Little Go

This is the Little Go bugfix release 2.0.1. It contains a fix for a bug that caused the app and Fuego to become out of sync when a game with handicap was started, or when a game with black or white setup stones was loaded from the archive (#430). The previous release was the Little Go feature release 2.0.0. An overview of the changes follows, for more details read the in-game Changelog. Features -------- Support for game variations (#380): - The app now supports displaying game variations. For that purpose a new view was added at the bottom of the Play tab. The new view displays the tree of nodes formed by all variations of the game. - The tree view can be resized, zoomed and scrolled, and you can tap on any node to change the game board to display the content of that node. - The app also supports creating new game variations: Go back to an older node and play a move and the app will automatically insert a new game variation. - A number of new settings were added under "Settings > Tree view" and "Settings > Game variation" that let you control various aspects of how the tree view is rendered and how game variations are inserted. - If you do not want to work with game variations you can also use the settings to hide the tree view completely and disable creation of new game variations. Improvements and changes ------------------------ User manual overhaul (#419): - The user manual has been rewritten from scratch, complete with icons, illustrations, a few animatons and hyperlinks. - Besides the in-app version of the user manual there is now also an identical online version that can be accessed in any web browser at https://littlego-usermanual.herzbube.ch/. - Many users have had trouble with the dry text-only user manual of the past, often being unable to match textual descriptions of icons to the actual buttons in the app. Hopefully this is now an issue of the past. Many thanks go to Andreas Fischlin who gave me the impetus to take on this long overdue task. For more improvements/changes see the in-game Changelog. Bugfixes -------- - In-app web views now continue to display their content after an external link is opened in Safari (#428). Affected views: Help tab, About tab, Credits tab, Source Code tab, and any one of the entries on the Licenses and the Changelog tabs. - The app no longer crashes when a handicap stone is removed while board setup mode is active (#399). - Fixed a bug where sometimes handicap stones were not properly marked up while board setup mode was active (#400). For more bugfixes see the in-game Changelog. Regressions ----------- - Fixed the "Select player" screen to show a non-transparent background color even when no players are available (#421). Technical changes ----------------- - Support for iOS 9 up to 14 has been dropped (#409). The minimum required version is now iOS 15.0. - See the in-game Changelog for a list of devices that are no longer supported. - Also see see the Changelog for other technical changes.

This is the Little Go feature release 2.0.0. An overview of the changes follows, for more details read the in-game Changelog. Features -------- Support for game variations (#380): - The app now supports displaying game variations. For that purpose a new view was added at the bottom of the Play tab. The new view displays the tree of nodes formed by all variations of the game. - The tree view can be resized, zoomed and scrolled, and you can tap on any node to change the game board to display the content of that node. - The app also supports creating new game variations: Go back to an older node and play a move and the app will automatically insert a new game variation. - A number of new settings were added under "Settings > Tree view" and "Settings > Game variation" that let you control various aspects of how the tree view is rendered and how game variations are inserted. - If you do not want to work with game variations you can also use the settings to hide the tree view completely and disable creation of new game variations. Improvements and changes ------------------------ User manual overhaul (#419): - The user manual has been rewritten from scratch, complete with icons, illustrations, a few animatons and hyperlinks. - Besides the in-app version of the user manual there is now also an identical online version that can be accessed in any web browser at https://littlego-usermanual.herzbube.ch/. - Many users have had trouble with the dry text-only user manual of the past, often being unable to match textual descriptions of icons to the actual buttons in the app. Hopefully this is now an issue of the past. Many thanks go to Andreas Fischlin who gave me the impetus to take on this long overdue task. For more improvements/changes see the in-game Changelog. Bugfixes -------- - In-app web views now continue to display their content after an external link is opened in Safari (#428). Affected views: Help tab, About tab, Credits tab, Source Code tab, and any one of the entries on the Licenses and the Changelog tabs. - The app no longer crashes when a handicap stone is removed while board setup mode is active (#399). - Fixed a bug where sometimes handicap stones were not properly marked up while board setup mode was active (#400). For more bugfixes see the in-game Changelog. Regressions ----------- - Fixed the "Select player" screen to show a non-transparent background color even when no players are available (#421). Technical changes ----------------- - Support for iOS 9 up to 14 has been dropped (#409). The minimum required version is now iOS 15.0. - See the in-game Changelog for a list of devices that are no longer supported. - Also see see the Changelog for other technical changes.

