The Conquest of Go News & Patch Notes

Fixed an issue where under some circumstances the estimated territory markers were unintentionally hidden on the practice board when switching between the "Place Black" and "Place White" controls.
Fixed an issue with reviewing online matches and SGF files where if both players passed, but there were still additional moves left that were played, the game would show the match as completed after the first passing moves. The game now allows the additional moves to be played and scoring won't be shown instead until the last passing moves are played. These premature passes happen during online games where both players pass, but can't agree on the score, so they continue the game with additional moves before later ending the game again. The functionality already worked for playing matches, but now it also works as expected for reviewing matches.
Fixed an issue during campaign match reviews, where if the player loaded the completed automated review directly after completing the match, the automated review recommendations and controls were running into issues if the player had pressed the load previous file or load next file keys on the keyboard or controller.
Fixed an issue where if the player immediately goes into review mode after a match while the automated review is in progress, their manually added moves while they were reviewing were appearing in the list of moves first once the automated review was finished and the automated review's moves were added to the move tree.
The move analysis has a feature where if the player's next move isn't part the AI's suggestions after it reaches its maximum move visits value, it will manually add the player's move to the list and search it so that a direct comparison can be made. After a next move is displayed on screen, if the player then reached a point in the move tree where there isn't a next move or the player reloaded the file, the old "next move" was still being included in the new list of moves, which has now been fixed.
Fixed the Japanese translations of Snapback.

Fixed an issue where under some circumstances the estimated territory markers were unintentionally hidden on the practice board when switching between the "Place Black" and "Place White" controls.
Fixed an issue with reviewing online matches and SGF files where if both players passed, but there were still additional moves left that were played, the game would show the match as completed after the first passing moves. The game now allows the additional moves to be played and scoring won't be shown instead until the last passing moves are played. These premature passes happen during online games where both players pass, but can't agree on the score, so they continue the game with additional moves before later ending the game again. The functionality already worked for playing matches, but now it also works as expected for reviewing matches.
Fixed an issue during campaign match reviews, where if the player loaded the completed automated review directly after completing the match, the automated review recommendations and controls were running into issues if the player had pressed the load previous file or load next file keys on the keyboard or controller.
Fixed an issue where if the player immediately goes into review mode after a match while the automated review is in progress, their manually added moves while they were reviewing were appearing in the list of moves first once the automated review was finished and the automated review's moves were added to the move tree.
The move analysis has a feature where if the player's next move isn't part the AI's suggestions after it reaches its maximum move visits value, it will manually add the player's move to the list and search it so that a direct comparison can be made. After a next move is displayed on screen, if the player then reached a point in the move tree where there isn't a next move or the player reloaded the file, the old "next move" was still being included in the new list of moves, which has now been fixed.
Fixed the Japanese translations of Snapback.

Fixed incorrect komi values coming from the foxwq client. For SGF files that have an application item (AP[]) which contains fox, a process will convert the komi value to a standard komi value if it is incorrect. These SGF files contain komi values such as 375, 650, or 0, when they should be 7.5, 6.5, and 0.5. This will display the komi correctly within the game and also allow automated reviews to be completed on the SGF files, where a huge komi value of 375 or 650 would previously cause issues with the review.
Improved the Steam Workshop upload process.
- Files with extremely long names will now automatically have their name truncated. Windows has a hard limit of 260 characters for the entire path of a file, which includes both the folder path and file name. Previously, file names that were near the limit by only the name were causing issues when the files needed to be copied to different folder paths of varying lengths and also caused issues internally with Steam's workshop upload process for similar reasons.
- When files exist in a workshop upload folder that are not the correct file extension (e.g. SGF) a copy of all of the correct files are created in a temporary directory to be uploaded to Steam. This process will also now take place when files with long names are found. This process has also been improved to display the copy progress while the files are being copied and will no longer freeze the game until the copy process is completed when dealing with thousands of files.

Fixed an issue with the tree of moves displayed at the bottom left while reviewing a match, which would not display properly if the user then changed the UI Scale settings within the Graphics Settings after the tree initially loaded.
Fixed an issue with the online menu's profile page not reloading the player's active games list under some circumstances after navigating between several other tabs.
Improved several German translations.

Fixed an issue with the Online menu's games list which was running into issues displaying games after some recent changes were made to the Online Go Server (OGS).

Fixed the board shadow for the new realistic board theme which was not displaying properly on non-16:9 resolutions such as the Steam Deck.

New Features

Move Evaluation
- A new button has been added to the top right of the Go board screen for quick play matches and reviews which will turn on the move evaluation feature. This icon is a circle with an analysis line through it. You can hover over each button and a tooltip will be displayed to show their purpose.
- When using the move evaluation, as you play your moves, your last move will be highlighted and a color will be displayed over top (a gradient from red, to yellow, to green) giving a rating based on the estimated score loss of the move.
- This analysis takes the estimated score prior to your move, and then compares it to the estimated score after you and your opponent's moves are completed. This determines whether your move was successful based on the opponent's response.
- In the AI settings, you can also enable the option to display the score loss as text on the move as well, for more precise feedback. A large negative value means that it is estimated that your move was not the most optimal and you opponent responded in a way that took advantage of your mistake. A positive value means that is estimated that your opponent did not respond in an optimal way to your move.
- By default, the threshold of a mistake is set to a score loss of 4 points which will be displayed as red, 0 or positive is green. and the midpoint (2) is yellow. This threshold can be customized in the AI settings menu.
- The red, yellow, and green colors can also be customized within the custom board theme editor.
Candidate Moves
- A new button has been added to the top right of the Go board screen which will turn on the candidate moves feature. The icon is similar to the move analysis icon, but with multiple moves in the center of it.
- When clicked, this button will show the candidate moves the AI is evaluating for a given board position. This works similar to the existing Move Analysis feature, however detailed information such as move rank, visits, or opacity of the displayed move are hidden from view. All moves are displayed equally to make it not obvious which is the top ranked move according to the AI. Additionally, the move analysis filters out moves that haven't been searched enough, so for a position that has one obvious answer according to the AI, it will display one move on the board with high confidence, where the candidate move analysis will display multiple moves on the board, allowing the player to do the evaluation themselves.
- This feature is also added as a campaign ability which costs less than the find moves/move analysis feature.
- The default settings will display 8 possible candidate moves, however this can be customized from within the AI settings menu.
Guided Mode
- This new game option makes use of the two new features mentioned above to give a more guided experience while playing a match.
- As you play your moves, you're able to see the evaluation of your last move. If this move wasn't up to your satisfaction and an undo is used, the candidate move analysis will be turned on automatically to display some options of where you may want to play for a better outcome.
- After the first undo for a particular move, each subsequent undo will divide the amount of moves displayed in the candidate analysis by half, eventually displaying only one move (the AI's top recommendation) if the player uses enough undos. By default this will display 8 moves, then 4 moves, then 2 moves, and then 1 move after each undo.
- Guided mode can be started from the Quick Play menu.
- Guided mode can also be started in the campaign mode by clicking the Start Guided Match button, which costs resources based on the board size. The cost is similar to the cost of a decent strength level ally when using the Ally Match campaign feature. During a campaign guided match, using undos no longer costs resources.
Please note that while using any of the features mentioned above, the AI is performing analysis which will take additional system resources.
Realistic Board Theme
- Within Settings > Board Settings, a new board theme can be found labeled as "Realistic".
- This theme follows the traditional style and gives an appearance of slate and shell stones on a wooden board and wooden background.
- The shell stones have 3 distinct patterns and are also randomly rotated so that each placed stone looks different.
- Like the other themes, custom colors can also be applied to this new theme for further customization.
Campaign Tutorial Improvements
- The campaign tutorial now has the option to select a specific part of the tutorial to play through instead of only being able to play through the full tutorial.
- The tutorial is broken into four parts
  - Part 1: Battles and Resources
  - Part 2: Reviewing Battles
  - Part 3: Defending Regions
  - Part 4: Additional Features
- When completing a part of the tutorial, the player is prompted to choose whether they would like to continue to the next part of the tutorial or exit.
- The order of messages within the overall tutorial has had some minor changes to better fit into the above mentioned four parts.
The previous version replaced the sound effects of the non-fantasy board themes (Traditional, Simple, Toon, Realistic) with newer more realistic sounds. A new option has been added to revert back to the old sound effects, for those that prefer that sound. You can find this in Settings > Audio Settings > Legacy Sound Effects.
For matches or reviews which are able to make use of the AI features found in the list of buttons at the top right of the screen, a loading icon will now be displayed while the AI is loading before finally showing the AI feature buttons when they are able to be used.

