Free Go

What is FreeGo?

FreeGo is software for playing Go on a board without lines, developed originally by Bildstein. He has been so kind to make it available under the MIT License. Sebastian is currently continuing the work on this project; the latest version is available here.

Installation

To run FreeGo, you will need to install the latest version of the .NET framework (anyone know a better URL?). Apart from that, all you need is the executable.

Versions

The current version is 0.4.0, which was released on 17 Jan 2005. Sorry for taking so long releasing a newer version after 0.2.0 on 28 Dec 2004. My only excuse is that I kept thinking "I'll just do this little bit more and then release it."

For a list of all past and planned versions and exactly what they do, see /Versions.

A change to the rules

After implementing the rule on capture and testing the software a bit, I finally became convinced that it doesn't make sense for stones to be used to capture stones of the same colour (Black stones capturing other Black stones, and similarly for White). I can't remember exactly what the realisation was that chaged my mind. But the new rule is that a stone can not contribute to the death of a friendly stone. Here is an example:

In the first example, the marked stone is dead. In the second example, the marked stone is not connected to the White stone above, but it is still alive because but for the above White stone, which is alive, the White stone below would be alive, so it is alive as it stands..

axd:

1. I'm very interested to know how you came to the conclusion that suicide is not OK.
2. please update the example links, the pages are not accessible. (doh... this dates from 2005...)

Herman: I don't know if suicide is the correct term here, he is talking about killing other stones of your own color, but not the stone you just played, while suicide traditionally includes killing the stone you just played. Perhaps fratricide would be a better term to make the distinction.