Little Go

Little Go 0.11.0 has been published on the App Store on April 23 2013, almost 4 weeks ago. For some reason I completely forgot to write this announcement, and I also forgot to update the master and develop branches on GitHub. I just fixed this a few minutes ago...

For iPhone users this new release finally brings the long-awaited zooming feature, making it much easier to place stones on large boards. iPad users can also zoom, but this is of much less value, except maybe for the iPad Mini. It is now also possible to display move numbers and coordinate labels, things I originally planned to implement much sooner, but somehow there was always stuff to code that seemed to be more important. So in the end I am not sure how important these two features really are, but they are at least a nice graphical addition to the UI.

Something of which I am sure that it is very useful is the new ability to export and import .sgf files to/from other apps such as Mail or DropBox. Working on these features prompted me to propose this draft of a UTI specification for the .sgf file format, but so far the announcement on the sgf-std mailing list has not received any responses. Ah well, it's probably not the most important thing in the world ☺.

The project page for Little Go has moved to https://littlego.herzbube.ch/. The new site is hosted by GitHub Pages, accordingly the site source files can be found in this gh-pages branch. The only resources for the Little Go project that are still on my private server are the third-party software tar balls required to build Little Go.

As of this morning, a new version of Little Go (v0.10.0) is available in the App Store.

A lot of work has gone into this feature release: Almost three months, much more time than I had originally anticipated. The biggest chunk was spent on adding the function for viewing board positions for moves played earlier during the game. The main problem I had here was designing the user interface: On the iPhone I had to add UI elements to an already crowded screen, and on the iPad I gave myself the challenge of revamping the entire "Play" tab.

Another thing that kept me busy were the graphic design changes: Adding artwork for the Go stones, and adding a wooden background to the Go board. With these changes the app suddenly looks much more attractive, which I find very satisfying because usually I am such a nil when it comes to polishing up a purely-functional UI.

No single release in the history of the project has more changes than v0.10.0, both visible to the end user and technically under the hood. On the one hand this is good because it tells me that the code is still malleable, on the other hand I am a bit nervous because many changes usually also means many new bugs. Let's hope that it doesn't get too bad.

The newest bugfix release 0.9.2 for Little Go has finally been released on the App Store last night. It took a bit longer than originally expected because I didn't manage to submit the binary before Apple closed their iTunes Connect service for the Christmas holiday.

0.9.2 addresses a number of crashing and memory leak issues which should help to further increase stability. As good as this sounds, I am not yet done with bugfixing because I have received reports for a new type of crash. Also I have become aware of a few changes in iOS 6 that make it necessary to revise the strategy for releasing memory when the app receives a memory warning. I don't know yet if I am going to roll these things out in another bugfix release (0.9.3), or if I will incorporate them into the next feature release. The decision largely depends on the feedback I get for 0.9.2.

The bugfix release 0.9.1 has just gone live on the App Store this morning. It fixes another glitch in the Ko detection routine (the same function I already muddled with for 0.8.1). Get the newest sources from GitHub.

Unfortunately 0.9.2 is already in the works: The new crash reporting feature in 0.9.0 has led to over 80 crashes being reported in only a few days. As sad as it is to see that the app I am sweating over is not as perfect as I would have liked it to be, it is still a good thing to see those bugs finally coming out into the open so that I can squash them. It also proves that adding both a crash reporting and a general in-app bug reporting feature in 0.9.0 was well worth the effort. If I ever start another iOS app project I will certainly launch the app with both of these QA features already in place.

The bugtracker for Little Go has now moved to GitHub. From now on everybody who has a GitHub account will be able to submit new issues without emailing me first. The few tickets that are still open on the old tracker will be duplicated on GitHub and closed on the old tracker.

Little Go 0.9.0 has just been released to the App Store. The source code for the new version is available directly from GitHub.

The main feature of the release is that there are three new profile settings that provide much improved control over the computer player's playing strength. The other major focus has been on QA stuff: You can now choose to send a crash report if the app crashes, and you can send a bug report with attached diagnostics information at any time. Last but not least there have also been a number of bugfixes; the most important improvement probably is that the game is now saved after each move instead of only when the app is suspended. A crash should now be merely annoying instead of causing catastrophic data loss.

The Little Go source code repository has moved to GitHub. I will remove the old repository on git.herzbube.ch in the next couple of days.

I recently stumbled upon Trello, a cool new service that provides simple task-oriented project organization. As an experiment, I have added a Trello board for Little Go and put most of the roadmap features and TODO ideas up on that board. Have a look and let me know what you think about it.

A couple of days ago Little Go 0.8.1 has been released to the App Store, and today I have put up the source tar ball on the project page. Even though the new version has only 2 new things it's definitely worth the upgrade: You'll get an important bugfix and a new spiffy app icon (contributed by Daniel Máslo).