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Interfaces (sometimes to go servers, sometimes to go AIs, sometimes both)

• Unix-native
  • quarry - GTP, GTK+ 2.0, also does othello and amazons, very nice looking screenshot, alpha stages Sun Jun 13 16:00:43 PDT 2004
  • ccgo - IGS client, sgf editor, gnugo interface. C++, GTK+
  • perlgo is (to become?) a raytraced two player interface
  • Goben GTP interface written with GTK+
  • Eamon Caddigan is working on a go client of some sort (not clear if it'll be for a server, or GTP or GMP at this point). It is expected to use FLTK and OpenGL. This (part of it?) is being done for a class project.
  • GLGo is an interface to gnugo that uses SDL and OpenGL.
  • glGo (another one) is written by the author of gGo. It's an IGS interface, and an interface to gnugo. It gives a very nice 3d view of the board, however unfortunately the 3d view does not appear to work with the version of Mesa that comes with Fedora Core 2. But, with the 2D view, this is a really powerful SGF editor, with what is probably the best tree view I've seen anywhere. Sadly, in version 1.0, it appears that cut and paste causes the application to lock up (FC2 again). Sun Jun 20 12:33:51 PDT 2004. See this also.
  • michael@utech.de is working on a gtk+ igs/nngs/clones client written in smalleiffel and using gtk+. It is named gobold. It looks like it's turning into a decent SGF editor at this point, except that it truncates long comments (in the display, not the file).
  • xgospel - a very powerful IGS (only) client.
  • cgoban 1.x. visually attractive interface to go servers like NNGS and IGS as well as a GMP interface for gnugo/baduki/perception - also an SGF editor. Also see below for information about 2.x
  • Here's Edgar Toernig's patch for cgoban 1.x
  • Here's the sourceforge project that has brought official maintenance back to cgoban 1.x.
  • vizigo - a fltk 2.x IGS/NNGS clone client. It tried it once, and it segfaulted when I exited the program - but as long as it waits until you're done, maybe it's ok :)
  • xgoban (interface to gnugo 1.2 and wally - SGF editor too)
  • gnoban - unreleased so far (5/29/1999). Check this out too.
  • tkgc and gcperl
  • qtigc-client (Beta now, GTK+ version "later", renamed to "qigc"?)
  • qigc
  • kgo
  • GtkGo
  • pggo - an SDL interface to GTP programs like gnugo, written in python with pygame. Here are some notes from "Informatique Roiffé" on how to get pggo to run on microsoft windows
  • xigc - might be the best client for languages that don't use the Roman alphabet (EG: English/German/Spanish use the Roman Alphabet, Chinese/Japanese/Korean normally don't)
  • igc
  • qGo is a "little SGF editor" based on Qt. Apparently the original author has abandoned qGo (except the unix-specific portions) to work on qGo for java (now ggo) instead. Someone else has picked up qGo maintenance, so if you liked qGo (the Qt version), you aren't stranded. From the author:
    qGo (http://sourceforge.net/projects/qgo) is a NNGS/IGS client written in C++/Qt, thus, available for Windows/Unix/Mac. There is a SGF editor too, which can handle even Kogo's joseki dictionary.
  • RubyGo is an IGS client and SGF reviewer written in Ruby. Ruby apparently uses TK for graphics, but the client has a more pleasing appearance than an average Tk app. In particular, the application uses a number of pretty images and backgrounds. The appearance is really very nice in version 8.1. It's actually a pretty advanced SGF editor, with features I've seen in no other SGF editor for unix/linux, but it doesn't seem to work well with Kogo's Joseki Dictionary. Anyway, it's become my main choice for reviewing commented pro games. It seems glitchy (maybe I just don't understand it?) in SGF editing mode though - it keeps popping into this mode where it plays moves automatically, and I'm finding it quite difficult to get it back into editing again.
  • Dingoui is a gtk+ 1.2 based GMP client. It works with gnugo
• Java
  • gogui - gtp, java, reportedly has a useful GTP-based "analyze" function useful for annotating in AI-suggested next-moves. This is probably really nice for newbies.
  • Zigc (Go server client)
  • ergo
  • JagoClient. I used to have serious color problems with jagoclient when I ran it on an 8 bit display, but now that I've switched to 24 bit and adjusted my resources a little bit, it's quite usable and quite nice for sgf files with deep variation trees.
  • cgoban 2.x - interface to its own server, KGS. Also an SGF editor. Unlike cgoban 1.x, it does not appear to include GMP support, so this one isn't useful as an interface to gnugo or baduki or perception...
  • ggo (formerly qgo for java) is a java version of qGo, that includes an IGS client, a GTP interface, and an sgf editor. It does well with Kogo's Joseki Dictionary! This has become my main SGF editor and IGS client, despite its beta status. Development seems to be progressing rapidly. As of 0.3, gGo is no longer open source because someone modified it to cheat on time. See also this.
  • gGo 0.2 (the last opensource version) might go back to sourceforge, but it isn't there at the time of this writing.
  • JGo
• Under emulators
  • WinIGC 1.00 (shareware) sort of runs with the 12-13-2000 version of wine, but doesn't appear to be fully functional.
  • PandaEgg 312a didn't work with the July 21, 2000 versions of wine or corel wine.