This is the Little Go bugfix release 1.7.1. It contains two fixes for bugs that caused the app to crash (#397 and #398). The previous release was the Little Go feature release 1.7.0. An overview of the changes follows, for more details read the in-game Changelog. Features -------- - The app now supports reading and writing of all SGF node annotation and move annotation properties (#339). The app also displays these properties' values and lets you edit them. This means that you can now add a valuation to a move (e.g. good/bad move) and/or to the entire board position (e.g. good position for black/white), designate a board position to be a "hotspot" (e.g. it contains a game-deciding move), annotate a board position with an estimated score, and finally you can add textual notes to a board position. Annotation data is displayed by, and can be edited via, an all-new annotation view. - The app now supports reading and writing of all SGF markup properties (#349). Except for the DD property (dim parts of the board), the app also displays these properties' values and lets you edit them. This means that you can now mark intersections on the board with 5 different symbols (circle, square, triangle, "X" mark, "selected" symbol), place single-character letter markers or single-digit number markers, place a free-form label text, and finally you can draw arrows or plain lines on the board. The app has an all-new markup editing mode for this (accessible via menu icon) that includes drag & drop support to move around existing markup. - In the Settings screen there are now a number of user preferences that affect how markup is drawn and that let you tweak some aspects of the markup editing process. Improvements and changes ------------------------ - The general user interface (UI) of Little Go now looks and behaves the same on all device types (#371). This unification of UI layouts became necessary because the effort to support different layouts proved to be too much. Also the unification provided the opportunity to get rid of many behind-the-scenes hacks. The main changes are: 1) Smaller iPhone devices which only support the Portrait orientation UI layout, now display board positions and the navigation buttons differently than before. 2) Larger iPhone devices now display a tab bar when in Landscape orientation (alas, reducing the size of the board). 3) iPad devices now always show board positions when in Portrait orientation, and when in Landscape orientation they display board positions and navigation buttons differently than before. - Changed the icon of the "More Game Actions" button (#377). The previous icon was a "curved arrow" symbol, which seemed to confuse many users so that they couldn't find important actions, such as "New game". The new icon is the established "hamburger menu" icon, which should now more clearly indicate that the button pops up a menu with actions to select from. - Button boxes and the board position list now support Dark mode by switching to a dark background color (#378 and #379). Thanks to Peter Waldispühl for reporting this. - For more improvements/changes see the Changelog. Bugfixes -------- - Board position zero (representing the start of the game) sometimes did not display handicap and komi. This is now fixed (#374). - Various speculative fixes for potential app crashes. See the Changelog for details. Regressions ----------- - A bug was introduced in version 1.6.0 that would cause Ko detection to fail after the app was suspended and was forced to restart by the operating system (a relatively common occurrence). This is now fixed (#372). Because Little Go has struggled with Ko detection many times in the past, this regression was particularly painful. Technical changes ----------------- - See Changelog.

