Nova.gs -- A modern web go server

[badukJr]

I just don't see it as that big of deal. Score estimation and comparison of different branches of play contributes a lot to strength, but you can't do that with a score estimator. Current game estimation can tell you to play complicated or simply but its not as a big of an effect.

[BobC]

I played a game on this last night (against a 30 Kyu - I got killed).

I must say I really like the server.Good feel and it's got features like groups, tournaments (planned) that I would like to use. The correspondence -> live feature is good.

We tried a Malkovich type live game but the strain was a little much......

Here's the game. On reflection I made some screamers.... Comments welcome...

[Kaya.gs]

Score estimation during games is a thing that is sometimes debated. Some servers don't allow the players to do it, others do. I think having it as a negotiation option is a good compromise.

But doesn't that complicate ratings calculations? Certainly skill at go includes skill at score estimation. So a player that is poor at estimating score will rate higher during games at which he/she can enable the score estimator, artificially increasing his/her rating relative to opponents that can estimate score well with or without the score estimator.

On Kaya.gs we debated ourselves not having score estimation on live games because of this conundrum. However, correspondence games do have estimation, as a player could arrive to the same conclusion of the SE given enough time. The reasoning is that because the player has the ability to do so, making it easier for him is just a tool.

If you were to agree with that, then allowing SE is just about the ability to "appraise quickly(under time constraints) the situation of the game".

In the end i do believe it affects skill, and it may also have the famous "i never count because i have SE" effect that might be adverse to the strength of the players.

There is a similar situation though, with Joseki Dictionaries. I;m totally up for them to be used on live games. Being able to consult a joseki dictionary during a game definitely affects the outcome of the game, however I don't see the negative effect of a player having the knowledge of a rather even position, as opposed to the memory of it.
It would raise the quality of the games (as less would be decided by joseki mistakes) and it would lower the application of hametes and obscure josekis(which hamper both progress and fun)

It is strange though, how many players are strongly against such a thing and are angered by the mere suggestion. Bottom-line the decision becomes "political".

Okay, this is was bit OT .

Yesterday i got into Nova.gs and talked quite a bit with anoek. I think they did a great job, kudos to them. The service is stable, and I have to feel flattered by the implementation of several features .

They have a similar architecture we use, and leveraged some very nice modern technologies.

As i told anoek yesterday, i hope there is space for collaboration, to better both our services.

[matburt]

@BobC: Somehow I think Dank might have been a little higher than 30k

[anoek]

Hey All,

It's been a very successful week over at Nova.gs and we've just pushed up our first major update!

What's New:

• A turn notification icon has been added to indicate when and how many games it is your turn on - click it to advance to the next game!
• Group pages now have a live game grid and full list of all the games being played by members of that group
• The main page has a live game grid and full list of all games going on in the server
• Lots of tweaks and bug fixes
• At least some connection issues resolved - Please let us know if you continue to have problems!

Coming up next:

• Much improved chat system
• Private messaging
• Stone removal phase improvements
• Player online / presence indicators for games
• Ability to draw on the board during game analysis
• Selectable (and possibly custom) board & stone themes

And of course we'll continue to be making UI tweaks and improvements throughout the process based on your feedback.

Note: If you've sent us feedback and it hasn't gotten integrated yet, it probably just means we haven't gotten to it yet, there are a lot of great ideas we've logged in our internal issue tracker and we'll be implementing them as we go along!

[anoek]

Hey All,

We've got another batch of updates up:


What's New:

• Added the ability to draw on the boards during analysis mode
• Added several stone and board themes, things look *much* prettier now!
• Improved the stone removal phase to be quicker to cull out those dead stones and dame points
• Moved to a very stable IRC backed chat system
• Added full support for international characters when labeling a board
• Significantly improved the performance of rendering and stone placement on mobile devices
• Games can now be viewed by users without an account, just give them the game URL
• Game SGFs can now be directly linked to

Coming up next:

• Live review mode, which is another step towards a full featured lecture mode
• A game tree view
• Beta tournaments! Join the Nova Go Enthusiasts group to be part of the first tournaments.
• A move of our DNS and static content to global CDN's, which should reduce the load times for our international players
• Player online / presence indicators for games
• Private messaging

And as always we'll continue to be making UI tweaks and improvements throughout the process based on your input, so let us know how we can be better!

