“Sente - Online GO” App for Android


This is what it looks like.
But if I tap the chombo game, it takes me to another game, the first in order I guess, and I lose the notification for the chombo game (since I tapped on it).
Maybe it’s a simple thing and I’m confused over nothing (never not a possibility with me) or it’s supposed to be that way.
But if I get 25 notifications and I can’t land on the game I want, maybe it would be simpler to have a “you have games to play” notification?

EDIT: I would like to also add that in the app ranks below 25 kyu show correctly, which I highly appreciate.

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Not really! But I didn’t want to be rude or stand in the way of progress.

I feel the current layout is nice for making use of the screen area with a square board but I guess the new layouts are rotatable.

Might it be possible to relegate some of the less used things to the top instead.
Menu buttons are usually at the top for example and I would mind if pass and undo were at the top.

I am not a Dev or app designer so don’t worry about what I say!

I feel mine was like this previously but now behaves like mrAlex says.

It’s not about being rude, if it ain’t broken don’t fix it. But also we should be aware of our bias against change.

I made the original while being influenced by the very popular android chess apps (e.g. lichess, chess.com) however chess has a clear concept of “my side” vs “your side” (pawns can only move one way) so it’s natural to place the two players across from each other. I’m wondering if that was the right choice for GO though since in here the board is completely symmetrical. It also forces a lot of white space and, as you say, it’s actually quite weird if you were to rotate the phone…

I have another idea: how about placing the chat on this page (at least the last few lines). It is weird right now that you have to click into a modal dialog to see the new messages… Here’s a mock-up, what do you guys think?

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I also prefer the current one. the new draft looks very busy.
chat shouldn’t be displayed by default in the game screen, clicking to access it makes sense to me.

when reviewing the game screen, I would propose something cleaner instead - one implementation I particularly like is the one of Pandanet:

the game screen focuses on essential information (player’s turn and timers), with everything else (including player’s profiles) accessible through the bottom bar.

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Well, Go is played by players on opposite sides of the board IRL but this doesn’t translate very well online. (I think black should be shown at the bottom of the board… First move etiquette - #7 by yebellz)

This looks interesting but I worry that it would either be to small to be useful and/or just clutter. Most of my games have no chat beyond a basic greeting and I feel it might get annoying to be faced with HF GG top middle of each game!
Also you need a dialog thing to type anyway don’t you so it doesn’t feel too odd as it is. For me anyway

I’ve seen previous drafts above the last: to me this one looks good

I’m 50-50 on having the “past results” on the game screen… it’s not essential, but having it designed this way is not too much of a bother either, and I get that it would be a fun stat to see filled in from time to time

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Ok, I see you guys are really against chat on the screen, perhaps I shouldn’t do it.

I do like the pandanet minimalist look, however perhaps it’s too minimal? I am not sure I’m getting all the info I need from that, for example what are the number in parentheses after the timers? Are they Byo-yomi (or whatever it’s spelled) periods? Are they prisoners? What’s the komi (if any)? Do we really don’t want the player ratings to be displayed (I do play differently against higher rated players than against lower rated ones)?

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I think there is a balance between clutter and wasted space and it seems like you will get the balance right!
I agree that the pandanet screen is too minimal.
I suppose it’s a headache to have display options. I suggested switching off the view of ratings on ogs and like this when I’m on my desktop. It would be great if the app respected this it has a similar option.

I’m not against chat on the game screen necessarily I just wonder how it would work. It would certainly be useful to be able to see the board more easily when chatting about particular moves in teaching games for example.

I was honestly not aware there is such an option on the website. Having the option to turn of minor thing such as the ratings display shouldn’t be much of a problem. However, having this for more complicated things could be a problem.

Yes, one reason I wanted it there is that it would be easier to chat and also perhaps even display variations. How would variations work with the modal chat screen? Do you click on a link in the chat, then you are taken back to the game screen with the variation played out and then you can go back to the chat and then to the proper game? That sounds clunky…

But I guess you are right that it would be 95% just a “hi, gg”, “u2” kind of deal permanently on your screen… not sure how a compromise would look…

Anyway, here’s a mockup of the initial version with the previous results removed (also no chat). It’s definitely clean, but I wonder if we could do something better with the toolbar at the top, it does seem redundant… What do you guys think?

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Looks great. I was wondering about the top bar you could presumably squeeze it to a single line by having moved numbers after the match name. But aside from the game switching thing it is a bit redundant.

Just had a thought about chat. Could you have it under the board? I mean “scroll” so the board is at the top and the chat is under when chatting? Not sure I’ve explained that properly.

I like it. If you’re putting the stones together, the one on top should be the one playing. In this case it’s white’s move so White should be on top (it’s duplicate information with the “your turn” but that’s alright).

It would look very weird otherwise, as it’s a quite common indicator for “player’s turn” (e.g. Pandanet and Sabaki use it)

Hi Mr. Alex,

tbh in my humble opinion, the update is not really necessary, i like the current look as it is.

Chat constantly shown surely isnt necessary for me
All info is shown in current layout while keeping it clean and simple, i like that a lot. I also like that with the current layout the board is displayed in between the players. So, while I think it is really cool of you to keep working on the app, the layout you suggested to me doesnt feel like a big improvement, of course i also do not mean to be rude.

However, what i do like about the new layouts is that time info is bigger!

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Yes, perhaps even doing away with it completely (and just have the my move button) could be an idea (see mock-up below).

Interesting idea. I will think about variations of this. Perhaps have it above the board so that we can train the user to drag down from the top to enter chat (hence removing the need for yet another button). This would make it impossible to have it below, as I don’t want to have gestures on the board itself. I need to think of this some more…

Didn’t know that, thanks for the hint!

Thank you for the feedback. I understand that there might be more pressing issues to be dealt with, but sometimes I need to improve on the things that I feel like doing so that the project is attractive to me as well. Most of the development time is sadly spent digging into endless (and sometimes contradicting) server responses and trying to make sense of them to display something meaningful. This time I wanted to do something more visual…

Of course if people feel like this is objectively worse, then I won’t do it… but if it’s even marginally better then I’d rather go ahead with it. And don’t worry, I don’t ever feel offended by constructive feedback, please keep it coming!

Yep, nobody liked that idea, I won’t do it :slight_smile:

Out of curiosity, why do you think that’s a superior layout?

Cool, i totally understand the fact that you follow your guts and your motivations when you work on it, after all its supposed to be fun for you! So any changes you feel that make it better for you are much appreciated :slight_smile:

Concerning the position of the board:

  • i like symmetry
  • it mimics the irl situation that players sit on opposing sides of the board.

While we are at it, things I really like to see is a bigger clock, like the one in the newer designs. And if it is possible sometime i would love to have acces to user stats (own primarily, but also from other users). Maybe you can scrape statistics from the gotstats?-website… I also would like to be able to access other players games as i have a ‘pupil’ whose games i check regularly to talk about mistakes he made and so on (of course without giving him tips in ongoing games :wink: )

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oh and i forgot: the app makes life so much easier and its easily the most used app on my phone. Thanks for the good work man.

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no doubt about it :slight_smile: everyday my phone is like:

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I hope that’s not battery usage lol :slight_smile:

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