Windows Phone 8

Cubeman · Post by **Cubeman** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 2:16 am

Now that WP8 has been released and there are some nice Nokia, HTC and Samsung devices with good hardware. We now need Hiarcs on this platform.
WP8 now supports apps coded in C language. I have looked at the Windows app store and the chess selection is quite poor at the moment, would be good if Mark could port many of the features of HCE to the mobile market.

Post by **Mark Uniacke** » Wed Nov 28, 2012 7:31 pm

Unfortunately there are only so many hours in a day.

WP8 will have to wait until resources are available to work on it.

kallistos · Post by **kallistos** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 12:56 pm

do you plan to develop windows phone version of hiarcs

Cubeman · Post by **Cubeman** » Sat Jun 22, 2013 4:42 am

What we really need is a PocketFritz type of interface, or a port of many features of HCE to the WP8. The basic chess package that consists of Human vs Cellphone is overdone in the mobile market with countless apps in iOS/ Android/even WP8. Many of these apps are free and can beat Super GM's. I personally don't play the cellphone in a one on one battle, rather be using my phone to connect to the popular internet chess sites (FICS, ICC, Chess.Com) and play real humans. One thing I do use my handheld apps is for researching openings, player databases, tactical training, PGN file manipulation. Have paid close to US $50.00 for each successive PocketFritz edition which the latest editions have done these features well. I am a OTB player that plays in many chess tournaments which require travel and sometimes not much time between rounds, Laptops are not practical in these situations so I make do with PocketFritz4 on an Acer Neotouch S200 cellphone from 2010. New hardware and new Hiarcs would be a much welcomed addition. I have now got a Nokia Lumia 920 and like the build and stability of of WP8 but the chess apps for WP8 are crappy, only good one is Chess Genius which is a basic outdated engine but reasonable GUI. Hiarcs Chess Pro for WP8 will corner the market in that segment and could be sold for a premium, and please let Hiarcs use multiple cores and those that want a dumbed down Hiarcs could get the basic package instead.

RadioSmall · Post by **RadioSmall** » Sat Jul 06, 2013 8:48 pm

Cubeman wrote:What we really need is a PocketFritz type of interface, or a port of many features of HCE to the WP8. The basic chess package that consists of Human vs Cellphone is overdone in the mobile market with countless apps in iOS/ Android/even WP8. Many of these apps are free and can beat Super GM's. I personally don't play the cellphone in a one on one battle, rather be using my phone to connect to the popular internet chess sites (FICS, ICC, Chess.Com) and play real humans. One thing I do use my handheld apps is for researching openings, player databases, tactical training, PGN file manipulation. Have paid close to US $50.00 for each successive PocketFritz edition which the latest editions have done these features well. I am a OTB player that plays in many chess tournaments which require travel and sometimes not much time between rounds, Laptops are not practical in these situations so I make do with PocketFritz4 on an Acer Neotouch S200 cellphone from 2010. New hardware and new Hiarcs would be a much welcomed addition. I have now got a Nokia Lumia 920 and like the build and stability of of WP8 but the chess apps for WP8 are crappy, only good one is Chess Genius which is a basic outdated engine but reasonable GUI. Hiarcs Chess Pro for WP8 will corner the market in that segment and could be sold for a premium, and please let Hiarcs use multiple cores and those that want a dumbed down Hiarcs could get the basic package instead.

One of the things that is very hard to understand is the time table here . Everyone waited for an enternity for Hiarcs Chess Explorer , and when it came out it had so many bugs that 4 updates were required.I just cannot understand how Richard Lang can put Chess Genius so quickly on both Android and Windows Phone 8 , and Hiarcs still yet has to appear on these platforms. Also the mobile versions of Hiarcs are all very buggy .....bugs that have rarely been addressed adequately .For example my latest post concerning Pocket PC Hiarcs ( it does not respect time controls ...has never been fixed......).At the speed Hiarcs is going , I believe that by the time it appears on WP8 ( if it ever does) newer platforms have been developed.All in all Hiarcs is a great Engine , but I am very disappointed at the speed of development and the presence of Huge bugs. I would not hold my breath for it to appear on WP8........The Hiarcs Development Team needs to do much more extensive testing before releasing new versions ,that is for sure.........

