Go4Go App for Android

[Uberdude]

The Wbaduk app overrides the phone's screen turn off feature, but in an annoying buggy way so use this with care! If I open the app and auto-replay some game the screen doesn't turn off . However if I finish and turn off my screen and leave my phone sitting on the table and a few minutes later the connection to Wbaduk drops then the app goes back to the home screen with a "Disconnected" message across the top, and seemingly interprets this as activity within the app and turns my phone screen on again, and it stays on forever (often through the night if I was looking at a game in bed)!

[sorin]

Since the app's key feature is access to the online database, does it support saving game records to the device for later offline viewing?

I second this - it would be very nice to be able to use the app without internet connection!

[Uberdude]

Since the app's key feature is access to the online database, does it support saving game records to the device for later offline viewing?

I second this - it would be very nice to be able to use the app without internet connection!

You can, games you have already viewed can be accessed without internet connection from the History section (click menu top left even though main page has loading spinner).

[macelee]

You are correct in that it IS a system setting, but it can also be controlled by apps. Otherwise, how could you possibly watch a video on your Android device? I do not wish to change my screen-off time setting temporarily each time I wish to watch Go4Go autoplay...

Edit to add link to StackOverflow example with wake lock

Thanks for the suggestion, together with the technical solution. It is actually fairly easy to implement in my code. So this function will be available in the next release. I shall have this tested more thoroughly.

[Drew]

The Wbaduk app overrides the phone's screen turn off feature, but in an annoying buggy way so use this with care!

The link I provided has several examples. There are both right ways and wrong ways to keep the device awake.

this function will be available in the next release.

Thank you for being receptive to my suggestion.

[Drew]

Feature Request: search for games between two opponents. Currently you can search for one participant, but not both.

Odd Behavior: on my Samsung tablet with screen locked at landscape, Go4Go forces portrait mode when launched, BUT when viewing History it reverts to landscape mode. I am ok but not delighted with forcing portrait mode at all times, lots of Go apps do this, but bouncing back and forth is not desirable.

[bayu]

Very nice!

Some remarks (and hopes)

The title of the games is occasionaly rather long (for example the alphago matches). On my mobile (s4mini) the titles are too long to fit on the screen, and the end of the title is usually an important identifier (like game 1 or 2). Please make them scrollable.

I like Goquests way of tapping the board: right hand side for forward and left hand side for backward. I often tap on the left only to find out that the game advances.

In case you implement a placing stone functionality:

- I'd love a guess move feature
- Trying out variations would be great

Occasionaly there are strange things: 13th Chinese Changqi Cup, round 1, Tao Xinran vs Wang Xi: result says W+1 but the game end position looks more like somebody resigned or that 20 moves are missing. If you install a "report game" feature you might get some feedback about those.

Lastly shouldn't the ruleset be specified in the game info? Maybe this is overrated. I don't know how the databases out there usually handle this.

[macelee]

Very nice!

Thanks!

Some remarks (and hopes)

The title of the games is occasionaly rather long (for example the alphago matches). On my mobile (s4mini) the titles are too long to fit on the screen, and the end of the title is usually an important identifier (like game 1 or 2). Please make them scrollable.

I see, for screens with low resolution this can be a problem. I will investigate if I can animate the game description with marquee effect.

I like Goquests way of tapping the board: right hand side for forward and left hand side for backward. I often tap on the left only to find out that the game advances.

Interesting idea. This may not be the desired effect by many users, in particular those who use left hand to navigate the games. I will investigate how to do this, however it will not be the default behaviour and will have to be turned on from a user setting.

In case you implement a placing stone functionality:

- I'd love a guess move feature
- Trying out variations would be great

Occasionaly there are strange things: 13th Chinese Changqi Cup, round 1, Tao Xinran vs Wang Xi: result says W+1 but the game end position looks more like somebody resigned or that 20 moves are missing. If you install a "report game" feature you might get some feedback about those.

The database is only as good as its data source. A small number of games are not completely recorded but game results can often be found from news sources, causing the discrepancy.

Lastly shouldn't the ruleset be specified in the game info? Maybe this is overrated. I don't know how the databases out there usually handle this.

Unfortunately the database does not contain this information. The following should cover 99% of the cases:
- Domestic Chinese games use Chinese Rule
- Domestic Japanese/Korean games user Japanes/Korean Rule (consider them the same for this dicscussion)
- International games mostly use the ruleset from the hosting country (e.g. Chunlan Cup uses the Chinese Rule, Samsung Cup uses the Korean Rule)
- A small number of bilateral games (e.g. China-Japan Tengen) may use multiple rulesets (Chinese Rule when held in China and Japanese Rule when held in Japan)
- Ing Rule becomes increasingly rare - Ing Cup, Chinese Changqi Cup and few Taiwanese tournaments are the only tournaments using it.

