FlutiChess

A simple chess playing application developed in Flutter There are 3 old chess engines ported to .dart language. Kind of experimental exploration of flutter on MS VSCode. Everything is shareable and advanceable anywhere.

Version

Currently 1.0.8 apr.2024

Web application is playable on web (~10Mb) https://chessforeva.github.io

Also windows executable, zipped in 12Mb https://chessforeva.codeberg.page/flutichess/flutichess_win64_release108.zip

Android application .apk 20Mb (should allow 3rd party apps on install, sorry) https://chessforeva.codeberg.page/flutichess/flutichess_108.apk

IOS - not an Apple fanboy

Screenshots

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Results

Flutter is awesome. Just like Flash was for small games. Lousy chess engine requires 64 bit platform (not javascript VM). OwlChess is an oldie for 32 bit platform. Limited to play as noob. Also Fruit chess is very known, just a .dart version. In fact, AI is limited not to search. Fast enaugh. It is not Stockfish, it is dart and flutter programming. Nobody likes losing in chess all day.

Also...

Prepare for lots of flutter works after downloading sources. Just read what people say and look at other flutter projects. Or add these folders to the flutter hello world.

Helper

This was developed on MS VSCode with Flutter and Dart.

Useful commands in terminal

flutter doctor          ; to see what is ok, or not
flutter clean           ; when nothing builds and caches are outdated
flutter pub get         ; after clean, update
flutter build apk
flutter build web
flutter build windows
flutter -h              ; help on commands
flutter run

flutter upgrade         ; upgrade flutter, use both commands
flutter pub upgrade     ; otherwise lots of errors

Buttons also, of course, for debug or run.

url_launcher case

The site is opened in a async Future() on tap event under State. Otherwise simple launch Url will freeze the app.

Also, on building windows there were errors: Developer Mode is turned off, which is disabled on Windows 10 Home edition by the way. So, I solved it, as google said:

1. Open the Registry Editor (start "regedit") and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModelUnlock

Right-click the empty space on the right pane, and create two DWORD (32-bit) values:

AllowAllTrustedApps = 1
AllowDevelopmentWithoutDevLicense = 1.

image

2. Find shortcut on Desktop to MS VSCode and open with Right-click "Run as administrator"!!!

3. Go to terminal and "flutter build windows". No errors and Developer Mode is ok.

Android gradle

• It requires Android Studio be installed.
• Icons should be placed in folders for each resolution. Just like in old days of javame.
• Try cleaning when cached builds go wrong way.
• Also look for versions in dependancies, may be too high agressive.

Web build

Dart compiles into encoded js + webassembly. Seems very fast and best for testing compared to android emulators or win executables.

Cache

I found that Flutter makes large Cache folder on build

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Pub\Cache

Deletion of it took long time. I think it should be cleaned sometimes as Recycle Bin.

flutter pub cache clean

UInt64 type

In .js, there is Safe integer Number.isSafeInteger(), just because of holding values in 52 bits. So, only such numbers can be in written in scripts. Compiles ok, but usage gives aproximate results on big numbers. Also (1<<32) does not work as for 64 bit platforms.

In .dart Int numbers are signed. So, (1<<63) is a negative number. But it is ok if we use bitwises only. Then unsigned not needed. Lousy chess engine uses Int multiplication for magics, but all results are verified ok for dart. Do not try use these magics for C or java, or use signed as dart.

Thanks

To all good people sharing knowledge.