Pocket Go
A downloadable game
Take Go on the go with your Playdate.
Now featuring an alpha version AI opponent alongside traditional two-player mode
Now you can bring one of the world's oldest games with you wherever you go with your Playdate. Features a 9x9 board using territory scoring and adjustable komi (5.5, 6.5, and 7.5). Scoring happens automatically once both players pass in succession. Currently dead stones are not automatically removed, so make sure to play out the position until it is absolutely clear who controls which areas, as neither color will receive points for ambiguous empty space.
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Download
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Development log
- Adding a simple AI to Pocket GoJan 13, 2024
- Pocket GoFeb 01, 2023
Comments
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Because of the way the console encourages more passing the console to each other, it might be nice to have a way to show which stone the opponent placed on their most recent turn. Yes, the cursor is still in there, probably, but if you move it (and have ADHD), that information goes away.
Might be an interesting exercise to figure out how to allow for larger boards, 13x13 or 19x19, but still have decent UX on the playdate. I understand it being a bit much of a challenge for a small side project like this, tho, that's fair.
Cool little app, tho. Clean and simple. :3
Thanks for the feedback Albey! I can’t believe I haven’t already implemented an indicator for the previous move 😅
I can’t remember if I tested out larger boards very much during the initial development but I’ll see if it works and think about including that as an option.
Hope you’ve been enjoying it!
The main thing I expect to be an issue is just... so many button presses to get across a larger board. Which is tedious. Not sure how to solve. 🤔
You might want to mark game as having multiplayer (not just with tags), so it shows up in search - https://itch.io/games/free/local-multiplayer/tag-playdate.
Oh wow, I totally missed that as an option, thank you!
Thank you thank you thank you!
Have been waiting for someone to make this for a while now!
Glad you like it!
Any other features you’d like? I want to have a single player feature, maybe like a joseki practice mode, or if there’s enough interest in a paid version (which there clearly is some, thank you very much BTW 🥰), I could look into whether or not the Playdate could handle a 9x9 Go AI. Probably wouldn’t be very hard to beat though if it’s even possible to run something that actually makes non-random moves 😂
You could try to fake an AI, by have a precalculated "good move" list for scenarios. (Don't know how hard/feasible that would be)
Even on a 9x9 board there is a mind bogglingly large number of variations that a board can be in.
https://senseis.xmp.net/?NumberOfPossibleGoGames
Even if you tried to narrow that down by eliminating mirrored/rotated positions it would be far too large.
Literature on Go AIs is actually pretty sparse.
I could have it look for a couple of josekis though 🤔 All I’ve thought of is to find the group with the least liberties and surround it. It’d be a very, very simple bot to say the least 😂
Stumbled across Fuego and specifically the simple players, which all work based on one move analysis which meant it was feasible to implement on a Playdate, so that’s I did!
It’s very bad, but I kind of like crushing it after losing in an online game against a real human haha.
Amazing :D