0.22.0 Alpha brings internationalization, branches and undo

Finally we support 3 features that were in the works since january.

The application now works also in French. We only included one language to pin-point all the places we missed internationalizing, so when we correct those, we will start adding all the other languages we got done by the community.

You can set your language from your profile account very easily!

Also, now we have branching on Sandboxes. You can create complex demonstrations and jump around branches to show alternatives. Even shared variations get loaded into the sgf  so you can browse them!

This was a major technical difficulty, we spent a long part of the last 2 weeks on this very feature.

And we also, hand in hand with the previous solution, added undos. We did decide for a slight design difference to what other servers do, i hope you find it more comfortable :)


We are working non stop, and this weekend we are preseting ourselves in a Javascript Conference here in Buenos Aires, and we are going to talk about Kaya.gs and our experience in building it with other experts in the field. We are really excited about that too :).

Increasing server power

Hey guys!

Yesterday , a few hours after the announcement over 50 people registered.  Many people working it at the same time caused a lot of stress and a lot of lag, which became a lot more stable by the time JeanSebL made the BC Card broadcast.

This morning I increased server power and its working very smoothly. Those that got to suffer the lag period, check it out again today, its working much better.

Regards.

Taking it up a notch

Hey guys!

We are working really hard and although 0.21 doesnt not bring huge new features, we have decided to open up a few accounts.

We are doing stress testing and basic performance tuning and we need more players to check it out!

We have opened up accounts up to 300 users, so if you are one of those fans that hasnt gotten his hand on a supporter account, this is your chance. Get an account here!

Visit Kaya, check all the features and enjoy.

We are not getting closer faster to the Beta, even though the server keeps improving noticeably, so for those that are really eager to check it out, this is a great opportunity.

If the server clogs up, we will increase the server size which will mean it will work much faster than it is now, although we delay that decision for costs and performance tuning.

Maturity and Kaya's inner dictionary

Hey guys!

I could finally fix my computer last week, thanks to chop-shopping Pato's father's computer. So last week i went back full force and dealt with sooo many things.

It was amazing how many tweaks i could get into it, making things look and feel much better.

3 Releases ago i was worried with Pato that we weren't reliable enough, that we had some bugs that hampered the experience, so we focused on that and we really nailed it. Playing is as smooth as ever, and lots of inconveniences were fixed.

We are getting to a very nice stage of maturity. Almost 40% of the Tweaki (the place where users can report minor bugs and issues ) is now written by me, which means the things that go wrong i notice before  most people.

Since we added the tweaki, over 200 "issues" were  reported and dealt with.

We are feeling very confident on the state where Kaya is and where it is going, and we have been able to keep the steady fast-pace of weekly releases for 20 weeks now. We had all catastrophes in the middle. Christmas, family matters, computers breaking (more than once), holidays but we powered-through.


Also the Open Source side has been getting attention and aid all the time. Lots of people are really interested in it. There also community work that doesnt require developer skills.

One special collaborator has gotten the Kaya Dictionary pretty fat. In the server you can consult Go terms by just clicking on the words in the chat, which should solve many typical chat concerns :).

As you might imagine, a Dictionary can be pretty big. So cheap-in! Large contributors can get an account or even a collaborator account! (which has special priviledges).

To help you can just use the Senseis Wiki: http://senseis.xmp.net/?KayaGsGossary .

We are working hard for Beta release, keep in tune.

KayaBot

Hey Guys!

Today i finished a Gem for running bots on Kaya. Gems are libs in ruby and they are very easy to install and to run.

With this, someone that wants to collaborate  with sheer processing power  or wants to try out their own bots on our rating system, they will very easily be able to do it.

Right now its set up to run gnugo only, but it can very easily support other GTP protocol bots. If you want to collaborate this way, send an email to info@kaya.gs . A stable bot is an easy way to get a collaborator account on Kaya :).

A link to the code and instructions https://github.com/conanbatt/OpenKaya/tree/master/bot/gem .

Lets get some bots running!

Channels, the game listing, and final features cut for Beta

So i havent mentioned many of the new features in the last few releases for non-founders.

Kaya.gs has grown quite a bit and its a lot more solid now. With the inclusion of channels the chatting experience gets richer and yet another channel of user- developer communication is available.