Updates

The starting resources value for each difficulty preset has been increased when creating a new campaign. There have been several features implemented that use resources since this value was initially set. This will help having resources available early on before a steady stream of empire resources starts to flow in. The new values are Beginner (2,500), Novice (2,000), Intermediate (1,500), Expert (1,000), Master (800), Professional (500). This value can of course be customized as well, which now has a max value of 10,000. Players wanting to go beyond this should use the Infinite setting for resource availability so that they can freely use resources. Existing campaigns will retain their existing resource values.
The starting resources value when creating a new campaign is now plainly written as the full value that will be granted for each resource. For instance, it will be displayed as "1000" instead of "10 x" as it was before.
The cost of the undo ability during campaign matches has been slightly lowered.
Matches that are in progress and are resumed from the quick play menu will now allow the player to undo moves that occurred in the prior play session, instead of only allowing to undo the new moves that were played in the new session.
When creating a new color theme and selecting a board theme type from the drop down list of the editor, a new default background color will be used that is unique to each board theme type that has a background (Traditional, Realistic, Toon, and Simple). Once the background color is customized, the new custom color will remain regardless of which board theme type is used.
The campaign tutorial has been updated to also mention the new guided mode.
During a review when guessing which move is the top AI recommendation, a success sound effect will now be played when the player selects the top move for the first time.
The description field displayed on the Learning Center's workshop items and SGF files has been modified to remove any empty lines to fit additional text on each grid item.
The workshop item upload process has been improved to take less time for very large folders, as long as all files are of the correct file extension.

Fixes

Fixed an issue where it was possible to have move recommendations from an automated review unintentionally appear during a tutorial.
Fixed an issue where if the player had enabled puzzle solve tracking features such as puzzle attempts or puzzle timing, it was possible to get stuck during the campaign tutorial if the puzzle attempts or timer had elapsed.
Fixed an issue on the practice board where the alternating stone color was not correct in some cases when undoing a setup node (black and white stones added directly to the board) that had no played move.

New Features

Campaign Ally Selection
- Players can now select between KataGo Human, GNUGo, and KataGo as their ally while playing campaign ally matches (matches where the player and an AI ally alternate turns on the same team). Previously, this ally was always KataGo.
- Choosing the level or rank of the ally affects how much the ally costs in resources, with the lower ranks, or lower AI strength costing less than those that play at a high level.
- The resource costs of a campaign ally have also changed because they now take into account the size of the region/board in the cost calculation. The larger the board, the more moves that will be required from the ally, and therefore the larger the cost. The 19x19 costs are a bit above the previous cost, but the smaller boards cost less than the previous cost.
- For allies that take a longer time to initially load and be setup (e.g. KataGo Human), if it becomes the ally's turn while it is still loading, a loading indicator will be displayed over the player panel and the timer will be paused until the ally can begin searching for their move.
New Import and Export Options
- Custom Board Themes
  - Within the Settings > Board Settings menu, you will now see new options for exporting and importing custom colors from the file system.
  - Selecting import allows the user to select a theme file to be imported.
  - Selecting export allows the user to select a folder where the theme file will be exported.
  - This allows players to share themes with each other by sending files or sharing files on other platforms such as Nexus Mods.
- Campaign Stories
  - In the campaign stories menu, there are now options to import and export stories.
  - At the main stories menu, an import button which allows the user to select a folder of a story to be imported.
  - While editing a story, there is now an export button which allows the user to select a folder where the story will be exported.
  - This allows players to share stories with each other by sending files or sharing files on other platforms such as Nexus Mods.
Campaign Resource Availability Changes
- The resource availability option when creating a campaign affects the level of resources that are gained throughout the campaign such as those gained from winning matches, solving puzzles, and empire resources.
- A new option has been added for unlimited resources, allowing the player to freely use the features that cost resources in an ordinary campaign.
- The existing option of "None" has also had some slight changes.
- When a resource availability of Unlimited is selected, the following UI changes are present:
  - Total resources at the top left of the campaign map are hidden.
  - Resource types listed in the Battle Summary panel of each region are hidden.
  - The market button at the top right to access the market to trade resources is hidden.
  - The Ally Match button is available and any ally can be freely selected.
  - The abilities panel while playing a match is available and abilities can be freely used.
  - Legend records for each region are automatically unlocked after the player conquers a region.
- When a resource availability of None is selected, the following UI changes are present:
  - Total resources at the top left of the campaign map are hidden.
  - Resources types listed in the Battle Summary panel of each region are hidden.
  - The market button at the top right to access the market to trade resources is hidden.
  - The Ally Match button is hidden.
  - The abilities panel while playing a match is hidden.
  - Legend records for each region are automatically unlocked after the player conquers a region.
- To ensure functionality remains present in existing campaigns with a resource availability of None, this update has a small distinction between campaigns that were created before this update and campaigns that were created afterwards. Existing campaigns with None for resource availability will be able to use the Ally Match feature as before, but new campaigns will restrict this feature as mentioned above. Since the new Unlimited option is available, those wishing to freely use the Ally Match feature should instead use Unlimited for their new campaigns.
Campaign Abilities Loading Icons
- New loading icons have been added to the find move, find variations, and territory abilities in the campaign.
- The loading icons will initially be displayed when the match first loads and the analysis AI is being loaded and setup behind the scenes. Once the analysis AI is fully setup and ready to be used, the loading icons will be hidden and the corresponding ability buttons will be enabled if it is the player's turn.
- The loading icon will also be displayed when an ability has been used and the AI analysis is underway. Once the initial analysis has been obtained, allowing move suggestions or territory to be displayed on the board, the loading icon will then be hidden.

Updates

The sound effects for the traditional, traditional dark, toon, and simple board themes have been updated to have a more realistic sound.
When using the file browser to import, export, or save files, each drive of the computer will now be listed to the left for quick access.
Improved the "Loading" message for AI opponents during the start of the match to be more accurate for AIs that have started but are still undergoing setup steps before being fully ready to search for a move.
The stone sound effects (stone placement, capture, and atari) when moving forward and backward through moves now have a reduced volume. For example, the moves that play out when loading a match that is in progress, or the stones that are quickly placed or removed by using the scroll wheel when reviewing a match. Stones that are placed on the board while clicking or those that are automatically played in response will play at normal volume. This functionality already existed to some degree, but was not as consistent in which areas had reduced volume. This volume is controllable through the Settings > Playback Settings > Reduced Stone Volume setting. The default value of this setting has been raised slightly, which will be in place for new players and players that have not modified this setting from its old default value. Players that have modified the value previously will keep their modified value.

Fixes

Fixed an issue with resource icons being generated after campaign matches.
Fixed an issue with superko detection while using Chinese rules, for the case of sending two and returning one specifically after a capture.
Fixed an issue when creating a new campaign or quick match with the novice difficulty value (KataGo-Human opponent), where changing the AI strength parameters was not correctly changing the difficulty value from novice to custom.

Fixed the imported content section asking the player to select a review type when clicking on a non-match record content item. Clicking an imported puzzle for example will now load the content straight away.
Updated the credits section with up to date links.

After a long journey, The Conquest of Go has finally exited Early Access and has reached the full release 1.0 version. Thanks for the support along the way! The game is at a point where I believe it fulfills a complete and stable game experience where Early Access is no longer necessary. To clarify, this doesn't mean that the game will never receive future updates, but rather, future updates will likely be less drastic and game changing than the major ones that occurred during Early Access.

Throughout Early Access there were a total of 33 major content updates and 48 patches. A full list of all changes can be found here. For those who haven't checked out the game since it first came out, in addition to general UI, usability, and stability improvements, here's a quick summary of some of the major changes that have occurred since then.

