

HN: Like playing Go? Review my new site. It was a "weekend hack." - davepeck
http://go.davepeck.org/

======
davepeck
Thanks for taking the time to check it out. This was a "weekend hack" for me
-- really, two weekends since I implemented Ko enforcement and a few other
requested features the weekend after the original code was written.

I wrote more about "weekend hacks" here:
<http://davepeck.org/2009/01/26/weekend-hack-1-go/>

The project is an open-source AppEngine application. The source code is up on
GitHub; it is released under the AGPLv3. This was a hack, so don't expect the
world's finest code base! <http://github.com/davepeck/appengine-
go/tree/master>

Please send your suggestions (or, better, patches) my way. Happy Go!

~~~
Maciek416
Can you explain the part about entering email addresses?

~~~
davepeck
This version of Go is played by correspondence. Email or twitter is required.
There are no "accounts" on go.davepeck.org -- just people playing the game via
their preferred contact mechanism.

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jkkramer
Nice work! It's great to see a fellow go-playing hacker on HN. I'm the author
of EidoGo (<http://eidogo.com/>, <http://github.com/jkk/eidogo/tree/master>),
which is JavaScript-based, open source, and has features like branching and
labels. Feel free to steal any of my JavaScript; I'll certainly be taking a
peek at yours :-)

~~~
davepeck
I played with your site and it's really nicely done. Following your project on
GitHub now. Good to know about this; I've discovered a few other Go+GitHub
types in the past few months. Cheers.

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pclark
can you include a match making service?

~~~
davepeck
This is a great idea!

To explain the history a bit: I originally wrote this site so that I could
play with my friends, whose email addresses (and twitter accounts) I know.
That's why there are no accounts on the site itself right now. (And as I've
mentioned elsewhere, accounts starts to look more like other services I know,
so I'm less excited about going that direction.)

The site has enough traffic these days that I could imagine a match-making
service that didn't require an account; you just get in line and give a rough
sense of how good you are, and when a match is found both players get an email
(or twitter) and away they go.

Does this sound like a good feature? I think it would be easy to add!

~~~
gambling8nt
I'd recommend giving a quick overview of the Kyu/Dan ranking system and then
asking people in line to estimate their rank if they don't know it.

~~~
sh1mmer
It would be slick if it figured out their approximate Kyu/Dan from watching
them play. Not sure how you'd do that.

~~~
zzkt
perhaps by having them play against gnugo a few times at varying levels?

------
lukas
Looks like a fun site. Anyone want to try playing me? My email is
lukeb@cs.stanford.edu. I'm a 5dan (aga) but I haven't played for years.

~~~
Scriptor
Oh God, I'm at best a 17 kyu and haven't played in a while either. Well, let's
change that.

------
rg123
In addition to the Ko rule, you might want to consider handling the other
repeated postion situations like at:

<http://www.britgo.org/rules/molasses.html>

Rules vary for these, though. See:

<http://www.britgo.org/rules/compare.html#rept>

The British Go Association has a great site in general, with good info on
computer and online Go playing resources.

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shaunxcode
Could you put cursor:pointer on the clickable parts of the board?

~~~
davepeck
I went back and forth on this.

In the end I decided that cursor:pointer was most desirable for links, and
that on the board I just wanted the standard cursor.

Let me know if you feel strongly...

------
timinman
First off, I love it that you made a game without flash. way to stick it to
the man. I also have some javascript games on my site <http://kidbuilder.net>

To improve it: Why not add instructions? I'm not sure how to play. Also, The
main page is just a little taller than the screen on my hp laptop. I had to
scroll down to find the play link.

~~~
davepeck
Drat! I tried to be careful about the size of the main page so that you'd
never have to scroll. What browser, and what screen resolution do you have? I
will correct for it.

I definitely intend to add instructions to the site soon. I also want to add
full-on interactive tutorials so that new players can learn the game. But...
time! :-)

------
DavidSJ
Is there a reason I should prefer this over <http://www.dragongoserver.net/> ?

~~~
davepeck
It depends on your needs.

If you need any advanced features, or you want to play for rank, DGS is the
place to be.

If, on the other hand, you want to casually play games with friends, my site
is probably better suited to that. My site has (in my opinion) much nicer
visuals & interface, but most importantly it is easy to play with anyone you
like -- they don't need to have an account.

I am contemplating adding accounts and rankings in the future. But then I
would stray into DGS territory.

------
staticshock
Wow, this is drop-for-drop exactly what i wanted to make for chess, because i
wanted to play with friends over email. I went as far as to write the valid
chess move logic, I just never set up the web app. Cool stuff, thanks, i've
been playing Go for 4 hours!

~~~
davepeck
Thanks!

Chess like this would be a lot of fun, too. By all means, use whatever of my
code is useful to build a similar chess service. (Note, though, that my Go
service is under AGPLv3 which is a very restrictive/viral license.) Cheers.

------
sh1mmer
The site is gorgeous but the hidden navigation sucks it really needs some
hints.

I thought the underlining for email was decorative until I read the comments
here and fiddled about looking for Twitter options.

Some kind of tool tip might help perhaps?

------
delano
This is great! If it were possible to play against people I didn't know I
would use it all the time. I've annoyed friends for years trying to get them
to play.

I like toggable settings by the way.

~~~
CGamesPlay
The toggle settings are extremely annoying. The drop-down combo box is over 20
years old at this point. Still here because it still works.

~~~
davepeck
Cool, good to hear this, and I was hoping to have discussion about the toggle
controls.

There are only two toggleable options on the entire site that would be better
served by a combobox. The rest are binary. The two in question both appear on
the sign-up page and both are rarely used (based on the site statistics.)
Therefore I opted for the less "correct" (and less usable) but more visually
consistent option.

If all you're doing is spinning those two options around to test the site,
then yes it certainly could be annoying. But my hunch is that for the average
use case, it's just not a big deal...

------
erikb
This tool feels great. And the simple interface to start a game is a
breakthrough in my eyes. I like and will use it.

------
dimarco
I'm a sucker for cool typography.

~~~
davepeck
Haha!

As it happens, I watched Helvetica a few days before I built this site. I had
in mind the typographer who was viscerally angry about Helvetica's popularity;
he described Helvetica as "textual dung." I decided I disagree!

~~~
jacobolus
Too bad Safari doesn't ever kern: those Yo pairs end up garish, whatever the
font.

~~~
davepeck
Is this a Safari thing or a Webkit thing? I notice it in Chrome too.

~~~
jacobolus
Apparently it’s a webkit thing, done for performance reasons. On IRC, it was
claimed that when they last tried it, kerning slowed text rendering down 25%
(because it makes it impossible to cache some glyph metrics or something), but
that was apparently quite a while ago, and they said it "might be a good idea
to test again".

------
timwiseman
Definitely impressive, but I think I prefer www.dragongoserver.net for the
moment.

~~~
davepeck
See my other comment about how I think my site relates to DGS -- I think they
are complementary.

And can you give me specific reasons that you like DGS better, or is it a case
of liking what you're used to?

------
andrewljohnson
If anyone plays on KGS, I'm Blackthorn.

