Hello everyone, particularly Go players,
I've just noticed Playroom received Go support, and while there are problems accessing it through web for now, I see this to be a very exciting addition.
I wonder, do we already have a Go community?
Given that, unfortunately, board games such as Chess or Reversy seem to be in minority when it comes to popularity, I'm not expecting a whole lot of players.
But regardless, it would be fantastic to have at least enough to handle a tournament.
If there was such an event, would you participate?

Also, I'm interested, if you're playing, what's your equipment?
After a long, long searching (few years I guess), I've finally managed to find and acquire a tactile 9X9 Go set from the American Go Foundation, who was really helpful in this manner.
But given how long did it take me to find they have them, I wonder how successful where the other board game fans in the acquiring process.
Given the abstract nature of the game, I think having a tactile board has a significant importance.

Hello,

Unfortunately, board games in general aren't played a lot on the playroom, and beyond the reason of not liking strategy and thinking, one other big reason is the need for many people to have a physical board in order to be able to play well. It's especially more important in Go, since the game is all about positionning.

For physical goban, personally I'd like to have one, but it doesn't seem to be easily available in Europe either.

Hello @Aminiel,
I'm from Europe too. But AGF was really helpful, they didn't have a problem with it.
You can ask them by eMail if they still have the 9X9 gobans and if they could send you one.
Or perhaps ask even your own organisation in France (if that's your location), I'm not sure how popular is Go in your country.

Of course, we still need a more available source of Go sets, so new players wouldn't need to search the whole world for them.
I created a goban for 3D print in the past. It was inspired by tactile chessboards - 36 x 36 CM for 9X9, with pieces being pushed into holes.
Though it was not particularly easy to print, the size is bigger than most of the printers support, so it consisted of 9 individual parts that needed to be joined by special components I designed for this purpose.

The goban I received from US is much, much smaller, I didn't measure it yet, but I think it could perhaps fit into a printer.
The pieces are not pushed into holes, instead, they have slots on their bottoms and can be fixed by putting them on the tactile intersections, which fit into the slots.
That lets the goban to be very thin, what could be a big advantage for 3D print - less material required, lower price.

An open-source tactile Go set could mean that anyone would be able to acquire a board in few clicks, for few euros in their local city.

btw, a side question, is there a way to sort the games in Playroom statistics according to popularity?
I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of games playd of Go, Othello or chess, all really awesome games, though I wanted to check the bigger picture.

Perhaps I could rather stop being lazy and simply rewrite the data to Python or whatever data analysis tool, or write a script to do so, but since I'm lazy by nature, I'm asking first. :)

Hello,

I don't have a 3D printer, but definitely, that could be an interesting solution with reasonable costs. By the way, can a blind person use a 3D printer ? Is it easy to design what to print with a sighted person ?

I have well hard about an offer for a goban in France, but for about 180€. It seems quite expensive. I don't know well, but I think it should more be in the range 60-80€; certainly not twice more, especially if it's plastic and not wood. I takes a chess or checker board as a comparison.

Hello @Aminiel,
you don't need to have a 3D printer yourself in order to print models.
In the current state of development, it would be quite inefficient - printers are big, expensive, you need to get materials, carry out maintenance etc.
Unless you're really into it, it's much better to make use of services that offer 3D printing, can be classical printing stores but also ones that specialize in 3D print.
I think you can find them in most bigger cities.
My school had a 3D printer as well, that's what I used for my goban.

The accessibility of 3d printing depends on what you want to achieve.
As for designing models, there is OpenScad, a tool that lets you define 3D models using a plain-text scripting language.
We're not going to do any artwork with it, but it's great for technical things, like components, and, go sets as well.

The printing process itself is more complicated. First of all, you need an accessible printer, as there are quite a few things to setup before a print can start.
And even if you do all the physical and software preparations required, things can still go wrong during the printing itself.
I suppose it could be done with good equipment and some luck, if one is willing to sacrifice some failed models.

For practical usage, printing services, or organisations with a 3D printer (if you're a part of one), are a better choice. You just hand them over an STL model and they return you a physical object.