I have been working on an Android App for the Go4Go database since the New Year. Now it is (in my own opinion) seriously in a good shape. I am cleaning up the code, giving it the final touches, and will release it in few weeks' time, possibly around the Lee Sedol vs AlphaGo event.

I might need a few testers in the coming days. PM me if you are interested. It is Android 4.0 compatible so any reasonable smartphones should work.

Just show a screen capture of the scoring function - yes the App has some more functions than the website.

I have just uploaded the first release onto the Play Store. If you are interested in being an early user and are able to provide a review here on lifein19x19, please PM me here or drop me an email at support_AT_go4go.net. I will provide a promotion code.

The first release has the following features:

- Access the complete Go4Go database (currently with 52896 games)
- Search the database by date, player, tournament, and a few other ways.
- Replay games manually or using auto-replay
- (not available at Go4Go website) Score games and make positional judgement.

I have prepared two versions: a paid version with a small fee of $3.99 for those who are able and wish to support the development work; a free version supported by advertisement below each game list. The free version is otherwise fully functional for the moment. The paid version will of course be further developed with more features to come (a pattern search function will be available soon).

Google Play Store Links
Paid version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... o4goclient
Free version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ClientFree

Any Android 4.0 or newer devices should work. The current release is optimized for phones with a high-quality display. However you should have reasonable experience even with a very old 480x800 display. I will provide enhanced experience for tablet users in the next few updates.

Following are more screenshots:

Main menu:


Game list (all searches return results this way):


Go board:


More screenshot in next post (lifein19x19 only allows three in each post).

More screen captures:

Player search:


Final scoring:


Mid-game positional judgement:


I need to manage expectation here: the scoring and positional judgement are algorithm based not AI based. So absurd results can be returned. I deliberately post one extreme example where the final result is off by 5 points. In particular L&D status of groups may be misjudged. However, the final score should be fairly close to the actual score and nearly 100% accurate for games with all dame moves filled.

Finally a screen capture for the free version.



I hope you agree with me that the ad placement is not intrusive. Please feel free to try using the free version but do support the development work if you are able. Thanks.

Really nice, sadly I don't use an android, but keep up the good work!

I've been trying out the app over the last few days, and I must say it is fantastic to have all these games available (literally) at my fingertips.

Here are some comments on individual features:

SE. As advertised, the results of the scoring / positional judgement estimator are to be taken with a grain of salt: sometimes it shows the same result as the game info, and sometimes it indicates that a player was winning when he resigned. In this respect it feels similar to KGS's SE: fun to have, but you can't rely on it.

Search. There are a number of ways of finding games. You can check out the pre-selections (new games, popular games and final games) or do a search, either for a player, a date or a tournament. At the moment the search functions could be improved. The one that works best is the search for a player. Here you can jump to a letter to find a player quickly (Note: Western players are sorted by their first names!). If you want to browse by date, the process is a bit slower, as you have to scroll through a calendar (which only goes back to 1970). This can take quite a few flicks of the finger until you get to the date you're looking for. Here, some kind of shortcut, such as the alphabet on the player search, would be welcome. The Tournament view however is the one most in need of a shortcut. Here, only the 20 most recent games are shown, and if you want to see more, you can scroll to the bottom of the page which prompts the next 20 in chronological order to load. There are over 2000 games for example of the Japanese Meijin or Honinbo tournaments, so finding an early game this way in such a list is currently pretty impractical.

Reviewing. The game view is pretty clean and basic, which I like. There is a configurable autoplay button, a slider, and buttons for next and previous move and that's it. The app is not constructed for trying out variations, and I don't know how it would handle commented games with variations, but I guess there aren't any in the database, so that doesn't seem to be a problem. For my tastes, the "next move" button is a bit close to the right edge of the screen, but otherwise, I must say that I enjoyed just looking at the games without the distraction of "features" to play around with.

Conclusion: This app is has a clear and simple purpose: To let you view games from the huge (over 50,000 games) and well-maintained Go4Go database, and as soon as the search functions are improved, I think this will be a "must have" app for any serious phone-totting go player. The only caveat would be that it does not appear to include games earlier than 1970, so a lot of historical classics are not available.

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

Thanks daal for this very kind and constructive review. I will address some of the points below:

Score estimator (SE) - this is based on an external web service which I don't have direct control. However in the future I can improve the accuracy of the results from the client side by allowing users to mark dead stones (just like what you do when playing on Go servers).

Time search (no game before 1970) - in fact you are missing only few games. As of today Go4Go database has 52943 games, among which only 216 were older than 1970. And 1970-01-01 is the Epoch time used by software so setting a cut-off there makes programming slightly easier. I will of course try to fix this at a later time.

Tournament view - you made a very valid point that old games are not easily accessible. I will try to implement a filter to allow user to jump to old editions of a tournament.