Expanded AI Opponents

The Casual AI was added to provide a more beginner friendly opponent and rely less on handicap stones for new players.
The KataGo Human opponent was added to give players an opponent that delivers a wide variety of skill levels/ranks and also behaves more closely to human-like play than the super-human level of the standard KataGo opponent.

Expanded Campaign

The ability to play campaign matches against players on the Online Go Server (OGS) was added. This includes both human opponents as well as the dozens of online AI that can be found on OGS.
The ability to create, share, and download custom stories to be played in the campaign mode was implemented. These stories include characters, dialogue, and battles all of which can be created in the in-game story editor. These stories can be downloaded from Steam Workshop.
Campaign fortification puzzles were implemented, which are life and death problems that periodically need to be solved for your conquered regions to keep them fortified. Additionally, puzzle options were added to optionally limit the number attempts at a puzzle and limit the time spent on a puzzle.
A full campaign tutorial was added to demonstrate the features and workflow of the campaign mode.
Campaign ally matches were created which allow you to team up with the AI and alternate turns against another AI opponent.
Collectable legendary records were added to the campaign mode, which are a curated set of match records from notable players in Go's history, ranging from the 1600's to present day. The match records primarily feature important events in the player's careers such as international tournament wins.
The option to convert a handicap advantage into reverse komi was added to give an alternate way to even the strength disparity between the player and the opponent AI.
New campaign invasions were added, which are matches that start from predetermined board positions when opposing nations invade your conquered regions.
Many new options which can be changed during the campaign mode are available to alter timing, difficulty, and review settings.

Customization

Steam Workshop support was added to the game to allow players to create, share, and download Go puzzles, matches, tutorials, and joseki. Thousands of additional Go puzzles are currently available through the Steam Workshop.
An imported content system was added to the game to import the same types of content mentioned above, which can be obtained anywhere, instead of only from the Steam Workshop.
A custom theme editor was added which allows the UI, boards, stones, and backgrounds to be set to preferred colors. These themes can be shared and downloaded from the Steam Workshop. Additionally, base themes of Toon and Simple styles were added to the game to increase the variety of themes which can be used and customized.

General Improvements

The macOS version of the game was released.
Controller support and Steam Deck support were added, including attaining the Steam Deck verified badge.
Localization of the game was completed for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Russian, and Spanish.
Opening guides were added to allow the player to explore viable moves and variations that take place at the start of the game.
The practice board was added to the game to allow players to freely place stones, setup board positions, and use AI analysis to evaluate moves.
The game review workflow was improved and numerous new AI and AI review options were added. The review system was also expanded to allow automated reviews to be able to be used on any match in the game as well as imported matches.
The game has been kept up to date to align with changes on occurring periodically on the Online Go Server (OGS) (e.g. rank recalibration, auto match redesign, etc.).
Difficulty presets were added which range from being a complete beginner to a professional level.
Steam trading cards and points shop items were added.

Fixed an issue with loading the list of players for an online ladder if a player's challenge is missing a valid game ID.
Fixed an issue where doing fortification puzzles in the campaign and then accessing the stories, stats, or campaign settings menus, would result in the scroll input still interacting with the puzzle behind the menu.
Fixed the hover tooltip for glossary term "connected" when appearing during tutorials.

Implemented new undo move functionality
- Previously, players in online matches could only request to undo their move while it was the opponent's turn. Now, players can request an undo while it is their turn, which will undo the opponent's last move as well as the player's last move. This was changed on OGS on 10/22 and now is also implemented within The Conquest of Go.
- When hovering over the undo button, the stones on the board that will be undone are now also highlighted. This new highlighting applies to both online and offline games.
- For online games, when the opponent requests an undo, hovering over the panel to accept or reject the request will also highlight the stones on the board that are being requested to be undone.
- Enabled undo button for online matches that are played during the campaign mode.
Improved compatibility of exported SGF files from The Conquest of Go for external SGF editors.
Fixed an issue with the UI while reviewing a completed online match, which wasn't displaying the match result panel properly.

Campaign fortification puzzles will now use the theme that is selected under Settings > Board Settings > Campaign Theme, similar to how this selected theme is used when playing Go matches during the campaign. The default value is "Automatic" which will use the corresponding forest, snow, farm, or desert theme based on the selected region, which is the same as how it worked before. If you instead select for instance the toon theme for the campaign theme, the campaign puzzles will now also use that selected theme. Additionally, if custom colors are selected for a specific campaign theme, those colors will also be used for the fortification puzzles.
Previously if a certain order of interactions with the battle summary panel took place, it was possible for the buttons at the bottom of the panel to get out of sync with what should be displayed until a different region of the map was selected. This has been fixed and the proper buttons should always be displayed based on what has been selected in the battle summary, such as an in progress match, previous match record, legend record, or puzzle.
Fixed a bug which was causing the online challenge waiting screen to persist when closing the online menu and starting to create a new online challenge against an opponent.
Updated the game engine for improved security.

Enabled the ability to start automated AI reviews for imported matches within the Learning Center's Imported Content section.

Fixed an issue that was causing the game to freeze on the loading screen when returning to the main menu from an unsaved quick play match that was reviewed.

Fixed an issue which was causing problems with the player clock when undoing moves under some circumstances.

Fixed an issue where playing a campaign ally match against the new KataGo-Human opponent could lead to the AIs getting out of sync and produce bad and/or illegal moves.
Fixed an issue where the Loading message above the AI player card was being removed too early under some circumstances for the KataGo-Human opponent.

