| Developer(s) | Media Division |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 5.2.0 December 1, 2011 |
| Written in | Actionscript |
| Operating system | Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android, Tablet OS |
| Available in | English |
| Type | chess program |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | SparkChess.com |
SparkChess is a successful[1] commercial chess program designed by Armand Niculescu for Media Division srl. It is written entirely in Actionscript. Originally intended to be played online, it was ported on a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux as well as on tablets running iOS (iPad), Android (Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom) and Tablet OS (BlackBerry Playbook).
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The first version of the program was called flashCHESS, written in Actionscript 1. It was released in 2002[2], intended as a technology demo for Macromedia[3]. A slightly improved version was released in the next year, with a 3D isometric view. Because of the limitations of the programming language, the game was very slow and did not implement all the chess rules.
Development was resumed in 2007 and the game was rewritten from scratch. The new version, entitled flashCHESS 3, was released in 2008[4][5]. The new engine was much faster and implemented all chess rules correctly.
Citing complaints from Adobe Systems, owner of the "Flash" software brand, the game was later rebranded as SparkChess[6].
In 2009, SparkChess was featured in a technology demo by Google for Chrome OS[7].
In 2010, SparkChess was ported to iPad and Android tablets[8].
In 2011, SparkChess added online multiplayer support.
SparkChess is a single-player and multiplayer chess program. It includes the chess engine and the graphical interface. The board can be represented in 3D with perspective (although it can't be rotated arbitrary) and in 2D (diagram mode). The game progress is saved automatically after each move and additionally it offers a limited number of "save slots". Games can also be imported and exported as PGN.
The game also has a PGN player that supports comments and annotations but not Recursive Annotated Variations. The game can import an entire PGN database at once, although the process can be slow for large files. There is also a board editor with the ability to import and export board configurations in FEN format.
SparkChess has some tutoring facilities, including a "Help me move" option that suggests the best move the player can do and visual hints, an option that highlights player's pieces under attack, squares controlled by the opponent and other hints aimed at beginners.
The online multiplayer mode is built upon Union Platform[9], a multiplayer server written in Java.
In a December 2011 interview[10] the author states 420,000 weekly users for SparkChess.
SparkChess runs in any browser that has the Adobe Flash Player plugin. It also runs as a standalone application on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux. More recently it has been ported on tablets including iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom and BlackBerry Playbook.
SparkChess uses alpha-beta pruning with principal variation, iterative deepening and aspiration window. It also uses quiescence search, history heuristics and transposition tables. It has an opening database with about 7000 moves[11]. Because of programming environment limitations, it does not use bitboard tables and it does not have multithreading support.