Goban

"...as elegant and deceptively simple as the game itself."

Play Go on Mac OS X - Jouez au go sur Mac OS X

Use Goban to play the game of go against the program. Play with people on the Internet go servers or your local network. Observe live pro and amateur games on IGS, the Internet Go Server. Review and analyze games. Browse through joseki or fuseki libraries... Goban is a powerful, simple, fast go board for Mac OS X. Like Hikaru and Sai, use a Mac to play go!

Features Features of Goban include: A simple, fast, Aqua user interface (Fig 1.)

Inspectors to view different aspects of the game (Fig 2.)

Internet go client (Fig 3.)

GNU Go, a go playing program

Opens, edits and saves standard SGF files

Handles efficiently large SGF files, game collections or joseki/fuseki variation trees such as Kogo's Joseki Dictionary

Supports the Go Modem Protocol and the Go Text Protocol

Japanese rules

Automatic Scoring

Simultaneous games

Resizable board

Undo/redo moves

One color go

local network play

local network play ... in a native, real Mac application. Fig. 2: Rules Inspector.

Fig. 3: Internet go players.

Goban is copyrighted work: Copyright (c) 1997-2004, Sen:te (Sente SA). All rights reserved.

Goban is currently distributed free of charge. Permission must be obtained for redistribution. A different version of Goban (FreeGoban) is distributed as free software, under the GNU General Public License.

All of the art work is copyrighted and shall not be reused without explicit permission.

The Sparrows nesting in a Go Bowl image from the About panel is (c) Copyright IGS;

image from the About panel is (c) Copyright IGS; Some of the icons in the Preferences and Internet go window are (c) Copyright Apple;

The "RealKaya" board is (c) Copyright Tweet;

All other art work, including boards and stones images are (c) Copyright Sen:te.

Goban includes GNU Go, which is distributed under the GNU Public license library. The source code for GNU Go is available.

For more information about this license, contact goban@sente.ch.

For any question, suggestion, or problem report, please send an e-mail to goban@sente.ch.

Goban can be downloaded from our server as a disk image (.dmg).

Goban 3.2.12 for Mac OS X, 10.4 and above, Universal binary: Goban_3_2_12.dmg (9.7 MB) Goban 3.2.9 for Mac OS X, 10.3.9 and above, G3/G4/G5 only: Goban_3_2_9.dmg (8.3 MB) Goban 3.2.7 for Mac OS X, 10.1.5 and above, G3/G4/G5 only: Goban_3_2_7.dmg (8.3 MB)

Additional designs for the stones are available in the package below. In order to use them, create a folder named Goban in your Library folder, create a folder named Stones in the Goban folder you just created, and copy the content of this package in Stones .

Goban includes the latest stable release of GNU Go. If you want to experiment with the latest development version, it is available below. This disk image contains a gnugo executable compiled for Mac OS X, as well as the source code. Several other Go engines, distributed by Andrew Balsa under the GPL are also available. Information on how to use these executables with Goban is available in help.

GNU Go 3.7.11 for Mac OS X 10.4.3 and above, universal binary gnugo-3.7.11.dmg (6.0 MB) GNU Go 3.7.7 for Mac OS X 10.1 and above, G3/G4/G5 only gnugo.dmg (5.1 MB) GTP Go engines for Mac OS X 10.2 and above, G3/G4/G5 only GoEngines.dmg (1.4 MB)

A mailing list for Goban users is available. New releases will be announced on this list.

To subscribe, send this email.

To see the collection of prior postings to the list, visit the archives. (The password that will be asked is to prevent spam robots to gather your email adresses.)

Does or will Goban work with the Kiseido Go Server (KGS)?

KGS uses a closed protocol and wants to control both the server and client. They are actively discouraging 3rd party clients. Goban will not work with KGS as long as this is the case.

Does or will Goban run on Mac OS 9, 8, ... ?

Sorry, no. Goban is a Mac OS X only application. Go software for older Mac OS releases is listed on the Shodan web site.

Does or will Goban run on Windows?

Sorry, no. Goban is a Mac OS X only application. We currently have no plans to do a Windows version.

Does or will Goban run on Linux?

Maybe. Goban is currently a Mac OS X only application. We could port it to Linux when GNUstep is sufficiently advanced.

How strong is the program?

GNU Go plays regularly on the NNGS and KGS go servers and its ratings graphed over time are available: NNGS [currently unavailable], KGS. Several GNU Go robots are also playing regularly on the IGS (with a rank of 12 kyu).

Thanks to:

Guy Moreillon, for his help with the design of the icons, stones, and Persistence Of Vision (Povray) programming;

Antti Huima, for his SGF utility library;

William Shubert, for his implementation of the Go Modem Protocol (GMP);

Erik Doernenburg, for his Cocoa implementation of Socket classes;

The GNU Go Team, for GNU Go, a nice and free Go playing program.

Stephan Somogyi, for his feedback, help and encouragements.

Tim Cartwright, for his feedback, help and encouragements.

Tweet, for his Kaya board picture, and his permission to use the "Sparrows nesting in a Go Bowl" image.

Daniel Bump and Reid Augustin, for sgf2tex, a Go typesetting software.

Gerben Wierda for his help with the integration of TeX.

Arno Hollosi for sgfc, a SGF syntax checker and converter.

Yamakawa Kazuki, for ugfc, an UGF to SGF converter.

Andrew Balsa, for his GTP compatible Go engines: badukiplus, wallyplus, randyplus, amigoplus.

Patrice Fontaine for retouching some of the alternate go stones.

Jean-Jacques Ardoino for the French localization

Our beta testers for their invaluable comments during the development of the Internet Go support: Tweedie, Raven H. Huang, Patrice Fontaine, Stephan Somogyi, Alan Crossman, Jim Watson, Joshua Epperson, Brian Merkey, Mark Anderson, Daniel Wilday, Peter Seal, Olivier Verdier, OGONG & AURORA, Olaf Foellinger.

Our users, for there continuous feedback, suggestions, and encouraging remarks.

Software Library

More Mac OS X, WebObjects or OPENSTEP software to download from Sen:te

Sen:te