Sphere-Go

bogiesan · Post by **bogiesan** » Fri Aug 29, 2014 5:16 pm

You don't need to build it out of wooden spheres. You just need a surface made of hemispheres. That can be achieved (not easily) with a router cutting 38, 90-degree coves; 19 north to south, 19 south to north, 19 east to west, 19 west to east. The hemispherical shapes will not be as close together as you might want, though. there must be room for the edge of the router bit to clear.

Hmm. That leads us to truncated cones or pyramids but truncated pyramids can be achieved with a bevel router bit scribing 19 lines.

Asmodeus · Post by **Asmodeus** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 5:01 am

Here it is:

questions? comments?

Asmodeus · Post by **Asmodeus** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:05 am

The whole bundle weighs 4 pounds (1841g)...

...but it's pretty compact...

...and the construction of the board is easy and takes about 3 minutes...

...I could also place the finished board between the pages of a magazine into my briefcase if I didn't have the 3 minutes.

I once read somewhere that if space aliens played a game it would surely be Go.
I think this is my guess what their board would look like.

I'll introduce the "Sphere-Go" set to my Go-club in two days and maybe record a game on video and write about their reactions to it here.

Bonobo · Post by **Bonobo** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:17 am

Pretty impressive, but, to be honest, I fear my eyes would turn inwards if I’d play it … for my eyes it’s too bright, there are too many light reflexes, and with all the roundings it looks quite confusing to me.

Asmodeus · Post by **Asmodeus** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:28 am

Bonobo wrote:Pretty impressive, but, to be honest, I fear my eyes would turn inwards if I’d play it … for my eyes it’s too bright, there are too many light reflexes, and with all the roundings it looks quite confusing to me.

I think you're right about that. It does have too many reflexes and I'm afraid it will be confusing to play too.
Although the reflexes are a bit exaggerated in the pictures and it's not that bad in real life. I'll tell you how it is to play it in a few days.
Thanks for the comment.

Hushfield · Post by **Hushfield** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:44 am

Congratulations on finishing your project. Both size and weight seem like a great success. I have to agree with Bonobo, however, that the visuals are very busy. It's quite a bit harder to focus on shapes than would be the case on a wooden board, mainly because the color of the grey magnet-spheres is exactly in between the black and white spheres. Weird though it sounds, it would probably be easier to play a game on it if the magnets were some bright color like green, pink or red.

Uberdude · Post by **Uberdude** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 7:20 am

How about leaving it in a lake for a few years to rust

Asmodeus · Post by **Asmodeus** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 9:49 am

Uberdude wrote:How about leaving it in a lake for a few years to rust

I see wat u did there, I'm trying not to laugh.
Also not sure if should laugh because funny or sad.
But seriously: Nobody laugh.

Jujube · Post by **Jujube** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 11:11 am

It looks lovely. I like the size of it. I was expecting the spheres to snap to each other in a zigzag fashion. How do they stay perpendicular?

Asmodeus · Post by **Asmodeus** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 7:32 pm

Jujube wrote:It looks lovely. I like the size of it. I was expecting the spheres to snap to each other in a zigzag fashion. How do they stay perpendicular?

Cursed magnets! I am confunded and perplexed as to how they doth work.
At first I made the mistake of making a row of 20, then another row of 20, and connecting them afterwards. That led to the polarity of the magnets being wrong very often and the rows snapping to each other in a zigzag fashion.
If you look at the last picture you'll see that I just make a continuous string of spheres that I just bend over at the end of the row to make the next row of spheres never needing to cut the string of magnets and so never having the polarity wrong and being faster.

Tomorrow will be the first game with this set and my opponent is a rather conservative guy so I expect to get hurting honest comments from him.
I know the set isn't perfect and traditionalists will cringe when they see it. But who cares?
I liked the idea of it and making it was easy and lots of fun for me and if some of you like it also it's an added bonus.

SamT · Post by **SamT** » Sat Sep 13, 2014 11:10 am

I like it so far. The shinies do hurt my eyes, tho. Given that you made the playing pieces black and white, is there a way to make the shiny board-spheres yellow, like a painted goban?

Saproxylic · Post by **Saproxylic** » Wed Sep 17, 2014 10:39 pm

I actually kinda love, how it turned out! Yes, shiny and I guess a bit hard on the eyes if you have been plating on traditional gobans, but for a total noob like me who's not used to anything yet it seems to be a totally acceptable way of playing. the weight might be a dealbreaker for me, but, well, it's mostly just me being frail.

Tim C Koppang · Post by **Tim C Koppang** » Sun Nov 23, 2014 12:14 am

Very cool! It looks quite sci-fi even if the shiny-ness is distracting.

Krama · Post by **Krama** » Sun Nov 23, 2014 7:55 am

I wonder if this changed on how we think about the game.

Because here you are placing it between other round shapes where as in real go you are placing the stones on edges of squares.

In the end it is all the same but I think playing on this board would let you think in a different way.

Asmodeus · Post by **Asmodeus** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 8:40 am

Krama wrote:I wonder if this changed on how we think about the game.

Because here you are placing it between other round shapes where as in real go you are placing the stones on edges of squares.

In the end it is all the same but I think playing on this board would let you think in a different way.

My personal belief is that the game of Go is just a representation of reality and as such that representation can vary in shape and form. Some concepts of Go as one other poster has already noticed become more clear when you play on Sphere-Go. I like to think of this set as being on the atomic particle level where lines and double-convex shapes are only what we represent the reality with.

PLEASE REBUILD, COPY, ENHANCE, SELL, GIFT, WHATEVER THIS SPHERE-GO SET AND HAVE FUN WITH IT.
(just don't forget to referr to me as the source for it as you do and I will be satisfied)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Life In 19x19

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