Checkers Tutor 2.1

I just posted Checkers Tutor 2.1 for Android on the Android market. It has a lot of improvements over the previous version:

• Nicer graphics (see previous post)and new nicer launcher icon
  
• A new pushover level where you should be able to win even when moving at random
  
• A smoother transition of playing strength when moving up from beginner levels to depth-controlled levels to timed levels. This is done by disabling parts of the evaluation on the lower depth-controlled levels
  
• The entire last game is restored now on startup, not only the last position
  
• Two small bugs fixed
  
• Behind the scenes, a lot of the code was cleaned up
  

To me, it looks as if it should be the best/nicest checkers app for the Android platform, but obviously I'm rather biased! Now all I need is some customers and some good ratings :-)

Playing with graphics for Android checkers

Over the weekend, my wife went on a short hike with our kid and his godmother, giving me a bit of time to play around with the checkers tutor graphics. Here's my current preview, and I think I will leave it at that - I like the looks of it!



I increased the size of the pieces a bit, and used Inkscape to produce pieces with gradients and highlights. Obviously I'm not a graphic artist, but I think they are much nicer than the plain circles I used to have.

Android checkers reloaded

During my x-mas holidays, disappointed with the measly 5000 downloads I got over one year of my free Android Checkers Tutor App, I came up with a great plan: make it a paid app instead of free - like that, all the people who know nothing at all about checkers won't download it and won't complain about the must-capture-rule, and won't give it bad ratings. Great plan, but with 6 sales in 40 days, it didn't really work out... Not one to give up easily, I have decided to revamp it a bit. I've started making the code cleaner behind the scenes, and also tried to improve the looks of the app. Not too sure about whether it's an improvement - what do you think?