Go with AI comes to the iPhone

My plea for more iPhone board games is really getting results! Now there’s a Go game with an AI, so I can get my butt spanked in privacy without the humiliation of losing to an actual human (such as my son).

iGo is pretty good, for $2.99. It supports board sizes from 7×7 to 19×9, and several levels of AI strength in addition to a customizable handicap. There’s even Undo, so I can back-pedal on my lamest moves and try again.

The only things I can say against it are:

For some reason its hit-detection is too high, so it places a stone on the space above the one tapped.
You don’t get a chance to confirm your move, so if you tapped the wrong space [see above] the AI immediately replies, so you have to open the drawer and press the Undo button.
When starting a new game, the first thing it does is make you type in a name for it. I have no idea what I’d call a particular Go game, so I go “Duhhh…” and type in something random. It could at least fill this in with the date and time, by default.

(Also, totally off the topic of games, I love the Amazon and OpenTable apps. Each of them is so much faster and smoother than navigating their respective websites.)

Previously: Games, Games, Games, Games!
Next Post: Python 3.0: What’s The Point?

By: Jens Alfke
On: December 3, 2008
at: 7:24 pm
As: Games
See: 9 comments;
Add: your comment

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This is the blog of Jens Alfke.

Introverted, intuitive, thinking, perceiving. I live to make things: most often software, sometimes designs or mixes or stories or photos. (I wish I could make music.)

Father, husband. My home is a nest of family. Outside is overrun with flowers and vines and shade trees, inside with books and CDs and kids’ drawings and game pieces and game cartridges.

Worker, dreamer. I’m driven by visions of things that could be.

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On Wed, Dec 3 at 8pm,
michael said —

Thanks for writing about this new release. I’ve been checking the app list (ordered by release date, etc) for weeks, hoping something like this would pop up.

And those issues definitely seem fixable in version 1.1.

On Fri, Dec 5 at 3pm,
faruk Ateş said —

It would be ideal if Undo was done simply via swiping from right to left, possibly with a confirm dialog that’s embedded and really fast (interaction-wise).

On Fri, Dec 5 at 3pm,
pz said —

This is so random. I wrote iGo and only found this because I was reading your blog post on HN about Python 3k (and i agree with your sentiment… but i digress).

Thanks for getting the word out. And thanks for the feedback from you and the commenters. I’m going to hopefully release an update in the next week or so.

(By the way, I purposefully put the piece cursor above your finger so it’d be visible.)

On Fri, Dec 5 at 3pm,
Faruk Ateş said —

pz: while not a bad idea, it’s unintuitive for touch screen use. Either way, a confirmation of each move (perhaps a setting: auto-confirm move after X seconds, 0..5+Never, where if set to Never it gives you a confirm dialog/button and won’t ever auto-confirm) would be a fantastic addition. :)

On Fri, Dec 5 at 3pm,
Michael said —

I think the click location would make a good setting, since I can definitely see arguments on both sides, even within my own head.

My main concerns with version 1.0 are with the flow of new game creation. It should be easier and less “clicky” to get to a fresh game - or just to restart the one you’re currently in (ie, create a new game with the exact same settings as last one).

I’m current playing through loads of 7×7 games with 2 or 3 level ability, so anything to make the process simpler would be appreciated.

In any case, thanks so much for writing iGo and bringing it out - good luck with all your future revisions.

On Fri, Dec 5 at 6pm,
pz said —

I definitely agree about faster game creation. I have a bunch of ‘asdf’ type game names, too. Thanks again for all the feedback and don’t forget to tell all your friends :)

On Sat, Dec 20 at 1am,
pz said —

FYI - i just submitted a new version for approval. i’ve improved the touch control and made it configurable since some people wanted the offset and others didn’t. its easier to start new games. i’ll keep iterating on it but i needed to get this new version out quick so i didn’t have time to get all the features in.

hopefully it’ll show up in the store in the next couple days.

On Sat, Dec 20 at 1am,
Faruk Ateş said —

pz: I have a whole range of UI improvements / ideas for your app; I was going to make a Go app myself but it’s not in the cards any time soon, but there’s a lot of things that have started to really frustrate me (though your new version may fix many of them, I’ll see when it shows up on the appstore) and I’d be more than happy to share them with you for your consideration :)

You can contact me at my firstnamelastname @me.com (where the last name has a regular “s” in it instead of the special one) to get in touch if you’re interested.

On Sat, Dec 20 at 10am,
Jens Alfke said —

pz: Great! Thanks again for the app, and for responding to our feedback!

Go with AI comes to the iPhone

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