New Features

New AI - KataGo Human
- There is now a new AI in the game, KataGo-Human, which was trained on human games and should provide an opponent that has more human-like characteristics than the super-human level of play provided by the ordinary KataGo opponent. KataGo is doing the heavy lifting here, so many thanks to lightvector and his continued support of the Go community.
- When using the human trained KataGo, you can select which era of Go the AI will play as. This includes the eras before and after AlphaGo Zero had an impact on human play and strategies.
  - If selecting the modern AI or pre-AI eras, a rank selection is provided to select which rank (20 Kyu - 9 Dan) the AI will play similar to.
  - If selecting to play against the historical pros era, a year selection is provided to select which year (1800-2023) the AI will play as, which is modeled after professional/master level players from that time.
- Players can also choose whether or not to use the “Refined Move Selection” mode when using the KataGo Human opponent. When selected, additional processing will be performed during the move selection process which may provide a more realistic opponent, but may also make the opponent take longer to respond. For those that are familiar with KataGo’s human model setup, when this checkbox is checked, both a human and non-human model will be used with additional parameters to control which moves will be played. When it is not checked, only the human model will be used.
- This new AI is available in both quick play and the campaign mode.
New Puzzle Settings
- In the settings menu, there is a new tab labeled "Puzzle" which is used to control several new settings listed below.
  - Load Next Puzzle - How the next puzzle will be loaded after being completed.
    - Manual - The default value, and how things previously worked, which is you click the button to load the next puzzle.
    - Auto - After completing a puzzle, the next puzzle is loaded automatically after the specified delay in seconds has elapsed.
  - Allow Hints - Controls whether the "Show Correct Move" button will be displayed if available.
  - Attempts Limit - How many tries you get to solve a puzzle. An attempt is used when the player reaches an incorrect ending in the puzzle's move tree, when the player enters a move that isn't part of the puzzle, or if the player undoes moves and begins to play moves down a different path through the tree. By default there is no attempt limit, but a value of 1 to 20 can be specified.
  - Time Limit - How long the player has to solve the puzzle. By default there is no limit, but a time limit of 5 seconds to 20 minutes can be specified.
  - Learning Center - Settings that are specific to the learning center's workshop puzzles or imported puzzles.
    - Randomize Order - After loading a puzzle, clicking the load next puzzle button will load a random puzzle from the list instead of by sequential order.
    - Randomize Color - The puzzle's stone colors will be swapped or left as-is on a random frequency.
    - Randomize Orientation - The puzzle's layout will be randomized by flipping horizontally, vertically, and/or diagonally.
New Puzzle Session Stats
- When solving puzzles in the campaign fortification process, workshop, or imported content, stats about how many puzzles have been solved or unsolved for that session will be displayed.
- Expanding the solved or unsolved header will display a list of each previous puzzle, allowing the user to click them to return to the particular puzzle.
AI Analysis on the Practice Board
- AI analysis (find moves, territory, score and win rate graphs) is now available when using the practice board, similar to how it is available when reviewing a normal match.
- This was previously not enabled because the practice board allows for things that are not allowed during a real match, such as placing multiple stones of the same color, changing the color of stones, deleting stones, etc. that are usually used to setup board positions on the practice board. During these instances, the AI will be asked for analysis based on the board state itself rather than the sequence of moves to get there. When using the alternating stone mode, the analysis will still however be requested based on the sequence of moves. All of that being said, there may be some rare occurrences of differences in AI analysis such as super ko evaluation when mid-match setup nodes are being used to add or remove multiple stones at once, since a full move history is unavailable.
Learning Center Imported Content
- The Learning Center now has a new menu item for imported content, which allows you to select folders of content on your computer to be imported into the game, such as puzzles, matches, etc. similar to the workshop content. The difference is that instead of downloading from the workshop, the files are instead loaded from a folder on your PC.
- The content within this section will also be similarly tracked for completion, allowing you to for instance see which puzzles you've already solved. Once progress has been tracked for an imported item, the ability to reset the progress is also available.
Recent Matches Tracking
- Matches played from the Quick Play menu will now be stored automatically into a new section of the menu called Recent Matches.
- By default, this will store the past 20 matches and will remove the oldest match to make space for a new one once the 20 match limit is reached.
- For matches that you want to be saved long term, players can open the recent match for review and click the Save Match button at the top right to save it to the Saved Matches folder.
- There is a new setting in the Playback Settings menu called Save Recent Matches which will control the number of matches that will be included in the Recent Matches folder. This can be switched to 0 to not save any recent matches or set to a maximum of 100. For those worried about disk space, the match files are very small, and a total of 100 matches will likely equate less than half a megabyte of space.
- Both matches that are finished and matches that are in progress will be automatically saved to the Recent Matches folder when leaving the Go board screen or exiting the game. Because of this, the prompt for an unsaved match that used to be displayed has been removed if the Recent Matches feature is enabled.
- Similar to other matches saved, these recent matches are also included in Steam Cloud so they can be accessed from multiple PCs.
Selectable Neural Network Size
- Within AI Settings, there is a new field for Neural Network which controls the size of the network that will be used by the analysis AI and KataGo opponent.
- The larger networks are stronger but also slower, so users can now decide which works best for their hardware, strength, and speed requirements. In general, choose a network that is as large as possible while still maintaining a reasonable speed when reviewing and providing analysis. Most users should stick to large if using a GPU Analysis AI (OpenCL) or use medium for a CPU enabled AI (Eigen or Eigen AVX2).
- Existing networks have been updated and two new networks have been added.
- Users can also select Custom, which will allow the user to import a different network file. Many network files for KataGo can be found here.
- For users using the OpenCL analysis AI, the tuning process will need to run again for the updated KataGo and network. This can take several minutes, but once completed it won't need to be retuned when launching the game again.
There is a new option for KataGo Version found in the AI Settings called KataGo Custom. This is for advanced users that want to import a custom version of KataGo which will be used for analysis, reviews, and the KataGo and KataGo-Human opponents. For example, users with modern NVIDIA GPUs that have installed and configured TensorRT on their machine could import the TensortRT build of KataGo which has the potential of better performance if the PC can support it.
When reviewing an automated review for moves that can be improved, once the moves have either been found, or the Show Correct Move button has been used, the markers on the board that show each next move in the tree will now include the move rank (1, 2, 3, etc.) from the AI review. This allows users to quickly view the rank of each move on the board and also differentiate between the moves that were included in the automated review and moves that were manually added afterwards.
A new tuning progress user interface element has been added which will be displayed for users using the OpenCL version of KataGo while KataGo is tuning its configuration to meet your PC's specifications. Previously a message was displayed for this when it started and ended, but no progress information was available between then. Due to the KataGo updates and network file updates mentioned in the above new features, this tuning process will run for the initial launch after this update is downloaded. Once completed, the tuning process will not need to be run again.
A new "Loading..." message has been added above the AI player card while the AI is being loaded for a match. Some AI opponents will load almost instantly and won't see this message, but for others like the casual AI or the new KataGo human AI, this message will be present until setup has been completed and the AI is able to start searching for moves. Additionally, the player clock won't start counting down for the AI until it has been fully loaded and it is ready to search for moves.

Updates

The underlying engine that The Conquest of Go is built on has been upgraded to a later version to resolve some engine-level issues. This has the chance of affecting anything within the game, so if there are any bugs that have arisen, please don't hesitate to report them here.
The difficulty presets for quick play matches and creating campaigns have been reconfigured. The casual difficulty setting has replaced the old beginner preset, and the novice preset has been changed to use the new KataGo-Human opponent. This means that the old presets that used GNUGo with handicap stones have been eliminated, but the intermediate difficulty with the GNUGo opponent still remains. This gives a more straight forward difficulty level progression without the need for handicap stones. Of course players can still achieve the settings of the old presets by adjusting the settings and creating their own custom difficulty level, if desired.
After a quick play match and choosing rematch, if the match settings remain the same, the game will no longer need to go through a loading screen to start the next match.
As a result of the improvements made to the AI being available on the practice board, the AI analysis when reviewing normal matches/SGF files is also now improved as it is now able to handle SGF setup nodes (adding multiple stones or removing stones) that occur mid-match, which could possibly be included in SGF files that have been imported.
Offline quick play and campaign matches can now specify that there is no time limit for a match by dragging the Main Time slider all the way to the right, which will set the time to "No Limit". The previous method of dragging the Main Time and Byoyomi Time all the way to the left to specify No Limit still exists, but some users found this difficult to discover. The new method is closer to the thought process of "infinite time" rather than the old method which is the thought process of "no time limit".
When doing fortification puzzles during the campaign, the Battle Summary panel will now take up less space, allowing additional space to be given to the panel showing puzzle information.
In the Saved Matches section, in addition to being able to delete files, you can now also delete folders.
Within the Settings menu, the names of each tab no longer include the word "Settings", which previously was redundant and took up more space.
During the campaign tutorial, the "Next" button in the Go scene that is used to progress the tutorial now has an animation when ready to be clicked to better help players know what to click next during the tutorial.
Running background AIs on macOS silicon to use silicon versions if possible before using Intel versions has been improved.
The default KataGo AI has been changed from KataGo Eigen to KataGo Eigen AVX2 for better performance. The AVX2 instruction set should be available in most CPUs that were created in the past 10 years. For older CPUs that do not support this, the game should fallback to the original KataGo Eigen which has wider support. As mentioned before, if you have a GPU, the KataGo OpenCL version will likely give you much better performance, so feel free to try that by going to Settings > AI Settings > KataGo Version.
The text for the Analysis AI setting found in Settings > AI Settings has been changed to "KataGo Version" as this setting not only applies to the analysis functionality, but to KataGo usage as a whole (opponents, analysis, review).

Fixes

Fixed an issue where automated reviews were able to be started on SGF files and quick play matches even if the match didn't contain any moves.
Fixed an issue with the move rank/order in automated reviews, where it was occasionally skipping numbers in the rank field.
Fixed an issue on macOS where the mouse cursor button detection was not reliable when playing in windowed mode.
Fixed tracking puzzle completion for workshop items on macOS.
Fixed the game periodically hanging on the loading screen for macOS silicon users until refocusing the window.
Removed additional "Correct" text from Steam Workshop puzzle solutions when the localized "Correct" text has already been displayed.

Fixed an issue with the general workshop content area found in the Learning Center (puzzles, matches, etc.), where the folders for the new custom colors workshop items were also unintentionally being displayed.

