ConwayLife.com

Hey, guys! I've been thinking, even though gfind is a good tool, it's not perfect! So, I propose that we improve gfind to have more features, be faster, and to have different optimization settings! Anybody wanna help?

I don't have the expertise to work on such a project, but I would like to see a way to save partway and be able to resume the search later. The power here goes out often enough that it's a gamble to set up a week long search. Maybe there's already a way to do this that I'm not aware of.

velcrorex wrote:I would like to see a way to save partway and be able to resume the search later.

You should check out afind. It saves the state of the search periodically and can be stopped and resumed later on. It also allows searching for knightships and searching perpendicular to the direction of travel (i.e. for short spaceships). Unfortunately, it lacks the ability to search for diagonal spaceships with bilateral symmetry.

Also, in an improvement of gfind, I would like to see it be able to extend partial results. This doesn't seem like it should be too difficult to do. Has anyone tried anything like this before?

I have now found renewed interest in improving gfind, and I shall at least try to make it able to search for any oblique spaceship.