mgo - Behind the Scenes

Egoban export works!

2009-01-06T13:00:00.001+01:00

Now this one has delayed the new release pretty much. However, we're on our way again.

On our way to a new unstable release

2009-01-03T07:40:00.002+01:00

We are currently struggling with re-activating the egoban export (since the egoban system changed). If that bug is fixed, we should be ready to relase a new unstable version.

Upcoming new release

2008-11-25T21:10:00.002+01:00

As can be found in the sources featuring
- graphical boards and stones
- sound (if supported by device)
- ...

Code moves to SVN repository

2008-06-24T16:46:00.004+02:00

As the restructuring of the code was that massive, we took our chance to switch from CSV to SVN.

The latest source code can be downloaded using the following command

svn co https://mgo.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mgo/trunk mgo

No development, but: Vectorized Logo

2008-05-23T00:36:00.004+02:00

Using the Gimp and potrace, we created a black and white SVG version of the mgo logo.

It's available for download here

(just in case: here's the PNG, and here's the PNG in levels of grey)

Website transferred to Sourceforge Wiki

2007-11-08T18:20:00.000+01:00

While the code reorganization takes place, we have transferred the mgo website contents to a wiki that belongs to the mgo project site at Sourceforge.

www.mobilego.org now links to the new site.

Development near NULL

2007-10-06T22:01:00.000+02:00

We're still struggling with the code overhaul.

Development lag after the 0.8.6

2007-07-12T17:32:00.000+02:00

mgo development lags due to unrelated activities (like earning money). Additionally, we need to restructure the code, as managing the two branches (mgo and mgo_x) produced a lot of development overhead in the past.

Developers are welcome!

Two bugs fixed and a new splash screen in the sources. New release rising.

2007-05-08T09:46:00.000+02:00

We are planning to release a new stable version of mgo and mgo_x at the 10th of May - exactly two years after the 0.1-pre-sf saw the light of day.
Compared to the last unstable, the changes are small: two bug fixes and a new introductory splash screen (which can be deactivated in the settings menu). But compared to the last stable release dated April 2006, the changes are almost too many as to be counted. Of course, we will try :-)

New releases 0.8.3 and 0.8.3a

2007-04-02T23:06:00.000+02:00

This new unstable release presents the brand new "save to egoban" feature, transferring a game protocol via a HTTP connection (GPRS or whatever) to www.egoban.org.

The minor upgrade 0.8.3a contains a convenience addition, i.e. if the user tries to save to egoban or to export SGF, mgo creates a local backup of this game, just in case mgo crashes before successfully performing this task.

Export to egoban works

2007-03-25T19:34:00.001+02:00

We successfully sent our first game from a real device (Nokia 6230i) to egoban.org!

Prepare for new packages.

Base64 Woes

2007-03-23T08:53:00.000+01:00

In order to login, mgo has to encode the credentials with Base64, but this did not work outside the emulated mobile device. We will now try to make use of the Bouncy Castle Lightweight Crypto API for this task.

Progress on sending to egoban

2007-03-21T10:21:00.000+01:00

Custom game names
User name and Password can be set in new "Settings" screen (which we will use for other settings, too, in the future, like e.g. setting display to black/white or color).
Export checks for existing credentials before trying to connect to server (and redirects to settings screen, if user name or password is empty
Export retrieves server's response (success/failure)

First successful SGF export to egoban.org

2007-03-17T13:46:00.000+01:00

We did it! We recorded a "game" in mgo and saved it to an egoban account.

Now we will concentrate on the necessary UI changes/additions:

Storing egoban login data
checking for successful data transfer
custom game names
...

New release 0.8.2

2007-03-15T19:24:00.000+01:00

Some bug fixes, some minor changes.
Next step definitely is saving to online server (http://www.egoban.org).

Watch out!

Hannes

Saving games to internet server

2007-02-07T09:55:00.000+01:00

How about having mgo saving your games to an internet server, where you can download them, or review them online?

