New Android app for playing on OGS

Hi all,

I’ve been working on an Android app for playing on OGS the last few weeks, and I think it is ready for a first alpha release. The accept stones part has not received much testing, so you may still need to be near a web browser for that part of the game, but I have made many correspondence moves with no problems.

Depending on the settings in the app, the first click and drag on the board will zoom making it possible to play 19x19 on a phone which was difficult for me in the phone’s web browser.

Bugs are expected, so you may want to play a few games against the bot first before trying to make a move in your important tournament game that has been going on for 4 months :slight_smile:

Download link and screenshots here: https://nathanj.github.io/ogsdroid/

If you encounter any problems please let me know.

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This is seriously something I have wanted for a long time and I’m sure that there are more people at http://lifein19x19.com/forum/index.php who want to try it. So you should make a post about it there if you want to have more feedback.

I haven’t had time to play yet but one thing I have noticed is that the time setting are only shown as “x seconds”/move instead of the actuall time settings on the “find a game” tab.

When I accept a challenge I get the message: “Unfortunately, OGS has stopped” so I can’t play any games :frowning:

Thanks for giving it a shot and providing feedback. I agree on the time settings. It was easier to display the seconds per move than worrying about parsing the five or so different possible clocks. Handling the clock better is on the todo list.

I will definitely add some sort of crash reporter in the next version so that I can get some debug info. This is my first “real” android app, so I’m learning things as I go.

If you still want to keep testing the app, you can accept a challenge on the web interface and then it will show up under “Your Games” in the app.

I tried starting a game on the webpage and then open it in the app and it worked! But for some reason handicap stones are invisible in the app. I will keep testing it as long as you continue working on it :wink:

Good catch! I had not tried handicap games.

I have a new release which should support handicap stones and should prompt to email me when you get a crash. Please give it a shot.

Download Version 0.2

0.2 Changelog

  • Add ACRA for crash reporting
  • Make the board look a little nicer
    • Added drop shadows and star points
  • Support handicap stones
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Will the app be downloadable from Google Play?

Just wondering, will it consume a lot of data? :slight_smile:

I don’t know if I will put it on Google Play or not. I don’t yet have an account so it would cost me $25 to put it there.

Regarding data, it largely depends on how many active games you have, since I have to pull the game details for each game to determine if it is your move or not. Earlier today I played one move in a game and android says I used 84KB of data.

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Have you looked into getting it on F-Droid?

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You should be able to get a list of only those games where it is your move without having to grab all of them. That should save a little on data.

Now I have finally played a whole match on the app. I like how big the board is compared to the browser and it worked fine except for three things:

  • the clocks had way to big numbers even though I’m playing on a large tablet (part of them were outside of the screen)
  • There was no countdown voice (is there any sound at all in the app at the moment?)
  • I got frequent messages saying “error submitting move”

Thats my report for now, and thanks again for working on this!

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She is like a freaking nightmare, pops up when least expected and starts to ruin the game :slight_smile:
I wish there was a way to change it to beep sound or something.

I’m partial to “Please make a move. You have 20 seconds to comply.

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maybe a hysterical scream at 2 second to go. This will get you in good shape :slight_smile: in no time.

Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymVPcs02QGc

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Very interested in this, I haven’t been able to play on OGS on my phone’s browser, so an app would be really cool! :slight_smile:

Hey i was wondering if you can get the app to make notifications for when it is your move on non live game. That way I know it’s my turn and can play my move.

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Hey Nathan, that looks like a very nice beginning. I looked at doing exactly what you are doing a while ago ( Alex’s Android Client) however I gave up when I realised the only way to log into the app is for somebody to generate a password on the site, then write it down, then type it into their phone. Worst of all, the password could not be edited and looked something like “f3a7416323384cae2f98916ddb950693”.

Since nobody will ever do that (at least not more than 10 enthusiasts) I failed to see the the point in sinking lots of hours into this project and gave it up.

I was wondering if you found a workaround for that.

PS: I logged into your app using the hard method, so I guess I’m one of those 10 enthusiasts :). Crashes 100% on the API 23 emulator when trying to join a game and there is no logging to shed any light on what happens.

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You could log in on the mobile browser to copy the application-specific password. That would help at least.

You and me maybe will, but the average Joe won’t. To me that meant the devs don’t really want people using an android app and so, since I’m not going to parties that I’m not invited to, I decided to drop it. But perhaps things have changed, that’s what I’m trying to determine…

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