[Kde-games-devel] Open Source Go server and software

[Paul Broadbent]

On Feb 3, 2008 12:24 PM, Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:
> I'm quite sure that there's "lots" (ok maybe no more than 1000 but that's
> enough imho) users out there that are Go fans that don't want to use Windows
> but it's their only option. If we give them a good KDE client they can switch
> to KDE more easily.
There are already many Linux friendly Go clients, both closed and open
source, so this isn't a problem we need to worry about. And by the
way, there are far more than 1000 Go playing Linux users, Go seems to
attract us programmers like kids to an ice cream van! (And with good
reason, it's an excellent game, it has very simple rules and yet they
create such a complex playing space that prevent search based
techniques getting very far at all, forcing human players to use
intuition and AIs to flounder.)


On Feb 3, 2008 1:41 PM, Ian Wadham <ianw2 at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 12:07 am, Josef Spillner (KDE) wrote:
> > Em 3/2/2008, "Albert Astals Cid" <aacid at kde.org> escreveu:
> > >I'm quite sure that there's "lots" (ok maybe no more than 1000 but that's
> > >enough imho) users out there that are Go fans that don't want to use
> > > Windows but it's their only option. If we give them a good KDE client
> > > they can switch to KDE more easily.
> >
> > GNU Go is a good AI player, maybe not the best out there but still
> > sufficiently strong for the majority of players I'd say. It is very
> > easy to wrap some game server code around it. <snip>
> >
> Thanks very much, Albert and Josef, for your interesting replies.
>
> Just to make sure we are on the same wavelength, a server for a Go
> AI opponent would be good and I think valuable for beginners, and
> maybe as a starting point in development work.
>
> But by "Go server" I mean a club or meeting place for human Go
> players, including the ability to log on and watch games in progress
> or study past games, maybe even run tournaments, and certainly
> record rankings of members, etc. etc.  Apparently Go servers can
> also run a game in real-time, on-line ... or off-line (if you are
> time-poor or bandwidth-limited) submitting moves by an email-
> like method.  Well I'm waffling and have not studied the
> possibilities, but I just wanted to make the point.
>
> An Open Source Go server would also be installable anywhere,
> so could be used by quite small groups to set up a local player
> community or support an existing Go club.
>
The two biggest live Go servers (IGS and KGS) are indeed close source
(although IGS has an ample supply of open source clients, and the KGS
client is a closed source app, but is Java based and runs fine on
Linux). But there is also the NNGS ( http://nngs.sourceforge.net/ ),
which is open source and looks to be the kind of thing you are looking
for, but I don't know much about it. I'm not even sure if there are
many NNGS servers running or if they have just made the software for
an open source server. Is that the languishing project you mentioned?
Do you know what's gone wrong?
If there is something that needs doing I'd be very interested in
helping out, but my time is quite limited so I'm not sure how much I'd
be able to do.

By the way, for anyone interested, most of the different Go software
is listed here:
http://senseis.xmp.net/?Software

Paul