Users without mgo_x's SGF export could have their SGFs this way
SGFs are accessible from any computer without cable/bluetooth connection
There's virtually unlimited space

Have a look at egoban, which is the site we will cooperate with.

New release 0.8.1

2007-02-06T09:39:00.000+01:00

* Custom names for internally saved games
* Minor navigation changes

Download

Release 0.8.0 and Next steps

2007-01-29T18:02:00.000+01:00

As we have finally overcome some technical difficulties, we recently released a new unstable: 0.8.0

The next steps are:
- Custom RMS names
- Custom SGF file names
- Securing game data in RMS if trying to export SGF (currently, if the device does not allow file system access, mgo crashes, and the game ist lost).

Future plans:
- Cooperation with egoban for e.g. storing mgo games online

Apologies: Half a year without new release

2006-11-28T09:55:00.000+01:00

We know that this is too long. So we will try to have at least an unstable release, which contains some of the improvements we have been implementing in the last months.

Speed boost, and SGF progress

2006-10-09T11:52:00.000+02:00

Matejcik boosted up the display speed (by buffering the goban drawing).
Additionally mgo_x is now able to read, store, overwrite and delete SGFs.

All changes are committed to the CVS, but not yet released due to limited testing.

Human stupidity

2006-10-01T18:24:00.000+02:00

We lost all progress on mgo_x due to human stupidity. Don't ask. It's already bad enough.
Most actual recoverable version is dated 2006-06-28.

Bad Luck: New Demo, but whole site offline

2006-09-27T17:40:00.000+02:00

Just when we were able to integrate a new way of giving mgo a try right on the visitor's PC (even with PDA, i.e. touchscreen input), the mgo homepage is offline.

Import works (in emulator)

2006-09-26T10:06:00.000+02:00

Good news!
We succeeded in mgo_x reading an SGF file from the mobile's file system. At the same time, we brushed up the file browser used for saving and loading. And we would already have released this new version, but unfortunately the software succeded merely on the emulated devices of Sun's Wireless Toolkit (WTK), and not (as we discovered in our second-level tests) on real world devices.
This usually means that the WTK shrugged off some exceptions, which our testing devices could not handle. Some cleaning, and we will be ready to release.

Online again

2006-09-26T09:14:00.000+02:00

After several days of being offline, blogger.com succeeded in reanimating our blog, which was deactivated for reasons unknown to us (slightly more information here).

The interim blog at wordpress.com will be deactivated.

Encouraging user review

2006-09-13T21:33:00.000+02:00

Having a look at the mgo download pages on GetJar, I ran accross the following comment:

Very useful software, and very light in the latest version. Doesn`t waste bytes on graphics and gadgets, but gets the job done.

Thanks, Richard! This is exactly, what we are aiming at.
(Although we definitely have insufficient programming power at the moment, the developers being busy in too many other ways. But we're still on the road to 1.0!)

Basic import ability

2006-06-29T10:37:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, mgo succeeded in transforming a simple SGF (without variations) into the internal game representation system.

Development goes on

2006-06-26T12:59:00.000+02:00

Contrary to the appearance on SouceForge, the development continues. Currently we are working on parsing SGF files, to convert them into mgo's internal game data format. This is the basis for both mgo_x loading SGF files from the file system, and loading SGF's that are directly put into mgo's JAR file.

The latter would allow users that cannot run mgo_x to transfer games into mgo.

Reprogramming mgo to use SGF natively would be cool, too, but as this would delay the 1.0 much further, we decided against.

Mailinglist "mgo-updates"

2006-06-22T14:03:00.000+02:00

The idea is to automatically inform subscribers about new releases even if they do not have SourceForge accounts (which would enable them to "monitor" the mgo files).

The subscription page is here.

New unstable 0.7.7

2006-05-13T19:18:00.000+02:00

Minor fix: Pass counts as move in Ko

Spring and all that

2006-05-11T15:59:00.000+02:00

Due to spring and all that, the developers tend to be distracted from working on mgo. After all, they fixed a Ko related bug, even if they did not make it to releasing the new version, murmuring: "It's spring, and all that...".