The enormous amount of feedback during Alpha has made a huge impact in our current service, from quality to durability, it is looking really good.

There is more polishing left but the experience of playing is already very engaging, and there are so many novel features it takes a lot of time to discover them and use them. We are really proud of that! We are proud of looking at a new supporter poking and clicking and investigating all the things that we made.

We are still picking an graphic designer for the site, which might be delaying our Beta estimates. Quality is our top priority and although the bar on design is not really high on Go Clients, we want to make a truly exceptional work in that side. A Go server deserves to be beautiful :)

With that, the next key features to be implemented have been picked for Beta. Although there is a huge backlog of things we want to do (which expands organically all the time) there are a few things we deem important for people to feel comfortable in this very new place.

One is free-games and negotiation. This merits some explanation to those that havent experienced our game listing system.

What we thought and discovered during the early stages of design, is that one of the key features for people to play a game is to have as little friction to start a game as possible. That is, waiting and negotiation make starting games harder, which means a lesser rate of play.
Playing is what amounts to most satisfaction in a Go server so we wanted to bring the current models one step further. KGS has a game-offer model, while Asian servers like Wbaduk & Tygem rely a lot more on automatch.
What we realized in this process is that both require negotiation of game terms: a step to accept handicap(KGS) or time settings change(Asian servers).

It occurred to me that changing settings is rare and undesirable. KGS only accepts handicap negotiation and that is somewhat frowned upon both by users and i think in an unintended way, by the server (by coloring the changes). That manipulation of the rating system is unhealthy both for the system as a whole and for the users.

On The asian servers however, you rarely ever play handicap games, and time settings change is rarely successful!. They switch from standard games to blitz, and negotiation terms is awkard.

So we took that step out. One click, one game. The result is a much much faster experience. Its so easy to start a game that at the slightest wimp or desire you are already playing :).


But it had one inconvenience: without negotiation  you cant pick handicap in a free game. And that we want to do, because friends set up handicap as they wish.

So we still have to do negotiation somehow. And our new way to start rating matches is also evolving. It has some unforeseen consequences that require more thought into design. That is good and healthy: new things come from experimentation and design gets better as you use it and understand its advantages and disadvantages.


The second very important feature for beta is Sandboxes. Sandboxes are empty boards where you can control basically anything that happens. Sandboxes are a key feature for many things. For teaching, for game reviewing. We want to give an ultra accessible space for boards.
Right now you can open up a board and play around, but we are missing a few things:

a) Turning matches into sandboxes fancy-ly. It has to be fluent and comfortable, so players can easily comment on a game after finishing.
b) Branching. We have to show a variation tree so players can navigate the variations.


These 2 big features are really important to get a very well-rounded play+comment experience.


Wow thats a big post. These kind of decisions are the ones we make every week, and we have to consider what we are going to do with great detail because each decision has great consequence.

I hope you enjoy the reading :).

Scarce posts, catastrophe and Sandboxes

Hey Guys! I havent been posting as regularly as before and mainly because im having a small technical issue.

That issue is a broken harddrive which has rendered my laptop useless. My brother is going to get me a new computer when he gets back from the US but thats over a month away, so im still looking for a makeshift fix until then.
That has kept me busy , but unfortunately it hasnt provoked a huge impact on 0.17 that officialized Sandboxes.

A Sandbox is an open board where you can change owners and players, and perform undos. Eventually(it was planned for 0.18 but the computer hassle might delay it) it will support branching , and its the board to show games by default.

After that, Sandboxes will be fitted so people without accounts can use them. Why? because that would make it possible for you to play and show the game to someone that doesnt even know what Go is.

And in between the last 2 features, its about turning games into game-reviews so you can comment games in detail if you wish so.

I think Sandboxes are the last Core feature for release, besides the new design. As Core features get finalized and polished, we can explore more on new and exciting ones like betting and guessing moves.

I hope you guys are excited as we are, getting closer and closer to Beta.

Tomorrow we will be meeting with yet another designers. We are in the process of picking who is going to aid us with the graphic design of the site, something so far Polly a.k.a. dp has been handling really well so far, but a professional touch will make it even better.

Regards!