Monday, September 10, 2012

Releasing 200 accounts Tomorrow

We are announcing another account release for tomorrow.
Since we started opening up accounts, players have registered within 6 hours! and the last time, they went up in only 3 hours.

1.5 Brought huge changes and the server is healthier than ever. And 1.6 is already packing  a punch for this Friday.  We are focusing on the core playing experience more than ever, and changes to the game page will come frequently.

As users that followed up past the last year, we have been doing a very regular and expected update, improving a lot each week.  Be sure to not miss out the great experience of looking at a server grow, and be here in time to participate in the creation of it.

Kaya has more feedback channels than any other server in the world. Between the idea forum, the tweaki, the constant presence of the developers, the quick-same-day response policy we have on emails, and we've been hearing out everyone. Many of the features we have implemented came from users suggestions.

The countdown is up on the site ! don't miss it .

Friday, September 7, 2012

1.5, Custom Handicap, reliablity and ASR League

This week we havent made an account release. This is because we knew we were going to work on very sensitive stuff and we wouldnt want a whole new wave of players get in so close to this release.

A very large change was done on how Kaya processes and reads SGF, making it much better and more resilient. We are now confident that we can read a lot more games and we now support uploading SGFs and opening a Sandbox with them.

This way you can custom review a game with your friends and other go players.

Also, we added an option to start games with  a desired handicap.

Kaya's  regular autohandicap system means its much easier to start a game, and all games are balanced out, both for rating and for probability of winning.

The more balanced a game is, the more exciting it is and the more worthy towards accurate ratings.

However,  not all games to be played are rated and competitive, and it was impossible to pick any handicap for any opponent before. Now we finally implemented a better challenging system so you can also pick the handicap and komi you wish for a specific opponent.

On the last note, the ASR league has been very successful so far, and over 100 games have been played. We are very happy with this collaboration and i hope this helps the ASR grow as well.


See you guys on the server for 1.5.


Saturday, September 1, 2012

ASR Integration on Beta 1.4, Game reviewing and Game Negotiation.

This past week was packed with a lot of action again. This weeks 200 account release was over in 3 hours! Faster than any other release.

And it was a breeze. There was absolutely no lag, marking for us a milestone since the Beta release.
We are technically ready to open up for more and more users.

The great number of users and games has given us a huge amount of feedback. The Tweaki has grown into a 7 headed-Hydra and we are cutting heads as quickly as we can :).

As we improve the quality and reliability of the server, there are a few features in the vecinity.


Two of the most missed features on Kaya right now are the ability to quickly set up a game review, and  being able to pre-set handicap before a game.

They are both in the making and they will be included in the near Future, so be patient about it :).


However, today we are releasing an new feature. Collaborating with the ASR League, specially with founder Stalkor, we have set up an integration of the league into the server.

Starting a league game is extremely easy to do, and the reporting is done automatically. Game rules are enforced, and only other league members are able to accept an ASR game challenge. Of course, you can also pick who you want to play specifically in the league.

Right now there is only one group as this is very new and the first run of the integration. You can quickly sign up by sending a pm to stalkor or to other league admins on the ASR channel.
There are more detailed instructions in the server,  including links with more information.