Life In 19x19

Hi All,

I made an Android app for the game of Go, which may be of interest to this audience. The app is called GridMaster and can be download it from:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... gridmaster

Gridmaster provides a full featured sgf reader/editor, a Go Text Protocol (GTP) interface to connect any GTP-compatible engine, and a lite version of the Olympiad champion Go program Steenvreter. It can be used as a tool to play, study Joseki, solve Go problems, make diagrams, annotate games, etc. For those that are new to the game, a self-contained introduction as well as some links to more information is included in the help.

If you're looking for a Go Gui on Android, if you'd like to play Steenvreter, if you're looking for the best sgf editor, or just something that quickly opens Kogo's Joseki Dictionary, please give it a try!

Best regards,
Erik

This is a great app. I installed it today and had a lot of fun already.
I am surprised I am the first one to notice.
As further feedback two details.
1 The option you offer not to be nagged by advertisement doesn't work.
2 If I want to load I file I first have to navigate 3 steps through the UI and then I still have to navigate everytime again through the filesystem to the same directory. Either remember the last opened directory or offer an option to change the standard IO directory.

Hardstikke bedankt!

Incompatible with my device (Android 2.3) - oh well.

Nice app

My two cents:
1.- Add some faster replay method. Clicking once for every move is too slow. For example, in the kgs app, when you make a long click on the "next" button, a menu shows up: 25 moves ahead, 100 moves ahead, end of game. The same applies backwards.
2.- Add some territory estimation method. Users sometimes are just too lazy to count by themselves, just like me
3.- Remove the "new" button
4.- Make the variations easier to navigate through, marking with a number the variations (such as eidogo) or somehow... The current dis/enabled button isn't too user friendly. I may miss some variations while looking at the board if I don't pay attention to the variations buttons.
5.- Sell it cheap

Hi All,

Thank you for the comments; it's nice to get some feedback.

@Cyclops:
(1) I'm not sure exactly what the problem is. You should be able to turn off the ad banner by going to the settings and unchecking 'ads'. If you restart the app this setting may not persist, but at least you should always be able to turn ads off for the current session.

(2) It is possible to change the sgf directory in the settings (Options menu -> settings -> scroll down to 'Files'). Unfortunately not all file managers play nice (some just ignore the path). On my phone 'ES file explorer', 'AndExplorer' and 'OI file manager' all open in the selected location.

In a next version I may add an option to browse the path directly under the save option as well.


@Daal: Sorry, 2.3 is really old, it needs at least Android 3.0. Perhaps there's a way to upgrade your phone? Maybe try something like CyanogenMod?


@Alejo:
(1) You can do already do that; if you push down a button and slide away it will go multiple moves.

(2) Reliable territory estimation is not easy because it depends on life & death status of groups. The main app is just a 'dumb' gui that does not have such knowledge. The Steenvreter (lite) engine can do it, but it requires significant work on the interface and gui. If I find the time maybe in a future version...

(3) If I remove the 'new' button, how would you resign / start a new game?

(4) Perhaps adjusting the style property solves this problem?
Under Tools -> Other -> Style select 'show siblings' or 'show children'
Alternatively, if you zoom out, the tree view may also be useful to find unexplored variations

(5) yeah, I'm still pondering on a good price, but first I want to get the bugs out...


@All: before suggesting changes, please have a look at the help and/or tips. Some functionality may already be there.

Best,
Erik

1. True, I hadn't noticed it.
2. Though I know a reliable territory estimator is difficult within a cell phone's power, I wonder about making a sort of KGS estimator were we could switch the alive/dead status of stones.
3. I would place the "new" button within the menu, but not in the main screen, this would avoid people accidentally pressing this button and allow more space for the navigation buttons.
4. I hadn't seen this "other" menu from the tools section. I think it would be more intuitive if it were inside the settings... but that's just my opinion...

After installing it on my tablet I realised initial tips were there, I skipped them...

By the way, I'm sure you've already considered it, but what about adding some graphic textures? And a landscape mode? Specially for tablets...

I know setting a price is hard, specially with google charging a 30% tax...

I uploaded a new version which addresses some of the issues mentioned above. In the settings you can now choose to hide the 'new' button and add custom SGF defaults (e.g., add 'ST[0]' if you want to see auto-markup of child variations). I added a directory picker directly in the 'save' option.

Also, something not mentioned before here but what I quite like myself; you can now copy-paste through the clipboard between apps. E.g., if you copy plain text sgf from an email you can directly paste it into the tree (which now also supports collections, so you can simply paste in a new root).

Hi Erik, Thanks for the app. I don't have any Android devices, but it's great you are providing this to the Go community.

One suggestion on the UI: add an option to adjust the gaps between stones. I looked at the screenshots and the gaps are too big for my taste. This is a personal preference. I prefer either zero pixels between 2 adjacent stones, or maybe at most 1 pixel.

Thanks and keep up the nice work!

Hi EdLee,

I agree. In the next version the stones will be a bit bigger (though probably not all the way to zero pixels).

Thanks,
Erik

Hi Erik,

evdw wrote:In the next version the stones will be a bit bigger (though probably not all the way to zero pixels).

Thanks. Options are good.

Ha, maybe I'll just do all styles.

A while back I was also considering to add a black-and-white mode (e.g., for making printable figures)...

Here's some different views I've implemented for the next version:

Hi Erik, very nice!

The new version has been upload (to https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... gridmaster)

No crashes logged in several weeks now... Perhaps I'm done?

Ever since uploading a new version last weekend I've been getting bad anonymous reviews...

Did I break anything?

Perhaps it's just child's play, but if anything is wrong with the latest version I'd really like to know about it. Analytics are not showing anything bad. No crashes in months, engines install successfully, so I'm a bit clueless as to what's driving this.



Erik