New Features

Custom Color Themes
- In the Settings > Board Settings menu, there is now a new entry for custom colors. Clicking the add button will open the interface allowing you to specify the different colors you'd like to be included with your color theme.
- The following items are able to be controlled with custom colors
  - Black Stone - The main stone color, the highlight color, the border color, and the last played move marker color. Each of these sub items can have a separate color specified. The same goes for each of the items listed below.
  - White Stone - The main stone color, the highlight color, the border color, and the last played move marker color.
  - Board - The color of the Go board.
  - Background - The color of the image behind the board.
  - Board Markup - The color of the grid lines, star points, coordinates, move highlights, and AI suggestions.
  - UI - The colors used for the UI backgrounds, middle ground, and foreground elements.
- These color themes can be uploaded to the Steam Workshop to share with other players. Players can find these by clicking the manage subscriptions button in the board settings menu. When uploading to the Steam Workshop, the board preview image will automatically be uploaded.
- You can browse the color themes in the workshop here. Five themes have been uploaded to demonstrate this new feature.
- Once you've created a color theme or have subscribed to a color theme from the Steam Workshop, these themes can be applied to any of the board themes in the game.
- Similar to how a board theme can be specified for normal matches, campaign matches, and the main menu, a color theme can also be selected individually for each of these in the board settings menu.
- Once a couple of color themes are in your game, you can also select Random as a color setting, which will switch to a new random color theme from your color theme list each time the theme is loaded. You can randomize this even further by selecting Random as the board theme, to receive a random board theme and color theme each time for even more variety.
- For the Campaign Theme setting, a new option of "Use Nation Colors" can be checked which will apply the color from each nation in the campaign mode to the stones while playing and reviewing matches during the campaign.
- With a color theme selected in the board settings menu, it will display the primary colors of the theme next to it. You can click the preview icon for a full view of what the board and UI will look like.
- A copy button is available to copy the colors of a theme to a new theme to allow easy color modifications.
A new board theme has been added, called Simple, which has a flat look without shading.
While switching between screens in the game, a new loading screen will be displayed with a Go term, description, and board representation. This has replaced the old static loading screen.

Updates

There are now some minor cosmetic differences in the default UI compared to previous versions in order to accommodate for the ability to have custom color themes.
While solving puzzles, the message that tells the user the change in fortification level and resources gained is now displayed in the left text panel instead of a popup message to avoid unnecessarily covering the board. This change applies both to solving standard campaign puzzles as well as story puzzles in the Go screen.

Fixes

Fixed an issue of the top pop up message not turning translucent when overlapping a portion of the board when not using a non-default UI scale in the graphics settings.
Fixed an issue with the glossary making the board representation of the glossary term far too small when the glossary term description was verbose and a large UI scale was used.
Fixed the display of match details for SGF files (black, white, event, ruleset, etc.) to display more properly in different UI scales when the fields are populated with more data than expected.
Fixed an issue in the campaign scene while solving puzzles where keyboard shortcuts and scroll input were still being accepted while in the pause menu.
Fixed an issue with the color picker used for selecting nation colors in the board settings menu, where the hue slider wouldn't respond until clicked a second time after selecting a color.
Fixed an issue with the sign out button of the online menu leaving the tooltip active after the sign out button is clicked.
Fixed an issue with the last byoyomi period sound effect which was being played unnecessarily at the start of the match for games that only use one byoyomi period.
Fixed an issue where it was possible to have duplicate stone remains displayed when viewing the result of a match on the campaign map.

Fixed an issue with Steam Workshop puzzles that contain non-standard solution information and end in a move that is the opposite stone color of the player's stones. These instances will now function properly for detecting the solution, displaying the correct solution when clicking "Show Correct Move", and marking the workshop item as completed.
Fixed an issue with the Story Editor's stone selector (move dialogue, scripted battle custom endings) which wasn't preserving some of the behind the scenes data while editing the selected move, not selecting a different move, clicking accept, and save.

Fixed an issue with marking the progress of Steam Workshop puzzles when there is no standard solution information contained within the puzzle's .SGF file.
Added a conversion process for Steam Workshop puzzles that are using the .SGF file's move comment field to designate the move as "Correct". The comment will be converted to the standard puzzle solution information. This improves puzzle completion tracking and also allows the "Show Correct Move" button to be used for these puzzles, which previously wasn't available.

Fixed an issue with the bulk dialogue import (.CSV) where the scripted battle endings and content type information wasn't being preserved for existing chapters.

New Features

Several new enhancements have been made to the previous Campaign Stories update which added custom campaign stories that can be created, played, and shared on the Steam Workshop.
Scripted Battle Custom Endings
- Scripted story battles are matches that are driven by predetermined moves from an SGF (Smart Game Format) file. Multiple moves can be possible at certain points, allowing branching paths to reach different endings moves. There are now three ending types for scripted battles.
- Main - The scripted battle will be completed when the player reaches the ending move of the primary/root path.
- All - The scripted battle will be completed when the player reaches the ending move of any path.
- Custom - Specific moves can be selected which will end the scripted battle when reached. Each of these moves also has completion action which allows the story creator to specify which chapter should be loaded next. This allows the story to follow different paths based on the input provided by the player during the scripted battle.
New Scripted Battle Content Types
- There are several new types of content that are available to be included as a scripted battle in a story.
- Puzzles - Chapters can now feature puzzles/tsumego for the player to solve. Solving these will affect the fortification level of your conquered regions and also earn resources if no mistakes are made, similar to the standard fortification puzzles in the campaign mode. It is also possible, using the custom endings mentioned above, to specify which moves are a correct or incorrect solution, or the solution can be specified directly in the SGF using the GB[] or GW[] properties. If there is only one branch in the SGF, the solution is automatically assumed. The tree view of moves and AI features will be hidden from the player while they are playing during this mode.
- Joseki - Moves will be displayed similarly to the opening explorer found in the Learning Center, allowing the player to explore branches of moves. The tree view of moves and AI features will be hidden during this mode.
- Tutorial - A simple display of moves with the tree view and AI features hidden.
- Match - This works the same as how scripted battles were previously working, with the tree view and AI features being visible.
Previously, dialogue occurring during battles were specified by the move number taking place. In addition to this method, for scripted battles, specific moves can be selected from a move tree which have their own dialogue. This makes it possible to have separate dialogue for moves that occur in other branches of the move tree. For example, move 4 from the main path and move 4 from an alternate path that branched from move 3 can have two separate dialogue lines.
After completing a scripted battle, if the next chapter does not contain any dialogue for the campaign map, and is the same content type as the previous scripted battle, a "Next Chapter" button will be displayed on the right side to allow the player to directly load the next chapter and continue on with the story instead of having to return to the map. This can be especially useful for linking chapters together such as completing multiple puzzles in a row.
Battles can now specify the player and/or opponent as "None" to indicate that there is no specific character for the battle. The story creator may want to specify the characters for a scripted match, but may not want to include characters in a scripted puzzle or joseki battle.

Updates

Several updates have been made to The Conquest of Go - Story Editing Guide to explain some of the new features and updates.
The ending of the War in the East story has been updated to demonstrate the new scripted puzzles functionality.
When exporting dialogue to .CSV, if a chapter does not have any dialogue, it will now still be added to the export with only the chapter information. This allows for the chapter order to be preserved and allow easily moving dialogue or adding dialogue to chapters that do not have any dialogue yet.
When exporting dialogue to .CSV, you will now see a new column for Move ID to make sure that dialogue for duplicate move numbers, but different branches, will be set appropriately when exporting and importing. For new changes, it is recommended to do a new export so your file has this new column, but the old exports will still be able to be imported for content that does not use branching dialogue.
The portrait image will now be aligned near the top of the dialogue instead of middle for portraits that are wider than tall.
The current story header in the stories menu now better handles displaying long story and chapter names.
The "Return to the map to proceed with the story" message has been replaced by a floating story icon to direct the player where to go next, which is either to return to the map or load the next chapter directly.
Online Updates
- The Online Go Server (OGS) recently made some updates to time controls and matchmaking. The updates below were made to The Conquest of Go to align with those changes.
- A new game speed of "Rapid" has been added to both the Create Challenge and Find Match menus. Rapid is a game speed that is between blitz and live game speeds.
- Within the Find Match menu, players can now search for multiple board sizes, game speeds, and time controls all at once and get matched to an opponent that meets any of the search criteria.
- When using the Find Match menu, the specific main time and secondary time, or range of times, will now be displayed next to the selected time control. For instance, "2m + 5x30s" will be displayed for a 9x9 game with Rapid game speed and Byoyomi time control.
- The Canadian time control has been removed from the Find Match menu, leaving Byoyomi and Fischer. Canadian time control can still be used in custom challenges.
- The rules preference has been removed from the Find Match menu. Games played through this menu will use the OGS default of Japanese rules. Other rulesets can still be used in custom challenges.
- In the Find Match menu, all correspondence matches will use the OGS default of Fischer timing. Other time controls for correspondence games can still be used in custom challenges.
- The default values and value ranges for time controls and game speeds in custom challenges have been modified to match the new values used on OGS.

