1.3.0: Technical and bugfix release

Summary

Version 1.3.0 is a technical and bugfix release. It was published on the App Store on September 14 2016.

Below is a summary of changes, taken verbatim from the ChangeLog document. For the full story, a list of issues closed for this release is available here on GitHub.

Features

• iPad Pro is now supported with its native screen resolution (#297)

Other improvements and changes

• When the game is resumed to settle a life & death dispute, a "Resume Play" alert is displayed if the game rules allow resumption with non-alternating play. Previously the alert buttons were sometimes displayed in the order Black/White and someteimes in the order White/Black, depending on whose player's turn it was. Now the alert buttons are always displayed in the order Black/White (#300)

Bugfixes

• Ko detection now works correctly if an old board position is viewed (#289). Many thanks to Denis Martynov for bringing this to my attention. I promised to release the bugfix "as soon as possible, probably next weekend". This was in June 2015 - over a year ago :-(
• The status view now displays the correct text after the user discards all moves at the beginning of a game (#301)
• iPhone n Plus devices: The "Game Info" and "More Game Actions" buttons are now correctly enabled after rotating the device to landscape (#299)

Technical changes

• The project has been upgraded to the iOS 9.3 SDK (#298) and Xcode 7.3.1
• Support for iOS 7 has been dropped, the minimum required version is now iOS 8.1 (#260). The only device that is no longer supported is the iPhone 4.
• The project now uses CocoaPods for most 3rdparty libraries (#291)
• The 3rd party crash reporting library QuincyKit was replaced by a new library called Crashlytics (#293)

1.2.0: Feature release

Summary

Version 1.2.0 is a feature release. It was published on the App Store on June 23 2015.

Below is a summary of changes, taken verbatim from the ChangeLog document. For the full story, a list of issues closed for this release is available here on GitHub.

Features

• iPhone 6/6+ are now supported with their native screen resolution (#263)
• iPhone 6+ has a redesigned user interface that makes better use of the available screen estate (#253). iPhone 6+ also supports holding the device in landscape.
• When starting a new game, it is now possible to select from several predefined rulesets, which allows setting many game rules at once with a single tap (#274). This makes the "New game" screen less cluttered and more user friendly. Rule enthusiasts can still adjust each individual game rule by calling up an "Advanced settings" screen.
• Gameplay mechanics at the end of the game have been significantly revised:
  • It is now generally possible to resume play after two pass moves without having to discard ("undo") the second pass move
  • 3 new game rules were added that govern gameplay mechanics at the end of the game. These rules allow to play games under AGA or IGS rules (#221, #223), but also under Japanese and Chinese rules where non-alternating play is possible to resume a game after it has ended after two pass moves (#275).
• As a consequence of these new gameplay mechanics at the end of the game, a much wider array of .sgf files can now be loaded from the archive, provided that the user selects the appropriate rules for the game that is in the .sgf file.
  • Files that contain more than two pass moves at the end of the game. This is especially useful to load games that were played on IGS (Pandanet), where games end with 3 instead of 2 pass moves.
  • Files that resume play after two pass moves. Again, this is useful for loading files from IGS (Pandanet), but also for files that contain games played under any ruleset that allows play to be resumed after two pass moves.
  • Files that contain non-alternating play (e.g. two moves in a row by black). This is useful to load files that contain game problems where theoretical board situations are set up by non-alternating play. Also, games can now be loaded that were played under rulesets (e.g. Chinese, Japanese) that allow play to be resumed after two pass moves by non-alternating play.
• Special thanks go to Norbert Langermann and his innocent suggestion to add support for loading .sgf files with games that were played on IGS. This was the trigger for adding the new end-of-game gameplay mechanics.
• One more thing: When placing a stone a magnifying glass is now displayed that shows the area of the board that currently under the user's 'fingertip (#271). This feature replaces the old "stone distance from fingertip" feature, which confused and was hated by many users.

Other improvements and changes

• Disable Fuego pondering in human vs. human games (#281). This saves a lot of otherwise wasted battery power. Thanks to Ben Jackson for the suggestion. Unfortunately, a nasty piece of code was required to upgrade existing user preferences, which may result in unnecessary player and profile backup copies cluttering the upgraded preferences. Users will get an alert if this happens so that they can clean up their preferences.
• When a game cannot be loaded from the archive because it has moves after the game has ended, the error message displayed to the user should now be less cryptic (#277)
• When the game has ended, the "Scoring" menu item is now shown as a button so that the user can quickly switch between scoring mode and play mode without first having to call up the "More game actions" menu (#268)
• A couple of buttons have gotten new icons (#269). Thanks to David Helfand for the suggestion.
• The status view now always shows the status for the current and the next board position (#265). Up until now the status view only showed when a player had passed, and never showed any information about the next board
  position.

