lobotommy wrote: Recording games. As a tool for recording games this app is... broken. But how? Is it really possible? Yes. All is "rather ok" (more below), till you want to enter a variation. Then all the magic happen. Magic of bad design and the ugly true that developer was not testing nor using it's own app. First: there is no any indication on a board where are the variations, where the next moves are. There is no "a", "b", "c" etc. There are just small screenshots of the board with a variation position right or below a board. Looks nice right? But totally unusable. If you have a game with variations under variations then good luck with that. It's a nightmare to go through it.
The support on variations does exist and works quite well. As soon as you tap the board and create a variation, you will notice two dots at the bottom of the panel, indicating a different view is available. Go to the second view you will see thumbnails of separate branches. Tap them to swap to different branches. This might take some time to get used to. I do believe this is an elegant way to present branches. I appreciate many people may be more familiar to tree views (similar to what KGS client does). I hope an option of tree view can be provided in a later release.
There is technically no difficulty using single tap (Just one or two lines of change). For iPad, it seems reasonable. But still double tap is good as well. Placing a stone too quickly is a bad habit:) Maybe we will have an option to let user pick in settings.
macelee wrote: The support on variations does exist and works quite well. As soon as you tap the board and create a variation, you will notice two dots at the bottom of the panel, indicating a different view is available. Go to the second view you will see thumbnails of separate branches. Tap them to swap to different branches. This might take some time to get used to. I do believe this is an elegant way to present branches. I appreciate many people may be more familiar to tree views (similar to what KGS client does). I hope an option of tree view can be provided in a later release.
lobotommy wrote: How about creating some tsumego? So you want to enter all black stones first. Or all white stones. You choose "add a black (white) stone". Then you touch a screen, black stone added, good, but wait, why it changed the way of entering stones back to the normal way (black, white, alternatively). I just want to add all the black stones at once. Ok once more. Nope, it does not work.You want to add a black stone you need to choose "add a black stones" every time you want to do it. It's a nightmare.
I totally agree with lobotommy on this point. Luckily I think this is something really easy to fix.
Related to this point, in the raw SGF generated, I think it is better to use the SGF AB and AW tags to describe the set-up stones.
There are cases when missing a stone at some point after nearly finishing entering a game. Most software just let users to remove all previous stones, which is rather frustrating. So using insertion for this case is better instead of AB/AW for setup stones.
Right now the setup stones are not easily added (An ultimate solution now is to edit the raw sgf text in Go Eye). In the future, there will be an option to switch to add setup stone mode.
GoEye2012 wrote: There are cases when missing a stone at some point after nearly finishing entering a game. Most software just let users to remove all previous stones, which is rather frustrating. So using insertion for this case is better instead of AB/AW for setup stones.
Right now the setup stones are not easily added (An ultimate solution now is to edit the raw sgf text in Go Eye). In the future, there will be an option to switch to add setup stone mode.
What you mentioned is a good use case. I think one intermediate solution is to use AB/AW for the first batch of setup stones before any move is played.
GoEye2012 wrote: There are cases when missing a stone at some point after nearly finishing entering a game. Most software just let users to remove all previous stones, which is rather frustrating. So using insertion for this case is better instead of AB/AW for setup stones.
Right now the setup stones are not easily added (An ultimate solution now is to edit the raw sgf text in Go Eye). In the future, there will be an option to switch to add setup stone mode.
What you mentioned is a good use case. I think one intermediate solution is to use AB/AW for the first batch of setup stones before any move is played.
GoEye2012 wrote:The review assumption that "the author has not tested or used their own apps" are not true. Actually the author uses it every day, as a great go fan, and tries to make every detail shine.
I'm sorry if my opinion was expressed in unpleasant and harsh way. I'm glad to see that you use this app, so definitely there is a high probability the bad things ("bad" in my point of view of course) will be fixed.
GoEye2012 wrote:The review assumption that "the author has not tested or used their own apps" are not true. Actually the author uses it every day, as a great go fan, and tries to make every detail shine.
I'm sorry if my opinion was expressed in unpleasant and harsh way. I'm glad to see that you use this app, so definitely there is a high probability the bad things ("bad" in my point of view of course) will be fixed.
No problem. The problems reported will mostly be addressed in future release. As for image recognition problems, would you please post some problematic sample pictures here or send email to us? Thanks.
lobotommy wrote: Recording games. As a tool for recording games this app is... broken. But how? Is it really possible? Yes. All is "rather ok" (more below), till you want to enter a variation. Then all the magic happen. Magic of bad design and the ugly true that developer was not testing nor using it's own app. First: there is no any indication on a board where are the variations, where the next moves are. There is no "a", "b", "c" etc. There are just small screenshots of the board with a variation position right or below a board. Looks nice right? But totally unusable. If you have a game with variations under variations then good luck with that. It's a nightmare to go through it.
