Turn your phone or tablet into a chess clock | Hacker News Reader

Turn your phone or tablet into a chess clock

akkartik.itch.io

44 pointssurprisetalk36 comments

Author here. The point of posts on this devlog is to show ways in which you can replace a bunch of different specialized, proprietary mobile apps of dubious provenance with a single general, reputable open source app (LÖVE running my carousel.love file, which is a cross-platform zip file containing all source code and live-editable on a computer).

If you have a favorite chess clock product you use, and it has any niceties or features that cause you to favor it over this little thing made with 100 lines of code, I'd love to hear about them. I want this thing to be a real product that competes with real products on mobile devices, but that can also stabilize and become a durable artifact that doesn't require funding or a business underlying it. I don't have the product/UX chops to do this, but it has time since it'll never run out of money. So all we all have to do is spend 10 years polishing and refining it without adding too many features :)

Carousel looks neat! I haven’t played around with Lua or LÖVE much, but this reminds me of Processing, except with more of a focus on creating useful mini-apps instead of visual art. It also reminds me SmileBASIC for the Nintendo 3DS.

What would distributing this for iOS look like? I guess it would be publishable on the App Store, since there are apps like Pythonista out there?

You can run LÖVE on iOS: https://www.love2d.org/wiki/Getting_Started#iOS

You "just" need XCode, and to recompile it once a year. Sigh, ugh.

I believe there are third parties distributing it on iOS as well. But then you need to trust an additional entity.

Gotcha, thanks! I'm not in the Apple Developer Program, but I'm tempted to do it just to be able to experiment with sideloading all sorts of LÖVE programs.

<3!

The Lichess app has had a built in clock that works very well and has all the time settings you would want. You can find it in the menu under the analysis board. I think a lot of people don't know that it's included even if they use Lichess.

Been using that for at least five years when I need a phone based chess clock on the go. I didn't try yours, but it has all the options for stuff like increments, handicap, stages, etc.

there is https://github.com/ldeso/blitz which looks quite nice

Does the environment you wrote it in support networking? If so an interesting option would be two have it run on two phones. Each phone would show both times.

This would have two advantages over other phone chess clock apps I've seen.

1. Convenient placement. Each player could have their phone where it is most convenient for them instead of it having to be in the usual place on the side of the board.

2. Others have brought up the concern that people might hit the phone too hard after their move. In a time scramble people do sometimes hit pretty hard because they are trying to hit it as fast as possible. Also, they don't always hit it with relatively soft flesh. They often hit it with the bottom of the piece they just captured. Imagine what repeated hits to the phone from pieces from a tournament sized triple weighted set could do.

If each player is hitting their own phone they might be more careful.

Really good points. LÖVE doesn't support https yet (that's coming in the next version) but for this I think pure http should suffice. I'm going to try to put this together with a tiny server shim to forward messages to each other. That way it should be robust to firewalls and so on.

I use lichess as a chess clock, works like a charm

The native app or website? Does the app have a clock tool? I use lichess a lot, but only on the web, and I haven't seen a chess clock on the website. (I'm the author of OP.)

At least the beta android app has one

The website has no clock. Both android and iphone lichess app has clock.

A nice option: https://chessclock.org/

I love it, but it looks too easy to reset the time by mistake.

I have seen people play 5-0 games on the board at my university; my phone would not survive one day of play.

(Sorry for the OT mini-speech)

I don't really like 0 increment games OTB. Online it's fine and you could argue that time management is part of the game, but on a physical board you end up knocking down pieces and having a lot of arguments about whether moves were legal or not.

5 minutes became popular when digital clocks were rare and expensive, but these days a digital clock that does Fischer increment is like $50. 3 minutes + 2 seconds is about the same length as 5 minutes and much better suited to OTB play IMO.

Totally valid criticism. I'm not competing with specialized chess clock devices used in professional settings, only chess clock apps on mobile devices that people use in more informal settings.

I think this is more a comment on how hard people slam physical clock devices after they've made their move, not about the feature set of any given chess clock solution.

Ah. I thought it was a comment on battery life. LÖVE is definitely not the most power-efficient way to run code on a mobile device.

