Whow, that took a while but we managed to get the Go application in the AppStore.
We are currently setting up a repository for the sources and hope you all will help us improve the game. Please don’t forget to donate if you like this application, it has been very time consuming to develop this and donations are not coming in!
The current version will work for the 2.2.1 firmware.
We had many people asking us if the sources for iGo and iChess will be open. Time to answer this question to all of you.
Currently the Apple SDK license does not allow the release of the sources. We respect that and decided to build the Go and Chess applications -technically- not linked to the GNU sources. This has some disadvantages such as the timeout error you might get when playing at a very high level in iGo.
To answer the question, yes, as soon as Apple releases the 2.0 firmware and gives us the developer license we will publish the Go and Chess applications through the Apple store for free and make the applications fully open source. If you like to join into the development you are more than welcome.
We would sincerely like to thank everybody that donated; about one third of the development costs of the iPhone community software are payed now, more than we expected; it makes us believe community software development based on donations is possible. We will take the development of the new versions through the App Store for our account and we hope understand that it takes many hours to build the applications. We still trust you donate and if you really can’t afford it, don’t worry, others might donate for you. Please do not donate less than 50 euro cents as it will just cover the paypall costs. Do not mail us for a registration code for the applications as there is no registration you donate for.
OK, we did look into depth at the 1.1.3 and 1.1.4 firmware installations for all the iPhone applications. It seems the even though the applications are compatible, the problem is with the installer used on the iPhone.
We will work hard to bring the applications to the extend possible through the free Apple channel so you can use the official and secure Apple installer. Meantime, we will give out some solutions to get the applications running.
The installer installs the folder for the owner ‘root’. The user ‘mobile’ that the application is running under is not allowed to save files in this folder. To fix the saving problem for the Go game just issue the following line after you login your iPhone using ssh:
chown -R mobile /var/mobile/Media/iGoSGF
Replace iGoSGF with another name for the Chess application or even remove it. The -R option makes it perform recursively on all underlaying files and directories.
You can also use a tool like WinSCP if you are on windows and scare to type a line in a dark command line environment.
The chess, go and accelerometer log applications are updated to work fine with all firmware versions available.
All files are saved in the user directory. This directory depends on your firmware version and the jailbreak you used but should be /var/mobile or /var/root.
If you have problems please let us know. Great thanks to all that donated.
A little note after we get a lot of emails from people asking when the applications (and especially screenshot) will be 1.1.3. ready. At the moment there are two ways to update to 1.1.3., the DevTeam’s soft upgrade method and Nate’s patch. If you upgraded using Nate True’s excellent patch most applications should work fine but it breaks Nikita and makes all applications run as root (just as before). Those who upgraded using the (misnamed) Official 1.1.3. update experience many problems, this update breaks with a lot of the applications available and has an important security issue with the ssh password being unchangeable.
The current situation is that Nate’s patch is no longer available in the installer. We understand this decision as it is expected that the Apple SDK will not allow applications to run as root and it’s better to have everybody update in the same way but would have preferred to leave this decision to the user. However, we have just updated an iPhone to 1.1.3. (thanks Yosh) using the softupdate method to make the applications work and now experience the same problems as many of you mailed us. Hopefully we can soon release updates that work with all updated iPhones.
We are looking forward to deliver you the applications build with the official Apple SDK!
After the Go game we also updated the Chess game to make it compatible with the 1.1.3 firmware.
All references to the ‘root’ user are removed and a few new features are added:
The game history does not work after a game has been saved or loaded (that’s for the next version); however, it works after loading a PGN file.
Have fun, please give feedback in this thread.
Hi All, just placed the iGo 1.6 in the repository, all references to the ‘root’ user are removed, it should now work with all (jailbreaked) 1.1.3. upgrades.
Other applications are about to follow, please give us feedback!
We tested all applications under firmware 1.1.3 and did not encounter any problems. This means that the applications support the entire firmware range from 1.0.2 to 1.1.3!
If you do run into troubles please post here.
UPDATE: it depends on how you installed 1.1.3, it seems many have only the ‘mobile’ user and no longer ‘root’. We will quickly update the applications to reflect the changes, the Go and Chess games are iPhone firmware 1.1.3 ready.
Please report success/failure on the iPod Touch.
We had a lot of email from people claiming they have ‘fatty’ fingers and cannot play the 19 x 19 board. Many suggestions have been given to improve the placing of the pieces on the tiny board (thanks!). After experimenting we have chosen to implement the zoom/scroll function and a quick way to undo the last move (including the opponents move). Last but not least the game supports stepping through a loaded game.
About 2% of application is paid so please don’t forget to donate if you like the game!
