EasyGo on iOS - review

[xiangz]

Hi Xyiana,

Thank you. Based on your suggestion, I'll add the following features in future releases:
1. Two finger tap to switch modes.( test, edit, replay), maybe no need to switch to replay for problem, IMHO, replay is seldom used for problems. Please advise. (this is easy to implement)
2. In landscape mode, provide a button or gesture to zoom the right view to full screen. Currently please just use it in portrait mode.
Anyway, game order and game search are my first priorities based on your feedbacks.

-Xiangz

[lobotommy]

I have a few thing in my mind about this app.
It's a review and wish list in one

Xyiana made a few good points in her review, but I think she didn't edit much games on iPad.
I think that for editing and reviewing games EasyGo is a better tool than SmartGo, of course this is my personal point of view.

Ok, my few thoughts about this app:

It look like competitior to SmartGo but it give us a little different approach to managing our SGF library. And it does it well.
This app is sold without any games database but we can now import hundreds of games or problems at once. We all have huge number of games on our PCs but now we can just import them all to the iPad or iPhone and view, study, or edit them on the go. In SmartGo we have thousand of games already loaded, here we create our own database. There are a lot of pro games on the web, and probably all of us has collections of games of Shusaku, Cho Chikun, Takemiya Masak, Lee Sedol or any other player, so it is really not a problem to import all of them into this app.

There are more diferences between SmartGo and EasyGo.
In EasyGo we have SGF editor with a treemoves view - you know that it is a big deal, whithout it is very frustrating to view or edit files with multiple moves branches.

Another thing is that we have folders for our files. In SmartGo we have tags and we can do a earching by anything-we-enter (name, date, result etc), so it is a dynamic search through collection of games vs structure of folder/files structure in EasyGo. Both has it pros & cons. If you have dynamic search only and it is the only way you can sort your games - after a few months it will be a mess. Huge list of games and you need to remember tags you used previously to search through all your saved games. If you have Folders - then you can sort your files as you like and put files where you want them, but you lost an easy way to search through files.
The best would be to combine both ways to sort our games: dynamic folders created by tags - like static folder but with dynamic content.
So we have dynamic search through collection of games (SmartGo) vs clear structure of files (EasyGo).

Grid view of catalogues/folders and files - you can change a way you want view a files - like in SmartGo (small board and details left to it) or just a smallboards (like presentation of games in PandaTetsuki). Not big deal but it's ok have this option.

Zip files import - you can import collection of games or problems - this is what I refered to at the begining - nice feature,

We have also a few nice additions like:
- Show SGF as txt option
- very good edit options with moves tree
- Autoplay and slider for quick view (tap with two fingers on the board to show these options)

The weak point is that the app is asking you if you want to save changes. On iOS it is a bad choice - it should be automatic. Autosave should be implemented. Better to have this feature, mannualy saving is so much not iOS like. It is not a problem but is definitely should be changed.

My wish list for this app (a few thing that should help while viewing a games:):

Autosave (no "save" button anymore, anywhere )

Moves numbers above stones on moves tree like this:
1 2 3 4
O o O o

Option to set speed of autoplay.

"next variation" button - to help circle through varations

Zoom works ok but is not scalable , and no double tap for zoom in zoom out - it would be nice have these features.

[xiangz]

Hi lobotommy,

Thank you for your detailed review.

Speed of auto replay can be adjusted, tap in the left half or right half board to adjust the speed.

About auto save, I didn't implement auto save because I think most of people might use the app to replay games, and I haven't implement the feature of "try move"(that is, try the moves without modifying the file), so the user can just tap the board to try some moves and discard the change, and it also prevent the file being modified accidently.
Anyway, maybe add auto save as an option.(default ON)

I saw some PC sgf editors(like stonebase, multigo) has a read only mode where you can actually click the board to try moves without modifying the game. This might be another approach.

Please also be aware, the current version has a problem: if the app is put on background, and the IOS terminate it due to low memory(generally only happen after EasyGo was in background for an extended peorid of time or some memory-hungry app was launched), you modification will be lost. So, please save file peoriodically currently. Sorry for that.

