The NEW SOFTWARE has been rolled out of beta on ☯GS … there still are some li’l bugs, and our all co-operation and communication is asked for to help make it grow and bloom

www.online-go.com


See you there, Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Can't seem to access the new OGS on my ipod at all. it keeps crashing Safari...

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If Chess was invented by man, then Go was invented by God.

First impression: Big improvement!

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Patience, grasshopper.

Sorry to say, but:

First impression: slow.

First impressions: While the level of clutter has increased by several orders of magnitude, I can no longer see the time remaining for my next move, in each of my correspondence games, on the home page. This is a critical flaw!

Also, the "Submit Move" button still starts flashing if you don't click it fast enough. I cannot understand why THAT has never been fixed.

There does not seem to be such big visual changes, probably more below the surface.

Showing a game I preferred the board-controls on the left-side (now they are on the right).

When you clicked on a user (getting a submenu) you could open a players-info in a new window (mouse-middle-click for example). Now this is not possible any more. The current window is replaced.

From a maintenance point of view using a full-fledged forum-software has its merits, but the (new) forums seems to need a 2nd logging in, and there are no themes, so if I have a dark theme in OGS and switch to the forums, the contrast-switch to the raw white background is quite shocking.
Also it's a pity: the old forums are still available, but they cannot longer be searched (all the "wisdom" in there got to waste).

Sometimes a page-reload (with the page-result) seems to be missing (e.g. withdrawing from a ladder).

Showing only part of a ladder (with page-navigation) makes it kind of difficult to find your own position and the players, that you can challenge.

The new pattern search on games is nice.

Still missing a function to search for correspondence games (to search / find / bookmark for observing). It seems the live-games are "favoured" in comparison to functions for correspondence games.

The link to the issue-tracker is not longer available (why?).

Hm, strange, sometimes it seems, page-response is tremendously slow or you do not get a response at all and you have to do a manual reload, though this is hard to pinpoint.

Probably needs a bit more time to further mature.

Dear everybody,

since anoek and matburt, the developers of ☯GS, can’t watch each and every place where these things are being discussed, it is important that we not (only) mention the bugs here but report them on the ☯GS forum.

That the times are missing in the graphical overview of one’s own games has already been reported.

Cheers, Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

This *is* my go forum. If anoek and matburt want to create a new go forum they are welcome to it but I don't need another one.

Edit: besides, that OGS forum is completely weird and foreign to me.

It is mine, too, and I often advertise L19 as THE place for everything Go (in the English speaking world)

The already have done so—for ☯GS-specific stuff, which is not only legitimate but also the right thing to do if it is about development and especially about collecting bug reports. See, any member of any other Go forum (is there one for the Spanish speaking world? Or in Chinese? I’m quite sure there must be, and perhaps with even more members that we have here) or even any FB or Google+ community member could say that *there* was *their* place to talk about Go with the same right, no?

I find it sad that you reject their wish to get more direct feedback … to me it looks as if there were other things that bite you here … I don’t know your personal history with ☯GS but it is not hard to see that you are somewhat p!ssed. Anyway, IMNSHO it can’t be expected from them to surf all over the Web to find out where somebody has mentioned some bugs …

I also had and sometimes still have some difficulties to adapt to it, but with a little good will it was and is not that difficult

Greetings, Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Out of curiousity, and perhaps slightly off topic, what's with the use of ☯GS instead of OGS? It seems much more difficult to search on.

Heh, yes, that’s why I usually also mention “OGS” in the same comment/thread

If you have been on ☯GS then you’ve seen their logo … I think it is very cool and eye-catching, that’s why I write it this way.

Greetings, Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Wasn’t sure in which OGS threads to add this, but I think this thread is adequate.

OGS – Online Go Server – online-go.com has rolled out the new 4.2 software update. (now with https)

Other useful links you might want to bookmark:

• The new OGS user feedback system where you can create your own suggestions and vote for them.

• The new OGS documentation

Enjoy and I hope to see you there.

Cheers, Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

It was a huge improvement, OGS has grown considerably and the interface is less clunky.

I have to admit I sort-of agree with defunct. While the sentiment to create a separate forum is not a problem, maybe even a good thing to do, this here *IS* the de-facto main english-speaking forum, and a place where most english-language go-related ideas are discussed. And there is no reason OGS cannot use it and benefit from it. L19 folks are even nice enough to possible create a separate OGS sub-forum is needed, they have done stuff like that in the past. There is even one for Kaya, for Pete's sake!

Were I a developer of a go server, I might create my own forum as well, just for giggles, but I would make darned sure I also monitor L19 as the main outlet of english-language ideas and gripes (btw - I also agree that your use of OGS logo does not help any such monitoring, as cute as it might be.) And while I would welcome people to post on *my* forum, I would certainly not try to entice them to do so - just do whatever they are comfortable.

Otherwise we end up with literally 100s of forums, one for each of the software/service we use... and that's just for Go... most of us don't have the time to not only monitor, but even sign up to all those forums.