Monsieur Plastique · Post by **Monsieur Plastique** » Sun May 11, 2014 3:56 am

I am wondering how things are going on the (possible) development front here please? I just bought my first Windows 8 phone last week and am impressed with the slick interface and OS. I put Chess Genius on it and it works extremely well, though I miss the shear strength and the very human playing style of HIARCS. So yes, it would be great to have HIARCS on this platform and looking as good as Chess Genius does.

Post by **Alain** » Sun May 11, 2014 2:46 pm

Monsieur Plastique wrote:I am wondering how things are going on the (possible) development front here please? I just bought my first Windows 8 phone last week and am impressed with the slick interface and OS. I put Chess Genius on it and it works extremely well, though I miss the shear strength and the very human playing style of HIARCS. So yes, it would be great to have HIARCS on this platform and looking as good as Chess Genius does.

Good choice

By the way, CEBoard is available for Windows Phone 8: this is a "back to the roots" version of CEBoard, i.e. it does not include an engine but it has a full PGN support (with nested alternate lines). Note that it can open pgn files from the web (and also load/save from/to OneDrive)

RadioSmall · Post by **RadioSmall** » Mon May 12, 2014 4:08 am

Monsieur Plastique wrote:I am wondering how things are going on the (possible) development front here please? I just bought my first Windows 8 phone last week and am impressed with the slick interface and OS. I put Chess Genius on it and it works extremely well, though I miss the shear strength and the very human playing style of HIARCS. So yes, it would be great to have HIARCS on this platform and looking as good as Chess Genius does.

I also have gotten a windows 8 phone recently , and I greatly enjoy the classical program "Chess Genius " on it . However it is a fact that the Android OS for mobile phones is much more popular than windows phone 8 ; and there has never been a Hiarcs for Android .Therefore it is my belief that we will in fact never see a Windows Phone 8 Hiarcs .Commerical Engine programmers must think dollars and sense these days: Windows Phone is a very small portion of the mobile operating system and as result the number of chess players using this OS ,and willing to pay for an engine is even smaller.I also want to call attention to the fact the there is no Shredder for Windows Phone 8 for similar reasons . Looking into the not so distant past we see that both Hiarcs and Shredder were (and still are ) available for the old Windows Mobile OS .Hence it looks like Windows Phone 8 will not be nearly as popular as Windows Mobile for Chess Programs. Some of this is I believe Microsoft's fault..................

Monsieur Plastique · Post by **Monsieur Plastique** » Sun May 18, 2014 9:57 am

Having mucked with Genius a week I am disappointed. The play is relatively passive and far less human like than Hiarcs or Fritz. Can you believe I played it on its strongest level and held it to a Grandmaster draw by repetition in less than 10 moves? Sadly this is the most boring and computer like engine I have experienced since the early 80s. What is the point of being out rated by 700 points if it is too scared to win and plays a very computer like game?

Cubeman · Post by **Cubeman** » Mon May 26, 2014 3:51 am

Alain wrote:
Monsieur Plastique wrote:I am wondering how things are going on the (possible) development front here please? I just bought my first Windows 8 phone last week and am impressed with the slick interface and OS. I put Chess Genius on it and it works extremely well, though I miss the shear strength and the very human playing style of HIARCS. So yes, it would be great to have HIARCS on this platform and looking as good as Chess Genius does.
Good choice
By the way, CEBoard is available for Windows Phone 8: this is a "back to the roots" version of CEBoard, i.e. it does not include an engine but it has a full PGN support (with nested alternate lines). Note that it can open pgn files from the web (and also load/save from/to OneDrive)

I have installed CEBoard on my Lumia 920, I have Chess Genius but just got for completeness sake. I like how your CEBoard lets you download pgn files from the web. Before I got CEBoard I could not download pgn files as IE would give an error message and to get Chess Genius to do it was a big process of using an alternative browser and uploading to OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) and then using Chess Genius to download from my OneDrive. Would be great if CEBoard had an analysis engine to be able to give running analysis of games. Another little bug with WP8 is that when looking at ChessBase games from the web that the figurine notation is missing the figures, so that moves like "N"f3 are shown as _f3 etc. On iOS and Android devices these are shown in full. Soon Chess.Com will be releasing an app for WP8 and this is good news as I mainly use my mobiles for playing mobile online chess.