An online go board with shared control

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TL;DR: I made an online go board that allows for all participants to have control at the same time. Check it out here: https://board.tripleko.com/

A while ago, after an online review session with some of my go friends, I realized it had become a personal source of frustration having to continually ask “Hey can I get control?” while we reviewed. It was especially evident when we wanted to play out some variations but still go back and forth (KGS teaching games allow you to set players, but this is also cumbersome and interrupts the review flow).

I asked on the OGS forums if there was any chance shared control would be implemented, and while I didn’t necessarily get a hard “no” the response indicated that such a feature would require big changes in the code, and extra care would be needed not to risk integrity of the whole service. Fair enough!

But still, I thought, what if I could make a standalone service that wasn’t a whole go server, but instead whose sole purpose was to be a go board sandbox? (Indeed, the last thing the go community needs is Yet Another Go Server).

So, I threw together a prototype to see if I could make the fundamental idea of “shared control” work. Limited success at the time! Unfortunately, I could see a LOT of problems with what I had made, not to mention all the quality-of-life features I would want to add to make the thing remotely usable.

I shelved the project.

Then about two months ago, I got re-interested in the idea, buried my face in my laptop, and ironed out a lot of the issues that had plagued me when I first started. I’m not finished, but at least I now have a product I believe is worth sharing with the community! I’ve been using it to review with friends online, and while there are still bugs, it is quite usable, and I’ve gotten some positive feedback.

It feels like it’s time to share!

Main page: https://board.tripleko.com/

Github: GitHub - jarednogo/board

Discord: Tripleko Board

Thanks for reading

20 Likes
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Love the idea!
Tested it yesterday for a review and it works great.
Even the pen tool is so good.

The only thing i noticed, it was not clear for me what to put in the textbox at the starting page.

I later realised it was the name/link to the board.
But it could also be a place to copy an sgf file to.

A label would be helpful :sweat_smile:

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Thanks for the feedback! Where do you think the label should go?

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https://board.tripleko.com/b/anyone

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Inside the textbox in grey
Smth like
"Game Name (optional)"

And the maybe also game upload buttons directly on the start page. I want to start as quickly as possibly. If I can just drag in the window my game and it oppens it’s perfect.

Smth like here (AI Sensei Page)

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and a indicater how many people are watching would be great, little mysterious atm.
and chat is useful.
And most importantly the Ko rule is not implemented :frowning:

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someone deleted game one already:

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image526×600 94.8 KB

and started 2nd…

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  • label for the room. can do!
  • upload buttons directly on the start page. maybe!
  • number of people watching. also maybe! I can see how that would be useful
  • chat. eventually!
  • ko. perhaps I’m just opinionated, but i don’t think that this an important thing to implement. I’m open to being convinced otherwise though!
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I agree. You’d have to implement 3 or 4 different ko rules and that would make it far more complicated. Also someone might want to play an illegal ko capture as part of a demonstration.

Similarly, how about allowing suicide?

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suicide should definitely be allowed if the main goal is to be a flexible simulation of a real board, as some Rulesets such as NZD Rules allow suicide (which I think makes for cleaner rules, and as a bonus adds a bit to ko fights in rare cases, which is a cool bonus)

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interesting, I hadn’t even thought about allowing suicide. at the very least, for the time being, one can manually remove stones

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out of curiosity, outside of the nz ruleset, is there a particular reason to allow suicide? I’m open to it, but it just hadn’t occurred to me before now that it would be an important thing to have

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It makes the rules simpler to allow suicide, which is the primary reason to prefer it (why have a rule (you cannot play a move if it would be cleared from the board at the end of the turn) that doesn’t add any strategic value to the game?), and as a nice side benefit, it allows a few things to be ko threats on occasion, which if anything would appear to be a minor increase in strategic depth

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i have to say that your reasoning is sound! if i was developing in a vacuum, then i think i would allow suicide. as it is, i want to allow for maximum compatibility of the sgfs the tripleko board produces across other go servers. kgs, ogs, and ai-sensei all have different handling of suicide moves, and it’s just simpler for the time being not to allow them.

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what happens if I upload an sgf with a suicide in it? (I usually play NZD Rules)

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i just tried this and it seems to not like it. would you mind sending me an sgf with a suicide in it? i might see if there’s an easy way to fix it

1 Like
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I would think that wanting to maximize compatibility would be a strong argument to make suicide legal. Same reason as for making ko-recaptures legal, right?

If different rulesets vary in whether they allow it, then it’s useful for the board to use the most permissive reasonable option - the one that allows as many moves as reasonably possible to be legal. That way, it’s easy to use the board to replay games or demonstrations for rules that do have self-capture or that do have ko recaptures (ko rule violations even can be useful for local tsumego reviews/demos about kos), and it still remains easy to use the board for rules that don’t allow those things because one can just not play those self-capture or ko recaptures that would be illegal under those rules.

The other way around (the board itself being less permissive), it just stops the easy use of the board for more permissive rules, while being of only minor benefit to the less-permissive rules.

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I‘m pro Ko rule for the normal play tool. For the one color options it doesn’t matter, But when reviewing a game you sometimes forget if you already took the ko. If you can take twice it creates unnecessary chances for wrong sgf files and more importantly OGS review also doesn’t allow it. So what happen if I upload a review from Trippleko to OGS?

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it’s not about rulesets, it’s about the other go servers that support an “upload sgf” function. in fact, if i use the least permissive rules, then this would provide maximum compatibility across other go servers.

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SGFs usually include the ruleset that is used. It’s probably best to code them all, but the question is whether it’s worth the effort.