Fixes

Fixed the import and display of story images that are using the same name as a previously imported image.
Fixed an issue with the map story icon not displaying if completing a chapter with no battle and the next chapter has no map dialogue.
Fixed the size of the text in the story overview menu from being overly large on smaller UI scales.
Fixed an issue with the current story header not being updated right away when resetting story progress.
Fixed the issue of no reset progress button being displayed for chapters that have no dialogue and match record.
Fixed a bug with puzzle move highlighter not showing correct path when undoing a move, manually placing opponent stone, and then clicking the "Show Correct Move" button.
Fixed an issue where if the player returned from an automated review straight to a fortification puzzle, messages about the review would be displayed with the puzzle text under some circumstances.
Fixed how coordinate areas (e.g. AB) are processed within SGF files.
Fixed the default file name not updating properly in the save/export file panel while reviewing matches and switching between next and previous files.
Fixed the Find Match menu allowing the player to click the find button with no board sizes selected.

New Features

In addition to the new features and updates below, there are several other campaign stories enhancements in the works since the update published last week. To improve the campaign stories playing and editing experience more immediately, the enhancements below have been released first.
A new story icon has been added to the game which is displayed beside the Stories button at the top right of the campaign map, shown on the map for a region that is associated with the chapter of a story, and displayed next to the buttons that need to be used to progress the story (start match, review match, etc.). This should make the workflow of progressing the story more obvious.
The same story icon mentioned above has been also added to the top right of the Go scene to allow players to hide and unhide the story dialogue panel on the right side of the screen. This panel is used to display dialogue for specific moves, or all dialogue for online matches. The button to hide and unhide the panel will appear after the panel has been first made visible.
Scripted battles that have the result field populated in the SGF file will now generate a match record and subsequent map objects afterwards as if it was a normal battle. This will only occur if the match result was decisive in the SGF file (e.g. RE (Black wins by resignation) or RE (White wins by 10.5 points)).
In the story editor, each dialogue line now has a header which by default is collapsed and shows a preview of the line of dialogue. When expanded, the full dialogue options for character, move number, portrait, and text in several languages will be displayed.
Using the new header mentioned above, dialogue lines can now be reordered by dragging and dropping, similar to how chapters can be reordered.
Dialogue lines that have no character associated with them may now also use an image/portrait. This is useful when the line of dialogue isn't from a specific character but there is still a relevant image that can be displayed.

Updates

Several updates have been made to The Conquest of Go - Story Editing Guide to explain some of the new features and updates.
The dialogue displayed on the right side of the Go scene will now stay visible for dialogue about each move instead of hiding after clicking next after the final move that has currently been reached. To hide the panel while playing the match, the story icon at the top right can be used.
The dialogue skip button will now skip to the last dialogue entry of the same type. For instance, if in a scripted battle and the first four moves have dialogue, if the player uses the previous button to go back to the first dialogue, the skip button will now skip to the fourth dialogue.
When playing through a scripted story battle and clicking to play the moves directly on the board, the usual behavior of the next stone being played automatically (simulating that a player is responding to your move) will be restricted if there is a new dialogue to read for that move. This avoids the case where dialogue is being quickly skipped because of the automatic move response on the board. The auto response will resume after there is no new dialogue to be read and the player plays the same color stone that was played before being restricted.
The text of the review button will now change from "Review Match" to "Review" for scripted battles of a story.
The "To continue the story, please proceed using any region of the map" message that is displayed for chapters that don't use a specific region will now be displayed whenever the map is displayed instead of only displaying it the first time the map is loaded.
The Set Progress and Delete button in the chapter header of the story editor are now aligned to the right to be consistent with other headers in the editor.
The display of the match result text found in SGF files (RE[]) for non-standard result text has been improved.
The handling of SGF import for scripted battles and invasions that contain carriage returns and carriage returns as string literals has been improved to be more robust.
The handling of empty and null values when exporting and importing dialogue to and from .CSV has been improved to be more robust.
When no image is selected for a component of the story editor (character portrait, general preview image, etc.) a "None" label will be displayed above a blank image. While playing a story, if no image is selected, the whole image box will be hidden to make more space for dialogue.
Support for non-square portrait images in various parts of the user interface has been improved.

Fixes

Fixed an issue that was causing issue with story progress if a campaign story was created with back-to-back scripted battles without map event dialogue.
Fixed an issue which was causing the map colors and map object colors to not follow the correct colors associated with the chapter of the story for online matches started from a challenge.
Fixed an issue with the same dialogue being shown multiple times if there were several dialogue lines for the same move number of a match.
Fixed the resource values for the campaign tutorial started from the campaign map to match the values of the tutorial started from the main menu.

New Features

Campaign Stories
- A new "Stories" button has been added to the top right of the campaign map screen.
- Using this new menu, players can create, share, download, and play different stories that take place in the campaign mode.
- Stories can vary in length and content, and can be a simple one chapter quest or a detailed story consisting of dozens of chapters.
- A four chapter story titled War in the East has been uploaded to the Steam Workshop to demonstrate this new campaign story functionality. This story has been translated into all languages that are currently supported in the game.
- Each chapter of a story is usually comprised of several sets of dialogue between characters and playing a battle (Go match) between characters of the story.
- Each battle can be a standard battle that would normally take place in the campaign, an invasion, which is a match that starts from a predetermined board state, or a scripted battle, which acts more like a match review where the player also reads through different dialogue as each move is reviewed.
- For standard battles, the player can play as a normal match against the AI, an ally match, or a match against an online opponent. For invasions, the player will play against the AI.
- The player detail cards displayed while playing a Go match now feature the character name and portrait during story battles.
- Dialogue during online battles is displayed in a way which does not prevent the player from taking action (playing moves, chatting, participating during the stone removal phase) and allows the player to read the dialogue at their leisure.
- Existing campaigns are compatible with these stories, and multiple stories can be played during a campaign. Progress is saved for each story, and stories can be paused and resumed as needed. Only one story can be active at a time however.
- While accessing the story menu and selecting a story, a list of story progress will be displayed, allowing the player to review which chapters have been completed and to also reread past dialogue.
- While a story is active, the standard campaign invasions are turned off to not interfere with the battles that take place during the story.
- Dialogue Controls
  - Dialogue can be progressed forward, backwards, played automatically, or skipped by using a set of buttons to the right or below the dialogue text.
  - Clicking more or less anywhere outside of the above mentioned buttons will move the primary dialogue to the next line of dialogue.
  - Keyboard controls and the scroll wheel can also be used to progress through dialogue. The keyboard controls are the same as the controls used for navigating moves in a game, such as the arrow keys, home, end, page up, page down, etc.
  - Controllers and the Steam Deck controls also use the same navigation controls such as using the d-pad, R1, L1, or B and A face buttons.
- Creating and Sharing Stories
  - The basics of creating and editing a story are below, but for more detail, please visit the full guide.
  - A full story editor is available for players from the same Stories menu on the campaign map.
  - Stories can be created and saved locally for your own use and testing, but they can also be shared to other players by uploading them to the Steam Workshop, which now has a new category for stories.
  - A story is comprised of the following:
    - General Data - The basic information about the story such as title, description, a preview image, supported languages.
    - Characters - Each character from the story with a name, associated nation, and a portrait image. The game comes with a set of 35 fantasy portraits, but custom portraits can also be imported.
    - Chapters - Each chapter of the story consisting of a battle (Go match) and/or dialogue.
    - Battle - A match of Go that will be played. The characters participating in the battle, the type of battle, and outcome of the battle upon win or loss can be customized.
    - Dialogue Sets - a set of dialogue for any of the phases of a chapter (campaign map, pre-battle, battle, battle loss, battle win, post-battle).
    - Dialogue - Conversation between characters that will be displayed in the phases above.
  - All text fields such as chapter titles, dialogue lines, etc. allow for localization to multiple languages.
  - Bulk editing of dialogue can be done with a .CSV file by exporting the dialogue, making edits, and importing the new .CSV file back into the game. The export and import function can be found at the top of the chapters menu. This can be especially useful when your story has a lot of dialogue in many languages.
  - In addition to creating full stories with characters and dialogue, the story editor can also be used to simply create a series of custom invasion battles that can be played and shared with other players on the Steam Workshop. The 19x19 Invasion Pack has been uploaded to the Steam Workshop to demonstrate this.
Save File and Export File Enhancements
- A new "Copy SGF" button has been added, which will copy the SGF contents to the clipboard, allowing them to be pasted in other areas of The Conquest of Go or into other applications.
- A new "Save as Starting Position" option has been added, which will treat the current board state as a starting position for a match instead of each individual move as a sequence. This can be useful for creating your own invasion type battles where each side starts with a set of predetermined stones on the board.

