Genome Interface

This is an outline of the minimal interface that is expected to be present on genome objects; example genome objects can be seen in DefaultGenome and iznn.IZGenome.

Class Methods

parse_config(cls, param_dict)

Takes a dictionary of configuration items, returns an object that will later be passed to the write_config method. This configuration object is considered to be opaque by the rest of the library.

write_config(cls, f, config)

Takes a file-like object and the configuration object created by parse_config. This method should write the configuration item definitions to the given file.

Initialization/Reproduction

__init__(self, key)

Takes a unique genome instance identifier. The initializer should create the following members:

• key
• connections - (gene_key, gene) pairs for the connection gene set.
• nodes - (gene_key, gene) pairs for the node gene set.
• fitness

configure_new(self, config)

Configure the genome as a new random genome based on the given configuration from the top-level Config object.

Crossover/Mutation

configure_crossover(self, genome1, genome2, config)

Configure the genome as a child of the given parent genomes.

mutate(self, config)

Apply mutation operations to the genome, using the given configuration.

Speciation/Misc

distance(self, other, config)

Returns the genomic distance between this genome and the other. This distance value is used to compute genome compatibility for speciation.

size(self)

Returns a measure of genome complexity. This object is currently only given to reporters at the end of a generation to indicate the complexity of the highest-fitness genome. In the DefaultGenome class, this method currently returns (number of nodes, number of enabled connections).