[macelee]

Feature Request: search for games between two opponents. Currently you can search for one participant, but not both.

Odd Behavior: on my Samsung tablet with screen locked at landscape, Go4Go forces portrait mode when launched, BUT when viewing History it reverts to landscape mode. I am ok but not delighted with forcing portrait mode at all times, lots of Go apps do this, but bouncing back and forth is not desirable.

In the next release I will also lock the History screen in portrait so that it behaves consistently. I will design something special for tablet in the future.

[macelee]

Go4Go Android Client v1.0.5

Just release a new version at Google Play Store. Depending on where you are, it might take a few hours to get it. This version contains the following changes:

- New feature: it is now possible to access the old defunct tournaments. Use the menu in the Tournament Search screen to swap active/defunct tournaments. Lots of old games can be easily found this way.
- Enhancement: when game autoplaying is in progress, your device will not attempt to dim or turn off your screen (thanks Drew for the technical solution)
- Bug fix: quickly tapping a game list would open game multiple times, now fixed
- Bug fix: a rare situlation that would crash the App while using History screen
- Bug fix: game information & filter search result dialogs could be displayed in incorrect size (too small or text truncated) under certain Android versions. Fixed. The dialogs may need some more work.
- Enhancement: lock the History screen in portrait mode, consistent with other game lists.
- Other minor UI improvements

[Drew]

Go4Go Android Client v1.0.5

Just release a new version at Google Play Store.

Your rapid update and willingness to listen to customer feedback here completely justify (and more) the price tag of this application. Thank you very much.

[macelee]

Just discovered this today; very glad I made the purchase.

I think the one request I could make that would overcome all the shortcomings of the viewer would be a way to send an SGF to another SGF editor on the phone. So, like, you use Go4Go to search and preview a game, but if you want to try out some variations on your own, you'd be able to load it in BW-Go instead. There's no reason for every Go app to eventually re-implement a full-fledged tree editor.

Besides that, it's pretty much exactly what I've been hoping for for years

I have been experimenting this requested feature. It is reasonably easy to implment and here is what I have now:

Screenshot_2016-04-01-11-57-20.jpeg (319.25 KiB) Viewed 8548 times

The problem is that some Apps claim to be able to handle SGF data when in reality they do not properly open the data supplied by Go4Go App. Well that is not my problem so this feature will be included in the next release. I try to include at least one other small feature before the release.

[macelee]

Go4Go Android Client v1.0.6

I just uploaded the new version to the Google Play Store. This version contains the following changes:

- New feature: I have incorporated goratings.com data in the App. From the Player Search screen, find a new menu item 'Top-ranked Players' to show the list.
- New feature (requested by apetresc): In the Go Board screen, find an additional menu item to open the current game with external Go Apps. I've tested the following: BW-Go, Gobandroid, GridMaster, Hactar Editor. They can all open Go4Go games. Occasionally you might need to try to open the game a second time for it to work. Apps that don't work: GOdroid, noGo. Use external Apps to edit Go4Go games until I have my own editing function.
- Enhancement (requested by bayu): for people with small displays, game descriptions in game lists often get truncated. Added a new option to scroll the text so that the complete description can be viewed. Some of you might find the animation a bit distracting. For that reason, the feature needs to be turned on from Settings.
- a number of small fixes.

Screenshot_2016-04-04-17-24-41.jpeg (221.64 KiB) Viewed 8501 times

[Sneegurd]

Thank you! I like Go4Go as a database. But I now open any game in Gridmaster (I think the board is not a strength of go4go yet, but no problem), so here is my suggestion:

- Please add a global option in the preferences, "Always open games in standard go application".
- If you are even more kind , let us define which app to use.

[macelee]

- Please add a global option in the preferences, "Always open games in standard go application".

Now you open a game in Go4Go App, select 'Open with' in the menu to use an external App to view that game. If I understand correctly, you want to be able to tap a game from a game list and open it directly in an external App. That is currently not possible because the actual game data isn't stored with the game list so there's not enough data to pass to the external App. And the data shouldn't be stored with the game list (lots of unnecessary downloads from the server when scrolling the list)

- If you are even more kind , let us define which app to use.

This should already be supported by Android. When selecting the external App, choose your favorite and tap 'Always' button instead of 'Just Once'.

I also need to make some general comments on GridMaster in case my other users want to try it. It is a powerful editor with lots of interesting functions. But it in my opinion is not particularly suitable if you simply want to browse games. There's no easy way (such as a slider) to navigate the game quickly. The navigation buttons are too small (only 4mm high on my 5.5' phone, which is significantly smaller than the recommended value so it is very easy to misclick into the nearby comment area). The tabs in the user interface are even smaller.