A few details
Within the program, the organisms are divided into a number of populations.
Programs can compete with individuals from other populations. This has been
done to provide diversity, and to avoid situations where organisms
consistently beat their ancestors, but still spiral downwards in overall
fitness.
Organisms are rewarded in proportion to how much they win by. Losers
are penalised in proportion to the size of their loss. This has been done
so that even if a population of organisms is being consistently beaten,
there is still a directional selection pressure acting on the population.
Unfortunately this method of rewarding or organisms will produce populations
who never resign games.
We intend to evolve the population while playing mainly on small
boards, with large boards employed sufficiently often for organisms to
need to be able to adapt to them.
Similarly, we will play most games with strict time limits. Games with
longer time limits will need to be employed often enough that organisms
develop techniques for exploiting additional time, when this is available,
though.
The applet is written in Java.
Incremental techniques are used for storing the positions of groups and
their liberties. A 32-bit Zobrist hash is used to detect situational
super kos. A simple ko rule is also available. There are no plans to
implement positional super ko.
Stone scoring is currently employed. Area scoring will be used at a later
date. There are no plans to support teritory scoring.
This applet allows you to play against the original hand-written ancestral
creature. This plays like a little baby.
When playing automatically, the Gozilla spends most of its time redrawing
the screen. Turn of the display updating and it will probably go through a
number of games per second.
If you want to ensure playing against a relatively well-formed offspring,
either reload the applet, or allow the applet to play against itself for a
while with mutation turned off.