This Julia package implements a subset of the Go Text Protocol (GTP), version 2, as well as keeping track of the Go board (captures, etc). (Here, "Go" refers to the board game, not the programming language.)
If a Go playing engine is written in Julia, then this package should make it easy to connect it to any Go client that speaks the GTP protocol. That will allow it to play humans or other engines via a GUI or over the internet.
All that is needed to create a Go playing engine is to write a function genmove(board, color, info) that decides which move to make, given the board state and color to play (and some additional info like komi and time left.) This function is then passed to the GoTextProtocol.gtp_repl function, which implements the GTP protocol. This REPL can be used directly from the terminal (for testing), but most commonly it will be accessed by a Go client that provides a more friendly user interface.
The file example_engine.jl demonstrates how to write a Julia script that can be used by a Go client. The Go client will typically have an "Add Go engine" option in the settings, where the path to this script can be entered.
- The aim of this package is not to provide a Go playing engine. The example script is barely better than random play!
- I have only tested this with a single Go client so far. Please file an issue if you encounter problems.
- At the moment, only the bare minimum of GTP commands are supported. PRs are welcome!
This package is based on the gtp Python package by James Tauber and on Julia Go board code by by Gunnar Farnebäck.