In order to understand the G System and its way of development it is helpful to understand some of the basic ideas that drives this project forward.
The G System (or G for short) was designed primarily for one purpose: the simulation of evolution. But what does this mean? This is a good question to ask and happily it is not too difficult to answer. Before we start, we want to say that the system is in no way limited to this kind of simulation but this is what we have in mind while creating the G System. If you intend to use it for something completely different you will probably find out that it is quite useful for many purposes - because everything actually is part of evolution...
Many scientific or mathematical simulation frameworks and applications are highly specialized in their domain, which is mostly of a technical nature like electronics, mechanics or any combination. The G System does not attempt to bring a complete framework in such domains but tries to fill the gap of a more social, life and evolution framework. Still, it provides the means to construct many highly technical simulations and in fact such implementations could bring even more completeness to the virtual universe that the G System brings forth. The main aspects of the G System do not in any way contradict to technical simulations. In fact, life itself is a wonderfully scientific system. This system can model life, evolution and social aspects of our day to day experiences without taking away the fascination passionate philosophers intuitively feel about the subject.
It is important to remember that the word simulation in the context of the G System is not strictly used according to the technical meaning of the word in todays science. Instead, the term is rather extended and applied to a much wider range of phenomas we all encounter in daily life. This means that the G System is a simulation in a broader view of things, trying to provide a simulation and a framework for life, society and evolution besides being a general purpose simulation framework.
The second term that is heavily used and needs to be clarified is evolution. In general evolution is understood as evolution of form, meaning genetic changes in bodies of a species through successive generations. But that is truly just a minor part in the larger scheme of things. We define evolution as evolution of life, meaning the change of consciousness of the life that is expressed through the forms. Life never dies or goes away. It's always the same life that, through time, uses different forms to express itself.
Every software project has some origin, a reason why it exists and why developers actually are willing to spend their time on. Thoughts, ideas and a lot of other things are written down in the Philocorner document of the G System. To understand the G System, one should understand the philosophy that backs up this project. In some ways these philosophical considerations opens the project to a group of people normally not involved in software projects at all. Such people are of course highly welcome to join.
The G System Framework, as such, is not an application in itself, it is rather a set of tools and libraries that can be used to make a simulation. They work by providing a kind of virtual reality whose constituent elements can evolve over time in a realistic way. Users can interact with this reality and thus influence the environment. By being able to interact with others in the environment users themselves are part of the process of evolution.
On the other hand, the G Universe is the virtual reality built with the G System in order to implement the desired evolution simulation. This universe is open to anyone who wants to take part in it. Participation of human entities results in a highly dynamic and interesting behaviour of the overall virtual universe. This also leads to a worldwide virtual community that builds up a complete society in this virtual world. The G Universe can in fact be used to experiement with complex social settings as the working of the virtual world just represents real life - since real life is evolution. The difference is that the G System offers more possibilities, as it is virtual; and, being virtual, it allows for better analysation and thus understanding of the processes involved.
Take a quick look at our world, what is there? People, animals, plants ... but also cities, nations, the planet as a whole, many natural areas like forests, continents, rivers, the air, ... . On a different level we can consider that our environment is filled with certain ideas, concepts, feelings, etc., whatever makes up the atmosphere we feel or sense around us when we go to work, interact with other people, or just sit in a quiet place. The point is that all things around us are changing in one way or another, and we ourself change in time. We can call this "evolution". How is this accomplished? All systems follow certain laws, physicists know this well. But there are not only physical laws which accurately describe the behaviour of physical matter, there are also laws that apply to the latter categories (emotions, thoughts, ideas, the perceived ambiance of the place we are right now,...). Under such laws changes take place inside the system according to how the individual parts influence each other. Now, this is a very rational approach but I think it shows the basic concept.
Now let's take a look at the universe. Even this enormous system is changing/evolving in some way. Solar systems come into existence and fade away. And inside such solar systems are planets. On some such planets we may find evolution to be quite active...
I think the most interesting way of looking at evolution is to think about human beings, which is probably a very good subject for these studies. For now, this is left to the reader as an exercise...
Summing things up we can say that everything is evolving and evolution is possible through influences between parts of a system. Designing the influences themselves and the reactions are two major steps in creating a simulation with the G System.
This was a basic overview of what the G System aims at. It tries to give you a context for the rest of the documentation.