As to double tap to zoom, I have tried that, but the problem is that after implementing double tap, the single tap will have a delay, which I don't like. Maybe also an option in the future(default off)
(technical detail)It seems the interval between two tap can't be configured until I use some low level touch detection api, which I don't have time to do right now.

Scalable zoom, that is continous zoom will be added later(low priority yet), currently, pinch gesture can only double size zoom.

As to switch variation, it is easy to implement. The issue is where I put the button, especially in iphone. If you have to tap twice to select this, maybe it's easier to just tap the variation in the tree view.

I'll write a summary about all the bugs/features you all have mentioned.

-Xiangz

[Yertle]

Finally, an iPad app I can upload my massive problem go problem collection to!

Even though it took a while to figure out the upload procedure I am happy with the end result with all my sets in their own folders.

I do have a couple suggestions for future enhancements to make a great thing even better.

1) Smartgo for the pc allows you to do a problem set in a shuffled order. I find this helps after you have gone through a problem set in order a few times.

2) Many faces of go has a feature where for a particular problem set as you get more problems correct you get harder problems. For sets where the problems get harder as you go along this could be a cool feature.

Thanks again for making this app, for me it was well worth the money.

[xiangz]

Hi Yertle,

Thank you for your suggestions. Problem shuffling is easy, I'll add it in later versions.
As to the second suggestion, I'll evaluate the difficulty. I bought Igowin Life for iphone, I also like the auto level features of Igowin life. However, for the current bundled problems, My wife(amateur 5d in China) and I have tried to arrange all the problems in correct order(from easy to hard). However, due to limited time and different people have different understanding on difficulty, I'm far from satisfied with the current ordering. Only after the difficulty order has been established, the auto level features will be possible.

By the way, to all who have bought EasyGo, could you please also rate & review it in appstore? Although I can't give your direct feedback via appstore, it will be helpful for others to make decisions.

[judicata]

First, thank you for the review. I bought the app too, and like it so far.

Think about SmartGo kifu as PC app. As editor it is worse than Drago. As archive/analytic tool is like ant to elephant if you compare to MoyoGo. So why pay for it?
SmartGo is rly good only as mobile app.

I don't really like the way SmartGo handles branches of moves. But I disagree about it archive/analytic value. For exploring pro games and positions, SmartGo is, in my opinion, the best there is. Of course, others may disagree. I also recall some issues about MoyoGo's developer's source for games, among others. Admittedly, the latter point does not deal with functionality.


EDIT: fixed quote

[wjamie]

Well, you really can't expect that much yet with its early stages of being released and you just have to use it all the more (with feedback option), just so they could improve on it. Everything starts from there and it is up to the user base how they are going to discover bugs and have them deal with it. I have to agree with the iPad options though not being able to make full use of it.

[sporg]

I have been enjoying EasyGo so far and may try to do a review of and comparison with Smartgo in the future.

One thing I do like about both is that they keep stats on correct v wrong as you go through the problems.

I would really like to see them both not only keep the basic stats as they do (Smartgo is more complete than Easygo) but also:

Keep records for each pass through a group of problems including:
a) counts of correct and wrong answers
b) How long it took to go through each group of problems (this should accumulate time if more than one session is used)

Right now work arounds include entering the stats in a separate database before resetting the stats or, in the case of Smartgo, creating a new user for each pass through the problems. In the case of EasyGo you have to reset the stats after each group as it currently only keeps aggregate information not per group.

All this is towards a goal of being able to measure improvement in both accuracy and speed.

[lobotommy]

A small add on to my wish list:
1)Editing:
There are sometimes corrupted sgf files - especially if I review my games from Tygem. It looks like that: game record is good till first pass. If an opponent decide to play instead of pass we get inverted colours of played moves in game record. My question: Is it possible to implement option to invert colour of played stones in marked range of moves, forme xample only from move#X to #Y"?
2) Theme:
Could you please add an option to change a stones textures?
Thx

[Actorios]

I've purchased your application as well and did appreciate as others the variation tree, the directories and the fact that all SGF can be reviewed as problems.

