Hey guys, I’m new to the community, but I’m a long time Go player and am passionate about the game.

We at Bravado Waffle Studios are making a new Go app for iPhone and iPad (and Android and the Kindle Fire afterwards) and wanted to share the details with you all and get your input. We really want your help to make this the ultimate Go app on the market created for and by the Go community.

One of our goals is to really show off the beauty of Go and make just experiencing the game as much fun as it is to play it. We have an artist that has worked with Marvel and DC and as a concept artist on major motion pictures, we have a composer who is currently making a wonderful soundtrack and realistic sound effects, and we have a developer who is passionate about the game.

Here’s a few features we are adding:

• Free to Play in a similar style as Words with Friends. This way nobody will ever have to search for a Go opponent again.
• Online asynchronous turn based game play via GameCenter.
• ELO rankings on GameCenter leaderboards
• 3 different board sizes to pick from (9x9, 13x13, 19x19)
• Multiple game boards you can unlock to customize the experience
• Over 200 Go proverbs and lessons you will get to add to your collection as you play the game
• Handicapping options to level the playing field
• Ability to play ranked and unranked games

What do you guys think? What other features would you like to see in the game? What things irritate you about current Go apps that we can fix? We really want to listen to the Go community on this project, so please share all your thoughts!

Below are some early artist renderings of how the game could look:

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Bravado Waffle Studios
Twitter: @bravadowaffle

Looks like a good project, and the graphics look great. I hope you can turn off the dragon on the board, though. Some may like it, but I prefer a normal board.

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be immersed

Thanks! Yes, we will have a very traditional Goban set (no dragon on the board), and we are looking to include at least 2 other options as well for the less traditionally minded- a Sumi-e Goban where the board and pieces are will look like they are painted onto a scroll, and a futuristic Goban that will be a cross between the Millennium Falcon's holochess board and Tron. Each will have it's own unique effects and background music.

Please let me know if there are any additional features you'd like to see us include! We are also looking into a way to let players export their games in sgf format so that they can share them and comment them with friends.

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Bravado Waffle Studios
Twitter: @bravadowaffle

So far I like what I see. Good luck!

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a1h1 [1d]: You just need to curse the gods and defend.
Good Go = Shape.
Associação Portuguesa de Go

What is the "Help needed" part?

It looks good but is it intended to be a real time server? I'm just curious since you compare it with "Words from Friends" which is a turn based fairly slow game. Is it only going to be available via portable devices then? You don't mention common desktops.

Hi, looks like a good project. I think though that making it GameCenter based is going to be the riskiest part. Online Go programs rely on having a community of other players as you know, so unless you hit critical mass with adopters of Go on the Go people might not be able to get enough well balanced games. Have you thought about making it a client to an existing server, say DGS or OGS?

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I am John. John-I-Am.

Reaching critical mass is a concern. We actually haven't looked into using an existing server yet to serve the games. It's not a bad idea. What we like about GameCenter is the push notifications and the turn based approach so you can play when you like. It works quite well for Go. We were hoping that with the support of the Go communities and the Free price tag we can reach critical mass doing it that way.

However, now that you mention it, I suppose it probably would be good to look into integrating with one of those servers... though I'm not sure where to start. Why did you mention DGS and OGS instead of IGS/KGS?

One further point of concern- One of the issues I would be majorly concerned about is dropped games and errors if we do go with one of the existing servers. For example with Tetsuki on the iPhone many many people complain about dropped games, disconnecting, and missing moves. This is probably a symptom of using an outside server. If we went with GameCenter that would never be an issue.

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Bravado Waffle Studios
Twitter: @bravadowaffle

Probably because both are turn based.


DGS is open source, and I'm sure the OGS developers would be open to collaboration.
IGS has an open protocol, through telnet, so it could also be an idea.
KGS has a closed protocol, and the developer is not interested in 3rd party clients

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a1h1 [1d]: You just need to curse the gods and defend.
Good Go = Shape.
Associação Portuguesa de Go

Very nice looking project, integration with GameCenter is a good idea, and if you could get permission from OGS creators to use your app as an OGS client this would be great.
One thing which is lacking in existing apps like Boardz or DGS client - please add "export sgf" option
And I have one question - how do you want to resolve a counting after a game? Automatic or manual?
Thx

Well that is good to know. Thanks! We will try and get in touch with the developers and see if they are interested then.



Exporting .SGF files is going to the top of our desired feature list. Looks like everybody wants that feature badly! As far as counting, we will be doing it automatically. Counting manually would be too hard to manage, and I want to make the game as accessible to newbies as possible to bring more people into the Go community.

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Bravado Waffle Studios
Twitter: @bravadowaffle

Hey guys, wanted to update you all on the progress of Go on the Go. Take a look and see what you think, we're really trying to make the art look photo-realistic and capture the beauty of playing traditional Go with high quality pieces. We will be releasing the game with retina graphics for iPad 3 and iPhone 4S, so it will be as high resolution as possible. Everything from the sound of the stones hitting the board to the background music is being custom done to ensure a realistic and enjoyable Go experience.

