Mobile Client for playing Turn Based

SpongeBob · #1

For playing Go online there's an IGS client for the iPhone and now there's the Adroid client for KGS.

This would not be a reason for me to get a smartphone, as much as I would love to have a really good reason to get one.

Because when I have the time to play a game of go, I usually also have access to a laptop or PC, with a better playing experience because of a large display, mouse and keyboard.

Also when I am commuting between home and my workplace, I will not have enough time for a whole game. I would have time, however, to play up to a few moves in my turn based games.

So I am wondering why the focus of those mobile clients has mainly been connecting to online and not turn based servers. Surely those normally have a HTML interface and so they can be played on via the mobile's browser. However, when I tried this for OGS, I was not satisfied. Zooming in, zooming out, placing a stone - those can become painful if not optimized nicely.

Other features that would be nice to have:
- An interface to a database of professional game records that can be searched directly from the played game by selecting a search area.
- Access to a joseki database. This could be just any other application running in a parallel task, though.
- Score estimator

I saw that Mdobbins has developed an Adroid client for DGS. Maybe someone can share his experiences with that. (A YouTube video would be really nice. :cool:

)

mdobbins · #2

anDGS is a simple DGS interface, there are some features not yet suppoted like placing handicap, scoring or making a pass move. But the developer on DGS is working with some of us client/robot developers to extend the capabilities of the program interface in DGS to do a full set of functions. My goal is to be able to do everything related to a DGS game on my client, including eventually reading/replying to messages that show up on the status page. (I am not expecting to support forums.)

I have had a number of users say they loved what anDGS does so far. I had one user say that they preferred a sliding cross hair style of stone location and placement over the touch to zoom and touch to place that I implemented. I actually find anDGS to be faster to make moves than a browser on my desktop as the number of bytes sent over the line (and I believe round trips with the server for acks, etc) is greatly reduced.

I have some screen shots on my website that can give you an idea as to what you would see and how the interface works.

I actually bought my android phone in January just so that I could write this app for my own use.

SpongeBob · #3

Thanks for the info, the screenshots give a good impression of what the application looks like. It seems very usable and .... guess what .... I already start wanting to have a SmartPhone.

You mentioned you are in contact with the DGS developer - do you by any chance know if he intends to implement triggers?

mdobbins · #4

SpongeBob wrote:

Thanks for the info, the screenshots give a good impression of what the application looks like. It seems very usable and .... guess what .... I already start wanting to have a SmartPhone.

I love my Droid

SpongeBob wrote:

You mentioned you are in contact with the DGS developer - do you by any chance know if he intends to implement triggers?

I don't know what you mean by triggers, can you be a bit more descriptive?

Li Kao · #5

Probably that you can say "If he plays at A1 I'll answer at A2" and the server automatically executes it if the opponent plays at A1. This is useful to speed up turn based games, and is used in the Malkovich games in this forum.

Chew Terr · #6

Also on OGS, there are conditional moves that do the same thing. You can say 'if a then b and if c then d', and you can have multiple parallel triggers. Kind of like 'If you pincer close I'll jump into the corner, but if you jump back, I'll extend to D10'.

SpongeBob · #7

Yeah, right, I ment the functionality of conditional moves, as provided by OGS.

mdobbins · #8

SpongeBob wrote:

Yeah, right, I ment the functionality of conditional moves, as provided by OGS.

Ah, Yes. We have always talked about it as conditional moves. A frequently requested feature. There has been a lot of discussion and even some design work done for it in the past. True to it's name, adding certain features to DGS sometimes tend to Drag-on

I don't know where this one sits in the priority list, you might find something on the development server. Right now most of the work is going into improving the client interface to add basic missing features.

mdobbins · #9

I just looked at the To Do List on DGS. Conditional moves is second on the list right behind tournaments and some tournament features have already been released. Since I am not directly involved with the development on the DGS server, I cannot say anything more about what, when, etc.

Jordus · **#10**

Iphone has a turn based client called Boardz... just FYI...

mdobbins · **#11**

Jordus wrote:

Iphone has a turn based client called Boardz... just FYI...