Updates

The data provided in automated reviews has now been streamlined to a single line containing the predicted match score, move score loss, and move rank to be able to see the information quickly at a glance. The existing paragraph form is still displayed below it.
The Steam Workshop upload form for uploading puzzles and other .SGF files now uses a static field of "Other" instead of a free text field to specify a different category.
Subscribing or unsubscribing to Steam Workshop items while the game is running will now be automatically refreshed in game for Steam clients that are no longer using Steam overlay.
The review progress bar in the Go board scene has been switched from the right to the left side of the screen to make more space for other panels.
The default value for text playback speed has been adjusted and the range of allowable values has been adjusted within the Playback Settings menu. Players who have not modified their text playback speed will be updated to use the new default value, but players that have customized this value will retain their custom value.
The custom nation color selection within the Board Settings menu now uses the nation banner icon for each color.
Campaign Tutorial
- The campaign tutorial now has an additional section to briefly introduce the new campaign stories.
- Required actions to proceed in the tutorial are now displayed in a bold font when there are more than one sentence in the tutorial text.
- The starting resource values in the tutorial have been increased to 8000.

Fixes

Fixed an issue where the player clock would still count down after an online match was completed by the opponent losing by disconnection.
Fixed an issue where players could not use the resume play feature to start a new match from the practice board if the board position was setup using the very first node of the tree via the "Play Black" and "Play White" modes instead of alternating colors.
Fixed an issue with saving an SGF file from the practice board if the player placed setup stones using the "Play Black" and "Play White" modes.
Fixed an issue where if a match was started with initial stones on the board of both colors and the AI player had the first move, under some circumstances the AI would try to play where stones already existed.
Fixed an issue with AI analysis where if SGF commands were used to alter the player color turn order instead of following the standard turn order, the analysis was not displaying the correct values in cases where the player color did not match.
Fixed the import and parsing of SGF files from BadukAI.
Fixed an issue where under rare instances, it was possible to resume a match from a different region when trying to start a campaign invasion match.
Corrected translation errors for Spanish, French, and Chinese languages.

New Features

There are a lot of new features and changes that come with this update. If any issues are encountered, please create a post in the Bug Reports & Support Subforum.
Online Campaign Matches
- Players can now play their campaign matches against online opponents.
- Similar to the existing online mode, these matches take place on the Online Go Server. Because of this, players can optionally play part of a match in The Conquest of Go and continue to play on the Online Go Server website or other 3rd party applications at other times without issue. The Conquest of Go will catch the games state back up to date during the next campaign play session.
- In addition to human opponents, there are dozens AI of different strength that can also be played online. Please bear in mind that these AI are run by members of the OGS community and may have different availability and requirements for match criteria (board size, time settings, etc.) to be able to play a match.
- Both online and offline matches can be played in the same campaign.
- Next to the existing Start Match and Start Ally Match buttons, there is now a Start Online Match button. Once clicked, the online menu will load, allowing the player to start a match in a variety of ways that will then be associated with the player's campaign.
  - Play Tab
    - Players can issue an open challenge to online opponents by using the Create Challenge button.
    - Players can accept a challenge that was issued by an online opponent by clicking the Accept button on one of the open challenges.
    - Players can use the Find Match button to have the system automatically find an opponent.
    - Players can challenge an online AI by using the Challenge Bot button.
  - Profile Tab
    - Players can find their friends or specific opponents they wish to challenge by using the search bar and Challenge button.
    - Players can also accept incoming direct challenges by going to their profile page, clicking the Challenges tab, and clicking the Accept button on one of the listed challenges. These challenges can also be accepted through the notifications panel.
    - If there is an existing match that is already in progress that the player wants to be added to their campaign, they can simply click on the match in the player's Active Match list which will prompt the player to decide whether they would like that particular match to be added to the campaign.
- Online campaign matches do not need to use the default board size of the region in which they take place in. This leaves more options for players to accept opponent's challenges of any square board sizes. If a different board size is used, the region is automatically updated to reflect this.
- Online matches that are associated with a campaign will have a campaign icon next to them in the online menus.
- In the campaign menu to load an existing campaign, the card now includes an icon for whether the campaign has any completed online matches and what the most recent online rank of the player was.
- The campaign now has a button at the top right which will display a count of how many games are waiting for the player's turn, and when clicked, it will automatically load one of those matches. It will first cycle through online matches that are the player's turn, then offline matches that are the player's turn, and then finally if there are no matches that are waiting on the player's turn, it will cycle through all active matches when clicked. This can be useful for players that have a lot of correspondence matches being played at the same time.
- There is a new setting in the Campaign Settings menu called "Include All Online Games" which will control whether the above mentioned active turn feature will only include online matches that are associated with the campaign (default behavior) or if it should include all online matches. This can be useful for players that have other matches they'd like to play moves in, but don't necessarily want them associated with their campaign.
- The automatic campaign difficulty adjustments after playing matches and reviewing matches will not take place for online campaign matches since online ranks are separate from AI difficulty and handicaps.
- The campaign tutorial has been updated to explain how to play online campaign matches.
Review Improvements
- After a match has been completed, the player can now immediately go into review mode by simply clicking the review button on the right hand side. When clicking the review button, it will prompt the user with the question of whether to review manually or with an automatic AI review, similar to how it it works in other areas of the user interface.
- If the player is manually reviewing a match for which an automated review is currently in progress, a progress bar will be shown on screen. The player can cancel the review by clicking the X next to it. Once the automated review has been completed, the player will be notified and can reload the review immediately with the new automated review data. This allows the player to perform some manual review of the match while waiting for the automated review to complete.
- Previously, in order to review a quick play match, the match needed to be saved and navigated to from the main menu. Automatic reviews can now be run on these unsaved quick play matches by clicking the review button mentioned above. While in review mode, if the player would like they can still save the match to their Saved Matches folder which will also save the automated review data.
- A new button has been added to the top right during reviews which when clicked will have the analysis AI (KataGo) play the next move. Alternatively, a new hotkey was added to trigger this "Play AI Move" feature, which by default is set to return/enter for keyboard players and Y/triangle for controller players.
- The score loss and win rate graphs will now display a delta value at the top right of the graph which represents the difference between the current value and previous value on the graph. For example, a move that has a current estimated match score value of B+5.5 and the previous move has an estimated match score value of B+10.5, the delta value will be displayed as Δ -5.5, representing a score loss of 5.5. This can be an easier way to look at the change in score or win rate between moves.
- There is a new setting in Settings > AI Settings which if selected will remember which AI features have been enabled and automatically enable them in the future. These features are the score and win rate graphs as well as move analysis and territory analysis. This is off by default because these features are rather resource intensive, but for users that always use these features, this setting should streamline things a bit.
- There are now two additional settings within the Settings > AI Settings menu which control the thresholds used in the automated AI reviews.
  - Maximum Review Recommendations - This setting will control the maximum number of move improvement recommendations that the AI will present to the player while they are reviewing a match with automated review data. For example, a value of 8 would mean that up to 8 moves during the match that can be improved will be displayed in the automated review data. The default value is 3, which is the same as how the reviews were previously working. The range of allowable values is now no limit to 16.
  - Minimum Review Score Loss - AI recommendations will be given in automated reviews for moves that result in a loss in score that exceeds the value selected in this setting. For example a value of 10 would mean that the AI will only include recommendations of improved moves if the move that occurred during the match resulted in a loss of score that exceeds or is equal to 10. The default value is 2, which is the same as how the reviews were previously working. The range of allowable values is now 1 to 30.
  - Both of these values work together in controlling the output of the automated AI review. For example, a maximum review recommendation setting of no limit and minimum review score loss of 10 will result in showing every single time the player's move resulted in a loss of score of 10 or greater during the match, whereas a recommendation setting of 3 and score loss setting of 2 will display the up to the top 3 biggest score loss moves that lost at least 2 points.
  - These settings affect all automated reviews within the game (campaign match reviews, online match reviews, local play reviews, SGF import reviews).
  - If this is your first time looking at this AI setting screen feel free to hover over the "?" next to each of the existing settings to explain how you can do even finer tuning of the AI used for reviews and analysis.
Campaign Map Data Improvements
- The battle history list which displays the list of ongoing and previous matches for a particular region of the map will now display a stone icon to represent which player's turn it is to play next for matches that are in progress.
- When viewing the current board state of a region with a match in progress, the last placed stone will now be marked.
Added support to allow tie match results in online matches under certain rulesets and komi values.
Added support for localized messages from the online bots available on OGS.
Added a new setting to specify the board theme that will be used in the main menu. This is found under Settings > Board Settings > Main Menu Theme. Previously this was always the forest theme, but now any theme can be selected, or even set to random for a surprise each time you load the game or return to the main menu.
Added the ability to ignore future confirmation windows by checking the checkbox "Don't show this message again" when responding to the confirmation window. This is currently used for the unsaved changes confirmation that appears when a quick play match has not been saved and the player attempts to navigate back to the main menu.
Added a tip message which will display when encountering an online match for the first time and will explain that certain assistance features are turned off to keep matches fair for online opponents.