Bugfixes

• The app now correctly synchronizes handicap stones with Fuego when board positions are changed (#279). This is the most important bugfix of this release because it fixes another source for the infamous "The computer played an illegal move" and "Your move was rejected by Fuego" alerts. Many thanks to Laurent Guanzini for providing step-by-step instructions that helped me with diagnosing the problem!
• The app no longer crashes when a game is loaded from the archive that contains a board that is larger than 19x19 (#283). The game still cannot be loaded, but an error message is displayed instead of crashing.
• The app no longer crashes when the last game in the archive is deleted (#286)
• It is now possible to place a stone when viewing an old board position, even if the game has already ended (#278). It is thus possible to resume play at an earlier board position than the last.
• The user interface no longer rotates while a stone is being placed (#272)
• The status view now correctly displays " passed" when a computer vs. computer game is paused (#266)
• If the user attempts to make an illegal move, the status view now displays the intersection of the move (#261)
• The device statusbar at the top of the screen no longer disappears when some screens are displayed (#256)
• iPad only: The board is now rotated correctly even if it is not visible at the time that the device orientation changes (#255)
• A number of other bugs were fixed that may have caused crashes (#192, #284)
• Other minor bugfixes (#209, #257, #258, #262, #273)

Technical changes

• The project has been upgraded to the iOS 8.1 SDK (#248) and Xcode 6.1.1
• 64-bit support was added (#249)
• The Xcode project has been cleaned up (#252, #253)
• The vector graphics sources (.svg files) for all icons in the app were added to the project and to version control (#264)
• User defaults updating is no longer triggered for fresh installs (#282)
• The 3rd party crash reporting library QuincyKit was upgraded to version 3 (#285)

1.1.2: Bugfix release

Summary

Version 1.1.2 is a bugfix release. It was published on the App Store on October 3 2014. It contains only the changes listed below.

Bugfixes

• Interactive UI elements are now disabled while a stone-placing gesture is in progress (#243). This closes a loop hole that may have been the source for a number of crashes in the past (e.g. the crash described in #244)
• Stones no longer temporarily disappear from view while dragging a new stone (#245). Thanks to stfiend for reporting this bug.
• Fixed a potential crash if the computer player starts playing immediately after a game is loaded from the archive (#247).

Regressions

• It is now possible again to make a move when viewing an old board position while the game has already ended (#246). This will resume the game, discard all board positions beyond the one that the user is currently viewing, and then play the desired move.

1.1.1: Bugfix release

Summary

Version 1.1.1 is a bugfix release. It was published on the App Store on August 16 2014. It contains only the single change listed below.

Bugfixes

• App (hopefully) no longer crashes while stone is dragged around the board (#242)

1.1.0: Technical release

Summary

Version 1.1.0 is a technical release that contains no new features. It was published on the App Store on August 14 2014.

Below is a summary of changes, taken verbatim from the ChangeLog document. For the full story, a list of issues closed for this release is available here on GitHub.

Improvements and changes

• The app's user interface has been updated to the iOS 7 look & feel (#204)
• The "maximum zoom" user preference has been removed (#217)
• iPad: The "Game Actions" menu is now displayed in a popover (#232)
• The name of the "iPhone 4S" demo profile has been changed to "Strong" (#210)
• The "long press" gesture for placing a stone now has a slightly longer delay (#241). This should make it less likely that the user places a stone when instead she wanted to scroll.

Bugfixes

• Drawing for Retina displays has been fixed (#205). Many thanks to Eric O. Lebigot for reporting the issue and giving me the necessary KITB to investigate the problem.
• The app no longer crashes when the "Score" segment is visible on the "Game Info" screen and player/profile information is edited (#225)
• The app no longer crashes when a player is viewed on the "Game" segment of the "Game Info" screen and the game ends (#226)
• The app no longer crashes when a saved game is renamed and the new name contains illegal characters (#235)
• iPad: The list of board positions now shows the correct move after discard & play (#233)
• iPhone: Potential app crash eliminated if user taps an entry in the list of board positions (#229)
• Handicap compensation is now shown in the "Game info" screen even if scoring mode is not enabled (#220)
• The "Minimum number of games" setting in the resign behaviour advanced settings screen is no longer editable if the "Auto-select" setting is turned on (#207)
• When the board is zoomed in or out, the internally managed zoom scale can no longer become lower/higher than the intended minimum/maximum (#139)

Regressions

• The "Load" button on the Archive tab is now disabled again while the computer is thinking (#227). This was broken when document interaction was introduced in 0.11.0.

