Hi! I’m Torry,
I’m new to the forum and also in playing Go.
I just wanted to tell you I’ve just developed an android app for playing Go that represents the game in a more “visual” and modern videogame aesthetics.
I think it can be pretty useful for new players to visualize better what’s going on in the game (I convinced several of my friends to play with me thanks to this app) and helped me a lot also hahah
It creates castles in line formations and paths between diagonal connections to visualize better the groups, also there are different levels of constructions depending the nearby stones.
Can also load and save .SGF files to analyse later in OGS for example.
When publishing I realised an steam game called Conquest of Go does something similar, but I think this is more focused on “casual” and local playing and not competing.
You can find it on Play Store:
Or Itchio for PC:
I don’t want you to think this is spam or something, I have 0 ads in the game and you can play it completely for free.
It’s fun! I have a few points of feedback if you’d like them.
The main one being that there send to be no way of ending the game! Passing just passes forever.
It’d still be nice if there was some feeling of conclusion to it. Maybe lock in the end result displayed and send you back to the main menu.
I also didn’t realize he back button was for undoing moves. I thought it was to go back to the main screen.
Also there is no explanation of komi, so saying komi is 7.5 is confusing. Heck, just say it’s 7 and blue/red wins ties. The whole 0.5 thing is just a convention to convey this (or heck allow ties). Or heck, since you’re doing area scoring just make komi 6 so their are no ties unless there is a odd-point seki.
Also if this is aimed at newbies, you shouldn’t make 19 the standard size.
Nice your idea of castles (and towers for stones alone).
I like less the paths in diagonal although they look great, for the only reason that beginners are often confused and don’t always understand that diagonal are not liberties of the group.
Anyway i hope many will enjoy playing with your apps.
I also think 9x9 is more “casual” and easier to understand Go rules although it’s not the “complete Go experience” or something. Anyways you have a 19x19 grid to play with zoom in/out controls to avoid missclicks
I am releasing a new version soon correcting some minor errors also
The idea for diagonal paths was to visualize better when a group is getting surrounded; multiple stones in line are a wall but in diagonal they can also form a wall, but with a hole in it (you can walk through a path between towers althought it’s difficult because they’re connected)
Same for representing the 3 different structures, when you place a stone alone in the board, it’s a house, you have some control over the zone, but it’s easy to kill. When you add another stone diagonally it’s a bit more difficult to kill and has more offense power so it transforms to a tower. And when you connect in line the group gets much difficult to kill so it becomes a castle.
Woops, autocorrect got me. I meant to write “shouldn’t”. Currently the app says 19 is standard, but I of course agree that 9x9 is a better place to start
I thought of it but I don’t have the technical knowledge to link it to OGS, but it’ll be cool
Also I’d love to make more visual the “alive” concept of a group but it’s quite difficult to program right now, maybe in a couple of years i come back and make all of this changes haha