Exactly, thanks for explaining it better than I did in my original comment. When they are in a time crunch, players often slam down on chess clocks ridiculously hard; those devices must be very solid.

I have played a ton of 3 min flat blitz games at the local bar using my phone as a click and my phone has never been broken, maybe due to a little good luck. Not as satisfying to tap the screen compared to slamming a button on a physical clock, but nobody has ever slammed the phone like that even if they've been drinking.

Seen plenty of liquids spilled on the board though so there is always that hazard...

I can think of two main reasons for a phone chess clock.

1. To paraphrase what is said about cameras, the best chess clock is the one that you have with you. People usually have their phone with them, so should the need arise to have a chess clock they are covered. Not many people want to always carry a physical chess clock around just in case the opportunity to play chess arises.

2. It is cheap or free. The phone is expensive but people are going to have that anyway so that doesn't count. A decent chess clock from a known company will probably run you are least $30.

For people whose main reason for a phone clock is #2 and would not have a problem with having to carry something with them I've always thought it would be interesting to make some sort of holder that you can put a phone in when using it as a chess clock.

The holder could hold the phone at a better viewing angle, and could incorporate some sort of rocker mechanism so that the phone tilts slightly to one side or the other. The app on the phone could sense which side the tilt is toward and use that to know which clock should be running. (The app could also correct the display for the tilt so the display remains level despite the clock body being tilted).

When you move instead of having to hit something on the touch screen you'd hit your side of the top of the holder to flip the tilt.

Back in the 1980s, I would write a BASIC program on my PC to be a chess clock.

I think I wrote it anew each time? It was really easy to do.

Yes! That is the world I want to bring back. No package manager and whatnot, just copy paste code from a website and keep going.

(I'm ok with not having to type it in every time. Though you're welcome to do that if you like.)

I probably wrote it anew each time because I wanted to try something different.

Or, in modern speak, it was a code kata.

I did the same when I needed to memorize a word list for Spanish class.

I use Chess Clock (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chess.cloc...) to play with my children - does the job, simple to use, free

This seems pretty decent. It's 1) by a reputable site, 2) says it doesn't collect any data, 3) doesn't share any data with third parties. Only criticism I have is that 4) it's proprietary and liable to stop working on new devices if the for-profit company funding it loses interest in it. Whereas OP depends on an open source project with very different incentives (won't lose interest; someone with interest will fork it; but on the other hand it's not going to be arsed to go through painful app store review. You'll need to download and run the raw apk. For as long as Android phones owned by an ad company allow that.)

Still, 3/4 is pretty good!

Now you made me want to write a PWA for a chess clock... This is not really nice of you, I already have a pile of things I plan to do and my wife is looking weird at me because I am typing at the computer instead of fixing the dinner as I said I would do :)

Excellent! :D

To be fair, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42034577 does have a very nice option.

Ah yes, it is already done. Thanks a lot for the pointer!

It's a shake it is not open sourced, the commands are indeed too close to the clock

please add go clock to (additional time)

I'm the author, but I don't follow your comment. Could you elaborate?

Google byo yomi

Ohh, you mean a clock for the game Go (wei qi, baduk)

Sure thing, that should be doable.

What do you think of this design?

    -- run within https://akkartik.itch.io/carousel
    g = love.graphics
    rect = g.rectangle
    color = g.setColor
    floor = math.floor

    Limit = 13
    Byo_yomi_period = 30  -- seconds

    Curr_color = 'black'
    Byo_yomi = {
      black=0,
      white=0,
    }

    Curr_time = 0

    function car.update(dt)
      if Byo_yomi.black == Limit or Byo_yomi.white == Limit then
        return
      end
      Curr_time = Curr_time + dt
      if Curr_time > Byo_yomi_period then
        Byo_yomi[Curr_color] = Byo_yomi[Curr_color] + 1
        Curr_time = Curr_time - Byo_yomi_period
      end end

    -- initialize space per side
    local side_w = floor((Safe_width-60 - 100)/2)

