Topic awaiting preservation: A good looking goBan

I am making a go client. It is one of my newest assignments.
It is heavily based on a virtual player, or artificial intelligence, called "gnuGo", but also allows multiplayer and network games
throughout dedicated protocols.

Anyway, I am currently concerned by making the goban look good.
As a background tile, I am using one of Doc's bg at the moment, which is subject to change.
In the following screencaps, there is a green highlight on the goban surface: that one will go as well.





I have (quite) a few questions.
Btw, I can use jpg, png, and gif, and theyre respective transparency and properties, and I can reproduce almost all Photoshop filters inside the code,
so <anything> can be done, in terms of graphics and animation.

With that in mind, the whole thing is "elastic", the goban can change size and configuration.

* The first thing I want to know is: how does it look as it stands?
* 2nd question, to have the goban look like something solid, is a small shadowy border enough? Should I blur that one a lot?
My guess is that picturing the light as uniform and coming from above is the right way to do it, as it is flat.

Then, on to animatig it a little:
* I want the stones to appear and disappear, and was picturing animated transitions, based on color addition/substraction
and alpha.
In PS, this corresponds to color dodge, it's opposite, and transparency.

Thoughts? tips?
Anything would be greatly appreciated.

There is a lot more to making this thing appealing, a lot of possibilities also: as the program stands, it is fully opened
and packed with both the power of newest Java features and my homebrewd algorithms and "tricks".
Skins are an option too.

So all ideas are welcome.

Few thoughts off the top.

You could add a drop shadow (2 or 3 px blur is usually enough unles you show alot of "height") to the board to give it some depth, or you could reverse fields and inset it into the background so the balls don`t "roll off" the playing field.

Don`t really know the game, but if the balls move, they could bounce from place to place, or sink into the surface, and re-emerge.

Definately lose the green. Perhaps darken the wood of the playing field to separate it from outside. An inset would look good there, too.

Thank you,

Have added little insets around the board, transparents ones inside (the black lines and letters):


Gobans look like this in the real world, with variations (some are on top of cute little tables):


I don't know how to replace the green. I was thinking about a "tatami" texture. (?)
I don't know where to put the drop shadow now that there is an inset around the goban. (?)
The logo means "go" in japanese calligraphy, I believe.

The project is -very- exciting as it combines several technologies, including some AI, networking a plenty,
some high and low level Java graphics, and probably... some OpenGL as well.
The game is very exciting too and was considered a martial art in Japan, Korea and China for centuries.

hey this game rocks! i used to play it as a kid,

Maybe soften the black lines and numbers/letters to a dark brown, that should help it blend in with the wood texture a bit better.

Personally i would also cut some of the red out on the board texture, to give it a bit more realisim.

so where can i play the game?

For the time being, my recommendation is to join the pandanet network
and use one of their nifty clients (Java and c++/OpenGL respectively, work on all platforms):
http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/

Later on, my game will also act as a pandanet client, but that's not before ~1 month.

A live app is better than 10000 screencaps, so if you got Java 1.4.2+, click the following link to keep track
of the most recent version, I've changed the color balance btw, to something "happier" in the same colors:
http://www.beyondwonderland.com/data/java/xiego/xiego.jnlp