qgo2: Multiserver client in pre-beta phase

Written by alejo on April 21st, 2009

Though most people running on Windows won’t know anything about qgo, some of you may already know about it: it comes within Ubuntu’s default package.
The next version of this program is already under development and it looks like a good tool for online playing.

General interface:

The general interface is very clean. There are a few icons on the left, which will intuitively guide you to your desired path. You can either play online, create or review sgf files, play against gnu go and configure a few options of the program. Since it’s a pre-beta version, the amount of variables which can be modified through the main menu still is somewhat short, but we expect it to grow within the next versions.

In-Game and Graphics

Here you have an image of how the board looks like. As you can see, it resembles the plain 2D version of panda-glgo, which is due to the fact that panda-glgo was actually developed from the first qgo… Well, the stone slate-and-shell graphics and the board are ok, the icons are small compared to other programs, but big enough to not having to worry about it. The upper space could be used to place some of the lateral icons and thus make them bigger

Go Servers:

Here it comes, the big feature of this program: it is able to connect to IGS, WING, LGS, CyberOro, eWeiQi, Tygem and Tom servers. Currently IGS games can be played without any trouble or, at least, I did. Since IGS is among the most used servers, its developer is focusing on improving the IGS experience and thus leaving the other servers as only “watchable”. I happened to succesfully watch a few games in Tygem and CyberOro.

Conclusion

QGo2 seems to be a very good tool for people who like moving from one server to another looking for new challenges. It is definitelly going to be an important tool for Unix users, since we don’t have many tools so powerful.

Last news: The developer of the program has allowed me to resend you information about compiling and executing the program. If you want to test it, contact me at alejostenuki AT gmail DOT com and I’ll send you the instructions.

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10 Comments to “qgo2: Multiserver client in pre-beta phase”

Posted by Chris, April 19th, 2009 at 11:55 pm

Wow, that’s great! I’ve never played on CyberOro or Tygem, ’cause I don’t use Windows. Off to download qgo2..

Posted by Alejo, April 20th, 2009 at 9:10 am

Hi there,

CyberOro and Tygem are still not playable due to some bugs.

You should contact its developer if you need further assistance during the compilation process.

And yes, it’s great news for the ones who don’t use Windows.

Let me know your opinion when you try it

See ya

Posted by Bloch, April 20th, 2009 at 11:08 am

I run Ubuntu. I looked in the software repositories and only saw qgo (not qgo2).
qgo hasn’t been updated for a while, and I’m presuming qgo2 makes it obsolete. But where can I get qgo2? I tried a google search but it didn’t get me far.

Posted by Alejo, April 20th, 2009 at 12:40 pm

Hi,
I’m running Ubuntu too and, indeed, since it’s a pre-beta release, it’s not in the repositories.

You need to contact the developer of the program directly. He posted an announce on this topic a couple of weeks ago at Godiscussions.com

By the way, currently the search feature in Godiscussions is disabled, so I can’t really send you the exact link.

see ya

Posted by CarlJung, April 20th, 2009 at 8:47 pm

Anyone have a binary of qgo2 they can share? Perhaps post it at http://www.getdeb.net?

I forsee many build problems before I have a working binary if I were to do it myself.

Posted by Alejo, April 20th, 2009 at 9:08 pm

Well… I did have them.

As far as I can remember, you need to have qt4 and alsa drivers installed (more exactly, the libasound2-dev package from Ubuntu’s repositories)

Then it’s just a qmake… but I must confess that it took me well over 30 minutes to figure out which programs were needed and to compile it. On the other hand, it’s been the first compilation I’ve ever made, so my timing shouldn’t be taken into account at all.

Posted by Alejo, April 21st, 2009 at 6:38 am

Hey

I just happened to contact the developer, if you want further information, I’ve been allowed to resend you his instructions email.

Send me an email to alejostenuki AT gmail DOT com, and I’ll send you the mail

Posted by CarlJung, April 21st, 2009 at 7:21 am

Google to the rescue. Here it is.

http://www.godiscussions.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8810

Posted by CarlJung, April 21st, 2009 at 9:11 am

I built it with no problems (it helped not having both qt3-dev and qt4-dev installed at the same time like last time I tried).

Looks nice but I’m missing the tree view. They have talked about it before but it seems they haven’t implemented it yet. I really want a tree view for easier navigation.

10.

Posted by Alejo, April 21st, 2009 at 9:17 am

I agree with you, a nice tree view is needed, but, still, it’s a pre-beta version… so we have to be patient about it.

Certainly, there are a lot of features to be implemented, but Peter is focusing in tweaking the IGS performance, so I guess anything but this will be somewhat delayed.

Alejo's Tenuki

A few moments to learn, a lifetime to master