Technical changes

• Memory usage during zooming has been greatly reduced (#212, #214, #215)
• Memory usage for wooden background image has been reduced (#216)
• The project has been upgraded to the iOS 7 SDK (#204) and Xcode Xcode 5.1.1
• Support for iOS 6 has been dropped, the minimum required version is now iOS 7.0. Devices that are no longer supported are the iPhone 3GS and the iPod Touch 4th generation.
• The user interface now uses Auto Layout instead of manually calculated frames (#206)
• Unit tests were migrated from SenTestingKit/OCUnit to XCTest (#222)
• No longer use any .xib files, the entire UI is now set up programmatically

1.0.0: Feature release

Summary

Version 1.0.0 is a feature release. It was published on the App Store on January 09 2014.

Below is a summary of changes, taken verbatim from the ChangeLog document. For the full story, a list of issues closed for this release is available here on GitHub.

Features

• When a new game is started, it is now possible to select one of several ko rules. Simple ko remains the default, new choices are positional and situational superko (#169).
• When a new game is started, it is now possible to select whether area or territory scoring should be in effect (#30). Area scoring is the default because the computer player (Fuego) does not properly support territory scoring.
• During scoring it is now possible to mark stones in seki (#190). Tap the "Actions" button to find the menu entry that lets you switch from "mark dead stones" to "mark stones in seki".
• It is now possible to display player influence, aka territory statistics, for an estimate who owns an area (#18). The feature can be enabled under "Settings > Display > Display player influence".

Other improvements and changes

• Some of the sections on the "Settings" tab have been re-organized (#132)
• Attempting to play an illegal move now displays the reason why the move is illegal (#182). Examples are suicide, ko or superko.
• When a new game is started and a handicap is selected, komi is adjusted automatically to 0.5 (#189)
• The computer player's strength has improved because a new version of Fuego has been integrated into Little Go. It is not possible to quantify the improvement against human opponents, but if the new and the old versions of Fuego play against each other, the new version wins 80% - 90% of the games.
• Use pattern-based additive knowledge on devices with more than 512 MB memory (#187).

Bugfixes

• iOS 7: The app no longer crashes on startup after a game has been imported from an external app such as Mail or DropBox (#184)
• The app no longer crashes when game is loaded while "Game Info" screen is displayed (#191)
• The app no longer hangs after launch if it was previously suspended/killed during scoring (#203)
• The maximum zoom scale has been reduced to 2.0 for iPad devices, and to 2.5 for iPhone devices (#202). The previous maximum zoom scale 3.0 was too high,causing crashes on most devices.
• The next stone marker "A" is no longer displayed after all moves have been discarded (#200)
• The "Start of the game" board position table view cell no longer has a wrong background color (#199)
• The "Delete all games" button on the "Archive" tab is no longer affected by edit mode (#185)
• A sliding gesture no longer puts the entire "Players & Profiles" screen into edit mode (#175)
• A number of memory leaks were fixed (#188 and other, smaller fixes)

Technical changes

• The project has been upgraded to Xcode 5.0 (#183)
• Support for iOS 5 has been dropped, the minimum required version is now iOS 6.1 (#198). Devices that are no longer supported are iPad 1st generation and iPod Touch 3rd generation.
• The 3rd party software build process has been completely rewritten (#92)
• All 3rd party software have been upgraded to newest versions (Fuego trunk r1728, Boost 1.55.0, MBProgressHUD 0.8, Cocoa Lumberjack 1.7.0, ZipKit 1.0.2, QuincyKit 2.1.9)

0.12.0: Feature release

Summary

Version 0.12.0 is a feature release. It was published on the App Store on September 11 2013.

Below is a summary of changes, taken verbatim from the ChangeLog document. For the full story, a list of issues closed for this release is available here on GitHub.