Go board - it is my design decision to keep the user interface simple and I am happy that you like this. You are correct that there aren't any commented games in the database so I did not have to write code to support comments and variations in this early version. Those functions will of course be implemented in a future version.

"next move" button too close to edge - thank for paying attention to such details. I will improve this in the next update. Now it is indeed too close and against popular design guideline. Related to this, I also received feedback from one user that when using phones with 5'+ display (which is really desirable to have an attractive board) with left hand, it is a bit stretched to reach the "next move" button with one hand. I will probably implement a user configurable left-hand / right-hand mode to help this.

Finally, I've released two updates earlier this week to fix crashes reported by users.

Any chance you will create similar app for iphone?

Not in the near future. I don't own a Mac which is required to develop IOS apps. In the absence of an official IOS Go4Go App, Go Eye can be used to access the Go4Go database.

Just purchased this app, and so far I have to say I really like its simplicity. My only wishes are:
* Options for selecting the theme of the board and stones; call it nitpicking, but I prefer the board to be lighter colored, and the white and black stones to be flatter in color.
* Allowing tapping on the board as another way to progress the game instead of the + button.
* A feature to allow searching by opening. I've been playing and studying games recently where Black plays a high Chinese opening, and being able to quickly filter games where such an opening is played would be fantastic.
* Having games load at the beginning rather than the end (or make it an option at least). Every time I load the game, I have to rewind it back to the beginning anyways.

Still, it's very nice! Thank you macelee and to those who tested and supported the release.

Thanks for your suggestions. Please find my replies inlined.



I will try to find some wood texture images in different colors and include them in a future release.



This can be done very easily. However, I may need to reserve tapping for other use, for example if the App eventually becomes an SGF editor. This needs to be planned carefully.



Several users have asked me about pattern search. This is on my todo list.



Go4Go has always load games in their end positions. This, however, can be a user configurable setting.



Thank you for your support!

Nice clean app. This makes replaying go4go games much easier as the Web player was fiddly on phone.
A few usability comments.
- I initially expected the - + buttons to zoom not forward / back moves. For that I prefer < >. I suppose you didn't like the similarity to ▶ for auto play?
- The red outline for white stones in game list is unpleasant (but thumbnails are very useful! ). I suppose this is for contrast with the white board, but I think it would be better to have a light brown board (if textured make sure it looks good scaled small) and white stones.
- On the board view there is some unused space at the bottom (on my Samsung Galaxy S3 which is fairly standard aspect ratio). Are you saving this for something like comments? For now I wonder about making the next / prev move buttons huge and putting them there. Easy to tap next move is the #1 thing in go review apps for me.

Yes that would be too similar to the auto play button which can be confusing. But you are not the only user who asks this question.



I don't know how where the red outlines come from. The thumbnails are the same you see on the Go4Go website, download over the network and the scaled down. I will investigate this.



Some white space is unavoidable. Depending on the aspect ratio of your display, you get more or less white space. Unfortunately there are too many possible screen sizes, I cannot possibly write custom code for each of them. Hopefully as the app being further developed and more functions available, the white space can be filled with more useful information.

Here's a screenshot.

Wow, a very naughty ad.

I am using Google's official AdMob to serve ads to the free App. Only a couple of lines code and I do not have any direct control over the contents. I will investigate if I can apply any filters.

Yeah, I get those fake notification ads in some other apps too, rather cheeky aren't they! I do plan to buy your app to support your good work.

My development work was distracted by the ongoing Deepmind Challenge Match. Who on this forum would not be distracted?

Just uploaded Version 1.0.3 to Google Play Store.

I received lots of feedback, many asking better game navigation. In response to that, I added two new ways to better navigate games, both can be done using one hand (helpful for those with large displays)

(1) Tap anywhere on the board to move forward. This, in the future, could potentially interfere with other operation if the App eventually supports SGF editing. But for now this feature is available and should be very useful.

(2) Use the hardware volume up/down keys to move forward/backward. I hope nobody listens to music at the same time reviewing Go games so I take control of the volume button (on the Go board screen only). If there is a problem, I can later add a setting to disable it.

Several users complain that many games are beyond reach, e.g. when viewing some famous old games. I start introducing filters to help refine search result. The first screen updated is the Final Games screen. Now tap the 'filter' icon from the corner to invoke a dialog and refine the search. This should hopefully be applied to player search and tournament search as well - these however require some server side change so I will delay them.



The release also contains some small UI improvement and bug fixes.

Is there any chance you could add a "no spoiler" mode? I like playing through games without knowing who will win, but the result (like W+R) is displayed very prominently before you can view the game.

Good job on the app

Just to make sure, you want to have an option to hide the game results from the game list. Correct?

Yes please