The Conquest of Go News

• Analysis Improvements
  
  • When using AI analysis, the AI's top move recommendation will be immediately displayed once generated instead of waiting for the move's number of visits to cross the minimum visits threshold found in AI settings. This will give a more responsive experience for the player, especially on older or less powerful hardware.
    
  • Next Move Display
    
    • If reviewing a previous match and the next played move is returned from the AI analysis, it will also be displayed before it crosses the minimum visits threshold.
      
    • The recommendation for the next played move will be displayed in a blue color, similar to the existing blue outline.
      
    • Once the main search for the AI's recommendation is finished by reaching the maximum visits threshold found in AI settings, a second evaluation will be run specifically on the move that was played next to bring its visits and evaluation to a similar level for comparison across the other recommendations.
      
    • During the second evaluation, the move will be ranked by comparing its win rate to other recommended moves, and if the win rate range is too small, score change will instead be used.
      
  • Recommendations that are not the top ranked move or the next played move will still wait to be displayed until they cross the minimum visits threshold.
    
  • The minimum visits threshold has been updated to be inclusive. A setting of 1 will display any move that has a visit count of 1 or higher instead of only higher than 1. If players wish to have this setting behave as it was before, just increase the setting's value by 1.
    
• UI Scale
  
  • The game features a new setting found in Settings > Graphics Settings to control the scale of the user interface, such as the size of text, buttons, panels, etc. that are displayed on screen.
    
  • This setting greatly improves legibility on smaller physical screen sizes such as the Steam Deck.
    
  • The setting goes from a value of 1 to 6, with 6 being the largest. The default value is 2, which will display the UI as it was in previous versions.
    
  • Players on the Steam Deck will default to a UI scale value of 5 for improved legibility.
    
  • To make more space in some of the panels where space is limited on larger UI scales, some of more decorative UI elements will be disabled.
    
  • This should be the final step needed to receive the Steam Deck verified badge once Valve's verification process is completed.
    
• The resume play from review functionality added in version 0.25.0 has been extended to allow players to also resume play against the AI from any point while using the practice board (Quick Play > Practice) and opening guides (Learning Center > Opening Guides).
  
• The match details panel for creating a match now has a button to swap the player details (player type, AI, level, name, and rank) between the players playing as black and white.
  
• The campaign map now has a button at the top right to view the campaign tutorial instead of only being able to access it from the main menu. Once completed, the player is returned back to their campaign.
  
• The panels on the right-hand side of the campaign map (stats, settings, reviews in progress, etc.) will now turn mostly transparent when hovering over a region where the panels would overlap the hover text (board size, match outcome, fortification level).
  
• After completing a match in quick play, players can now change the match settings after clicking the Rematch button. The player can simply click start to play the match with the same settings, or adjust settings for the next match such as AI opponent, ruleset, komi, handicap, and time controls without need to go back to the main menu. Depending on which settings were changed, a loading screen may be used before starting the match.
  

• Previously there were two settings within Settings > General Settings which were used to control tooltip size and dynamic text size. These settings have been removed from the game and the new UI scale setting located in graphics settings mentioned above will be used in their place.
  
• The layout of the various buttons at the top right of the Go scene used for AI analysis and displaying/hiding many of the panels has been updated to better support instances where many buttons are shown. Now if there are more buttons than available with the width of the panel, a second row of buttons will be displayed. In most cases the default UI scale will display the buttons on a single row, but larger UI scales may display multiple rows of buttons.
  
• Navigating moves during a review which has multiple branching paths has been slightly changed. Previously, while working backwards through moves and reaching a move in which the next move has several options/branches, clicking the next move button or using the scroll wheel would always choose the first option available. In this version, the next move button will return to the last chosen move if multiple options are available. Once the player has navigated two moves prior to the branching paths, the path will return to the default state of playing the first move available when returning to the branching paths. The tree view of moves will highlight the branching moves appropriately to show which path the player is currently viewing. In short, this allows the player to stay on the same branching path briefly instead of always defaulting to the first available path when navigating forward through moves.
  
• In the online menu's profile match history, match records that have an automated review completed will simply display the review icon next to the match name instead of also displaying the review progress bar. Reviews that haven't started or are in progress will still display this progress bar, but if there is no progress bar it is implied that the review is already completed. This saves space when displaying the match name and player names.
  
• The layout of the battle summary and fortification puzzle panel in the campaign map scene has been improved to better use the additional height available in screen resolutions which provide additional height beyond the standard 16:9 aspect ratio.
  
• The layout of Steam stats and achievements has been improved which will now display on multiple rows if additional space is needed for larger UI scales.
  
• While using the practice board, the board actions panel will now display the Return to Main Menu button.
  

• Fixed the markup displayed on the example boards within the glossary and tooltips, which are used to mark numbers or shapes on the board when explaining Go terms, such as marking liberties or eyes.
  
• Fixed an issue with AI analysis during reviews, where if the player triggered AI analysis while on an unsolved move recommendation, AI analysis would not start once moving to the previous or next move.
  
• Fixed an issue with the online mode where if there were complications with the player's secure save data file, it would potentially log the player in as a guest account.
  
• Fixed an issue where the match results panel was being displayed during a review if the record had a passing move in the middle of the game which was not followed up with a second pass, but the player during review plays the second pass in an alternate branch. The match results panel will now only be displayed after the final moves of the root branch have been played.
  