SGF editors

• cgoban 1.x
• cgoban 2.x
• xmgt
• mgt
• xgoban
• ggo (formerly qgo)
• GoWrite2 is a shareware java program for "viewing, editing and printing Go diagrams
• Recent versions of kombilo are able to edit SGF files now. This is the only SGF editor I've seen so far that can mirror a game about various axes.
• goVRec is intended for linux-based PDA's, but it works on a *ix desktop as well. It's a pure Xlib program, so it should port to about anything with an X server.

Printing SGF

• Many SGF editors have a print function
• sgf2print

Kifu paper

• 19x19
• 9x9, 13x13, 19x19 on sensei's

SGF replayers

• go4go - works with kogo's
• jigo
• PyGO (not sure it belongs in this category)
• pygoboard
• GoodShape
• problematic

Go AI opponents

• Unix-native
  • GNU go. (Betas here ). Formerly "liberty" and "freedom". GNU go 2.x is derived from, and improves upon, gnugo 1.2. Gnugo 1.2 was (mostly?) by Man Li, while 2.x is a collaborative effort. Gnu go is probably the strongest right now; I matched gnu go 2.3.23 and baduki 0.27 (level 7) against each other 5 times, and gnu go won by an average of 74.5 points. Meanwhile gnugo has continued to move forward while baduki development appears to have stopped.
  • Baduki is derived from, and improves upon xamigo. Some people consider baduki more convenient than gnugo, because it doesn't require cgoban to get a nice interface. The author has apparently taken down his web page about baduki, but I have a copy of the program here.
  • Vegos - in java. Uses simulated annealing.
  • Gozilla. Not yet released as of 7/8/1999. May be renamed due to a name conflict with a windows program. Done by Richard L Brown. Should be appearing on NNGS soon. A "Gozilla" account already exists. Update: it's here now.
  • Another gozilla. This one's by Tim Tyler and uses Genetic Programming.
  • perception.
  • goo Goo's terrible. I wrote it. It was an experiment in machine learning as applied to go - I wrote it when I was about 30k* IGS, hoping I could come up with a program stronger than I was, to teach me go. Lesson learned: coming up with a way of representing go knowledge is hard, and probably best undertaken by people with a better understanding of the game.
  • The Turtle. Currently there's only a palm version, but release of a linux version is intended. It's free now but is expected to become shareware later.
  • wallyplus is a C++ version of wally with GTP support
  • Andrew Balsa's version of amigo (xamigo?), amigoplus has GTP support.
  • Andrew Balsa's version of baduki, badukiplus has GTP support. This is derived from Artist's original work, noted above. Version 0.1.2 of badukiplus doesn't build with gcc version 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7) or gcc version 2.95.2 19991024 (release). To compile version 0.1.2 with these versions of gcc (and any c++ compiler, really), change MAX_PATTERN_SIZE to 37 - it is originally 36
  • Andrew Balsa's version of randy, randyplus has GTP support. This is a really simple GTP player of random legal moves. On redhat 8, you need to add -lpthread to the link line to get it to compile.
  • Of historical interest
    • wally
      • The original
      • Extended by Newman (IIRC, this version core dumped on me)
    • xamigo
      • The original
      • Ported to linux
• Web-accessible
  • testmyspeed
  • JaGo (requires java)
  • JavaGoliath demo (requires java)
  • Jogo (doesn't require java)
  • Play against Wally on the web (doesn't require java)
  • Gogol (doesn't require java, a little confusing if you don't speak French)
  • JavaGoliath didn't work for me with netscape 4.75; it gets stuck on the opening screen.
  • gogo (requires java)
• Under emulators
  • DOS
    • TurboGo (There's a shareware/DOS version. DR-OpenDOS 7.02 in DosEmu works)
    • ManyFaces (Commercial software. DOS version. DR-OpenDOS 7.02 in DosEmu works or dosbox works)
    • HandTalk (commercial software. DR-OpenDOS 7.02 in DosEmu works. dosbox works too)
  • Under Wine (a windows emulator - requires an x86 processor)
    • Go++ - rumor has it this program is 1) the strongest available (Tue Nov 11 08:20:03 PST 2003) and 2) runs on linux under wine. It costs $35. One person quoted on the program's website said it was between 6 kyu and 9 kyu.
    • augos - Seems to work fine under wine 12-13-2000, but it isn't terribly strong. Running it might be easier if you can read German a little bit
    • Igowin (the free 9x9 version of ManyFaces) works reasonably well. The woodgrain doesn't show up right, and fixing the case sensitivity problem doesn't help. The White stones show up funny until you resize the window; then they're fine. The tutorial doesn't appear to work.
    • TurboGo (the newer windows version) appears to run fine. Turbogo 4.01 still appears to think that a one-eyed group is alive. This is shareware.
    • Aya 4.37 worked quite well with the 2000-11-05 version of wine. It requires a lot of swap space though.
    • The free fungo demo works well with wine, only a few glitches; it's quite playable. The go problem collection is usable, but troublesome enough that I don't really consider them worth doing.
    • The free demo of Goliath which I downloaded Dec 30, 2000, did not work with the Dec 13, 2000 version of wine. It displayed the opening screen and got stuck
    • WinHonte (finally someone mailed me the link) works under wine (2002-11-23). It played a good game when I gave it 9 stones, but in an even game it played quite bizarrely.

