Deep Green 1.1 was just approved by Apple. It’s been four months under its way. That’s a long time. And it feels even longer. Perhaps because I’ve been doing a lot of other things while creating the best Deep Green yet. More on that soon.
Version 1.1 offers the following improvements over 1.0:
- Built-in Help
- Application Settings:
- Rich, analog-type sounds¹
- Callout notification for check, stalemate, and checkmate
- Vibration on check, stalemate, and checkmate²
- Board coordinates
- Board auto-rotation
- Prevent device from going to sleep
- Added piece animations for check, stalemate, and checkmate
- Improved animations for captures and move suggestions
- More comfortable auto-playback speed in Playback mode
- Display of Engine Strength next to player name in Game Info
- Animations when swapping colors in Game Info
- Quick-link for sending e-mail to Support
- Other minor improvements and bug fixes
I’ll be writing about several of these enhancements in greater detail in separate blog posts. For now, check out the videos on Deep Green’s product page.
¹) Sound is only available on first generation iPod touch when using headset or external speakers. The device must be unmuted.
²) Vibration must be enabled on the iPhone (Settings > Sound) for the currently active Silent/Ring state. Vibration is not available on iPod touch.
6 Comments
Hey Joachim!
I just wanted to say that the new site and Deep Green 1.1 are AWESOME! It’s been a little wait, but it was definitely worth it. Keep up the great work!
Agreed. Nice new update. What I always like about this app is the lovely, worn design of the board itself. This new update brings some nice new touches yet still keeps things simple and intuitive. Great work!
Sounds great! Just off to check it out.
I have been using this application a lot and notice that it tends to consume battery power significantly. The phone also tends to run hotter when you use this product at is full capacity including continues checks on best move, taking back moves, etc. The sound, use of vibration, dancing of the pieces, etc. all together would appear to requite extra power. Also, after a while, the application gets very, very slow, less responsive to the tactile commands.
Carlos,
I’m sorry to hear this. Which iPhone OS version are you running?
After having upgraded to version 3.0, I’ve noticed that my iPhone 3G gets very hot too. Also when not running Deep Green at all. Evidently hotter than under version 2.2. And I’ve noticed that some of the animations don’t run as smoothly under version 3.0. I talked to an iPhone engineer during WWDC who told me they still had some optimizations to do. I haven’t checked if they’ve done so in the just released developer seed of iPhone OS 3.1.
I submitted an update, Deep Green version 1.1.2, to Apple two weeks ago that tries to work around some of these issues when running on iPhone OS 3.0. It should be available soon, I hope.
Having said this, Deep Green is a CPU intensive app when the engine runs. But I never noticed any issues like this under iPhone OS 2.x.
Finally, which device are you using? The new iPhone 3GS has been said to run very hot.
I think this chess engine (v. 1.1) is not very clever: im am not very good to chess – I am always close to winning over this chess engine (in relation to such Kasparov Chess, where I often is far from winning). Therefore, i need a faster and much smarter chess engine.