A new server is being developed: Kaya.gs

[Laman]

Kaya.gs:

so, how's it going? i am really cheering for you, but i feel it is about a time to show people some progress / to announce some reasonable opening date or something. most players i know have heard about you and are looking forward to the new server, but i think you should give them some new info occasionally, to keep their attention

maybe some progress bar on your website would be nice, like:

[example]
rating system: done
time systems: done
scoring: in progress (ETA: 1 week)
design: in progress (ETA: 2 weeks)
another thing: to do
yet another thing: to do
[/example]

[mohsart]

Yeah, at least for the ones that has contributed there should be someting.

/Mats

[mw42]

There *is* a contributor only blog on kaya.gs.

[oren]

There *is* a contributor only blog on kaya.gs.

And are they doing anything?

[mohsart]

There *is* a contributor only blog on kaya.gs.

I guess my contribution was too small to get access to that then?

[Redundant]

There *is* a contributor only blog on kaya.gs.

And are they doing anything?

There have been two posts in the last week. As it is supposed to be a private blog, I'll be vague. Some posts have pictures showing measurable progress, and others are simply stories about the development.

[mw42]

There *is* a contributor only blog on kaya.gs.

I guess my contribution was too small to get access to that then?

If you donated and you're not allowed the progress updates that is pretty sad. My guess is this is not the case -- you should message the admins for access.

[Kaya.gs]

There *is* a contributor only blog on kaya.gs.

I guess my contribution was too small to get access to that then?

I'm sure i sent you the invite mohsart as i used all the emails from the payments. As many , you probably got the invite in spam.

Send me a pm/email with the email address you want to access the blog and ill send you an invite.

[Kaya.gs]

Kaya.gs:

so, how's it going? i am really cheering for you, but i feel it is about a time to show people some progress / to announce some reasonable opening date or something. most players i know have heard about you and are looking forward to the new server, but i think you should give them some new info occasionally, to keep their attention

maybe some progress bar on your website would be nice, like:

[example]
rating system: done
time systems: done
scoring: in progress (ETA: 1 week)
design: in progress (ETA: 2 weeks)
another thing: to do
yet another thing: to do
[/example]

I did give someupdates in another thread, the one announcing OpenKaya. http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4720. Although that post is pretty old already.

I post to the blog about twice a week, announcing our short-term goals and what we have been achieving. For example yesterday we finished the replay bot.
The replay bot fetches the latest games from GoKifu and broadcasts them on Kaya with a reasonable fix timespan to allow observers to comment on the game and share the experience of studying pro games.

It was a great feat because not only it looks awesome, it is a service that goes through every part of the arquitecture: the bot works absolutely separate from the server, so it can run in any computer. As such, it is an example of the interface to make a bot that runs with Gnugo or other computers, which will be available and will be able to run separate from the server.


As i also announced on the private blog, we are building a video-demo which we will finish within the span of a week. This video is meant to be used to show the current state of the server and show some of the features that make it special. I plan to show it to a lot of people in Korea, to get support, coverage, and maybe even volunteers.

The reason why i dont show pictures publicly was made clear in the blog too but i'll repeat it here. The graphical design is barely starting this week, so most things are just barely organized on the paying page. As such it of course doesnt live to the standard of the prototype (which is what our designer is now molding into our server) and it would be a dis-service to let people think the server will look as it looks now.

To answer your example point by point

rating system: Yoyoma's implementation of Glicko is done and implemented in the server. Although i wish to work a little more and allow blitz-rating and normal rating.

time systems: Clocks are synched and working on the board. Right now we only have Absolute time, and we plan to support all time's KGS + Fischer, Bronstein, and other fun ones like Hourglass , etc. This part is available in OpenKaya, so anyone that wants to implement a timing system can do so.

scoring: Right out of the oven. Polly finished the inclusion of the algorithm, and some other functionality like recognizing entire groups of dead stones, much like kgs does. There is still work left into making the score agreement between players: the only remaining thing left for the server to be fully playable.

design: in progress. We are making a first version for the demo this very week. Our star designer (the one that made the prototype) is on vacation so we had to compromise on the amount of work we are doing today. But after he gets back, design is top priority.

Ok, thats enough .

I hope this addresses your concerns.

mohsart, im sorry you didnt get the invite, if you ever have any concern just email me or pm me here and i will answer.

Regards, Gabriel.

[jokep]

As i also announced on the private blog, we are building a video-demo which we will finish within the span of a week. This video is meant to be used to show the current state of the server and show some of the features that make it special.

Cool! When will we be able to see this video?

Do you have a date for alpha yet?

Greetings,
Jokep

[Kaya.gs]

We are working on the video. We had some delays trying to include a difficult but very valuable feature.

As we publish the video we will open up the supporter blog so everyone can check out the latest.

Stay tuned!

[usagi]

I mean... I don't mind supporting it because it is a good idea, but why should I play there? I bet I am not alone asking this.
Go servers are like bars. Nobody wants to sit in a bar alone, so people go where people are. But how to get the initial people in?

It is weird, the answer to this question is so clear in my head, but it is not easy to put it into words. I would probably sum it up with one word: Accessibility.

To mention a few thoughts in no particular order:

• As a website, it is much easier to hang out on it than a dedicated application. For example I will certainly have the website open in a tab most of the time, just like currently I usually have OGS in the background. I don't generally have KGS running when I am not playing, especially not when I am doing something else / working.
  