This is the Little Go feature release 1.7.0. An overview of the changes follows, for more details read the in-game Changelog. Features -------- - The app now supports reading and writing of all SGF node annotation and move annotation properties (#339). The app also displays these properties' values and lets you edit them. This means that you can now add a valuation to a move (e.g. good/bad move) and/or to the entire board position (e.g. good position for black/white), designate a board position to be a "hotspot" (e.g. it contains a game-deciding move), annotate a board position with an estimated score, and finally you can add textual notes to a board position. Annotation data is displayed by, and can be edited via, an all-new annotation view. - The app now supports reading and writing of all SGF markup properties (#349). Except for the DD property (dim parts of the board), the app also displays these properties' values and lets you edit them. This means that you can now mark intersections on the board with 5 different symbols (circle, square, triangle, "X" mark, "selected" symbol), place single-character letter markers or single-digit number markers, place a free-form label text, and finally you can draw arrows or plain lines on the board. The app has an all-new markup editing mode for this (accessible via menu icon) that includes drag & drop support to move around existing markup. - In the Settings screen there are now a number of user preferences that affect how markup is drawn and that let you tweak some aspects of the markup editing process. Improvements and changes ------------------------ - The general user interface (UI) of Little Go now looks and behaves the same on all device types (#371). This unification of UI layouts became necessary because the effort to support different layouts proved to be too much. Also the unification provided the opportunity to get rid of many behind-the-scenes hacks. The main changes are: 1) Smaller iPhone devices which only support the Portrait orientation UI layout, now display board positions and the navigation buttons differently than before. 2) Larger iPhone devices now display a tab bar when in Landscape orientation (alas, reducing the size of the board). 3) iPad devices now always show board positions when in Portrait orientation, and when in Landscape orientation they display board positions and navigation buttons differently than before. - Changed the icon of the "More Game Actions" button (#377). The previous icon was a "curved arrow" symbol, which seemed to confuse many users so that they couldn't find important actions, such as "New game". The new icon is the established "hamburger menu" icon, which should now more clearly indicate that the button pops up a menu with actions to select from. - Button boxes and the board position list now support Dark mode by switching to a dark background color (#378 and #379). Thanks to Peter Waldispühl for reporting this. - For more improvements/changes see the Changelog. Bugfixes -------- - Board position zero (representing the start of the game) sometimes did not display handicap and komi. This is now fixed (#374). - Various speculative fixes for potential app crashes. See the Changelog for details. Regressions ----------- - A bug was introduced in version 1.6.0 that would cause Ko detection to fail after the app was suspended and was forced to restart by the operating system (a relatively common occurrence). This is now fixed (#372). Because Little Go has struggled with Ko detection many times in the past, this regression was particularly painful. Technical changes ----------------- - See Changelog.

This is the Little Go feature release 1.6.0. An overview of the changes follows, for more details read the in-game Changelog Features -------- - Added an SGF parser (#112). Among other things you can now see if an SGF file in the archive contains more than just one game (#338). A number of user preferences give you some control over how SGF files are processed (#337). - Added a new user preference "Discard my last move" to the "Board position" settings screen (#99). - Added a new entry to the "More game actions" menu that lets you play a rematch without showing the "New game" screen first (#313). - Added a new user preference that lets you choose what kind of computer assistance you would like to receive. With this you can now tell the computer to only make a suggestion how to play instead of immediately making a move on your behalf (#28). Improvements and changes ------------------------ - The buttons that let the user navigate between board positions have now more space between them (#346), making it less likely that the user taps the wrong button. Thanks to Dan Hassin for both reporting the issue and implementing the fix. - Improved error handling when loading a game from the archive. - When a game is saved to the archive the current player names are now written to the SGF data (#237). - The user interface has been adapted to newer iOS devices with a sensor notch, rounded corners and/or a Home indicator instead of a Home button (#336). - The app now supports Dark Mode (#345). A new, darker wooden background for the board still needs to be found (#360). - When Little Go is newly installed from the App Store the default computer player is now weaker (#358). This should give more users a positive first app experience. Users who want a challenge can still increase the difficulty by switching to a stronger computer player. A side effect of this change is that the default computer player no longer uses the "Pondering" setting, which means that the iOS device's battery should now be used up a lot less. - Added another predefined computer player that has "Pondering" disabled. Users who already have the app installed need to select "Reset to defaults" in the "Players" settings screen to see the new player. - The app's user interface no longer exposes GTP engine profiles as a separate entity, instead the user interface now only displays players (#211). Bugfixes -------- - The app no longer crashes when a game with many moves (500 or more) is archived or unarchived (#357). - The app no longer crashes when a game is loaded while an ended game with non-alternating dispute resolution is present (#361). - Speculative fix for a potential app crash when an SGF file is imported (#362). - The information which player resigned is no longer lost when the user switches to an earlier board position (#341). - On iPhone devices with larger displays, when the device is rotated while the activity indicator is displayed in the status view the activity indicator is now still displayed after the rotation (#343). Regressions ----------- - All iPhones: When board setup mode was added in version 1.5.0 a bug was introduced that made it possible for board position lists to show erroneous information when moves were discarded and then replayed, or when games were restarted with different characteristics. This bug has now been fixed (#359). - iPhone devices with smaller displays: When iOS 13 or newer was installed on these devices the current board position view stopped responding to taps. This bug has now been fixed (#344). Technical changes ----------------- - See Changelog

