KGSueMe

    Keywords: Software, Online Go

KGSueMe is a KGS client development effort. According to its [ext] Home Project Page, the developers have one goal:

KGSueMe aims to provide a sample implementation of a client for the popular Kiseido Go Server. The project stresses documenting the [ext] protocol so others can write their own clients, rather than to provide a featurefull client.

The [ext] screenshots do show progress, but no release of the client has been made yet.

  • Author of KGSueMe?: The screenshots on the (now deserted as the projetc has moved) sourceforge page are rather old. I was using the client for over a year to watch games, without developing much, so they were quite accurate, still. Now the remaining parts of the protocol have been reverse-engineered to allow for playing games (see KGS-0.9 module on CPAN). The main goal is to documented the protocol, not to implement a client. The client exists just because I am too annoyed with the slow and buggy cgoban2 client. Making it easier for me to access KGS was the main motivation behind the project.

Caution to would-be users:

There's nothing I can really do to stop you from doing this, but again, if other KGS clients are written I will have to support them and I just don't have the time to do that, so I will not help you if you try to do this.

  • According to the KGSueMe [ext] documentation, Shubert is opposed to this effort. He has also asked at least one developer of another reverse-engineering effort not to proceed.
  • It has been said that KGSueMe causes harm to the server.

Author of KGSueMe?: The client did cause crashes to the server once, which is far less often then the official client caused crashes. As such, it is probably more harmful to use the official client, as kgsueme is used daily on kgs without any problems for some years now. Regarding the crashes, I reported every single bug I found in the server to WMS, and he was actually thankful for this, and fixed the bugs that caused server crashes. This did not keep him from adding some "encryption" to the protocol, though, but these are the rules of the game, and he certainly has more power. Contrary to some admins who publicly try to defame me, though, WMS played relatively fair. I just wish he wouldn't oppose people writing "better" (for them) clients so much as to expel normal users just to make all of our lives harder.

  • In some localities reverse-engineering CGoban2 may be illegal.

Author of KGSueMe?: this is true, but reverse-engineering of cgoban2 is (and was) not required to reverse-engineer the protocol. Although it should be fairly easy to do this with java.

So in conclusion, using a client such as KGSueMe to connect to KGS is probably not a good idea.

Author of KGSueMe?: well, it's not a client (per se), but there are also other programs for which there is no alternative, like a gtp-controller that allows you to open demo games to show realtime game analysis, so it's not client-centered. Anyways, if cgoban2 works for you, it's certainly not a good idea to switch to kgsueme, which will never come in a nice prepackaged box. For those people who are annoyed by the "suboptimal" behaviour of cgoban2 enough it might be interesting.

Remarks

Since some time (0ct.'10) the [ext] Terms of Service for KGS state, that

(certain behaviors that are absolutely not tolerated at KGS:) 
[ ... ]
Using modified or otherwise unauthorized clients

so you are risking to get your account banned, if you use your own client.

See also

CGoban-h


KGSueMe last edited by 92.230.250.145 on August 10, 2012 - 15:45
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