• A modern "web 2.0 style" web application generally has a simple, lightweight, and inviting interface (and everything suggests that Kaya.gs will be no exception). Unfortunately this is not something seen in current Go websites and even less in Go applications, so it may be hard to recognise for everyone how much this is going to lower the barrier to entry.
  
• If there are not enough people yet for realtime games, one can start turn based games if/when that is supported. Something that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that Kaya.gs also has the potential to be a much more sophisticated alternative to OGS and DGS, which is already quite something. Personally, as much as I appreciate the service offered by OGS, I can't wait to switch to something slightly better designed.
  
• Kaya.gs is likely to be a good choice to use for showcasing games for example. As people link to games or other content on the server, they will naturally grow the population of it. There is a convergence of services which is simply not possible within a traditional desktop client.
  
• Gabriel and Patricio seem to be quite good at generating enthusiasm, as the flurry of donations indicates. Many of us will be eager to spend a lot of time on the server/website right from the start. And giving that they want to turn this into their livelihood, they will be aware that active marketing is a requirement.

Sure, it will take a while for numbers to grow significantly. But the early days will also be the most exciting, and that should easily make up for a lower number of players. It's not like you have to stop playing on every other server.

I'm a huge KGS fan and probably won't make the switch till kaya.gs is stable, but on paper Kaya.GS sounds much better than KGS.

Simple things like not having idle time restrictions, being able to study tsumego online, and having things like leagues and tournaments integrated with the client are absolutely huge user interface improvements which could (read: should) have been done YEARS ago, but they are never done. In fact I've gotten shot down pretty hard when I've asked for simple little things or made simple suggestions (like if it would ever be possible to integrate league functionality into KGS or get an extension on the number of messages we could receive). Just look at KGS+, which rakes in a huge amount of money for KGS. KGS has taken in orders of magnitude more money than Kaya.GS yet the interface and administration behind it are unusable. Additionally it's too easy to lose access to old lectures. Access can't be transferred or paid for in retrospect and so on. There are dozens of other changes like skinning which could (should) have been done years ago which I suspect will be on Kaya.gs from the start, and it's my view that fortunately or unfortunately Kaya.gs really will make good on it's claim of killing the other go servers.

One positive development I hope comes out of this is that wms decides to monetize his absolutely huge collection of lectures and sell a 3 DVD set of "the best of KGS Plus". I'd buy it. But will that ever happen? No, because it would make sense ^^

[usagi]

Picture the following 2 scenarios with the way pretty much all major servers work today:

1) You talk to a go player that is not tech savyy. You tell him to go to a server to play go. The series of steps he has to do before he starts a game is astounding.
a) go to the page
b) download client
c) log in as a guest
Now he sees an entirely new thing he doesnt know how to use, that has no "start game" or anything of the sort.
d) look for someone to help him/assist him into starting a game
As opposed to-
a) Got to the page
b) log in with a form any browser user in the world would understand
c) enter and be able to play a game a click away

2) Another classical example is that you want to share a game being played with someone. "MilanMilan is playing", "they are relaying a pro game", "check out the game i just played"
All those things have enormous friction to share, as the other person has to potentially install cgoban to enter, and look for it.
With a web client, you just share a link. The other user clicks on it, and he is there. Only 1 step.

I'd like to speak out a bit as a Java programmer, and remind people that the reason why people think Java sucks is because Microsoft wanted you to think that. However, Java (today) is a lot more stable now that Internet Explorer has been losing market share. (What did you think? You were using windows.)

At any rate you are right that Java is everywhere, and it is even everywhere that Javascript is not. With Android's support of Java, and iPhone's decision to drop flash (and Adobe's decision to drop flash on mobile platforms, and to move away from Flash in general) Java is really the only modern programming langauge available to developers which runs on phones, the web, desktops, and every desktop from mac to linux. It may work against you to throw out Java at this particular time. The tide is changing somewhat. But that being said, I would like to focus on the list you've presented above. I'd like to compare what you have said.

First I would like to remove the necessity for you to click on a link to access the site, since that is a requirement for all servers. Secondly, I'd like to remove the requirement for you to log on, since that is also a requirement for all servers including kaya.gs.

current-generation go server design:
b) download client
d) look for someone to help him/assist him into starting a game

kaya.gs remaining:
c) enter and be able to play a game a click away

Subtly, when removing the necessity to log in, I removed the necessity to log in as a guest, since when you go to kaya.gs the first time you are already logged in as a guest (observer).

I also don't feel it's appropriate to claim that on other servers people automatically don't know what to do, but that on kaya.gs everything will be intuitive.

So what are we left with? Kaya.gs is just like other go servers BUT it is more accessible because you don't need to download a client.

Well that isn't really true, the download of the client is merely hidden from the user because it is downloaded as javascript by the browser. Yes, I agree, there is a magic in that but I am just being completely fair from a technical standpoint.

So all in all there is really no difference between implementing kaya.gs in javascript, or in java, or anything else. The most important reason you should write it is because you are planning to listen to the user community.

Thank you.

[hailthorn011]

Also, you don't have to download the KGS client to play on KGS. You can play from the web browser.

[Mivo]

With Android's support of Java, and iPhone's decision to drop flash (and Adobe's decision to drop flash on mobile platforms, and to move away from Flash in general) Java is really the only modern programming langauge available to developers which runs on phones, the web, desktops, and every desktop from mac to linux.

iOS does not support Java, and that's a large chunk of the mobile market right there.