But we shouldn't be too rigurous here, because it seems to be spring, and all that.

Let's simply hope for summer.

New release 0.7.6

2006-04-16T17:46:00.000+02:00

The Ko bug seems to be solved, and Ko position is now marked with cross.

New stable release 0.7.4

2006-04-07T09:54:00.000+02:00

One month after the last stable, we made it to the 0.7.4!

Changes and new features: http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=560058

More than 350 downloads on SourceForge in March

2006-04-01T19:19:00.000+02:00

After three months of 200+ downloads, March broke the 300 by far. See the popularity page on www.mobilego.org.

Unlimited Slots

2006-04-01T19:09:00.000+02:00

SourceForges CVS is currently down, so we can't launch a new release, but anyway: Happy news! The number of "Slots" to save games in RMS is limited only by the mobile's memory, now.

How about an mgo 1.0 countdown?

2006-03-28T15:47:00.001+02:00

Mattman had the idea to put a countdown on the mgo pages, which will run out, when mgo reaches the 1.0

Unfortunately, we have no idea, how long this will take, but we know, which crucial features are missing. So it might become a "missing feature countdown".

We'll see.

New release 0.7.2

2006-03-27T22:38:00.000+02:00

A lot of small changes/fixes: cf. https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=556098

New release 0.7.1

2006-03-27T21:25:00.000+02:00

Mainly bug fixed and the capture-counter screen is accessible again.
Download here.

Greedy thoughts

2006-03-21T13:37:00.000+01:00

Regularly checking our download numbers on getjar.com leads to the astonishing result that we have around 20 downloads a day. Which would be 600 a month. This could easily make my living if we sold mgo for one Euro a copy ;-)

New release 0.7.0

2006-03-19T17:56:00.000+01:00

Touchscreen support
Restructured Menu
enhanced file browsing (in mgo_x)
New savegame format (may be incompatible to previous "slot"-saved games)
Logo in start screen (instead of greeting)

Soon: Touchscreen Support

2006-03-17T10:43:00.000+01:00

Matejcik sent a patch that (besides a *lot* of rewritten code) provides touchscreen support. It will be part of the next (unstable) release, which should be available within the next two or three days.

Much More Downloads

2006-03-16T10:29:00.000+01:00

Focussing on SourceForge's graphs, we forgot about the downloads at GetJar.com. Current numbers are: 3007 downloads in total, and 277 last week. This is more than the current March standing on SourceForge (193). But there seems to be no way to get any statistics from GetJar.

We probably have to grab the numbers from the GetJar site ourselves (like a weekly wget, or the like).

We Have a Logo

2006-03-15T19:15:00.000+01:00

Thanks to the help of Petra S. we now have an mgo logo, which can already be found in this blog's header.

New release 0.6.6, thanks to matejcik

2006-03-10T23:36:00.000+01:00

A warm welcome to matejcik, who joined the mgo developers a few days ago, and was *the* man behind release 0.6.6. He replaced the whole messy menu navigation with clean code and will not stop programming before touchscreen devices are supported :-)
And we hope, that we find another task for him, then.

The new release can be found on our project download site.

mgo Mentioned in OpenEZX-Wiki

2006-03-09T08:36:00.000+01:00

mgo seems to run on mobiles that are based on "Motorola's EZX phone platform, such as the A780, E680 and E680i Linux based GSM phones" (ref). Here's the link.

As soon as there is time to contact the authors of OpenEZX, I will find out what concrete devices they have used and finally start the "compatibility page" on the mgo website. It should be populated soon.

New releases: 0.6.5

2006-03-08T17:16:00.000+01:00

mgo 0.6.5 is stable
mgo_x 0.6.5 is unstable (no selection of the place, where the file is to be stored, yet)

mgo Mentioned in American Blog

2006-03-08T09:02:00.000+01:00

First Switzerland, now the USA: mgo's first steps into blogosphere.