• Fixed an issue with the campaign stats panel where if the player has played all matches with automatic difficulty adjustment turned off, a value for the highest difficulty achieved would not be displayed.
  
• Fixed an issue with the quick match menu where the improper tab (basic or advanced) was being selected in some instances while using custom settings.
  

Fixed an issue which was causing resource values and costs to be displayed for campaign abilities when resuming play from legendary record reviews.

• Resuming Play from Reviews and SGFs
  
  • Players can now start a match against the AI from any point while reviewing a match by clicking the "Resume Play" button.
    
  • This applies to reviewing normal matches and legendary records in the campaign mode, reviewing saved quick play matches, reviewing online matches, reviewing imported SGFs, and reviewing matches that you've subscribed to in Steam Workshop.
    
  • Campaign Integration
    
    • In the campaign, resuming from review will start a match against the same AI opponent and will use the time controls which are specified in the campaign settings.
      
    • Since the result of the resumed match does not affect the ownership of the region where the match took place, campaign abilities are able to be used without consuming resources.
      
    • When the player completes a match that was resumed from a review, the player will earn empire resources, and if the result was a win, the player will also raise the fortification level of their regions of the map. The amount of resources and fortification levels are determined in part by how many moves were played after resuming (+), whether campaign abilities were used (-), and whether the match was resumed from an existing move (+) or a move that was added during review (-).
      
    • Resumed records are displayed as subrecords of the original match within the Battle History panel of the map, and can be accessed by first clicking the original match. Matches that contain subrecords have a small mark in the bottom right corner.
      
    • Similar to normal matches, resumed matches are also saved automatically as matches in progress which can be later finished if the player navigates away, such as returning to the map, main menu, or exiting the game.
      
    • Automated reviews are also run on resumed matches, however the review will only evaluate the new moves that took place after resumption.
      
  • Matches resumed from review in non-campaign modes such as saved matches or online matches will prompt the user to select which AI they would like to play against and select other settings such as komi and time control.
    
  • In addition to starting from a point in the existing match, players can add their own moves and branches during review and choose to start the match from a different branch.
    
• Music Improvements
  
  • New themes have been added which are played in the campaign mode upon match completion based on whether the match was won or lost. There are three possible upbeat themes when the match is won, and three possible somber themes when the match is lost.
    
  • A new theme has been added to the Go board scene.
    
  • A new theme has been added to the campaign map scene.
    
  • New theme names have been added to the credits list which can be found in the extras menu.
    
  • Improvements have been made to how the different themes are selected and ordered when played. Previously, the list of possible songs would be randomly ordered each time a new scene in the game is loaded, which meant it was possible for a theme to be played more than once before other themes were played when revisiting a scene. In this version, the themes are tracked as they are played, so each possible theme will be played once before restarting the whole list of themes.
    
• The campaign has a new setting labeled "Disable Difficulty Adjustment" which will keep the difficulty the same instead of adjusting it after the player wins a match (increase difficulty) or reviews a match (optionally decrease difficulty).
  

• The scoring summary displayed at the end of online matches will now only display relevant data depending on the ruleset that is being played. For instance, under Chinese rules, white is given a point per handicap stone, but under Japanese rules, this is not the case. The row for handicap points would be displayed for Chinese rules and not Japanese rules in this case.
  
• The difficulty level range of fortification puzzles has been reduced for campaigns played against the Casual AI opponent.
  
• The Export Match button at the top right of the Go board scene has been enabled while reviewing matches that have been reviewed by the AI.
  
• When clicking the "Return to Region" button after a match or after reviewing a match, it will automatically select the match record or legendary record that was last being viewed.
  
• Legendary records will now be displayed for a particular region of the campaign map if the player has conquered that region at any point during the campaign, instead of only being displayed if the player has won the latest match.
  
• The main menu button layout is now more dynamic to better handle other aspect ratios.
  
• Added some common 16:9 resolutions to the graphics settings that were not previously loaded as an option for ultrawide resolutions.
  
• If a screen resolution that has been manually set within the MachineSettings file is not within the default screen resolutions supported in the game, the new screen resolution will now also appear in the Graphics Settings screen resolution list.
  

• Fixed an issue for online matches where komi wasn't being displayed in the scoring summary if the komi value was negative.
  
• Fixed an issue for online handicap matches under some rulesets where the score estimate displayed during the stone removal phase may not have been the same as the score displayed after the stone removal phase.
  
• Fixed an issue for online matches, where if the player was in an online match and loaded a different match directly from the Go scene, under some circumstances they would be disconnected from notifications.
  
• Fixed an issue with the score and win rate graphs for reviewed quick play matches where the color would still be displayed as the color of the human player, even if the review was run from the perspective of the AI player.
  
• Fixed the aspect ratio of the board in all scenes so that it does not extend past the screen height for ultrawide monitors.
  
• Fixed an issue with campaign settings, where if the user was using the default "Campaign" text for the campaign name, and the user switched languages and returned to the campaign settings menu, the name was not updated to the preferred language.
  
• Fixed an issue during the exit of the game which was also closing all instances of KataGo or GnuGo whether they were related to The Conquest of Go or not.