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KGS Android Client

Written by alejo on August 25th, 2010

Last week I decided to buy the KGS android client or, at least, give it a try. This fabulous idea was the result of the previous 4 long hours on the train which separates me from Barcelona. Now, I was on my way back home and I’d already seen the film twice, when I decided that KGS would bring me back from boredom.

Everything went fine -successful Google checkout, KGS client only weights 470 kb- so I was logging into KGS within two minutes. Unfortunately, my Online-Go-Anxiety (aka OGA) focused my mind on watching games, so I’m still lacking the playing experience with this client.

I’ve got a HTC Magic, one of the first devices, with a low resolution, but the board, avatars and bowls still showed up nicely, so I guess results on better devices should be somewhat nicer. After having watched 3 games on a row, it was time to actually analyse the app instead of just KGS games.

The lowest part of the screen includes the navigation buttons which, if pressed long enough, bring up some extra options, and the chat window.

While this app is the only -and, therefore, the best- KGS client, it disappointed me somehow. In fact, what worried me the most, was that games with lots of tenukis were hard to follow. While marking the stone on a normal PC with a circle is enough, it seems to fall short as a notification in such a small screen. Maybe some sort of double stone-blinking would be helpful.

One of the games I saw included a nice amount of peeping tesujis so I thought of sharing it. Unfortunately, there isn’t any “Save game to disk” option. The tactile function is weird while watching a game, as you can point on the board and make a square appear, but its utility remains unknown for me. The trackpad moves this square around the board instead of navigating through the game.

Though my hopes may have been to high, I’d say that, to sum it up and taking into account its 15$ price, I’m a little disappointed with the final result. Obviously, since these 15$ include two months of the KGS plus service, it may be useful for users who would like to give KGS+ a try, but I don’t think it is fair for users who wouldn’t use it. On the other hand, I must admit that I haven’t tried to play with it, since I got some deficiencies in my internet signal while I was on the train and I suffered my monthly OGA crisis.

Edit: You’ll find further discussion on the comments, including it’s developer and KGS owner, Bill Schubert.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 6:10 pm and is filed under Android Go, Go. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Comments to “KGS Android Client”

1. Posted by RazorBrain, August 26th, 2010 at 11:15 pm

Cool to see that KGS final has a smart phone client. With my kids (now back in school) constantly on the computers at home, my smart phone is my link to internet go.

I’m sad that it seems a KGS client won’t come anytime soon for the iPhone :( I love the politics of technology). But I’m glad to see one available for Android phones.

With that said, $15 is silly. First, don’t force me to buy advertising, as that is what giving me two months of KGS+ but charging me for it. Also, $15 is too much for a client like this. The Tetsuki client for iPhone is free and works for IGS. I prefer KGS to IGS, however. Therefore my fingers are still crossed and I continue to hope for a KGS client for iPhone. That way, Android and iOS go players can play each other as they commute home each day!

Thanks for the review!

2. Posted by alejo, August 26th, 2010 at 11:33 pm

Hello RazorBrain,

if you enjoy politics of technology and KGS, there is a forum thread requesting an Iphone KGS client you should read. However, I don’t remember if it was in godiscussions or lifein19x19.

KGS app price is, mainly, charging for two months of KGS, so I wouldn’t consider it the real price of the app. On the other hand, I can understand WMS emphasising KGS+ two month subscription, though I don’t consider it to be strictly fair. Personally, I would create two prices:
-Client: 3-4$
-Client and KGS+: 15$

Though KGS is closed and we have to stick with William’s decisions, it’s still the server we enjoy the most, so we’ll have to take it whether we like it or not.

3. Posted by Bill Shubert, September 30th, 2010 at 11:39 pm

Hi, stumbled across this while searching for another page discussing android and go.

The KGS Plus isn’t really an ad with the client. Part of the high price of the android client is that you are paying not just for the android client, but to support the server itself as well. My reasoning was that right now the server is kept alive by the KGS Plus customers, so having them pay the “keep the server going” fee twice isn’t fair. Giving you two months of KGS Plus seems to balance it out – KGS Plus users will now be paying only about $5 for the Android client (since it saves them $10 on their KGS Plus bill), and people who don’t care about KGS Plus are paying $5 for the client and $10 to keep the server going. Maybe that makes it feel better to you, maybe not, but that was my reasoning when I put it together.

As for the trackpad not moving forward/back in the game, that design decision was partly because my phone I test with (a Samsung Moment) has one of the worst trackpads ever made. I find it nearly impossible to control so it never occurred to me to use this trackpad for something like forward/back in a game. I even forgot it moved that red square! (Which is the “focus” indicator). In any case I found the big onscreen buttons to be much easier for navigating a game so I just use them.

I also left out “save to disk” on purpose. Instead, I added the “tagged game” system mostly for phones, although I added it to the main client also. The idea is that if you want to review a game later, you tag it, and then can easily fetch it from the web game archives or from the main client. I intend to have a way to review tagged games in the android client also, but haven’t gotten around to it. In general, I find the flash drive in the phone to be clumsy, easier is to keep things on the web but have hooks to make it easy to come back to them later if you want to review them another time.

-Bill Shubert (KGS owner/author)

4. Posted by alejo, October 1st, 2010 at 12:14 am

Hello Bill,

First of all, I’d like to tell you that I’m very pleased to have you visiting this blog and, even more, leaving comments on the posts. It would very nice to have you visiting this site from time to time ;)

From my point of view, supporting the server with the 10$ from the Android client price seems fair, tanking into account the amount of hours we spend there. On the other hand, I think supporting the server should be an optional decision from the users. In any case, forcing users to pay for the two months subscription to KGS plus may be understood as a way to force more users into the Plus service, not just by myself but for some other potential users.
The trackpad use I expected was like the traditional mouse wheel on KGS, though onscreen buttons work fine, it’s just faster to navigate with the wheel. But I can understand your problems with your trackpad… I didn’t prepare my android app properly for resolutions other than mine, just didn’t think of different scaling.

When it comes to tagging games, I sincerely still haven’t messed with it, but I can’t see myself editing a watched game and saving it through tags I’ll wait till you get around to it.

5. Posted by Bill Shubert, October 1st, 2010 at 9:36 pm

Happy to check in. But I hope you’re not offended if I don’t read it regularly. The truth is, for me I only play go these days, I have too many other things competing for my time to be really involved in the online go community. I check in on lifein19x19, but that’s mostly to look for KGS questions that I can answer.

As for “supporting the server” being voluntary, that would be nice, but speaking as the guy who has to pay the bills and who has put in the time to build it in the first place, I sort of like the idea of taking people who are willing to pay for things and adding in a “keep the server going” fee…KGS is a hobby, but it’s just too busy and too big to stay *only* a hobby so sometimes I need to make decisions based on business plans.

6. Posted by alejo, October 4th, 2010 at 6:49 pm

Keeping up KGS alone takes a lot of time, that much I know ;)

Well, since paying for the KGS app only happens once for every user, it would be a reasonable “keep the server going” fee, but then it should be somewhat mentioned on the app info, not just the KGS plus subscription, it seems to be rather business-oriented.
By the way, I wonder how many people are actually buying from kiseido while still thinking they own KGS… Every now and then, someone appeared in godiscussions claiming “I support KGS because I buy from kiseido”… Moreover, is there a way to make donations to the server or any similar way to contribute? I mean a small yearly sum or something…

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