LeisureGuy's "Later On"

The 0.6.5 is ready (but not yet released)

2006-03-08T08:29:00.000+01:00

We won't have time to release it officially before tonight, but the new mgo(stable) / mgo_x(unstable) release 0.6.5 is ready.

Changes:

Menu has basic scrolling abilities, so even small displays show all the entries.
A new screen "SysInfo" shows

the accessible dimensions of the mobile's display
whether the mobile does support file export and finally
how many lines of standard text fit into your display (which is rather irrelevant to anyone else than the developer).

The last move is marked with a small cross on the stone. If the stone is not big enough (on boards bigger than 11x11, usually) it is marked by a - very tiny - dot.

Nice entry in Swiss Go Blog

2006-03-07T12:50:00.000+01:00

VincentV mentiones mgo in his Go blog and gives a very positive description of its features. In the context of another entry there, one might even get the impression that mgo might serve as a means to making Switzerland "europe's no. 1 go nation" ;-)

Strange Key behaviour

2006-03-05T12:39:00.000+01:00

The otherwise wonderful new testing device has a strange "feature": Pressing the navigation key does not call the "FIRE" key action, which is typically used in selections.

Nokia 6230i has arrived

2006-03-04T11:54:00.000+01:00

Here are the Java related features:

MIDP 2.0
CLDC 1.1
FileConnection and PIM API (JSR-75)

Wireless Messaging API (JSR-120)
Mobile Media API (JSR-135)
Mobile 3D Graphics API (JSR-184)
JTWI (JSR-185)
Bluetooth API (JSR-82 No OBEX)

We obviously got more than "just" FileConnection.

So how could the mgo of 2010 look like?

Matches between two phones (surely interesting for clever go enthusiasts during boring lectures :-) using bluetooth?
A "battle-mgo" with enemy stones being killed or captured by animated 3D-stone-monsters in violent but gorgeously rendered action scenes?
An acoustic update giving you the illusion of sitting on a solitary mountain top with the only sounds being some remote bird's singing and a moderate breeze in the grass your sitting at, gently pleasing your ears.
Now simply focus your eyes towards the board (on the mobile) in front of you, and you will completely forget about bragging teens, drunken hooligans, depressingly odd talks or whatever situation makes you dream about happy solitude.

New mobilego.org email adresses

2006-03-02T18:50:00.000+01:00

We succeeded in getting real mobilego.org email adresses. So we changed the adresses for donations and for getting information. The latter is "contact at mobilego dot org", the former can be found via the links on the right navigation column.

JSR 75 mobile in reach

2006-03-02T18:47:00.000+01:00

We might get a Nokia 8230i, soon.

New Naming Paradigm

2006-03-02T18:32:00.000+01:00

As mgo_light does sound like a crippled version, and as there are only very few mobiles that will run the "full" version, we shall rename the programs.

"mgo_light" becomes the simple "mgo", as this is supposed to run on all mobiles.
"mgo_sf" or "mgo_sgf" or the like will be the name for mgo-plus-fileSystem operations
"mgo_bt" could be a future version that uses bluetooth as well.

You get the ides: users should try "mgo", which should work at once. Theyt hen have the chance to try "extended" or "additional" versions/features, which then may run or not, according to their mobile. But then, it is not "mgo", that is not working, it is the extended "mgo_sf".

Marked last stone & First patching experience

2006-02-22T18:29:00.000+01:00

Following an idea of Vadim v. B. (who is one of the very few nice people giving us usable feedback on mgo), the code of unstable and light now contains marking the last move with a cross.

The respective piece of code was first written in light, and then patched into the unstable-branch. We never did such a thing before, but it immediately worked.

Expensive mobile missing

2006-02-22T09:25:00.000+01:00

Well, we have succeeded in implementing the SGF export, but we don't have a real device that fulfills JSR 75. Just the emulator. So we cannot go sure that an unstable is really working. And we should, before declaring it as stable.

The cheapest device we found on the net was around 200 EUR. This is definitely too much. Especially with the donations currently summing up to zero.