Life In 19x19

Hey everyone! I posted this on /r/baduk and am here also.

I am an independent developer, and noticed several months back there was no Go client on Steam so got to work. Since the Google AI announcement, I have been rushing to try and be ready to catch some of the people who discover Go exists due to the media hype around it.

I just launched a Greenlight which contains some video and screenshots. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=631409809

My goal here is not to compete with OGS, KGS, Tygem, but to introduce the game to new players, many of whom have never heard of Go and only purchase games that are on Steam.

Right now there is a basic tutorial, a few planned sections on specific rules and positions (seki/ladders/etc), a simple AI (kyu in the 20's right now), and a server that is only has the groundwork and is not polished. I am leaning toward a 9x9 blitz quick match as the featured game type, with then a more standard advanced section.

I would love to know what thoughts this community might have on what that should entail, features to include or that can be left out, anything to help shape it and draw in beginners!

Looks great! I especially like the realistic 3d look, all of the other servers you mention have a very "flat" and simplistic theme because they're not running an engine like UE4. Looking forward to its development, clicked "Yes".

Thanks! Really it doesn't change the game at all and has a lot of overhead, but it gets people in! New players is the goal!

Here's the type of Go server I wish existed and would be great (I think) for anyone willing to improve:
The server pairs anyone willing to play at the same time, whatever their strength, but then the weaker player takes Black and has the first move, while the stronger player takes White with no komi. Depending on the gap strength, the two players would play on different sized board so that the bigger the gap in strength, the smaller the board is and the more of an advantage the first move would be: imagine playing against a complete beginner on a 5x5 board and giving him Black with no komi as a compensation, the effect of his first move on the board would look like this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$ 5x5 board. No komi.
$$ -------------
$$ | . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . |
$$ | . . 1 . . |
$$ | . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . |
$$ -------------[/go]

Now, Black's huge advantage is obvious here, and White should have no chance of winning if she wasn't playing against a complete beginner. Hell, I'm sure I could beat even Lee Sedol in this game if I were Black!

But anyway, since it's a beginner we're talking about, he may not think of playing in the middle of the board right away, so the game could look like this instead:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$ Black messed up.
$$ -------------
$$ | . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . |
$$ | . . 2 . . |
$$ | . 1 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . |
$$ -------------[/go]

the point is: the first move for Black with no komi for White makes for quick games when the two players are far apart in strength, but since the board is so small, one mistake is all it takes to make an upset, so that the weaker player will have a clear "losing move" he can learn from.

Let say now that time past and Black got a little bit stronger... If he asks a game at the same time than White does, they are once again paired together, but the gap in strength being a bit less than before, their game could look like this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$ Black's advantage is smaller.
$$ -------------
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 1 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ -------------[/go]

Now, Since there's more space to play, it will be easier for White to survive, but still super hard to get ahead in points...

Anyway, you get the point: finding the right size to play on for Black to give White a run for his money, while giving Black clear learning opportunities:

_ On 5x5 boards, he'll learn that he needs at least two eyes to survive, and that the bigger his eye space (his territory) the easier it is to live.
_ On 7x7 boards, he'll learn how to play solid, basic endgame moves... and how to count.
_ On 9x9 boards, since White will often create two groups, he'll learn how to kill.
_ On 11x11 boards, he'll start to tell potential and territory apart
_ On 13x13 boards, he'll learn the merits of invading compared to building
_ On 15x15 boards, he'll learn the value of the sides and the effect of joseki towards them
_ On 17x17 boards, he'll learn how to use thickness to attack, build or destroy
_ On 19x19 board, he'll learn the value of influence and how to control the center

In short, Black will be more focused on what he's working on, compared to handicaps games on a 19x19 board on which he has to make countless mistakes for the stronger player to catch up...
And from White's point of view the game will be more interesting and challenging, as he will just have to be patient and wait for a mistake to catch, instead of overplaying to do so.

