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KGS Status
    Keywords: Online Go, Clubs & Places, Software

This page is where wms gives info on the status of the next KGS release. It's kind of a companion page to the KGS Wishlist; the wish list is where KGS users say what they would like me to do, this is where I say what I want me to do. For slightly more long term plans, see KGS Plans. As soon as a release is out, I'll cut out its status from here, but you can see past release status at [ext] the KGS change log.


2.5.8 is in BETA now. Please test!

To test the beta, log in to [ext] http://beta.igoweb.org/ and download a beta client. This client will connect to the beta server. You can run the applet, use the java web start client, download an executable - whatever, they will all connect to the beta server. Do not overwrite your normal client if you choose an installable version - you cannot connect to the normal server with the beta clients!

Once you have the beta client, log in and try it out! You will probably have to ask friends to join you, often the beta server is empty. Do anything you can think of there, but especially try to do as many of these as you can (this is where the code changed):

  • Browse around the web pages. They were changed pretty heavily. One problem that I know of is that the Konqueror and Safari browsers aren't centering some of my tables; this seems to be a bug in the browsers, but if anybody knows a workaround that validates as HTML 4.01/Strict, then let me know. Please report any other anomalies that you see.
  • Test audio lessons. There have been changes here to make it easier to tell if there should be audio - indicators for teacher & students when audio is present. The account "teacher" has been set up, password "teacher", that has audio access, so anybody can log in and use it. Just make sure nobody else is using it before you log in, or else they'll get booted when you try!
  • Lecture mode (this is phase 2 of ultra top secret project x). When a teacher presses the "quiet" button in their editing tools for a game, they will get two chat logs. Any comments from students will go to the "moderation" chat of the teacher, and will not be seen by other students. The teacher can click on a message, and press an "accept" button to get this comment put into the "normal" chat where everybody can see it. The idea is, a teacher can say, "any questions?", then choose which questions to show & answer and which ones to ignore. There is also a "pause" button, so that if there are a large number of students, the teacher can stop the chat from coming in; once all messages present have been answered, they can unpause if they want.
  • User picture mechanism had changed a bit. User pictures from the main server were not copied to the beta server, so you can try uploading a pic to make sure it accepts properly. (People who had pictures on the main server will see grey boxes, or no picture, could be either, until they upload a new pic & it is accepted).
  • Automated password recovery. Try clicking the link "Lost password" in the [ext] http://beta.igoweb.org/ page. This only works if your email address is correct in your account.
  • The web archives have changed. Games were not copied from the main server, but the database was, so you won't be able to download games you played on the main server, but any games you play on the beta server should be downloadable just fine. Please try it out.
  • Don't worry if your rank is a little different. Admins were testing the rank system, and changed around the anchors, so your rank may be higher or lower than on the main server.
  • There may be netlag on the beta server. It is running on a 256kbit connection to the internet, so if a lot of people are connected, you'll have lag problems. Then again, if that many people are connected, then it's the best beta test yet, so that's a good thing.
  • Lastly, read the changes listed below, try out any that I forgot to mention!

Thanks everybody! Hopefully in about a week this will be ready to go up on the main server.

