When I heard at the end of February that the Newton had been discontinued, my first thought was: "Great, now there'll never be a decent chess program for the Newton". As a chess enthusiast, this was a real disappointment. Imagine my surprise, when, a few days later, the following announcement appeared on the Newton Underground:
"DEEP GREEN TO BE FREEWARE! At last Thursday's San Francisco Newton User Group meeting, Joachim Bondo demonstrated Deep Green, an amazing chess game for the Newton! Deep Green is written almost entirely using the C++ tools for Newton, and is blazingly fast.Deep Green has tons of features - it has greyscale support for OS 2.1 Newtons, it can take back moves and suggest moves to you, and even has a setup feature so that you can recreate classic games or chess scenarios and play them out.
Joachim announced that Deep Green will be freeware, as a good news gesture to the Newton community. You've got to try it -- it certainly has us falling in love with our Newton all over again. We'll let you know as soon as Deep Green is available."
"This is great!" I thought, and immediately contacted the author to try to get a copy of the program as soon as possible. Joachim Bondo, the author, was extremely friendly, and told me that he had delayed Deep Green's public beta release, despite the urging of those who had used the program, in order to further fine-tune the program. But, he continued, "I also think there's a time where the Newton community should be able to enjoy the program instead of me making micro-adjustments for my own sake..." Several weeks later I was able to download the program as promised.
Both the board and pieces are well-designed,
visually pleasing, and provide a good overview of the game.
Joachim realized that the Newton was perfectly suited to serve as a platform for portable chess games, and being a casual player himself, wanted a good chess program for occasional games on the Newton.
The only possibility at that time was ChessPro, an expensive program which lacked even basic features such as take-backs. Since Joachim worked as a developer in his spare time, he thought it could be entertaining to develop a program himself. Not the chess engine itself - which would be too much work, but just the user interface on top of an existing engine.
He talked to a friend, Jens Bengaard, a very talented C/C++ programmer, who also liked the idea. They wanted to make their program freeware from the very start, or shareware if they had to due to licensing issues.
Joachim began to look for suitable engines (with modest memory requirements) and located several. Most developers, however, wanted money for the engine, and seemed concerned about whether they could trust him with their source code.
Scott Ludwig (author of PocketChess for Pilot), on the contrary, simple sent Joachim and Jens his source code and said that it would be great fun to see it on the Newton as well. He did, however, warn them that it would be a tough task, and that others had already tried to adapt the program and had failed.
That was in May/June of 1997. Joachim spent his time drawing and designing the user interface while Jens worked on the C code. In September Deep Green validated the first move, and in October it made its first move. The authors were ecstatic! Joachim says "It's been very exciting, and it's very gratifying each time I open Deep Green on my Newton."
The program, which takes about 110k of memory, loads effortlessly, and requires no configuring. Tap the Deep Green icon, and the board springs instantly to life, the pieces eager to do battle. Both the board and the pieces are well-designed, visually pleasing and allow the user to see everything that is happening on the board at a glance. A look at the "Game Info" option reveals that one can play against Deep Green as white or black, use the board for a game against another person, or even have Deep Green play itself. I selected Deep Green vs. Human, and used the slider to set Deep Green's playing strength to its lowest level (1 out of a possible 120 seconds). Even at the 1 second level, Deep Green proved to be a challenging and extremely quick-thinking opponent. At higher playing levels, I didn't have a chance.
Users can set up their own positions quickly and easily.
A number of minor details on the board indicate the high level of workmanship and commitment that went into creating the program:
Everything is well thought out, intuitive, and makes chess on the Newton a real pleasure.
Reviewing a game in playback mode.
Nobody knows for sure! The 1 second playing level is almost too strong for most casual players. In fact, one of the major features Joachim hopes to include in the next beta version is a handicapping function which will also allow less experienced players to enjoy a round against Deep Green. PocketChess, the program on which Deep Green is based, rated approximately 1,850 Elo running on a 16 MHz PalmPilot. Assuming that a doubling of the clock speed increases the rating by 40 additional points, Deep Green running on an MP2X00 would have a rating of near 2,000 Elo. An evening at a local chess club confirmed this estimate: at the 30 second level, Deep Green made mincemeat of players ranked between 1,700 and 1,800 Elo, while at the 45 second level, the program was able to beat a player rated at 1,950+ Elo.
Deep Green is THE chess program for the Newton. Visit Joachim at his web site and download your own freeware copy of Deep Green: <http://www.bondo.suite.dk/newton/deepgreen.html>.
Joachim Bondo and Deep Green.
(Photo: Thomas von Eyben)