The BKGo Home Page

What is BKGo?
Features
Screenshot
How to Get Started
Download
Contact

What is BKGo?

BKGo is a system for playing Go (wei-qi) over the internet.

The system consists of:

A server program which moderates the game and connects players together;
A client program which allows a player to connect to a server

The complete source-code to the system is available for download under the Gnu General Public License (GPL).

Features

Unlimited clients: server allows play between a black player and a white player, and any number of observers can connect and watch
Chat window: for discussion during gameplay
SGF format: load and save games in SGF format
Persistent storage: server can hold on to game even when players are disconnected, allowing games to play out over long periods of time.
Authentication: server remembers passwords for the original black and white players, so as to protect a game in progress

Screenshot

Client program running as standalone app

How to Get Started

BKGo can be used in two different ways:

As a standalone Java application

Assuming that you have some sort of Java 1.1 runtime environment on your computer, you can download the program and play Go head-to-head with someone over the internet. Instructions are in the README file included with the distribution. In this mode, both the client and server run as full-fledged Java applications, giving you access to your filesystem for loading/saving games.

Note: an "appletviewer" will not suffice! You will need a full JDK or JRE. Try downloading one from Sun.

As a web-based applet

Not everybody wants to bother downloading a Java Runtime Environment, so why not use the one you have? Namely, the one built into your web browser!

The web-based system allows a "surfer" to launch BKGo servers and run a BKGo client applet completely within a web-browser. To set up this system, see the WEB-HOWTO included in the distribution.

Download

The latest version of BKGo is 0.7 (beta).

You can download this release here (Includes the source code, compiled .class files, Makefile and instructions on how to set up your own web-based system). Please read the README on how to use.

Contact

Because this program is distributed under the terms of the GPL, we encourage people to actively change and improve this program. Please send us bugfixes, feature requests, and the like. In the future, we may be setting a mailing list for managing the evolution of this program.