Evolution of a Go program

About the development of Moyo Go Studio, software to (help) play the Oriental game of Go. Go is a two-player zero-sum game of perfect information. It is considered much harder than Chess. Currently, in spite of enormous effort expended, no computer program plays it above the level of a beginner.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Setup Time :(

The disadvantage of having 75,000 index files is that it takes ages to install Moyo Go!

Speed of installation is not dependent on the CPU speed because the files are not compressed (the DVD has enough space anyway). With so many little files to transfer, installation speed depends mainly on (always relatively slow) harddisk seek time, and if you thought it was agonizing to sit through a Windows install, wait until you install Moyo Go :)

Small consolation for existing customers: I am going to fix this! Simply by throwing Higher Technologyâ„¢ at it. Instead of using all those small index files, I will use one huge index file and the software will know where to look. This means that searching will still go as fast as always, but at install time, there are 150,000 less HDD head movements to make.

I am very eager to fix this - install time should go from more than an hour to just a few minutes!