The review states that it uses it own private server not one of the popular ones like OGS or DGS. It may eventually draw enough users to be interesting to someone.

fwiffo · **#12**

Just gave anDGS a try, and think I found a bug... If there's a server message it seems that you can't make a move in your games until you've read it on the web page.

SpongeBob · **#13**

mdobbins wrote:

... adding certain features to DGS sometimes tend to Drag-on

O.k., now I know where the name comes from.

One further question, though: Is it possible to try out different sequences, before submitting the game move?

Redundant · **#14**

SpongeBob wrote:

mdobbins wrote:

... adding certain features to DGS sometimes tend to Drag-on

O.k., now I know where the name comes from.

One further question, though: Is it possible to try out different sequences, before submitting the game move?

On anDGS, if you know the ID you can download the sgf of any game and then edit it.

mdobbins · **#15**

fwiffo wrote:

Just gave anDGS a try, and think I found a bug... If there's a server message it seems that you can't make a move in your games until you've read it on the web page.

Did this occur at the same time as the issue you described in the PM? If so, the waiting message may not be be the issue.

The waiting message can only be cleared by reading on the server, but I have never had a problem making a move because of it. The first move of a game must be made on the server as the current interface only allows a client to send a move if the previous opponent move is on the board (not at the beginning or after a pass), that is one of the new features on the client interface we are working on resolving. You may have seen that along with the game message in your status. If I am right, it was making the first move on the server, not reading the message that allowed you to make additional moves.

If you find that you cannot make a move on the board after your opponent makes a move on the board (w/ or w/out a message waiting), please let me know.

In the mean time, I still need to figure out what looks like a Cyrillic character set problem in the player name suppressing the display of the first move that you reported.

fwiffo · **#16**

Ah, you're right. It was the first move of the game in that case. I've had server messages since then and they haven't interfered (though it would be nice to be able to have them marked as read).

mdobbins · **#17**

Redundant wrote:

SpongeBob wrote:

mdobbins wrote:

... adding certain features to DGS sometimes tend to Drag-on

O.k., now I know where the name comes from.

One further question, though: Is it possible to try out different sequences, before submitting the game move?

On anDGS, if you know the ID you can download the sgf of any game and then edit it.

Yes, that is what you would have to do. The editor supports creating and moving through variations, putting comments on the moves and then saving it all to an sgf file. You just can't go directly directly between the editor to the online player. I wanted to make it easy to explore games in general on the server, but not make it too easy to tempt/encourage people to always do it during playing. So I can't see that I would ever include it in player directly.

The main feature not implemented in the editor is annotations on the board, I plan to eventually implement that when I have time to restructure how I display the board. Before that I will work on adding the other missing normal server features involved with starting, ending a game.

mdobbins · **#18**

fwiffo wrote:

Ah, you're right. It was the first move of the game in that case. I've had server messages since then and they haven't interfered (though it would be nice to be able to have them marked as read).

Yes, I feel your pain. As soon as the new client interface supports message reading and marking as read, I will add it to anDGS.

Displaying messages was a compromise as I would often be playing through anDGS for a long time before I touched a browser and saw that I had a message. Now I get the notice in anDGS and then go to the browser on the phone to process the message.

I pretty much live on my phone with anDGS to the server, so anything that makes my life easier through that interface will be implemented first.

fwiffo · **#19**

If you were impatient, the client could ape a browser and "visit" the message to mark it as read.

While I'm asking for features, does the client interface allow sending comments (e.g. for greeting/thanking your opponent)?

mdobbins · **#20**

fwiffo wrote:

If you were impatient, the client could ape a browser and "visit" the message to mark it as read.

While I'm asking for features, does the client interface allow sending comments (e.g. for greeting/thanking your opponent)?

It depends on how long it is going to take to get the new client interface on DGS. If that is delayed, I may have time to mimic a browser to process the message, otherwise I use the time I have to fix bugs and implement the new interface and I often have other projects to work on as well. It is not so much being impatient, after all some games take months to complete on DGS so I have learned patience, it is time and effort to parse the messy HTML coming back when I request the message.

After you make a move but before you touch submit, the large button below the board can be touched to bring up a text entry box to send a comment back to your opponent with your move. It is the same area that your opponents comments are displayed.

Mobile Client for playing Turn Based

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