•Players will drag stones from their bowls onto the boards and then submit the move when they are ready.
•Captured stones will automatically appear in the lids.
•Also chatting and options will be accessible in the top menu bar.
•When you play a stone, the bottom scroll will unroll and a Submit/Cancel option will present itself.
•When passing or resigning, there will be an "Are You Sure?" dialog box so nobody accidentally hits one of those.

We have decided to use the DGS server as the server for the game, so you will be able to play anybody on DGS most likely, even if they're not using this app. Hopefully we will be able to combine this with GameCenter on iOS to send push notifications to notify you when it's your turn and keep track of your ELO ranking on their leader boards.

Additionally, we have officially figured out how to export the games as .sgf files, so you will be able to export any and all of your games for later review. So this is a huge feature we are very excited about!

Oh also we are currently looking into porting the game to Android as well for either a simultaneous iOS/Android release or more likely releasing the app for Android shortly after the iOS version goes live.

All of these pictures are subject to change as we develop the game and continue to play test the graphics. What do you think of the User Interface so far?

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Bravado Waffle Studios
Twitter: @bravadowaffle

Some thoughts:



Could this be made optional? On an iPad, it's entirely viable to just touch where you want the stone. Having to drag and drop stones and submit the move is a little cumbersome for longer games and it would probably make or break the app for me.

A crucial feature, for me, is the pre-marking of dead or "likely dead" stones and groups by the app at the end of a game, similar to how the KGS client handles it, so that players only need to make corrections, if necessary, or just accept the score.

If 9x9 and 13x13 games are also ranked, I feel that separate leaderboards for those sizes should be implemented.

Playing against GameCenter friends (rather than through auto-match) would be awesome, though I believe this is already planned this way.

This sounds like an awesome project and I'd be happy to beta test.

Edit: Oh, and I'd love different stone sets too, in addition to the usual slate/shell stones. Some precious gem stone sets may serve as inspiration here. Or steel stones, with matching boards. These could even be IAPs. I think Go often looks a little "boring" to people who have a casual interest in it. Just think how Battle Chess introduced chess to computer gamers who would never have otherwise even considered playing chess (back in the 80s or early 90s).

Yes, it would be optional, you could just tap on the board wherever you want as well.



This is a very good point. There's nothing worse than thinking you have a dead group and the app not marking it as dead and ruining your game... or playing extra stones to be sure the app counts it as dead when it's not necessary. We will have to see about implementing something like this for sure. Not positive if it's possible with the DGS server or not... will have to look into it!



There will be 3 different leaderboards for the 3 different sized game boards, and once we start our beta we'll have to hit you up!



I agree! We currently have a couple extra boards planned- one is a Holo Chess/Tron type board similar to the Chess game played on the Millennium Falcon, the other is a Japanese Sumi-e painting type board with painted brush strokes on canvas for the pieces and grid. We'll probably have a few more by the end, but the focus right now is on perfecting the experience with the traditional game set before we branch out.

Thanks for the support!

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Bravado Waffle Studios
Twitter: @bravadowaffle

Another thought I had:

When I learn a new (board) game that involves playing against other, real people, I prefer to be able to first play against the computer. Just to get some kind of idea and learn the very basics without of running the risk of feeling or looking "dumb". Presumably I'm not the only person who feels that way.

How realistic is it to add a "play vs CPU" mode to the planned app? Sente and a new app I saw the other day, Little Go, both use Fuego as an engine. Since this is open source, I don't know if the license would allow it to be used in a non-free app, though. It doesn't have to be something that plays quite as strong, either, just anything that allows people to play against the device before tackling games against live opponents.(People could get another app and do that, but if the idea is also to attract new folks, this may help.)

This may be beyond the scope of what you guys have in mind, but hey, worth chipping it in.

May I suggest you may have over-designed the interface? I like your 3D artwork and all but how about just a simple, clean, less stylized typeface?

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David Bogie, Boise ID
I play go, I ride a recumbent, of course I use Macintosh.

small tip about how to put a stone on the board (how it should look):
Some time ago guys from "brainium studios" made an app called Pente / Pente Lite, with great style, great design and the best and simplest way for putting a stone on the board I have ever seen on the mobile. maybe it sounds like an exaggeration but it really works very smooth and is very precise. It would be great to get this way of playing. check this app and take a look how it works (link to itunes) http://itunes.apple.com/pl/app/pente-li ... 18785?mt=8

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Tsumego/Tesuji apps for iPad, iPhone & Android devices:http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7511

Oh wow, that's pretty impressive! Thanks for the tip, I like it a lot. I will pass this along to the team and we'll certainly have to test it out! I could see it being very useful on the iPhone!

Do you guys find you need zooming like that on the iPad screen though? I find it's pretty easy to place stones without zoom on most all iPad Go programs, even on a 19x19 board.

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Bravado Waffle Studios
Twitter: @bravadowaffle

On my Android tablet, I disable zoom-ins and enable them on my phone.

Zooming on the ipad would be annoying. Big screen means huge zoom in and out effect - I would get sick before yose I think

Has this project continued? I would love a great alternative to Boardz and Dragon Go Client. This looked very promising!