GNU Go Task List
You can help make GNU Go the best Go program.
This is a task-list for anyone who is interested in helping with GNU
Go. If you want to work on such a project you should correspond with
us until we reach a common vision of how the feature will work!
A note about copyright. Before any code can be accepted as a part of
the official release of GNU Go, the Free Software Foundation will want
you to sign a copyright disclaimer. Of course you can work on a forked
version without signing such a disclaimer. If you want your changes to
the program to be incorporated into the version we distribute we need
such a disclaimer. Please contact the GNU Go maintainers, Daniel Bump
(bump@math.stanford.edu) and Gunnar Farneback (gf@isy.liu.se), to
get more information and the papers to sign.
Below is a list of things YOU could work on. We are already working on
some of these tasks, but don't let that stop you. Please contact us or
the person assigned to task for further discussion.
//--------------------------------------------------------------
// General
//--------------------------------------------------------------
* If you can, send us bug FIXES as well as bug reports. If you see
some bad behavior, figure out what causes it, and what to do about
fixing it. And send us a patch! If you find an interesting bug and
cannot tell us how to fix it, we would be happy to have you tell us
about it anyway. Send us the sgf file (if possible) and attach
other relevant information, such as the GNU Go version number. In
cases of assertion failures and segmentation faults we probably
want to know what operating system and compiler you were using, in
order to determine if the problem is platform dependent.
//--------------------------------------------------------------
// smaller projects
//--------------------------------------------------------------
These issues are of tactical nature, i.e. they concern some specific
feature or the infrastructure of the engine. Some of these are quiet
small, maybe doable in a day for an experienced GNU Go programmer.
They might also be useful project to start with for a new project
member. Some of them are bigger and demand a deeper knowledge of the
engine internals. The issues are presented here in an approximate
order of perceived difficulty.
* Add more checks in patterns/mkpat.c testing whether the main diagram and
the constraint diagram are consistent.
* Complete the conversion to 1-dimensional representation.
Check all comments before functions to make them agree with
the actual function header. In some cases these comments were
missed when the function was converted to 1D.
* Break out handling of movelists into its own file and generalize it.
This is started in 3.1.16. Move lists are used, among other places,
in worms.c where it is used to store moves that capture, save,
threaten to capture and threaten to save the worm.
* Implement move lists storing important moves for dragons and eyes
in the same way as it is used for worms. Half eyes are already
halfway done. The moves are stored, but not the attack and defend
codes (LOSE, KO_A, KO_B and WIN).
* Make the cache not waste storage on 64 bit systems.
* Implement detection of superko violation in the board code. We
probably only want this optionally in play_move() and in a variant
of is_legal().
* The dragon data is split into two arrays, dragon[] and dragon2[].
The dragon2 array only have one entry per dragon, in contrast to
the dragon array where all the data is stored once for every
intersection of the board. Complete the conversion of eye_data,
half_eye_data, worm and dragon to use the same structure as the
dragon2 array.
* Implement persistent caching in the semeai code.
* Support for ko in eyes.db and optics.c.
* Support for constraints in the eye patterns.
* Create a paradigm for handling other types of ko (approach move ko,
multi-step ko, etc) and then write code that handles them.
(Difficult!)
* GNU Go should be able to resign some games. This feature should be
able to be turned on or off since we don't want it during
tournament play. If all dragons are settled and GNU Go is behind by
a lot, it should be able to resign.
//--------------------------------------------------------------
// long term issues
//--------------------------------------------------------------
These issues are strategic in nature. They will help us to improve the
playing strength of the program and/or enhance certain aspects of it.
* Extend the regression test suites.
See the texinfo manual in the doc directory for a description of
how to do this. In particular it would be useful with test suites
for common life and death problems. Currently second line groups, L
groups and the tripod shape are reasonably well covered, but there
is for example almost nothing on comb formations, carpenter's
square, and so on. Other areas where test suites would be most
welcome are fuseki, tesuji, and endgame.
* Tuning the pattern databases. These are under constant revision. This
is a sort of art. It is not necessary to do any programming to do this
since most of the patterns do not require helpers. We would like it if
a few more Dan level players would learn this skill.