To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, here's what I thought should have been my pairing on KGS when I was 3 kyu there:
Opponent's Rank / his color / Board size
30 ~ 25 kyu / takes Black / 7x7
24 ~ 19 kyu / takes Black / 9x9
18 ~ 14 kyu / takes Black / 11x11
13 ~ 10 kyu / takes Black / 13x13
9 ~ 7 kyu / takes Black / 15x15
6 ~ 5 kyu / takes Black / 17x17

4 ~ 2 kyu / even game / 19x19

1 kyu/1 dan / takes White / 17x17
2 ~ 4 dan / takes White / 15x15
5 ~ 8 dan / takes White / 13x13
9 dan / takes White / 11x11

Anyway, that would be my dream Go server, where the strongest player can have fun no matter who he plays, while the weaker one has countless opportunities to learn from the best.

Looks really good! The 3D appearance of the board is very appealing, and I like the nice cheerful stone placement sound.

My only criticism of the video is that some of the slide transitions are a bit too fast.

Nice work.

Hi Acumen,

The 3D is very pretty, as others have mentioned.

A few suggestions:

- Make sure you don't force the 3D look on the user; also give the user the choice (option) of a traditional 2D board.
- The GoPanda2 client (on OSX and Windows) for IGS is very beautiful (resolution 1366x768) :
- A few of the good and bad elements of GoPanda2's interface (resolution 1366x768) :- My biggest complaint with GoPanda2 is that its 'fullscreen mode' is not really full screen for the board
( it wastes about 1/5 or 1/6 of the screen on the useless gaps );
please remove these two gaps, or at least give the choice (option) to remove these two gaps (see above screenshot).
- The 'Current move' maker on both GoPanda2 and gIGo is the circle (see screenshots above): I think this is correct.
On Tygem and other Korean or Chinese clients, they use a Triangle -- I think it's very ugly and jarring.
At least give the user the choice (option) of the circle 'current move' marker.

Thanks!

The model you're using (targeting beginners, using a 9x9 board) most is closer to the GoQuest phone app than any of the major online servers. If you haven't taken a look at it, I recommend doing so.

I've played a lot of 9x9 blitz go on GoQuest, and I've also watched beginners try to learn the game on the XBox game The Path of Go and major online servers. Here's a bit of my advice based on those experiences:

• A good tutorial is really important, especially one that can explain scoring. Scoring is by far the most difficult part of the game for beginners to understand.
• Do NOT include live in-game score estimates. They seem beginner friendly, but they're inherently inaccurate and beginners often struggle to understand why a large area that was "theirs" is counted for the opponent after they failed to make two eyes.
• Be careful with the time controls you choose. If people can abuse them, they will. GoQuest started with 3 minutes per side and no byo-yomi, but this led to people playing every legal space on the board to try and win on time. They added a one second byo-yomi, which doesn't sound like it would make a big difference, but it greatly reduced that problem.
• Match people based on ELO or some other rating system, but allow the kyu/dan ranks to be permanent achievements. This is the most brilliant thing GoQuest does, and I think it's very beginner friendly. It helps mitigate the common fear that playing more games will cause your rank to drop.
• Limit or eliminate the social interaction people can have during the game. This minimizes the damage that griefers can do to the community. If you want to encourage discussion, I recommend allowing an (optional) shared review where people can discuss a game that has already occurred. You can also allow a few canned phrases (greetings and thanks) if you want to encourage manners during the game.
• Make sure that people can easily look up and review their old games.
• Make sure people can watch others play. In fact, I would highlight the games of strong players to draw more observers. This is a great way for people to learn.
• Use a ruleset that allows area scoring. (On Reddit you said you planned to use AGA rules; this is fine.) Allow the computer to score the game without human intervention. This might lead to a few incorrectly scored games, but probably not as many as if beginners are allowed to mark the life and death of stones themselves.
• Think about what achievements / badges you can offer for people who complete the tutorial / play a game / play X number of games / etc. Do everything you can to allow beginners to feel a sense of progress.
• Make sure there are bots of a variety of strength levels so that people never have to wait long to find a game. You'd mentioned difficulty finding bots that were free for commercial use on Reddit. Have you tried Aya? There's no license file in the source code download, but I think it's free for all use, is reasonably strong, and has a lot of parameters that can be tuned for different levels.
• I actually like an integer komi (7 seems appropriate for a 9x9 board). I find it satisfying when a hard fought game ends in a draw. I'm not sure if this is a general principle that would apply to beginners, though.

I'm certain there is more that I'm missing, but this seems like a good start. Good luck!

Wow some great stuff here.