    -- initialize font size
    local function font_size_for_chess_clock()
      local font_size
      local min_font_size = 20
      local max_font_size = Safe_height
      for i=1,100 do
        if min_font_size >= max_font_size-5 then
          break
        end
        font_size = floor((min_font_size+max_font_size)/2)
        local font = g.newFont(font_size)
        local w = font:getWidth('00:00:00')
        if w < side_w then
          min_font_size = font_size
        elseif w > side_w then
          max_font_size = font_size
        elseif w == side_w then
          break
        end
      end
      return font_size
    end

    local large_font_size = font_size_for_chess_clock()
    local large_font = g.newFont(large_font_size)
    local small_font_size = 20
    local small_font = g.newFont(small_font_size)

    function car.draw()
      local top = Menu_height+20
      local x = 30
      local height = Safe_height-80
      local gutter_width = 100
      -- black side
      color(0.2,0.2,0.2)
      rect('fill', x, top, side_w, height, 5,5)
      color(1,1,1)
      local y
      if Byo_yomi.black < Limit - 10 then
        y = top + (height-large_font_size)/2
        print_centered(large_font, Byo_yomi.black, y, x, side_w)
        if Curr_color == 'black' then
          y = y + large_font_size + 10
          print_centered(small_font, floor(Curr_time), y, x, side_w)
        end
      elseif Byo_yomi.black < Limit-1 then
        y = top + (height - large_font_size*2 - 10)/2
        local s = ('%d left'):format(Limit - Byo_yomi.black)
        print_centered(large_font, s, y, x, side_w)
        if Curr_color == 'black' then
          y = y + large_font_size + 10
          print_centered(large_font, floor(Curr_time), y, x, side_w)
        end
      elseif Byo_yomi.black == Limit-1 then
        y = top + (height - large_font_size - 10 - small_font_size)/2
        print_centered(small_font, "no time left", y, x, side_w)
        if Curr_color == 'black' then
          y = y + small_font_size + 10
          print_centered(large_font, floor(Curr_time), y, x, side_w)
        end
      else
        -- out of time; Byo_yomi.black == Limit
        -- print nothing
      end
      -- white side
      x = x + side_w + gutter_width
      color(0,0,0)
      rect('line', x, top, side_w, height, 5,5)
      if Byo_yomi.white < Limit-10 then
        y = top + (height-large_font_size)/2
        print_centered(large_font, Byo_yomi.white, y, x, side_w)
        if Curr_color == 'white' then
          y = y + large_font_size + 10
          print_centered(small_font, floor(Curr_time), y, x, side_w)
        end
      elseif Byo_yomi.white < Limit-1 then
        y = top + (height - large_font_size*2 - 10)/2
        local s = ('%d left'):format(Limit - Byo_yomi.white)
        print_centered(large_font, s, y, x, side_w)
        if Curr_color == 'white' then
          y = y + large_font_size + 10
          print_centered(large_font, floor(Curr_time), y, x, side_w)
        end
      elseif Byo_yomi.white == Limit-1 then
        y = top + (height - large_font_size - 10 - small_font_size)/2
        print_centered(small_font, "no time left", y, x, side_w)
        if Curr_color == 'white' then
          y = y + small_font_size + 10
          print_centered(large_font, floor(Curr_time), y, x, side_w)
        end
      else
        -- out of time; Byo_yomi.white == Limit
        -- print nothing
      end end

    function print_centered(font, msg, y, left, width)
      local w = font:getWidth(msg)
      local x = left + (width-w)/2
      g.setFont(font)
      g.print(msg, x,y)
    end

    function car.mouse_press(x,y, b)
      if Byo_yomi.black == Limit or Byo_yomi.white == Limit then
        return
      end
      if y >= Menu_height + 20 then
        if Curr_color == 'black' then
          -- it's black's move
          if x <= 30+side_w then
            Curr_color = 'white'
            Curr_time = 0
          end
        else
          -- it's white's move
          if x >= 30 + side_w + 100 then
            Curr_color = 'black'
            Curr_time = 0
          end end end end

I'm going by the description in https://www.britgo.org/bgj/10643.html, but I haven't actually seen a Go clock before, so feedback appreciated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com