Sunday, August 7, 2011

WeGoIgo 1.16 and GnuGo 1.1

Well, like I promised, I've released v1.16 of my WeGoIgo app and v1.1 of the GnuGo AI app. I haven't made all the changes I wanted to the interface-- I want to take some time to really think through the best way-- but I have made the magnifying glass try to go above your finger instead of to the side. I've also slightly improved the efficiency of the SGF loader, so people who've had trouble loading Kogo's might try to clear their cache and try again. No promises-- it was a very small change-- but you never know!

The biggest thing here, as I said, is the AI. I'm confident that it will be more responsive and more stable-- something I know many people, including myself, have been wanting for some time.

I haven't gotten around to releasing the update for the free version yet-- enjoy the perks, paid users! I changed my system for managing them so it's easier and quicker for developing, but publishing is not quite as automatic. But, since I spend more time developing than I do publishing, I'm happy with the tradeoff.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Updates

It's been a while since I've posted, but I've been pretty busy working for Minus (previously Min.us) developing their Android app, a job which I happily took over from my good friend Colin. Everyone should check out the service-- it's pretty slick. And, they've got a pretty awesome Android app, which should see a pretty good update sometime very soon.

In other news, I've finally found my way back into my WeGoIgo code. It's definitely showing it's age (it was my first published app, and only the second I wrote). There's a lot of rugged stuff that shows how little I really understood about the platform when I first started, and I feel I've really developed as a programmer since I started the project about a year ago. I've already executed several ideas I had for revamping some of the code to make it sturdier and just generally better. The focus for the next release (whenever I have the time to finish some things up) will probably be AI. I've completely re-written the bridge between GnuGo and Android to make it faster, more efficient and stable, etc. I've also scrapped all the logic for the interactions between GnuGo and WeGoIgo and rewritten it, so that should also be significantly more stable. GnuGo will now throw up a Notification while it's running, so there's no doubt about whether it's crashed and just not told you!

I may release just these changes if I don't have time to improve the interface like I want to, but I hope to add some fun enhancements to stone placement and stuff that I think everyone will like.

Look forward to it!