Making ascii diagrams more presentable

• newstosgf takes an article on rec.games.go, pulls out the ascii diagrams, and spawns an SGF viewer to show you each one in turn. This isn't unix specific; it's written in python and should run on the majority of operating systems.
• Presentation of ascii Go diagrams

Problems

• Native
• Uligo (formerly "Shodan")
• gquiz. gquiz isn't really go-specific, but it was written with go in mind.
• cho2sgf. This is a program that can convert one of Kiseido's problem collections into sgf format, making it appropriate for use with a quizzing program like gquiz
• goproblems2gquiz - a program that copies problems from goproblems.com into a format suitable for use with gquiz.
• cho2sgf.py.
• XGod
• GoD (or Go-Driller) (this is a work in progress)
• goproblems.com - java based
• java
• gotools is an online L&D problem solver and L&D problem creator, which is promising to revolutionize my L&D study. If you were thinking "what if I'd gone there instead?", you can just plug your move into gotools and it'll come up with a reasonable answer. It's probably not as effective as asking a pro, but it's a lot cheaper. A standalone DOS version is available which should run in DOSEMU, and linux and windows versions are planned, with only the copy protection left to do. BTW, the online java version didn't work with the JRE that comes with netscape 7, but it works fine with the JRE in netscape 4.77 - the author of gotools is planning to talk with the author of the java interface about this. Fri Jan 3 09:17:17 PST 2003. here it is with the IP, since netscape 4.8 doesn't do DNS on redhat 8 with libraries suitable to the JRE included.
• Shape Applet
• Under emulators
• Tesuji Made Easy
  • This is a commercial product
  • Doesn't appear to work with July 21, 2000 versions of Wine or Corelwine.
  • Doesn't work with Jan 1, 2002 wine or codeweaver's wine either.
  • I finally knuckled under and installed this product on a W2000 box with MS Terminal Server, which I access from linux machines running rdesktop.
  • I still plan to try this with future versions of wine, including LindowsOS.
• An early version of Die or Live didn't work with the Oct 10, 2001 wine. However, a later version of the Die or Live demo did mostly work with the same version of wine. The display is a little glitchy, but it does appear to be usable. After doing about 20 L&D problems, I came across a problem where I'm pretty convinced I had a right answer that it thought was wrong.

  Note: The Oct 10, 2001 wine yielded a very hard to kill window. File/Exit didn't work, close didn't work, destroy didn't work. kill -9 did.

Studying Pro Games

• Of course, going over a game with an SGF viewer is always helpful.
• Another option is a program like Kentou.
• And there's Minigo Ichiban Shoubo, a java applet.
• Games against Pros: This program didn't work with the Jan 1, 2002 wine
• Kombilo can play guess the next move now

Summarizing a collection of games

• Jacoto
• sgfsummary.py

Graphing estimates of a game's score on each move

• sgfgraph

Server software

• NNGS' source code
• mlrate - a rating system
• gnugoclient - for putting a go AI up on an IGS-style go server
• kgsGtp - for putting a GTP interfaceable go AI up on KGS.

Screensaver

• Here's a nice goban-screensaver derived from cgoban 1.x.

