The Conquest of Go News

• 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.
  

Fixed an issue in the campaign tutorial which was previously unintentionally displaying review type confirmation when starting the first match.

• New Casual AI
  
  • A new AI opponent has been added which is aimed at beginner and novice players and has a strength level which is weaker than GNU Go.
    
  • Like the other AIs, it has options for level 1 through 10.
    
  • A new difficulty level called "Casual" has been added to both the campaign and quick play menus, which features the Casual AI as the opponent and is placed below the existing "Beginner" difficulty.
    
  • Players primarily focused on training may still find benefit in learning from GNU Go's more competent moves during handicap matches, but the Casual AI may provide a more fun experience with less reliance on handicap stones to even the skill gap.
    

• Improved text legibility of commonly used areas and functionality which was previously difficult to read on smaller screen sizes, such as the Steam Deck.
  

• Fixed a bug which was causing the Hybrid AI to not be able to play against itself in quick play, when both the black and white players were set to Hybrid AI.
  

• MacOS Release
  • A macOS version of The Conquest of Go is now available, with all of the same functionality as the existing Windows version.
    
  • For players playing on both Windows and macOS, the save files should sync properly through Steam Cloud, allowing you to pick up where you left off on either platform.
    
  • The macOS version has been tested by multiple testers on a variety of hardware and versions of macOS, but if any issues are encountered, please create a topic on the discussion board where issues can be worked through. Thanks.
    
• New Campaign Settings
  • Players now have the ability to disable automatic reviews which run after campaign matches for those who are not interested in the review results for every match. In this mode, players can still trigger an AI review by clicking the review button while viewing the match result on the campaign map, and then selecting Auto.
    
  • Players now have the ability to hide campaign abilities (undo, find moves, find variations, show territory) while playing campaign matches for those who do not wish to have any AI assistance or undos.
    
  • Both of the above settings are in the campaign settings panel which can be found by clicking the settings button on the right side of the campaign map.
    
  • Similar to the other campaign settings, when creating a new campaign, it will use the same campaign settings as the most recently played campaign.
    

• While this release focuses on bringing the game to a new platform, the underlying game engine needed to be updated in order to do this, which has the possibility of affecting existing functionality, even for players on Windows. Prior to release, issues have already been fixed as a result of this, but if anything else is discovered that is not as expected, please don't hesitate to create a topic on the discussion board to get resolved.
  
• The previous file dialog system used to import files into Saved Matches or to upload files to the Steam Workshop is no longer compatible with the latest release and a new file dialog system has been implemented to replace it. All actions in the new system take place within the game instead of using the operating system's file dialog.
  
• SGF download for ongoing online matches will now be disabled for matches on OGS that are set to "Disable Analysis".
  
• Players with the graphics quality setting set to low will no longer see the zoom animation on the campaign map when clicking on a region to load the result of a previous match. The zoom animation was tough for some older systems to handle which will now benefit from the low quality setting.
  
• Improved handling of online accounts that are banned on OGS.
  
• Further improved protection against save file corruption.
  

• The report function for reporting online players is now fixed to match recent updates that were made to OGS.
  
• The default file name generated for saved SGFs will no longer include player names if it would result in a very long file name causing issues with saving. Additionally, the name fields when creating a match in quick play are now set to a max length of 60 characters.
  
• When playing an online match, after using the last available pause, the pause button will now be hidden for that play session.
  
• Fixed an issue where if multiple reviews were in the queue to be run and one was cancelled, it wasn't processing the next review in the queue until the scene was reloaded.