Icon  Deep Green, Spectacular Chess on Your Newton




Copenhagen, Denmark, September 28, 1998
Documentation version 3
Deep Green version 1.0b3

 


Contents

  1. Legal Stuff
  2. Introduction
  3. Installing Deep Green
  4. Using Deep Green
  5. Known Bugs and Limitations

 


1. Legal Stuff

Deep Green is freeware and may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial use only.Deep Green is Copyright Joachim Bondo and may not be uploaded to or included in any commercial web site, CD-ROM or similar.

 


2. Introduction

Welcome to version 1.0b3 of Deep Green - the first full-featured Chess playing application for the Newton.

Deep Green is a joint effort between Scott Ludwig,who ported an existing Unix chess engine to his PocketChess for the PalmPilot, and Jens Bengaard, who ported Scott's chess engine to the Newton using Apple's C++ toolkit for Newton, and myself, who designed and coded the user interface in NewtonScript.

I've put a great effort into making Deep Green as pleasant a user experience as possible. I hope you'll enjoy playing chess with your Newton using Deep Green. Please mail me any suggestions, bug reports or whatever you feel like. I'd like to hear what you think...

 


3. Installing Deep Green

Deep Green is installed as any standard software package on your Newton. Please refer tothe manual that came with your Newton for information on the installation process. Deep Green consists of one package and takes up approximately 104 KB when installed.

 


4. Using Deep Green

Using Deep Green is extremely straightforward. Use it as if you were playing with real chess pieces on a real chess board. The basics of using Deep Green is described very brieflyin the following paragraphs:

How Do I...

Start a New Game

To start a new game, select New from the Game menu, configure the players in the slip, and tap New:

New game

When a player is configured as Deep Green two sliders appear below the radio button. The leftmost is the Concentration slider which has a great impact on the strength ofDeep Green's play. The lower level the worse play. The Think Time slider controls howmuch time Deep Green will allow itself to spend on each move.

Change Game Settings

The game settings can be altered any time during the game by choosing Info from the Game menu. The slip shown above will appear again but without setting up a new game. Swapping sides can be done quickly by tapping either piece graphics in the slip.

Move the Pieces

Pieces can be moved in two ways: 1) Drag/Drop, and 2) Tap/Tap. Drag/Drop: Tap the piece you want to move, without lifting the pen drag it to the desired destination square, and release the pen. If you regret your move during the drag, just drop the piece where you picked it up. Tap/Tap: Tap the piece you want to move, release the pen without making a drag, tap the destination square and lift the pen within this square to make the move. While making the final tap you can move the pen around before finally releasing it to change the destination.

To make a castling just move the king two squares towards the rook, and the rook willautomatically place itself on the opposite side of the king.

Playback a Game

Any time during or after a game you can play it back move by move. This is particularly useful when you want to analyze a game. Choose Playback from the Game menu. The Move button is replaced by 5 VCR-like buttons:

Go to starting position

Go to previous position

Auto-replay moves from current position

Go to next position

Go to last position


When Deep Green auto-replays the game, the button is changed to a Pause button. To resume your game in Play mode, choose Resume from the Game menu. You'll have the option to resume the game from the shown position or from where you left it:

Resume game

Hereafter the Playback buttons disappear and the Move button reappears.

Setup a Game

If you want to set up a special position for playing or analyzing select Setup from the Game menu. The Move button is replaced by the Setup button. In Setup mode you can rearrange the pieces as you like. Moving pieces around can only be done using the Drag/Drop method, since tapping a square displays the Piece popup menu:

Setup Game

The popup menu allows you to place and remove pieces at the desired squares very quickly. Pieces can also be removed from the board by scrubbing them the usual Newton way. If you want to erase the entire board, select Empty Board from the Setup button.

To play the game select Play from the Game menu.

NB! There must be exactly 1 king and a maximum of 16 pieces of each color on theboard. Deep Green will alert if that's not the case.

Win

When Deep Green plays at Full Concentration (see "Start a New Game") it's very difficult to beat for most people. Lowering the concentration level makes Deep Green play worse and will be easier to beat. Experiment with the sliders and play the games to find a suitable level.

Learn About the Chess Rules

Point your web browser at IBM's Chess Reference. It also contains links to other chess relevant sites on the Internet. And, of course, you'll find information on Deep Green's "big brother", Deep Blue.

Hide Deep Green

As a shortcut to quickly free up screen real estate, Deep Green can be temporarily hiddenby choosing Hide from the Info button. This will hide Deep Green and flash the Notification Icon in the top center of the screen. Select Show Deep Green from the flashing star when youwish to continue your chess game. This is a more convenient approach than closing Deep Green and opening it again from the Extras Drawer.

 


5. Known Bugs and Limitations

This is the list of known bugs and limitations in version 1.0b3. They will be fixedeventually.

 


 

Enjoy using Deep Green,
Joachim