* Extend and tune the Joseki database. It might be very useful to implement
a semi-automatic way of doing this.
* The semeai module is still in need of improvement. (This is underway.)
* The connection analysis is today completely static and has a hard
time identifying mutually dependent connections or moves that
simultaneously threatens two or more connections. This could be
improved by writing a connection reader. (This is underway.)
* GNU Go does not have a move generator that tries explicitly to build
moyos, or reduce/invade opponent's moyos. Such a move generator could
be built using the same type of code that is used in the owl life and
death reader, or the connection reader mentioned in point 5 above.
* A much improved combination module. The combination module of
today only finds combinations of threats to capture enemy groups.
A more useful combination module would e.g. find combinations of
threats to capture a group or enter opponent territory. It would
also be strong enough to find combinations of strategic moves and
more indirect threats (a threat to a threat). Possibly it could
combine threats in AND-OR trees (DAGs?) that could be searched
using ordinary tree search algorithms. (Revision of combination.c
is underway.)
* Speed up the tactical reading. GNU Go is reasonably accurate when
it comes to tactical reading, but not always very fast. The main
problem is that too many ineffective moves are tested, leading to
strange variations that shouldn't need consideration. To improve
one could refine the move generation heuristics in the reading.
Also, one should implement some more of the standard tree search
optimizations used in alpha-beta readers.
* Create a way to quickly assess the safety of a group. This might
take into account number of eyes / half eyes, moyo in corners, moyo
along the edge, moyo in the center, proximity to living friendly
groups, weak opponent groups etc. The point is that it should
involve no reading and that it is quick. This could be used to
make a strategic estimation of how a move strengthens a friendly
group and/or weakens an opponent group and how strong/weak groups
influence each other.
* In some positions GNU Go may report a group as alive or connected
with a living group. But after the opponent has placed one stone
GNU Go may change the status to dead, without going through a
critical status. It would be nice if these positions could be
identified and logged for later analysis of the GNU Go team.
* Automatic search for missing patterns by analysing games from
NNGS.
//--------------------------------------------------------------
// Ideas
//--------------------------------------------------------------
These are some ideas that have been floated on the mailing list. Some
of them are down-to-earth, and some are just blue sky ramblings. They
are presented here for inspiration.
* A good GUI.
A start is being made with GoThic, a goban widget based on the QT
toolkit. This is linked from the GNU Go development web page on
gnu.org. Other starts have been made based on GTK, but so far
nothing more than a start has been attempted.
* A graphical pattern editor.
This would make it much easier for non-programmers to improve the
strength of GNU Go. It could also be used as a debugging tool for
the programmers. This project has the GUI as a prerequisite.
The challenge here is not to make a tool which makes it easier to
create patterns but to make it easier to overview and maintain the
database.
* Make the engine thread safe and use multiple CPUs on an SMP
machine.
* Making the engine use many machines loosely connected on the
internet or in a cluster.
* Think on the opponents time.
* A global alpha-beta reader. This would probably be very slow and
could only read 2 or 3 moves ahead. Still it could find fatal
errors and improve the moves that GNU Go makes.
* A pattern based tactical reader instead of the hard coded one.
This could be made stronger than the current by taking into account
more moves. The challenge is to keep it on focus so that the
reading does not take forever.
* A strategic module that identifies high-level goals and then gives
these goals to the rest of the engine. It should be able to
identify if we are ahead in territory or thickness, if we should
play safe or if we should play daringly (e.g. if behind). It
should also identify weak areas where we can attack or where we
should defend. Maybe this module doesn't have to be written in C.
Maybe PROLOG, LISP or some other AI language would be better.
* A parameter that makes GNU Go play different styles. Such styles
could be 'play for territory', 'play aggressively', 'play tricky
moves (hamete)', and so on. It could be used to present human
users with different kinds of opponents or to tell GNU Go how to
play certain computer opponents in tournaments.
* Generalize representation and handling of threats so that we have a
graph representation of threats that can be searched to see how
different threats interact.
