__ __| | ) _ \ | | \ \ / _) | __ \ _ \ / ( | | | \ \ \ / _` | __| __| | _ \ __| | | | | __/ \__ |___ __| \ \ \ / ( | | | | ( | | _| _| |_|\___| _/ _| \_/\_/ \__,_|_| _| _|\___/ _| March 2, 1994 Issue #3 ______________________________________________________________________________ The interest in the '94 standard appears to be increasing dramatically. There has been a lot of discussion in the rec.games.corewar newsgroup recently about the proposed standard, and a large number of entries on the '94 hills. Keep it up! If you are unfamiliar with the '94 draft standard, you can learn more about it by reading the FAQ for this newsgroup. In addition, the program pMARS includes a highly recommended tutorial on the new standard. Feel free to send me e-mail if you have any difficulty finding either of them, if you need to have a corewar item mailed to you, or if you have any other questions. The FAQ is available through anonymous FTP to rtfm.mit.edu, as /pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z ______________________________________________________________________________ The ICWS '94 Draft Hill: Core size: 8000 instructions Max processes: 8000 per program Duration: After 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. Max entry length: 100 instructions The current ICWS '94 Draft hill: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 29/ 30 Killer instinct Anders Ivner 154 6 2 38/ 25/ 37 NC II Wayne Sheppard 151 61 3 35/ 19/ 46 ttti nandor sieben 151 17 4 37/ 25/ 38 Sphinx v5.1 W. Mintardjo 150 64 5 35/ 20/ 45 ttti94 nandor sieben 150 12 6 43/ 42/ 15 Fire Storm v1.1 W. Mintardjo 145 67 7 35/ 25/ 41 Snake Wayne Sheppard 145 16 8 35/ 27/ 37 JustTakingALookSee J.Layland 143 60 9 40/ 42/ 18 Sylvester v1.0 Brant D. Thomsen 139 43 10 40/ 41/ 19 Ntttgtstitd Simon Hovell 139 7 11 38/ 38/ 24 Christopher Steven Morrell 137 5 12 40/ 42/ 18 SJ-4 J.Layland 137 10 13 41/ 46/ 14 Rave Stefan Strack 136 44 14 40/ 45/ 15 Rave 3 Stefan Strack 136 33 15 38/ 40/ 22 Fast Food v2.1 Brant D. Thomsen 135 19 16 39/ 42/ 19 Beholder's Eye v1.7 W. Mintardjo 135 73 17 37/ 41/ 23 tiny J.Layland 133 41 18 39/ 46/ 15 Impurge 94 Fredrik Ohrstrom 131 3 19 36/ 42/ 22 Vanity/M Stefan Strack 130 1 20 30/ 32/ 37 CG IV Brant D. Thomsen 129 2 Although there were several attempts at the hill, only one program managed to get on successfully: "Vanity/M", a SPL/JMP bombing B-scanner. It replaced "Medusa's v6". There are several scanners on the hill, but they all seem to be stuck in the bottom 10. The vampires on the hill are also starting to take a real beating. The programs that currently tend to be doing the best are mostly imp-spiral based, although "Killer Instinct" is a notable exception to this. ______________________________________________________________________________ The ICWS '94 Draft Experimental Hill: Core size: 55,440 instructions Max processes: 10,000 per program Duration: After 500,000 cycles, a tie is declared. Max entry length: 200 instructions The current ICWS '94 Experimental hill: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 60/ 12/ 29 BigImp Alex MacAulay 208 8 2 62/ 30/ 8 Rave 3 (55440) Stefan Strack 195 19 3 55/ 19/ 26 Imperfection v1.0 X Michael Constant 191 4 4 53/ 26/ 21 CG-X IV Brant D. Thomsen 180 18 5 58/ 38/ 4 No Ties Allowed Wayne Sheppard 178 24 6 48/ 21/ 31 BigImps James Layland 174 27 7 55/ 38/ 7 BS J.Layland 172 26 8 52/ 36/ 12 Dagger v6.0 X Michael Constant 168 7 9 40/ 35/ 25 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 145 23 10 39/ 46/ 16 Surprise7 James Ojaste 132 6 11 38/ 45/ 17 testing testing Fredrik Ohrstrom 132 14 12 37/ 45/ 19 Surprise71 James Ojaste 128 3 13 35/ 49/ 15 Surprise7a James Ojaste 122 2 14 39/ 57/ 4 Tracker Snow 121 1 15 35/ 56/ 9 bunker t3 P.Kline 113 15 16 18/ 31/ 51 Frantic 0.9 A Lee 104 28 17 28/ 53/ 20 Road Hammer 0.3 Simon Hovell 103 25 18 29/ 58/ 13 VJX-2a James Ojaste 100 11 19 28/ 64/ 8 VJX-2 James Ojaste 93 12 20 24/ 67/ 9 VJX-4 James Ojaste 82 10 It looks like the experimental hill has finally filled up, and Alex MacAulay's "BigImp" program is dominating it. If I'm not mistaken, "BigImp" is a standard imp-spiral/stone combination. It looks like all your '94 programs will still need to deal with Imps! ______________________________________________________________________________ HINTS and HELPS: This issue's hint is brought to you by Stefan Strack. Stefan is the driving force behind the creation of a '94 ICWS Standard, as well as being heavily involved in the pMARS project. It was his tournament last fall, in fact, that got me interested in the current '94 standard. Rejuvenating a Classic In the last issue of _The_'94_Warrior_, Brant mentioned that the best way to get familiar with ICWS'94 is to optimize an ICWS'88 warrior. This is what I am going to do in the following. I am going to start with a classic SPL-carpet bombing CMP-scanner, Agony 3.1, and turn it step by step into its shorter, more efficient '94 counterpart Rave 3. To start with, here is the code for Agony 3.1: ;redcode ;name Agony 3.1 ;author Stefan Strack ;strategy Small-interval CMP scanner that bombs with a SPL 0 carpet. CDIST equ 12 IVAL equ 42 FIRST equ scan+OFFSET+IVAL OFFSET equ (2*IVAL) DJNOFF equ -431 scan sub incr,comp comp cmp FIRST-CDIST,FIRST slt #incr-comp+CDIST+(bptr-comp)+1,comp djn scan,comp ;post-increment count djn.b split,#0 sub.ab #BOMBLEN,comp jmz.a scan,scan-1 incr spl.b #-IVAL,<-IVAL mov.i 1,