Done for 2.5.8

  • Changed game archives to be 1 month per page rather than 20 per page
  • Added a "level meter" when you are a live audio teacher to show whether your audio is working properly. Added an indicator for listeners telling them whether or not an audio track is present and playing.
  • Fixed bug that would corrupt your messages if you got one from somebody who you had censored.
  • Added a "password reset" web page that will let you automatically change your account's password if you lost the old one. You must be able to read email from the account's email address for this to work. Still need to make a server side change to make this work perfoctly (passwords are currently cached on the server, and the web pages update the database, so I need to make the server re-fetch your password each time you log in, just in case it changed.)
  • When you choose "claim win" you now get an info window explaining that if there are network troubles for your opponent, you will not get the win.
  • Reworked many of the web pages to be valid XHTML/strict. Added a validation system so that I can automatically validate all the pages.
  • Fixed packet out counter for server stats window.
  • The "you have been disconnected" window will be in the window list.
  • Have split the server into two computers, one for actual go server, and one for web pages. Was pretty tricky since games will be stored on the master server and some on the web server (so the master server still needs a minimal web server running in it), and migrating them around must be done very carefully. One side effect is that now for the first time the SGF file you download will be the actual file used by the server to track the game; this means that some KGS-only SGF parameters will be present, "DE[]" (stones marked dead), "SB[]/SW[]" (score for black/white in this node), and "DS[]" (contains flags saying which of the players has pressed their "done" button at this point). Hopefully these won't interfere with other SGF programs, one of the problems with SGF is the small namespace for custom extensions. In the old (2.5.7 and earlier) servers this wasn't an issue because I would just strip out these parameters before writing the "downloadable" version of the SGF files.
    • I asked on the SGF mailing list about the use of these KGS-only properties, and the agreement was that making them look "different" from standard properties was more important than ensuring that the files can be read by out-of-spec SGF readers, so the properties will be "KGSDE[]", "KGSSB[]", "KGSSW[]", and "KGSDS[]". This is fine by the spec, but some older SGF readers (eg, my own CGoban 1) will choke on "long" property names. I'll try to put together a cgoban 1 patch, it sounds like most readers will have no problems though.
  • Improved dead connection detection. Should now cut log out users within 4 minutes if their connection dies. Used to take up to 30 minutes due to a mistake I made in my network code!
  • Fixed kgsGtp bug: When two engines play each other, they sometimes (often? always?) would not properly finish the game.
  • Fixed another kgsGtp bug: Was unable to properly resume games with free handicap where GTP engine was black.
    • Fwiffo: I've run into a problem with my robot and wanted to be sure it was this bug and not something new. When trying to resume a game with free handicap and the engine is black, the game engine doesn't necessarily place the handicap stones in the same place as before (making moves that come later in the playback illegal). Is that this bug, or something else?
    • wms: Sounds like it, but to be honest I don't really remember the details of the bug. I think best is to wait until 2.5.8 comes out then see.
    • sita: Yes, exactly this was the bug. I was the one who reported it.
  • Forfeited games will be downloadable.
  • Top secret project X phase 2 complete.
  • Fixed the server bug that crashed it on April 7. I hope.
  • Added URL detection to chat. Whenever a word starts with "http://" in room desrciption, room chat, or game chat, it will be underlined. Clicking the underlined text will open the URL in a web page. This will only work if you are running java web start or the applet version, not if you are running any other version of the client.
  • Fixed the bug that would yank scrollbars down each time new text appeared in a room or game. I think one or two people have complained about this one. :-)
  • Ultra blitz games (games with total per-player time of under about 7+1/2 minutes) will not be rated. See [ext] http://www.igoweb.org/~wms/minTime.html for the reason why. Basically, below that level the rank system cannot predict winners using the person's performance at slower games, so it implies that go skill is not being used (instead speed clicking skill is more important), so the game results do not belong in the rating system. The 7+1/2 minute to 15 minute "blitz" time does seem to correlate with slower games, so only ultra blitz will be forced non-rated.
  • Wrote a program that will read all the "internal use" SGF files and fix them to but standard SGF + KGS-specific properties. Before there were some cases where the internal SGF files would not fit the standard.
  • Fixed "editing tools won't always open" bug.
  • Fixed a bug: SGF files with "LB[xx: ]" (that is, " " as a label) would generate errors when they were read in.
  • Fixed a bug: SGF files with no "SZ[]" parameter are assumed to be 19x19 boards, but the client doesn't check in this case that the moves given actually fit onto a 19x19 board. The server does check, so your client dies if you try to upload such a game. In 2.5.8, it will properly check on the client for bad move locations.

Put off until a later release

  • Look into the bugs where the client thinks you left a game but the server thinks that you are still in it.


This is a copy of the living page "KGS Status" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.