Note: If you've sent us feedback and it hasn't gotten integrated yet, it probably just means we haven't gotten to it yet, there are a lot of great ideas we've logged in our internal issue tracker and we'll be implementing them as we go along!

[EdLee]

The new default wood, new black stones, and new shell stones (with randomized grain rotation!) are much prettier than before:
(screenshot saved at 80% of actual quality):

NovaBoard.jpg (74.18 KiB) Viewed 8821 times

( Still waiting for a real full-screen mode! But thanks! )

[anoek]

Glad you like the new board and stones I think we may have your fullscreen mode in as early as next patch. We're planning on adding in "layout themes" along with the site color themes.. so baring any major complications with that, you should have a fullscreen layout available then

[EdLee]

Glad you like the new board and stones

Small suggestion: the glare/reflection on the shell stones may be a bit too strong right now -- it looks like a white dot.
If you could soften the glare, like you did on the black stones, it may look nicer. Thanks.

[anoek]

Small suggestion: the glare/reflection on the shell stones may be a bit too strong right now -- it looks like a white dot.
If you could soften the glare, like you did on the black stones, it may look nicer. Thanks.

I tweaked them a bit - is that any better?

[EdLee]

Much better, thanks!

[EdLee]

anoek, 2 suggestions on the UI:
- Make it very clear who is Black and who is White (current UI: very unclear);
- Make it very clear who has how many captured stones (current UI: very unclear).

nova_UI_idea.jpg (116.96 KiB) Viewed 8574 times

Here's one beautiful solution for the captured stones, by GoPanda2:

GoPanda2.jpg (128.03 KiB) Viewed 8574 times

Current UI: to me, this reads: there is 1 captured stone in White's lid:

unclear_B.jpg (633 Bytes) Viewed 8491 times

Current UI: to me, this reads: there are 17 captured stones in Black's lid:

Unclear_W.jpg (934 Bytes) Viewed 8491 times

[anoek]

anoek, 2 suggestions on the UI:
- Make it very clear who is Black and who is White (current UI: very unclear);
- Make it very clear who has how many captured stones (current UI: very unclear).

Hey EdLee, sorry for the delay on the response, we were lost in code and forgot to come check the forum!

I like your suggestions! We'll have to ponder on where the best place for those values to live is now as we've updated the interfaces a bit, but your point is very valid in that the score display needs to be clearer, as well as who is what color.

[anoek]

Hey All,

It's been a long time since our last update (5 weeks now!!), but we haven't been slacking! We've just released a major update that included several big features:

• Tournaments! We've implemented Round Robin, Swiss, McMahon, and Simultaneous McMahon tournaments which can be run by group administrators for members of their group, and we'll start running site wide tournaments after we've run a few beta tournaments in the Nova group and worked out any kinks we find.
• Live review mode! This lets a reviewer stream a review session (walking through variations and drawing on the board and that sort of stuff) to any viewers.
• Game trees for analysis and review mode!
• Fullscreen mode for games!
• Online presence indicators in games

as well as the usual bug fixes, enhancements, and tweaks. (See the changelog for more information.)

Our next batch of updates will primarily be focused around improving what we have, adding in some of the basics that we're still missing (private messaging!) and cleaning up some of the minor bugs and whatnot, then we'll cycle back to some bigger features again

[EdLee]

anoek, thank you for the "bigger"-screen mode! You're almost there.
If you look at photos on Facebook, their Full-screen mode is really full-screen.
Yours is... a big improvement, but still not really full-screen yet! But, thanks!

(Full-screen means the entire height of the board spans the entire height of the physical display.
Currently, the browser's menu, URL bar, toolbars, etc. still take up space on top,
and -- on Windows at least -- the Task Bar still takes up space on the bottom. )