Features

• It is now possible to configure the computer player with a threshold how quickly it will resign a game (#133). For instance, it is now possible to tell the computer player to never resign so that the game can be played out to the very end. This also allows beginners to play with a large handicap on a small board (up until now the computer player would always resign immediately when faced with an overwhelming handicap). The resignation behaviour setting can be found towards the bottom on the "edit profile" screen.
• When an old board position is viewed, the intersection where the next stone will be placed is now marked with the letter "A" (#101). This can be disabled in the "Board position" settings.
• Changes to the active profile are now immediately applied to the GTP engine (#123). For instance, it is now possible to change the playing strength or the resign behaviour of the computer player without starting a new game.
• At the bottom of the "Archive" tab there is now a button to delete all archived games in one fell swoop (#55)
• The tab order can now be customized (#57)
• Players & profiles can now be reset to their factory defaults (#54), in case some severe misconfiguration occurred
• Players & profiles can now be edited directly from the Game Info screen (#122)

Other improvements and changes

• Loading a game from the archive is now about 10% faster (#166)
• The user interface for changing the dangerous "Max. memory" profile setting is now vastly improved (#153). The maximum value that can be selected for the setting is now limited to a fraction of the device's physical memory, and the amount of physical memory that the device has is also displayed.
• When a computer player is edited, there is now a button that allows to directly edit the profile that the player is using (#71)
• When a profile is edited, the players that are using the profile are now listed at the bottom of the screen (#70)
• The button to reset predefined GTP commands is now clearly marked with a "red warning" style (#56)
• The "About" screen now displays the build date/time (#161)

Bugfixes

• The GTP engine is configured to no longer recognize positional superko (#171). This is a temporary solution to bring the GTP engine's rules into sync with Little Go's rules. Little Go currently does not recognize superko, so this sync'ing fixes the problem that Little Go lets the user make a superko move which is then rejected by the GTP engine. Many thanks to Brid Griffin for emailing me a bug report that helped me with diagnosing this problem! Note that Little Go will officially support superko in 1.0.
• On the iPad, the board size is now correct after the device is rotated while the board is zoomed (#162)
• Dragging a stone outside the zoomed in board section no longer places the stone (#143)
• The computer player now resigns even if the profile setting "Max. games" is set to a value < 5000 (#154)
• Undo resign is no longer possible when viewing an old board position. This fixes the problem that undo resign when viewing an old board position corrupts the backup .sgf (#158).
• If the game has ended but an old board position is viewed, the status view now shows information related to the board position instead of end-of-game information (#107)
• Scoring mode is no longer activated automatically when a player resigns. The effect is that the status now reads "x has resigned" instead of the inappropriate "y wins by ..." (#4). If a score is desired it must be requested by manually activating scoring mode.
• The user can no longer place a stone on behalf of the computer player (#160)
• The board position can no longer be changed while Fuego is searching for an initial set of dead stones during scoring (#163)
• A number of potential app crashes have been eliminated (#130, #172, #173)

0.11.1: Bugfix release

Summary

Version 0.11.0 is a bugfix release. It was published on the App Store on May 22 2013. It contains only the changes listed below.

Bugfixes

• Board position can no longer be changed while other commands are executed (#156). This hard-to-find bug caused numerous crashes (e.g. those described by issues #128 and #129) and other problems, such as the infamous "The computer played an illegal move." alert. Many thanks to Logan Bouia and Carole Wolf for emailing me bug reports that helped me with diagnosing the problem.
• The entire game is now saved when an old board position is viewed (#150)
• The app should no longer crash after receiving a memory warning on iOS 5 while the "Game info", "New game" or "Save game" screens are displayed (#157). Thanks to the anonymous iPad 1 user who patiently reminded me that the issue needs fixing by sending an occasional crash report.
• Fix for a memory leak in TableViewSliderCell (#155)

0.11.0: Feature release

Summary

Version 0.11.0 is a feature release. It was published on the App Store on April 24 2013.

Below is a summary of changes, taken verbatim from the ChangeLog document. For the full story, a list of issues closed for this release is available here on GitHub.