This is the Little Go bugfix release 1.5.1. It contains a fix for a bug that causes the app to crash during launch on iOS 9.x and below (#332). Thanks to Li Chen Ke and Dennis for reporting the issue. The previous release was the Little Go feature release 1.5.0. It contains the following changes: Features -------- - Added a board setup mode (#276). When you start a new game, instead of beginning to play you can now switch to board setup mode. In this mode you can place black or white stones in any order and combination to set up the initial board before you begin to play moves. In addition to placing stones, you can select the side which is to play the first move. Read the "Board setup" section in the in-game manual for a detailed feature description. Bugfixes -------- - Fix for a memory leak in UnarchiveGameCommand (#331) Technical changes ----------------- - Added an initial set of a few automated UI tests (#134)

This is the Little Go feature release 1.5.0. It contains the following changes: Features -------- - Added a board setup mode (#276). When you start a new game, instead of beginning to play you can now switch to board setup mode. In this mode you can place black or white stones in any order and combination to set up the initial board before you begin to play moves. In addition to placing stones, you can select the side which is to play the first move. Read the "Board setup" section in the in-game manual for a detailed feature description. Bugfixes -------- - Fix for a memory leak in UnarchiveGameCommand (#331) Technical changes ----------------- - Added an initial set of a few automated UI tests (#134)

This is the Little Go bugfix release 1.4.1. It contains an important fix for a bug in Fuego that could cause Fuego to play a stone during the opening game on an intersection that was already occupied by a handicap or setup stone (#328). In addition, Little Go's error handling is now capable of dealing with such a situation so that user's are not stuck in a seemingly endless "computer is thinking" loop. Thanks to Mark Spurlock for reporting the issue and to Rob Wildschut for diagnosing the problem. The previous release was the Little Go maintenance and bugfix release 1.4.0. It contains the following changes: Known bugs ---------- - On iPhone Plus devices as well as on iPhone XS Max, when the user navigates to the first or last board position most of the time the new current board position is not displayed with a special background color as it should (#326). Features -------- - Added support for loading and saving .sgf files that contain stone and/or player setup nodes (#323). This kind of .sgf files is frequently used for sharing board positions that teach how to play best in certain game situations, or that are puzzles to be solved. View the in-app Changelog for additional notes. Improvements and changes ------------------------ - The "New game" screen now displays a recommendation to use the area scoring system. - The "Game info" screen now shows stone and player setup information. - When the app is started for the first time after the update, two new GTP commands "list_setup" and "list_setup_player" are added to the user's list of GTP commands (Diagnostics > GTP commands). - The way how an archived game can be shared was re-implemented. This may result in users now seeing different sharing options. - The Changelog is now available in-app ======== Bugfixes ======== - When playing with area scoring, the Fuego computer player now correctly includes handicap compensation in its score calculation (#319). Before this fix, the Fuego computer player was calculating scores without handicap compensation, which would lead to it resigning (when playing as white) even though it had actually won the game. Or it might not resign (when playing as black) even though it had actually lost the game. This serious bug was reported by dtsudo - thanks a lot! - The app now synchronizes komi with Fuego when board positions are changed (#324). Up until now the app never synchronized komi. View the in-app Changelog for details how this omission might have affected gameplay. - A bug in the board drawing routines was fixed which caused the app to occasionally crash (#308). =========== Regressions =========== - White player influence is now shown correctly with white squares (#317). White player influence was erroneously shown with black squares since the release of version 1.1.0. Thanks for reporting this bug go to ecru86. - Users that do not have automatic crash reporting enabled are now asked whether they want to submit a crash report (#321). The alert that asks for permission was accidentally disabled since the release of version 1.3.0. Because the alert was disabled, no crash reports were submitted at all unless the user had automatic crash reporting enabled. ================= Technical changes ================= - The project has been upgraded to the iOS 12.1 SDK (#314) and Xcode 10.1 (#315) - Started migration from Twitter Fabric to Google Firebase (#320). A best effort has been made to disable all other Google services and to only keep Crashlytics enabled. Notably, Firebase Analytics data collection has been explicitly disabled! - View the in-app Changelog to read about other technical changes