L19 can and does serve as a nice aggregator in that sense, so lets use it as that. No need to splinter the community. As it is, I think there are too many outlets out there, and I personally feel I miss a lot by not reading all these forums, blogs, Facebook pages, and whatnot... Alas, as I said, no time to even remember where all of it is, let alone read/scan it for interesting stuff.

So lets try not to add to the mess, lets use one place for as much as we can instead of trying to convince people to post somewhere else.
Lets try to be considerate to those of us who do not have the whole day doing social-media-jumping.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

In the spirit of my previous posts, let me make some comments on the current state of OGS, from my perspective.

As I do from time to time, usually prompted by reading something about it, like this time, I just logged in to OGS to check it out again. I was confused by a few things, and it might just be that I am not used to the interface - but then, it might also be that the interface is not really intuitive. Anyways, here it goes:

1. When I opened the page, I had a sign-up screen, which confused me since I remembered I could do stuff as a guest without signing up before. It took me a few seconds to click on the OGS in upper left to open the side panel - but this only because I have seen it before and so figured out quickly where to click. Anyways, no biggie...

2. Next I looked for games to watch, as I always do. So I decided to click on Games... which got me to the page with 40 or so live games, 9 per view. So far so good... but I noticed that all the games were DDK games, which I am not often interested in. Is it just the time of the day, or a fluke, or is it like that most of the time? Anyways, I tried to search for more advanced games, so I looked around the interface.

3. I found the option to display more games per view than 9, which was very nice. But the max number is 20, I would like to be able to see all games, or at least 50-100 at a time. And I don't really need the live games as real-time boards, just as a list would be fine. I remember there used to be such option, or am I mistaken? Anyways, I could not find any other kind of view. It made looking for more advanced games a drag.

4. I also did not find any way to sort or filter the games, which to me is a very serious drawback, almost making the server unusable for me (I seldom have time to play, but I like watching good games while I do other stuff, so this is my main interest.) Especially if there will be more games played in the future and/or more advanced games. Will there?

5. So I decided since there are no advanced live games to watch, I can watch non-live games. But I could not find any way to view them. Is there a way to show a list of non-live games to view? I know I can probably look at player names or leagues/tournaments and see some games from there, but I really do not know that many players to search for them, and it is very cumbersome. I would really like a list of all games in progress so I can watch them. As a matter of fact, since they would be non-live, some bookmarking option would be nice for kibitzers, or even a notification functionality. Or is something like that already there, I just cannot find it?

6. Not finding what I wanted, I left the page.

This is it. My impressions after 5 min scan of the server. Take it for what its worth...

I will drop in to OGS next time something direct my attention to it, but for now the server does not have enough of what I need for me to use it regularly. Or maybe it does and its just not apparent. In either case, for now it still needs work, and I rather live without a stone sound.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

OGS is lacking dan-level players right now. There are not enough western dan players to populate several game servers simultaneously, so I suspect things will improve slowly as time passes and the current SDK/DDK improve and others join.

That being said, I agree OGS is not a good server for kibitz as it doesn't make it as easy to spectate games as other servers do.

Yep, won’t spend more than five mins then on the answer: after the update to 4.2 the user preferences were lost, you have to set them anew. Won't happen every time OGS is updated but apparently this time it was inevitable.

Enjoy

Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Oh, cool.
But does that mean I need to log in every time to take advantage of this option?

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

My OGS impressions so far...

- I like the general type of interface very much. It's nice that you don't need installing the Ask toolbar before using it . If I would have the task to program a GUI myself, I would try to find out more about how it works.
- The rating seems more tough than e. g. on KGS. While being around 4k on KGS I started as 6k on OGS and am now about 8-9k. Also it seems that some low-dan players on KGS have OGS ratings in the 2-3k range. That maybe part of the reason why there are not so many dan-level games visible.
- I like the format of the game list, however a sorting feature would be also nice. There is a list mode accessible in the settings, however the number of shown games and their sorting is just the same as for the thumbnails.
- Many game offers are without handycap (seems a default setting, when creating a game) and there are also many game offerts on smaller boards. Thus OGS is nice if you would like to play a short game in between.
- It's nice to have a review tool, too. However it seems not yet fully stable. Once I gave a review and we were several times "unsynchronized" (i. e. the other player saw a different position than me).
- The score estimation function seems much worse yet than on any other server (KGS, WBADUK, IGS).
- Also the scoring at the end of the game can become tricky - especially if the suggested marking of dead stones does not fit. Maybe I have to read the documentation again.

All in all - quite promising, certain parts may need further polishing.

Edit: It would be also nice to have a kind of "back" button, which returns to the previous form. In the moment I always have to go via the main menu. Maybe I'm also missing some essential points...

Ah, first clicked the wrong button so you got an accidental “like”

Huh? I’d think for OGS to know what your preferences are you’d need to identify yourself to OGS first, but, not being a coder, I’m not sure how these things are done, you’ll have to try. And no,this is not a trick to get you there just one more time


there’s something with clicking on stones/intersections, can’t remember out of my head whether it includes pressing shift or alt keys or something

not sure what you're talking about here … what “form” do you mean? What about the back button of your browser?

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?