Features

• Display coordinate labels (#12). This can be turned on or off under "Settings > Play view > Display coordinates".
• Display move numbers (#17). The user preference can be found under "Settings > Play view > Display move numbers". Because displaying many move numbers is cluttering the board, the percentage of move numbers to display can be adjusted with a slider.
• Zoom the board up to a 3x zoom scale (#16). All standard zoom gestures are supported. Because zooming costs memory the user may want to limit herself to a maximum zoom scale that is below 3x. This can be done with the slider found under "Settings > Play view > Maximum zoom". A limit of 2x zoom scale is recommended for devices that do not have much RAM (typically older devices such as the iPhone 3GS or the iPad 1st generation).
• Archived games can now be exported to Mail (#19) and other apps that are capable of processing .sgf files (e.g. DropBox).
• Games can now be imported from Mail (#20) and other apps that are capable of exporting .sgf files (e.g. DropBox).

Other improvements and changes

• The application now launches much faster (#114), except for the first time after upgrading from a previous version.
• Status text and activity indicator are now displayed in the navigation bar at the top of the screen (#120).
• When a new game is started, the "discard old game" question is not displayed anymore if there have been no changes since the game was saved the last time (#42).
• Loading a game from the archive is now about 10% faster (commit 139bb46).
• Drawing of Go board now makes better use of the available space. This is especially noticeable for the large 19x19 board on a small iPhone screen (commit 86443d9).
• The "stone distance from fingertip" user preference now behaves more predictably: Previously a "clever" algorithm tried to figure out the "best" distance by taking into account various parameters such as board size and screen size. The new algorithm now simply scales a fixed maximum distance according to the value of the slider.

Bugfixes

• No longer crash when a computer vs. computer game is restored during app launch and that game has already ended (#127). Thanks to Serge Grossenbacher for reporting this bug.
• No longer draw in secondary thread during app launch (#117). This eliminates another potential source of crashes.
• iPad only: Screen should no longer be flickering wildly after loading some games from the archive (#126).
• It is now possible to save games with a name that consists of 1 or 2 characters (#125).
• Resigning is no longer possible when viewing an old board position. This fixes the problem that resigning when viewing an old board position corrupts the backup .sgf (#115).
• During scoring, the activity indicator is now only displayed for finding the initial set of dead stones (#121).

Known bugs

• App may crash when board position is changed (possibly forward going only) (#128)
• App crashes when user plays an illegal move while viewing an old board position (#129)
• App crashes during launch after a player has been deleted (#130)

Technical changes

• MBProgressHUD upgraded to the newest version (HEAD of the git repository). The progress indicator is now a round shape instead of a horizontal bar.
• Private Objective-C method declarations in .m files have been removed to reduce unnecessary code duplication (#102).

0.10.0: Feature release

Summary

Version 0.10.0 is a feature release.It was published on the App Store on March 06 2013.

Below is a summary of changes, taken verbatim from the ChangeLog document. For the full story, a list of issues closed for this release is available here on GitHub.

Improve graphic design

• Add wooden background
• Add artwork for black/white/cross-hair stones (instead of just drawing filled circles)
• New layout on iPad
• New icon for "continue" button in computer vs. computer games, to distinguish it from the new "forward" button

Features

• View board positions for moves played earlier during the game
• Replace "undo" with "discard move"
• A game that has ended can now be resumed in two ways:
  • Discard the most recent move if two pass moves were played by mistake
  • Select "Undo resign" from the game actions menu after accidentally resigning the game
• Redesign of "New game" and "Game info" screens
• New user preferences
  • Settings > Play view > Stone distance from fingertip
  • Setting > Board position > Discard future moves alert
  • Settings > Scoring > Score when game ends
• Add support for collecting logging data
  • Turn this on under Diagnostics > Collect logging data
  • Logging data is automatically included in a bug report
• Do not trigger the computer player when a computer vs. computer game is restored on app launch
• Add placeholder message to "Archive" tab if there are no saved games
• Various other small GUI updates and fixes

Bugfixes

• App no longer crashes if a computer vs. computer game is paused and the computer passes or resigns
• Diagnostics > Bug report section is no longer disabled when computer player resigns
• Fix various memory leaks
• GUI updates during long-running actions (e.g. app launch, load game) should now happen always in the main thread; besides smoother GUI updates, this should eliminate one more possible source of crashes

Known bugs

• The resigned state of a game is lost when a game is saved or loaded; this is not new in this release, it's just been added to the list of known bugs

Technical changes

• Upgrade project to Xcode 4.6
• Drop support for iOS 4.3, the minimum required version is now iOS 5.0
• Add iOS 6 compatibility
• Add iPhone 5 support
• Improve 3rd party software build process
• Upgrade CocoaLumberjack to version 1.6
• Update Doxygen target to use the MacPorts path /opt/local/bin