Updates

The Conquest of Go logo that appears in the main menu has been altered on when it will appear. The logo will now be displayed when the game launches and is on the "Press any key to continue" screen. Once the player is past that screen the logo will move off screen and give full visibility to the board on the main menu.
To align with recent changes at OGS, players can now play ranked matches against opponents of any rank. This was previously a maximum difference of ±9 ranks.
The previous Override Campaign Theme setting in Settings > Board Settings has been changed from a checkbox to a drop down list of themes. The default value is Automatic, which will load the campaign theme of the region that the match is taking place on, but a specific theme can also be specified. This allows the user to have a separate specific theme for both campaign and non-campaign matches. For users that previously had the Override Campaign Theme checked, this value will now default to the same theme as the Preferred Theme setting, but can be altered by accessing the Settings > Board Settings menu.
The board theme setting of "Random" has been improved to cycle through all available board themes during a play session before repeating a board theme that was previously seen.
Hotkeys are now disabled while the player is typing in a text field such as the online chat box or save file dialog.
The font of the values used in the win rate and score graphs have been updated to be more readable.
The way The Conquest of Go is referenced in macOS has been altered to allow macOS to more correctly determine launch parameters.

Fixes

Fixed an issue where certain match values were not being properly restricted in the UI while creating an online challenge that is ranked.
Fixed an issue where it was possible to submit multiple online blitz/live challenges at once.
Fixed an issue where in some cases the latest ranking data was not being displayed for the active online user.
Fixed an issue with the display of rank for online players with a provisional rank.
Fixed being able to play and review matches that are using an even board size (e.g. 18x18 instead of 19x19), which previously would not display the board and star points correctly. While these board sizes still aren't available in the menus to be created, they technically still can make their way into the game via online challenges or imported SGFs.
Fixed the campaign battle history panel to only allow the player to start a match if there is no match currently in progress.
Fixed the move history panel's coordinate values which were being listed improperly while solving tsumegos from the Steam Workshop that display only a portion of the board.
Fixed layout issues in the Steam Workshop upload and edit forms that were present when using high UI scale.
Fixed an issue where the next move recommendation button would not function if the player was in a branch of moves which started from the very first move.
Fixed an issue with the score and win rate graphs where if a match was resumed from a certain point of an automated review, the previous score and win rate data was being loaded into the graphs and not behaving as expected thereafter.
Fixed an issue with the score and win rate graphs where values in the root path would not display as expected if the graph was first enabled while in a separate path of added moves and then returned to the root path.
Fixed an issue with the score and win rate graphs which wouldn't display the last value in the graph properly when the graph is first populated with data from an automated review if the final move wasn't made by the player whose moves were reviewed.
Fixed an issue which was causing the next move icons to be displayed on the board during the review of AI recommendations if the player first loaded a review that doesn't have AI recommendations and then proceeded to load one that does by using the previous or next file buttons in the text output and navigation panel.
Fixed tooltip text for the Load File setting within Settings > Playback Settings.
Fixed AI moves playing in the background while transitioning from the Go screen to the main menu or campaign map.

Fixed the solution for one of the fortification puzzles which was causing the player to not be able to move on to new puzzles once all other puzzles in the group were solved.

The graphics for the stones used in the traditional and traditional dark themes have been improved to look better on very small board sizes and very high resolutions.

Fixed an issue with loading campaign mode fortification puzzles after a certain problematic puzzle was attempted to be loaded.
Fixed an issue with loading a tutorial which asks for player input on the first node. It was previously marking the options of where to play next on the board, which was not intended when asking the player to decide where to play.

New Features

An indicator and button has been added to the online mode which shows how many matches are currently waiting for your turn. Once clicked, it will load and cycle through the active games, allowing the player to make their move in each of them. This is especially useful for players with multiple ongoing correspondence games. Once all active turns have been played, the button will cycle through the other games the player is in which are waiting for the opponent's move. This button and indicator can be found within the top right of the online menu as well as the top right of the Go board screen while playing an online match. The indicator will be displayed on the online menu of the main menu if there is at least one active game. The indicator will be displayed within the Go board screen if there is at least one active game other than the one that is currently being played.
Players can now choose to hide online ranking information, allowing them to focus more on playing Go and less about the rank of their opponents or rank changes from matches. This will hide ranks while in the online menu, such as match history, as well as hide ranks while playing matches. The setting can be found under Settings > Board Settings > Hide Online Ranks.

Updates

When using the Find Match/Automatch functionality of the online mode, players can now continue to browse the open challenges while their live or blitz automatch request is currently active, instead of staying on a waiting screen like before. The automatch request will be automatically cancelled for live or blitz if the player finds a match through other means or browses away from the Play tab.
The way that The Conquest of Go connects and communicates with the Online Go Server has been reworked. This update is mostly behind the scenes and should primarily go unnoticed, but if there are issues occurring during online play after this update, please file a bug report here.
The logout button for the online menu has been removed when accessing the online menu through the Go board screen. Logging out of the online menu will now only be handled in the main menu.

Fixes

Fixed an issue with loading the online mode having the possibility of causing a rare crash if taken too long.
Fixed an issue with creating an online challenge or find match request not properly setting the rules when using New Zealand or Ing SST rules.
Fixed an issue which was causing the online mode play tab buttons to become unresponsive when using the challenge button and loading the waiting for challenge screen.
Fixed an issue where match preferences were not being saved properly to be reused later when using the online mode Find Match functionality.
Fixed an issue where old historical online matches that don't have a name were unable to be clicked.
Fixed an issue with the online game chat user list which was being populated with group chat users if the player accessed the online menu, loaded a group, clicked the chat tab and then closed the online menu to continue playing the online match.
Fixed an issue with the online profile tab where if the profile was loaded by accessing a private message and the player navigated away from the profile tab and came back to profile tab once again to access their profile, it wasn't loading the player's profile correctly.

The Conquest of Go news & patch notes

The Conquest of Go news & patch notes

New Features

Updates

Fixes

New Features

Updates

Fixes

Expanded AI Opponents

Expanded Campaign

Customization

General Improvements

New Features

Updates

Fixes

New Features

Updates

Fixes

New Features

Updates

Fixes

New Features

Updates

Fixes

New Features

Updates

Fixes

New Features

Updates

Fixes

New Features

Updates

Fixes

Steam news for The Conquest of Go