2-D on 3-D Goban

Playing 2-D Go on 3-D shapes.

Here, a 3D shape is used, and Go is played on the surface of it.

Locally, this means that 2D go is played, but edge and corner effects are of course different from the usual. The 3D shape used can of course be anything, but the simplest ones are a sphere and a cube.

From a post to rec.games.go by Matthew MACFADYEN

I constructed a SPHERICAL board with 60 points on it - the " small rhombicosidodecahedron " (12 pentagons, 20 triangles, 30 squares, arranged symmetrically with 2 squares, one triangle, one pentagon at each vertex).

This was made of card, with an iron nail at each vertex so that magnetic stones stuck on, and mounted in gimbals like a globe. It worked quite well as a game, normally it proved quite difficult to make two independent live groups.

From a post to rec.games.go by Bill TAYLOR

There is also the possibility of playing on the surface of a CUBE. This could be quite cute. There is a tiny corner effect, nowhere near that of regular boards. The edges are locally just like the interior of a regular board - no funny effects at all. Best of all, one could play on *physical* boards this way - a cubical wire grid framework, with clip-on pieces. It would be fun to turn the board over and over in one's hand!

There are two ways the corners could be arranged.

• Points along the physical edges, and at the vertices
• Points just alongside the physical edges (and corners)

On the former, there are 8 points with only 3 neighbours.
On the latter, all points have 4 neighbours, but there are 8 places where three points are mutual neighbours.

Both forms of irregularity can act as ladder-breakers.

phooky: I've built a Cubical Go board, and I'm nearing completion on the Java-based networked version as well. Pretty groovy stuff. It's now available for download, although it's not nearly done. In particular scoring isn't implemented yet.

ChessWhiz: Sounds fun! Can 2 players play against each other on the same computer in your Java program? Let us know when it's available for download!

SiouxDenim: An applet that appears to allow playing Go on various 2D surfaces on a 3D shape can be found here. You need Java3D to run it, which requires your machine to have a 3D graphics card. My doesn't. Hopefully a SL user out there with time to spare does. The pictures on the site look impressive.

Gludion?: play Go on a 3D cube (flash). Size board can be changed. The 2 players must play on the same computer.

Phelan: A suggestion: don't allow people to use sizes that are too big, or warn them that it might get really slow. The inner tester in me tried 99, and it almost seemed frozen. :p Also, there is no way to reset the size, apparently. Closing the page does nothing. Other than that, it works well, and looks nice. :)