Version 1.4.0 is a maintenance and bugfix release. It contains the following changes: Known bugs ---------- - On iPhone Plus devices as well as on iPhone XS Max, when the user navigates to the first or last board position most of the time the new current board position is not displayed with a special background color as it should (#326). Features -------- - Added support for loading and saving .sgf files that contain stone and/or player setup nodes (#323). This kind of .sgf files is frequently used for sharing board positions that teach how to play best in certain game situations, or that are puzzles to be solved. View the in-app Changelog for additional notes. Improvements and changes ------------------------ - The "New game" screen now displays a recommendation to use the area scoring system. - The "Game info" screen now shows stone and player setup information. - When the app is started for the first time after the update, two new GTP commands "list_setup" and "list_setup_player" are added to the user's list of GTP commands (Diagnostics > GTP commands). - The way how an archived game can be shared was re-implemented. This may result in users now seeing different sharing options. - The Changelog is now available in-app ======== Bugfixes ======== - When playing with area scoring, the Fuego computer player now correctly includes handicap compensation in its score calculation (#319). Before this fix, the Fuego computer player was calculating scores without handicap compensation, which would lead to it resigning (when playing as white) even though it had actually won the game. Or it might not resign (when playing as black) even though it had actually lost the game. This serious bug was reported by dtsudo - thanks a lot! - The app now synchronizes komi with Fuego when board positions are changed (#324). Up until now the app never synchronized komi. View the in-app Changelog for details how this omission might have affected gameplay. - A bug in the board drawing routines was fixed which caused the app to occasionally crash (#308). =========== Regressions =========== - White player influence is now shown correctly with white squares (#317). White player influence was erroneously shown with black squares since the release of version 1.1.0. Thanks for reporting this bug go to ecru86. - Users that do not have automatic crash reporting enabled are now asked whether they want to submit a crash report (#321). The alert that asks for permission was accidentally disabled since the release of version 1.3.0. Because the alert was disabled, no crash reports were submitted at all unless the user had automatic crash reporting enabled. ================= Technical changes ================= - The project has been upgraded to the iOS 12.1 SDK (#314) and Xcode 10.1 (#315) - Started migration from Twitter Fabric to Google Firebase (#320). A best effort has been made to disable all other Google services and to only keep Crashlytics enabled. Notably, Firebase Analytics data collection has been explicitly disabled! - View the in-app Changelog to read about other technical changes

Version 1.3.1 is a bugfix release that contains only one change, an important fix for a long-standing bug that sometimes caused ko detection to fail when an old board position was viewed (#307). This was the root cause for the dreaded alert message "Your move was rejected by Fuego", which must have popped up on quite a few people's devices, but which I had never been able to reproduce despite the bug reports that were kindly sent to me by some of the most patient users. Yesterday, however, I received a report that finally gave me a reproducible case which allowed me to pinpoint and fix the coding error. Many thanks to everybody who sent bug reports, but especially to Manuel Braun for submitting the crucial last bug report.