My biggest use of the iPad for go is to use it aside of a book to transcript some problems or diagrams so to to review variations which are not in the book. I see a large benefit from being able to go over them again.

My 2 biggest expectations as far as program functionalities would be:
* the program to choose randomly on variations if those depends on the opposing color from the problem (so to be able to test your play against different answers). I have made a few test but it doesn't seem to go into other variations than the main one if those are not induced by the active player.
* Probably my biggest one would be spaced repetition in the same way a problem like Anki does. I'd be glad to get prompted more frequently on the problems I failed and be able to set a program for review without going into sorting problems by failing rate (and remembering where I was). That would be super great to make sure you memorize consistently sets of problems.

[xiangz]

Sorry for the late response. I don't know why no email notification was sent to me when there are new posts on this topic.

To Actorios,
Randomly choose between one of right variations for the opponent will be supported in future version.(High priority)
Spaced repetion is possible too, low priority yet. Due to a long todo list.

To lobotommy,
Could you send me one of the SGF file with this problem?
Changing stone texture will be supported too. You can transfer stone texture image files via itunes file sharing. The image file need to be PNG format with transparent background.

To sporg,
I suggest the following, it's easier to implement and hopefully flexible to use too, please advise
1) keep stats for every folder(system problem folder or custom created folder in My Games)
2) stats for folder can be reset manually.
3).(low priority) old stats can be saved and queried.

[Bonobo]

Just purchased EasyGo.

Upon launch it just dies quietly. I turned off the iPhone (completely) and turned it on again to make sure there was no “dirt” in the RAM, launched EasyGo again, same result.

- iPhone 1
- iOS 3.1.3
- over 3 GB of free space

Any ideas what I can do to troubleshoot?

Thanks in advance, Tom

[xiangz]

Hi Bonobo,

I'm really sorry to hear about that.
I haven't tested it on iphone 1 yet, so there might be some compatibility issue.
If you turn on auto crash log reporting to apple, I could receive the log for further invetigation.
Also you could refer to the article(http://aplus.rs/apple/how-to-find-crash ... ta-and-xp/) to send me the crash log manually.
Besides crash log, you could also install a free iphone app called console, to check anything reported in the console log.

Anyway, I don't have a real iphone 1 and no real device running ios 3.1, it maybe difficult to trouble shooting.
I suggest you ask a refund from apple appstore first.
And to prevent other users having the same problem in the future, I'll update the app description to reflect this and might change the requirement to ios4 in future verions.

Really sorry for that.

And to all already bought EasyGo, if you successfully runs it on ios 3.x, please let me know, thanks.

[Bonobo]

Hello Xiangz,

If you turn on auto crash log reporting to apple, I could receive the log for further invetigation.

Is turned on.

Also you could refer to the article(http://aplus.rs/apple/how-to-find-crash ... ta-and-xp/) to send me the crash log manually.

Thx for the link, crash log is out via mail.

Besides crash log, you could also install a free iphone app called console, to check anything reported in the console log.

Well, I checked ALL console apps (I think), and they only work on iOS 4+

[..]

I suggest you ask a refund from apple appstore first.

Oh. Thanks for the offer, but I won’t do so b/c EasyGo runs just fine on my iPad 2 w/ iOS 5.01

And to prevent other users having the same problem in the future, I'll update the app description to reflect this and might change the requirement to ios4 in future verions.

Really sorry for that.

Oh well, such things happen, I understand. SmartGo Pro runs fine on my olden iPhone, Igowin Life also, so I’ve got enough Tsumego for training

Greetings, Tom

[Bonobo]

Just to let you know that I’ve been in contact with Xiang, and together we’ve tried to sort things out re: running it on my old iPhone 1 w/ iOS 3.1.3 … but as it seems, there’s too much code to be changed to make it run on iOS below 4.x, which apparently would also lead to a loss of functionality, so … it won’t happen.

Xiang has promptly changed the info text in the App Store to reflect this fact.

Aside from this, I—and the members of “my” small Go group in the North Germany wilderness—enjoy training Tsumego on the iPad 2, and I strongly appreciate the ability to import other tsumego collections and especially games with comments.

Greetings, Tom