has a 64 or 32 bit CPU!?
I'm not sure if using databases is feasible, but I am willing to investige it. (Then I finally would have to start generating my own!) However, on Android I already get out-of-memory errors after a while when I set the transposition table to 32 MB, while on iOS this poses no problems. Android, on the other hand, has a file system (not sure about the speed, though) and iOS has not. Etc. These are the quirks of mobile programming.

I put some test results of Maximus "mobile" on my website at http://www.maximusdraughts.org/app/results. Maximus vs. the other mobile draughts programs, and Maximus vs. Maximus on different devices. This gives an idea of the relative playing strengths. During the test phase I made some improvements to the evaluation function, handling some cases that are usually left to the egdb. Of course all games were played by hand because no DXP (yet)! (ouch)

BTW, by the end of last year I completed a full (desktop) Maximus 1-15 ply x Maximus 1-15 ply 158-game-matches tournament. I will post the results later. Does anyone care to repeat this experiment?

Jan-Jaap