The support on variations does exist and works quite well. As soon as you tap the board and create a variation, you will notice two dots at the bottom of the panel, indicating a different view is available. Go to the second view you will see thumbnails of separate branches. Tap them to swap to different branches. This might take some time to get used to. I do believe this is an elegant way to present branches. I appreciate many people may be more familiar to tree views (similar to what KGS client does). I hope an option of tree view can be provided in a later release.
Sure, it looks very nice. At first there was even a "wow" effect. But, as all people, I have my habits. There's no any indicator on the board where are variations and let's say I want to create a fuseki lesson sgf. Or how to browse through variants in Kogo's sgf? How on earth I can do this now with these thumbnails I do not know. I don't know on which branch I am currently. I would love to use it as it is but I simply don't know how to operate it in the current state.
Last edited by lobotommy on Fri Apr 05, 2013 8:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
lobotommy wrote: Recording games. As a tool for recording games this app is... broken. But how? Is it really possible? Yes. All is "rather ok" (more below), till you want to enter a variation. Then all the magic happen. Magic of bad design and the ugly true that developer was not testing nor using it's own app. First: there is no any indication on a board where are the variations, where the next moves are. There is no "a", "b", "c" etc. There are just small screenshots of the board with a variation position right or below a board. Looks nice right? But totally unusable. If you have a game with variations under variations then good luck with that. It's a nightmare to go through it.
The support on variations does exist and works quite well. As soon as you tap the board and create a variation, you will notice two dots at the bottom of the panel, indicating a different view is available. Go to the second view you will see thumbnails of separate branches. Tap them to swap to different branches. This might take some time to get used to. I do believe this is an elegant way to present branches. I appreciate many people may be more familiar to tree views (similar to what KGS client does). I hope an option of tree view can be provided in a later release.
Sure, it looks very nice. At first there was even a "wow" effect. But, as all people, I have my habits. There's no any indicator on the board where are variations and let's say want to I create a fuseki lesson sgf. Or how to browse through variants in Kogo's sgf? How on earth I can do this now with these thumbnails I do not know. I don't know on which branch I am currently. I would love to use it as it is but I simply don't know how to operate it in the current state.
The color one is the current active branch. The black/white ones are other variants to choose.(This is easily remembered as the color one matches the big board's color to represent active branch. Again, this is intuitive design . The first one (left most) is the main branch.
Tap to choose. Long touch to edit (remove).
Last edited by GoEye2012 on Fri Apr 05, 2013 7:31 am, edited 3 times in total.
lobotommy wrote:Sure, it looks very nice. At first there was even a "wow" effect. But, as all people, I have my habits. There's no any indicator on the board where are variations and let's say want to I create a fuseki lesson sgf. Or how to browse through variants in Kogo's sgf? How on earth I can do this now with these thumbnails I do not know. I don't know on which branch I am currently. I would love to use it as it is but I simply don't know how to operate it in the current state.
As I mentioned this does take a bit time to get used to. May I suggest that you first view a few SGF's with branches before trying to create your own. That will make the learning process easier. The commented games on gogameguru are perfect for this purpose. Note that you can load those games using Go Eye's integrated browser.
Maybe the author can consider providing a tree view in long term. I understand habit is very hard to break.
lobotommy wrote: Slider for a fast game viewing. Slider does not work as it should - you can move a slider but it does not update a board position unless you stop touching screen. And it does not work if your finger moved over the slider even a little. Why? There is a move number listed but there is no update of it when you use a slider, and it's impossible to get exact place you want at a game. So this functionality is totally broken.
I had another look at this. I think the current slider behaviour is reasonable. What lobotommy suggested is nice to have.
A tip: if you want to fast forward/backward a game, you can tap and hold the + or - button. The initial 2 or 3 moves are slow then it moves faster. A lot of electronics devices are programmed this way so I think Go Eye behaviour is quite intuitive.
lobotommy wrote:Sure, it looks very nice. At first there was even a "wow" effect. But, as all people, I have my habits. There's no any indicator on the board where are variations and let's say want to I create a fuseki lesson sgf. Or how to browse through variants in Kogo's sgf? How on earth I can do this now with these thumbnails I do not know. I don't know on which branch I am currently. I would love to use it as it is but I simply don't know how to operate it in the current state.
As I mentioned this does take a bit time to get used to. May I suggest that you first view a few SGF's with branches before trying to create your own. That will make the learning process easier. The commented games on gogameguru are perfect for this purpose. Note that you can load those games using Go Eye's integrated browser.
Maybe the author can consider providing a tree view in long term. I understand habit is very hard to break.
A tree view is not so friendly for touch devices as the nodes are too small to touch. I got a better idea for presenting variants, inspired by the comments. But please forgive me that I will keep it as a secret for now Will improve in future releases.
I am happy to announce that the following fixes suggested by lobotommy and mace have been implemented and tested, and will include in the next release of Go Eye.
1. The +black/white stone button now will be used to input consecutive stones. 2. +b/w stone button will be used to add Setup stones (like handicap stones) if it is used for first move.
3. A new option to choose double/single tap switch in settings for user to change the input mode.
4. Slider now will show the move numbers at real time.
. The first one (left most) is the main branch.