I think this will be very successful in promoting the game in the west.
It looks very good.
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Thanks for the kind words, @Leidang. I hope so too!
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I had to retweet that with some comment 
(hashtags look broken here but aren’t there)
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This week I implemented the OGS integration for groups with functionality to show/search groups, display the details (summary, bulletin, latest news) of the group, the news list of the group, group members, group chat, and group ladders.
One thing I’ve yet to decide on how to handle is how to display the various spots that support Markdown format throughout OGS, such as the bulletins or news within groups. The game engine I’m using, Unity, doesn’t support Markdown format. It does support some rich text options which could be converted to from Markdown, but there’s not enough coverage to fully support all Markdown options. So I think I’ll have to convert the ones that are possible on the fly and hide things that are not supported (e.g. tables). I do have a link button next to the group name which will open the corresponding group page in your web browser though, so that could be clicked for those groups that are using a lot of formatting that can’t be displayed in game.
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I need an ETA.
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Still gunning for the original goal of end of September, but that’s rapidly approaching, so we’ll see where I am at towards the end of August. I definitely need to polish some of the existing features up, so there will probably be less new large features to announce while that takes place.
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The first 90% of any software project takes 90% of the time. The remaining 10% also takes 90% of the time.
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This week the friends list functionality was implemented. Friends can be added/removed and will be displayed in the list with their corresponding online status.
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This week the player clocks for online matches were updated to use the data from OGS, including the several different time control settings (Absolute, Byoyomi, Canadian, Fischer, Simple). Additionally, the disconnect timer displays when a player disconnects from a live game, and the players also can pause/resume games.
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This week was mostly behind the scenes work, but I did add several new campaign invasions, which are shown in the clip below. Invasions occur during the campaign and start from a predetermined board position, allowing the player to play out the remainder of the game. The invasions are a mix of realistic and unrealistic board positions, both of which can be fun to play through.
A few of @S_Alexander’s suggested board positions made it into the mix from earlier in this thread. If anyone else would like to suggest board positions for invasions, feel free to do so, and I’ll consider adding them as well. Thanks.
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Several new Steam integration features were added this week. New stats are being tracked for wins, stones played, stones captured, and playing specific Go shapes. Each stat has a corresponding set of achievements which unlock as you progress each stat. Right now there are 42 achievements which are shown in the clip below, but more can be added. The stats and achievements are displayed in game, but the achievements will also be viewable from within the Steam library.
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Awesome! Maybe add an award for losses as well? Something like “sage” or “learned by doing” or “lose your first 100” or “on the road to greatness” etc.
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Thanks for the suggestion. Showing negative statistics and giving them achievements can be a bit of a polarizing topic. While it may be fine for most people, there are people that get obsessive over such things. On one hand, you have the player that strives to keep their stats “clean” and will do whatever possible to avoid tarnishing their stats with a loss or losses. That player may fear trying the AI on a higher level and actually progressing their skill level because they’ll end up with losses. On the other hand, you have the completionist or achievement seeker player who wants to get all achievements, and may end up losing games on purpose just to get the achievement. Go is hard enough as-is, so I think the latter case will happen naturally, haha. I do like the fact that it goes along with one of the most famous Go proverbs though. I’ll give it some more thought, and I’ll also look around a bit to see if there’s any other proverbs that I could possibly incorporate in there.
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There’s always more shapes to add too if you want more achievements 
Other than that you could have some funny ones like “I slew a dragon” https://senseis.xmp.net/?Dragon although not sure how easy that would be to track. Could be something for the size of the group captured in one move or something
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I really appreciate your game focuses design thinking. Thank you for the well thought out reply. Given those examples, I think it makes sense to leave out negative statistics.
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Thanks for the suggestions. There are a few more shapes that are already being detected and showing up in the move history panel, but I wasn’t sure if I should just convert all of them into stats/achievements, so I just went with the more common ones for now. I like the dragon idea, and I could setup a dragon size type achievement pretty easily.
No problem!
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New Steam integration features were added this week. The Steam friends list will now show the general actions you are taking while in game (menus, game modes, game progress, etc.). Additionally, Steam cloud saves were implemented, allowing your save data to automatically carry over to any machine you access with your Steam account. The cloud saves are also separated, allowing multiple Steam users to have individual save files on the same machine.
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I added the new CPU versions of KataGo (Eigen and Eigen AVX2) to the available AIs for analysis in the game. The GPU version is still much faster and should be used if supported, but the CPU versions will allow AI analysis to run on PCs that don’t have a dedicated GPU, or don’t have a GPU that supports OpenCL. A fallback system has been implemented to swap between the versions automatically in the game, and the version can also be selected manually within the settings menu. Additionally, a recovery system has been implemented to issue commands to catch AIs back up to their previous state in the case termination or swapping between AIs.
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I was able to get back into the campaign mode this week and put together a system for post match review where your key mistakes (based on AI evaluation) are pointed out, allowing the player to guess at which moves are better and explore resulting variations. I plan to tie this into the resource system to incentivize reviewing mistakes/alternatives and also allow players to build back up resources after losses.
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This clip previews some of the music and sound effects that are within The Conquest of Go . Different sound effects play for a single stone, atari, and capture. Also different sound effects are played depending on the chosen board theme (fantasy vs. traditional). Music is by Alexander Nakarada of https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com/. Songs featured within this clip: Village Ambiance, Forest Walk, and Nowhere Land (License CC-BY 4.0).
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