Dontbtme: This seems like a really fun idea. I will be experimenting with it for sure. Agree should take off a lot of the new player pressure where people feel intimidated, while being interesting/novel enough to engage people who are improving and moving up to bigger boards. What do you think the proper board would be with 2 evenly matched low ranking players? Probably need komi in there somewhere, not sure if that makes it more confusing or if there is a more elegant way to deal with fair matches.

BigH: Yeah I had some difficulty with the video editing, some of my clips were 8GB+ (recording is like 1.5GB/minute) , and the editor was not coping well so I could not preview, only edit, render, re-edit, etc. I have learned some tricks for next time around and will definitely keep that in mind when it comes time to cut the next one. Thanks!

EdLee: Yeah agree 100%. Right now I have it snap into the 'zenith' and into 0 90 180 270 degree angles when you move close. On the big boards especially the lines get a bit anti-aliased, so I will probably have a bunch of special setting go into effect when you hit the 'zenith' to make it look really good, which is where I expect the better players will end up most of the time, especially when actually playing. Having it switch to an orthogonal view from there should have all the benefits of the 2D and 3D together. Also a separate check box for shadows should help get people the view they like.

For the view, it is anything you like. You can zoom in, out, pan around to any angle, so no gaps unless you want them

For current stone right now I have a centered grey asterisk just because it is easy. I like the circle too, should be able to play around when it comes time to polish and get something better. Agree on the triangle.

Jeromie: Yeah agree on the tutorials, no plans for live score, agree they are more confusing than anything else. Yeah I like the one second byoyomi idea a lot, will certainly do something like that (and probably not even mention it just have it in the background). It does feel weird to play on servers that don't have that loosing time to latency.

Yeah definitely background elo/variant type system translated to front end kyu/dan. Steam achievements are something I think people will really like, leveling up is a great idea. Works well with the board sizes idea too. "First game on a 7x7!" etc.

Yeah agree on the chat stuff being a possible issue, I don't have any implemented right now partially for that reason, partially because it is work. I think that is something I will look at again if there is a player-base where it becomes worth while to add and people want it. Even Hearthstones system of greeting does get abused sometimes and many people just turn it off. For launch probably will just have nothing there.

Old games I am planning to store at launch, but only have review for the just finished game. It is one of the things that I will go back and add retroactively (possibly quickly) if there are the players and demand for it. Observing is another one of those things. I sort of feel like the new people on here should just play and have fun and not have lots of options thrown at them. All that is 100% necessary for a base of 'real' players, but maybe not as much for lots of new people. If the base is large enough and starts to mature play wise I am all for adapting to what provides the best overall experience though. With this too, there is the possibility that the 'real' games might involve me linking into OGS/KGS in a minimal way where your same account might have more options through their client.

Planning right now on doing AGA with automatic scoring for the AI and quick matches, leaving only human scoring as an override in the bigger games. I think even the seki edge cases etc should all be machine scorable, haven't looking into it too much yet but I can't think of cases where it would not be unless both players pass too early.

Yeah agree on badges. They should be fun to come up with!

Cool thanks! Downloaded Aya, seems like it is free but does not grant redistribution rights. I saved it so will contact them if Fuego, which I am also looking at, doesn't work out. Should be able to just have a difficulty/think time with as many choices as make sense.

Yeah draws might be a good idea I had not thought of that. The worse player wins is sort of that the 0.5 points boil down to? Makes sense for tournaments but maybe not for the game in general. I will keep that in mind!

P.S. The greenlight is going well, thanks everyone who votes, favorites, follows! If there are any places to cross-post this I would be very interested as keeping the momentum of voters up is going to be key to getting through the process quickly.

Acumen wrote:What do you think the proper board would be with 2 evenly matched low ranking players? Probably need komi in there somewhere, not sure if that makes it more confusing or if there is a more elegant way to deal with fair matches.

I didn't think of adjusting the board size for even games when both players are 'weak', but that makes sense and I like the idea So, lets see...

First of all, maybe real beginners should first beat an A.I. as Black with no komi on a 5x5 board, as part of the tutorial for beginners, before joining the general ranking system. That could ensure that they understood at least the rules correctly...
Anyway, back to the problem at hand, it all depends on who do you want to let play even games on 19x19 boards.