Typesetting go

• sgf2tex
• sgf2mpost metapost takes this as input. The program's name is apparently mpost and comes with teTeX as well as the redhat version of TeX.
• asc2ppm a program to convert specially formatted ASCII go diagrams to graphic file format for web publishing or printing. Includes instructions for converting your diagram to a GIF, JPEG, or PNG file.

Searching game records for patterns

• kombilo - This is one of those programs I didn't realize I wanted very much, until I tried it.
• MasterGo reportedly doesn't work in wine
• Here is a comparison of kombilo and mastergo.
• GoGoD includes a lot of pro games suitable for feeding to kombilo. IIRC, there's also a DOS program included that might work under DOSEMU

Joseki info

• native
• www.joseki.com - requires a web browser with a flash plugin. netscape 7 does not work, even if you downloaded the version with a flash plugin :(. I'm in discussion with the webmaster hoping to get this working. Fri Jan 3 21:02:12 PST 2003
• Kogo's joseki dictionary is a really great resource.
• ggo (formerly qgo for java) appears to be the best I've seen for viewing Kogo's.
• Recent versions of qGo reportedly do well with Kogo's
• jagoclient works pretty well for browsing Kogo's joseki dictionary. Recommended. Navigating the variations is easy. I have two small complaints:
  1. The dictionary's idea of what "white 4" is, is quite different from jagoclient's notion.
  2. The + marks for the variations frequently make it hard to read the letters marking various vertices

  Note: apparently the author has made an effort to make jagoclient work better with kogo's joseki dictionary, probably in a version released shortly before Nov 10, 2001 (I can't find the version of the software in the online help). I haven't used this new version with Kogo's much yet, but as I gain more experience with it, I'll summarize my findings here.

• cgoban 2.4.1 brings it up slowly, and performs slowly once it's up. Also, using the variation tree is cumbersome in such a large, branching file
• cgoban 1.9.10 brings it up snappily, but it's still difficult to navigate the huge number of variations. The displayed tree of variations is really nice for a small or even medium-sized variation tree, but for a huge one like this, it seems to be a liability
• xmgt 2.31 is pretty good at navigating lots of variations, but it doesn't appear to be able to show letters, so you have to move forward and back a lot to see which variations are which.
• xgoban 1.0, primitive as it is, is not an unreasonable choice for navigating this large tree of variations. It's a little confusing, but it appears to have a design and features that work well for this purpose.
• mgt 2.31, the curses-based SGF editor, didn't display the first screen correctly in rxvt or xterm, so I gave up on it pretty quickly.
• RubyGo 8.1 is promising. It has the features needed. However, it seems to be a bit glitchy with Kogo's.
• soksoo is a sort of automatically-generated joseki resource, but it's targetted at helping one find answers to mistakes in a joseki.
• emulated
• gogameonline's "Joseki" software wouldn't run under the Nov 10, 2001 wine. The installation hangs. I'm not sure if this software is a series of problems, a dictionary, a tutor, or what.

CBT (Computer Based Training)

• Bruce Wilcox's Go Dojo: Contact Fights works well with the 2003-09-11 version of wine. Some of the more recent versions of wine did not compile on redhat 8. The scroll bars in the application are a little funny, but if you just pull up on one and don't mind that it doesn't move, you should be fine. The software, of course, is a bit like reading a book about contact fights, but it gives immediate feedback on how well you're assimilating the material through a variety of tests. Sun Nov 2 07:07:31 PST 2003

Format conversion

• sgf2misc converts a large number of go-related formats
• sgfconvert can convert from long format to new short format, and split or join sgf collections

go art

Related games - these are sometimes referred to as "simplified versions of go"

• Gomoku (Japanese)/oomoke (phonetic Korean)/wuziqi (Chinese, sounds like woo see chee)
• Gnomoku (gomoku)
• Networked Go-moku
• emacs gomoku. Just use meta-x gomoku. (Recent versions of emacs do not seem to include this anymore, but you can probably find it in an elisp archive)
• TicTacToe.app calls itself tic tac toe, but it's actually gomoku on a small board
• gomoku.app
• asforza4 - sounds like gomoku, but four in a row
• Pente ("Pente" is Greek for "five")
• Bill Shubert's Pente Program - This was the "gateway program" that got me hooked on go...
• Othello
• Gnothello
• pretty strong text-mode othello program by Bennett Todd
• rhino
• sirius
• quarry - plays go, othello and amazons
• Less traditional
• Motti
• xistrat
• quarry - plays go, othello and amazons
• freedgo - go on interesting surfaces

See something missing? Please let me know about it.