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The return of the Jedi: MGS is back!

Written by alejo on October 13th, 2007

Frank A. de Groot just announced that he will continue the development of Moyo Go Studio at Godiscussions.com. These are wonderful news for the Go community.

In fact, I’ve just realised that, there has been a whole “revolution” during the lasts months when we talk about Go study programs.

Till a few months ago, there were only a few “serious” programs for studying Go. Many Faces of Go could be discarded as a proper studying tool due to his lack of database handling and pattern search, though it is very famous because most users started playing computer-go with Igowin. Moyo Go Studio and SmartGo were the main programs for serious students.

Then, Stonebase appeared on the scene: an asian program with very good database handling but some weak points. The developer of Drago got into serious programming sessions and started publishing new versions, including Kombilo’s engine in it; now Drago is another serious competitor for the previous programs.

Since the lack of spare time prevents me from making proper reviews, you’ll have to try them by yourself. Go, get them and compare!

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10 Comments to “The return of the Jedi: MGS is back!”

1. Posted by VincentV, October 13th, 2007 at 11:06 pm

I downloaded the Freeware-version of MGS a few months ago and was impressed by the many functions of the program (hadn’t seen anything like that before).

But the interface kinda detered me from making it my main go-tool. I hope that there’s gonna be some kind of beginner-interface so I can use it again :)

2. Posted by Alejo, October 14th, 2007 at 9:14 am

I’m afraid there is no beginner interface in MGS… we all suffer headache the first time we open it… but you get used to that and finally the headache disappears…

Drago has a simpler interface and some good features. I won’t compare them, but I think it could be a good option for you.

3. Posted by Mef, October 15th, 2007 at 3:40 am

I’ve yet to try it, but Dariush is a program that was posted about relatively recently on RGG. From what I gather it’s another pattern searching program that’s offered for free.
Link: http://ricoh51.free.fr/indexeng.htm

4. Posted by Alejo, October 15th, 2007 at 11:09 am

Yep!!! That’s right, Dariush also has a pattern searching engine… but I find it very confusing.

I’ve just tried Dariush and it is a little bit short of features if we wanted to try it as a study tool.
But that is just my opinion after 10 minutes playing with the pattern searching engine…

5. Posted by Alex, October 16th, 2007 at 2:11 pm

Only 3 serious programs?
You missed Bigo Assistant, at least.

6. Posted by Alejo, October 16th, 2007 at 5:10 pm

Bigo Assitant… I’ve just tried it on the Tiny version. My conclusion…. Umm… still thinking ;) But I’ll guess I’ll have to change that 3 into “a few”.

One of the weakness of this program is that it is very difficult to limit the search to a specific area of the board.
It has a good fuseki analyzer and the database handling is quite good also, but I would say that both MGS and SmartGo are better than Bigo assistant.

In fact, Bigo reminds me of Kombilo, though the second one is much more powerful. I’ve just tried it for a few minutes, so there might be a way to limit positions to match (or not adding each move manually), but I still haven’t found it.

Apart from the fuseki analyzer, Bigo Assistant doesn’t have many good features to compete with other programs… let’s say, for example, a “Guess next move” mode, or connection with Go servers…

From my point of view, there are 3 types of Go software:
-Simple: these only have one or few features but nice interfaces. Typical sample: panda-glGo.
-Average: these programs have some good features but lack of other important ones. Sample: Kombilo.
-Good: These programs are the most advanced ones, importing most features from other programs and implementing new ones. Sample: MGS and SmartGo.

By this I’m not saying that Bigo is a bad program, I’m just showing my point of view when it comes to compare programs.

7. Posted by Alejo, October 16th, 2007 at 5:16 pm

Another good tool, for example, would be Drago. Drago lacks of server connection, but has lots of features which make it a very good option for serious study…

For example, Drago has the best image exporting tool on the market right now. And had a nice system handling the preview of the results of searches (not unique, but a good one).

Try comparing Drago, or Stonebase (both available for free), or a demo version of SmartGo, with Bigo Assistant, and you’ll see the difference.

8. Posted by VincentV, October 28th, 2007 at 10:57 pm

I’ve worked with all of the mentioned progs and think that MultiGo is probably the best freeware prog available even though it has no built-in Database-editor.

Drago and Stonebase are pretty similar imho (but I like the stonebase-GUI better). But the printing functions on Drago are clearly better. I wonder how the progs will develop. MultiGo was the first one to implement a “movie-feature” (which is very cool). But eventually Stonebase will rule the Go-world ;)

9. Posted by Alejo, November 1st, 2007 at 4:04 pm

MultiGo is a good option too, but I’m afraid that I haven’t tried it for the last few months, which makes me unable to comment on it… and my original computer is trying to recover after a few virus and spyware “invasions”.

Stonebase is to rule the world. Freeware… made by chinese… if only it was open-sourced… Yes, I think we’ll have a good result from this program.

10. Posted by La France, June 23rd, 2012 at 12:49 am

You also forgot the program Dariush. :)

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