For example, if you decide that the single digit kyu players earned the right to do so, then you could apply the following:
30 kyu could play even games on a 7x7 board
29 ~ 28 kyu could play even games on a 9x9 board
27 ~ 25 kyu could play even games on a 11x11 board
24 ~ 21 kyu could play even games on a 13x13 board
20 ~ 16 kyu could play even games on a 15x15 board
15 ~ 10 kyu could play even games on a 17x17 board
Other players could play even games on a 19x19 board

On the other hand, if you think of dan players as kind of Go graduates, then you could apply (something like) the following instead:
30 ~ 29 kyu could play even games on a 7x7 board
28 ~ 26 kyu could play even games on a 9x9 board
25 ~ 22 kyu could play even games on a 11x11 board
21 ~ 17 kyu could play even games on a 13x13 board
16 ~ 11 kyu could play even games on a 15x15 board
10 ~ 04 kyu could play even games on a 17x17 board
Other players could play even games on a 19x19 board

Finally, if you think that only the strongest players are fit to play even games on 19x19, then you could decide the following:
30 ~ 28 kyu could play even games on a 7x7 board
27 ~ 24 kyu could play even games on a 9x9 board
23 ~ 19 kyu could play even games on a 11x11 board
18 ~ 13 kyu could play even games on a 13x13 board
12 ~ 06 kyu could play even games on a 15x15 board
5kyu ~ 3dan could play even games on a 17x17 board
Other players could play even games on a 19x19 board

All the above assume the use of komi, as Black's first move on small boards is such a big deal.

Alternating Black and White with no komi on 19x19 as in 'Ancient Go' (back in the day when komi didn't exist) would be possible, but that would mean letting 'weak' players play on 19x19 boards against each other... unless you use one of the above board attributions not to determine even game boards, but to determine on what board a player has the right to play. That would mean that if you earned the right to play on a 13x13 board, for example, you could still be paired for 7x7, 9x9 and 11x11 boards, but would still play only against stronger opponents... Until you earn the right to play on a 19x19 board. But then, there might not be enough 'strong' players around to pair 'weak' players with them...

So maybe the best option is what you suggested to begin with: to allow people to play even games on small boards with komi if need be.

Anyway, there are many possibilities, but I hope you'll find something useful here

You've given me a lot to think about!

I think there is some big potential for the unlocking of bigger boards idea on Steam. That is the kind of thing the player base loves.

I wonder if some even less conventional board sizes might work? 5x5 -> 5x7 -> 7x7 -> 7x9 -> 9x9. Or is square board just that much more 'real' and aesthetically appealing.

Very excited to play around!

Well, I made small paper boards myself a few years ago from 5x5 to 9x9, in order to try teaching Go to beginners.
The idea was for them to beat me 3 times in a row with Black and no komi before graduating to a bigger board. At first I had only 5x5, 7x7 and 9x9 boards but the increase in difficulty seemed too sudden and big from 5x5 to 7x7 already, for my newbies to feel confident in their ability to beat me at 7x7, which is why I thought the same as you and made 5x7 and 7x9 boards to ease the transition...
It seemed a bit strange at first playing on a rectangular board, but it didn't seem to change the nature of the game and did it's job making it easier for my opponent to try and beat me, so I thought the experience was a success, though I didn't play more than a handful of games/people that way.
(By the way, I tried first 6x6 and 8x8 but those kind of boards did in fact change the nature of the game so I really wouldn't recommend them)
Anyway, I played with newbies from 5x5 to 7x9, and leveling up that way seemed challenging for them but not intimidating, so you may be onto something...

I think I am going to have to try it out if the progression thing works out and is more fun. Although now that I am thinking about it that will require a good amount of code change for all the X,Y loop upper bounds.

Yeah as long as there is a Tengen the first player should have an advantage, otherwise mirror go gets much more playable, and it is not fun for most players.

Up voted on Steam.

Hello from your local Go club member!

Hey! Thanks

Based on your rank, we played right? That was a great game! I've looked at the picture of the completed board a bunch of times thinking about that fight on the bottom.

I'm looking forward to this software's release. I use steam regularly and it has a very large user base that could indeed expand Go's sphere of influence.

I would suggest adding achievements to. Lots of folks get hooked on obtaining those. Something like an achievement for completing the tutorial, for winning your first game, ect.

An actual Go ranking system would be a great addition also with a leader board.

Just some random thoughts. I've been away from Go for a while.

Any idea on a release date yet?