.xX$$x. .x$$$$$$$x. d$$$$$$$$$$$ ,$$$$$$$P' `P' , . $$$$$$P' ' .d b $$$$$P b ,$$x ,$$x ,$$x ,$$b $$. Y$$$$' `$. $$$$$$. $$$$$$ $$P~d$. d$$$b d d$$$ `$$$$ ,$$ $$$$$$$b $$$P `$ $$$b.$$b `Y$$$d$d$$$' . . a . a a .aa . a `$$$ ,$$$,$$' `$$$ $$$' ' $$P$XX$' `$$$$$$$$$ .dP' `$'$ `$'$ , $''$ `$'$ `Y$b ,d$$$P `$b,d$P' `$$. `$$. , `$$P $$$' Y $. $ $ $ Y..P $ `$$$$$$$' $$$P' `$$b `$$$P `P `$' `Y'k. $. $. $. $$' $. Issue 75 2 September, 1999 _______________________________________________________________________________ Core Warrior is a newsletter promoting the game of corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills - currently the '94 draft hill, the beginner hill and the '94 no-pspace hill. Coverage will follow where ever the action is. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star internet locals for more information: FAQs are available from: http://www.koth.org/corewar-faq.html http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html The ftp site and it's mirrors are at: ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/mirror ftp://www.koth.org/corewar pMARS itself is also available from: http://www.koth.org/pmars ;pMARS home page ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar ;Fechner ftp site Web pages are at: http://www.koth.org/ ;KOTH http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar ;Planar Newbies should check the above pages for the FAQ, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! _______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings... This issue contains the results of the IWT and the code for Kline's SnooPy. The hint this issue shows how Khuong's nPaper became a warrior which shot to KotH on the '94nop hill. Enjoy... -- John Metcalf _______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server ICWS '94 Draft Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 43.3/ 34.4/ 22.2 Recycled Bits David Moore 152.2 97 2 35.2/ 18.6/ 46.3 Jade Ben Ford 151.8 20 3 41.4/ 34.8/ 23.8 Self-Modifying Code Ben Ford 148.1 43 4 45.1/ 42.4/ 12.5 Qshot Christian Schmidt 147.8 27 5 41.4/ 38.0/ 20.5 Snowman John Metcalf 144.8 41 6 41.9/ 39.8/ 18.3 SnooPy P.Kline 144.0 23 7 29.2/ 15.6/ 55.2 Return of the Fugitive David Moore 142.9 24 8 34.8/ 26.9/ 38.3 Stonewashed Christian Schmidt 142.7 37 9 34.3/ 27.2/ 38.6 One Step Beyond John Metcalf 141.4 58 10 41.6/ 42.0/ 16.5 goonie David Moore 141.2 18 11 32.4/ 24.4/ 43.1 nPaper II Paul-V Khuong 140.4 0 12 36.8/ 33.6/ 29.7 The Endless Knot John Metcalf 139.9 4 13 35.5/ 31.0/ 33.5 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 139.9 97 14 43.4/ 47.5/ 9.1 QHSA Ken Espiritu 139.3 8 15 39.3/ 39.5/ 21.2 Stranger John Metcalf 139.2 54 16 38.2/ 37.5/ 24.3 Draken Fire Ben Ford 138.9 55 17 38.7/ 39.3/ 22.0 death by redcode Simon Wainwright 138.0 76 18 31.2/ 24.8/ 44.0 Slippery Eels Ben Ford 137.6 39 19 27.7/ 18.5/ 53.7 No More Innocuous Leonardo H. Liporati 136.9 29 20 32.0/ 27.3/ 40.6 Icen Ben Ford 136.7 45 21 32.7/ 29.5/ 37.8 Sword'n'shield Christian Schmidt 135.9 8 22 30.6/ 26.0/ 43.4 EvoP Ken Espiritu 135.2 3 23 30.7/ 26.5/ 42.8 Exor Ken Espiritu 134.9 12 24 38.6/ 43.2/ 18.2 myBlur2 Paulsson 134.1 8 25 37.7/ 45.4/ 16.8 TheFlyOnTheWall Christian Schmidt 130.0 0 Age since last issue: 25 ( 43 last issue, 16 the issue before ) Days since last issue: 37 ( 61 last issue, 44 the issue before ) Average age: 33 ( 24 last issue, 19 the issue before ) Average score: 141 ( 141 last issue, 145 the issue before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by just 10 independent authors: Ford and Schmidt with 5 each, Metcalf with 4, Moore and Espiritu with 3 and the remaining 5 authors with just one warrior each. ( 9 authors last issue, 11 the issue before ) The scanners are returning to the hill in new unexpected forms... MyBlur's scan loop contains several processes to implement an airBag technique. QHSA uses a 'quasi-1c scan' to great effect against Return of the Fugitive, against which Moore's own 3-shot scanner (Goonie) also scores well. _______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New (Sorted by rank and score) # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 37.8/ 32.0/ 30.2 Am I alive? Christian Schmidt 143.6 1 1 35.0/ 28.1/ 36.8 The Pendragon Christian Schmidt 141.9 1 1 28.3/ 17.6/ 54.1 Jade Ben Ford 139.0 1 2 41.9/ 41.5/ 16.6 SnooPy P.Kline 142.3 1 2 26.0/ 13.0/ 61.0 Return of the Fugitive David Moore 139.1 1 3 40.6/ 40.6/ 18.7 goonie David Moore 140.6 0 7 38.2/ 39.8/ 22.0 The Endless Knot John Metcalf 136.5 0 8 43.2/ 48.0/ 8.8 QHSA Ken Espiritu 138.4 0 8 30.3/ 24.4/ 45.2 nPaper II Paul-V Khuong 136.3 1 12 29.4/ 26.3/ 44.3 Exor Ken Espiritu 132.5 1 14 38.3/ 44.2/ 17.5 myBlur2 Paulsson 132.4 0 16 35.8/ 41.5/ 22.7 Men-An-Tol-4 John Metcalf 130.0 0 17 33.5/ 35.4/ 31.2 Electrum John Metcalf 131.5 1 18 28.8/ 28.4/ 42.8 Sword'n'shield Christian Schmidt 129.2 1 20 28.8/ 26.7/ 44.5 EvoP Ken Espiritu 130.9 1 23 31.7/ 35.3/ 33.1 Baby One Moore Time Phooey 128.0 1 25 34.3/ 42.7/ 23.0 F B I Ken Espiritu 125.8 1 25 34.7/ 47.6/ 17.7 TheFlyOnTheWall Christian Schmidt 121.8 0 Players entering hill since last issue: 9 ( 8 last issue, 6 the issue before ) Average rank of new entries: 11 ( 9 last issue, 14 the issue before ) Schmidt and Ford both claim 1st place with their new entries. The Pendragon is a curious variation on the stone/imp. Jade contains a Q^4 -> Stone/imp which seems to be the only imp warrior immune to Khuong's nPaper... Moore's Fugitive returns stronger than ever. _______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More (Sorted by age) # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 26 30.6/ 37.8/ 31.6 The Outsider Simon Wainwright 123.5 51 26 34.1/ 43.0/ 22.9 Circle of Fire John Metcalf 125.1 48 26 35.9/ 41.6/ 22.5 WingShot Ben Ford 130.1 41 26 34.2/ 41.6/ 24.2 Digitalis 5 Christian Schmidt 126.9 40 26 25.4/ 25.6/ 49.0 Alive and K(qu)icking Zet Leonardo H. Liporati 125.2 40 26 29.2/ 34.7/ 36.1 Vain Ian Oversby 123.7 36 26 25.2/ 25.4/ 49.4 Glass Ben Ford 124.9 32 26 31.3/ 37.7/ 30.9 Pitch Shifter Christian Schmidt 124.9 30 26 27.2/ 33.0/ 39.8 Icepick Ben Ford 121.3 21 26 32.4/ 36.1/ 31.5 Am I alive? Christian Schmidt 128.7 16 26 33.4/ 42.1/ 24.6 Rubble P.Kline 124.7 9 26 31.3/ 38.4/ 30.3 Serenade to a Cuckoo WFB 124.2 8 26 31.1/ 39.3/ 29.6 PC WFB 122.9 8 26 2.0/ 0.9/ 1.2 The Pendragon Christian Schmidt 7.1 6 26 30.7/ 35.9/ 33.5 Baby One Moore Time Phooey 125.5 5 26 31.8/ 35.5/ 32.8 Electrum John Metcalf 128.1 3 26 32.6/ 42.1/ 25.4 Men-An-Tol-4 John Metcalf 123.1 3 26 34.3/ 43.3/ 22.4 F B I Ken Espiritu 125.4 2 Am I Alive? drops off the hill from KotH in 15 challenges - though not quite quickly enough to beat Toki's 12 last issue. _______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 43.3/ 34.4/ 22.2 Recycled Bits David Moore 152.2 97 13 35.5/ 31.0/ 33.5 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 139.9 97 17 38.7/ 39.3/ 22.0 death by redcode Simon Wainwright 138.0 76 9 34.3/ 27.2/ 38.6 One Step Beyond John Metcalf 141.4 58 16 38.2/ 37.5/ 24.3 Draken Fire Ben Ford 138.9 55 15 39.3/ 39.5/ 21.2 Stranger John Metcalf 139.2 54 Recycled Bits continues to perform well. _______________________________________________________________________________ The Extended New Hall of Fame: * indicates the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Probe Anton Marsden 403 Q^2 -> Bomber 2 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 396 Scanner 3 Damage Incorporated Anton Marsden 373 Q^2 -> Bomber 4 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 357 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 5 unrequited love kafka 346 Q^2 -> Paper 6 Impish v0.2 Ian Oversby 345 Stone/imp 7 Gigolo Core Warrior staff 332 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 8 Falcon v0.3 Ian Oversby 275 P-warrior 9 Nine Seven Six M R Bremer 232 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 10 Rosebud Beppe 218 Stone/imp 11 Newt Ian Oversby 216 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 12 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 214 Q^2 -> Scanner/bomber 13 Instant Wolf 3.4 Edgar 205 P-warrior 14 Goldfinch P.Kline 201 P-warrior 15 Simple v0.4b Ian Oversby 197 QScan -> Stone/imp 16 Trident^2 John K W 195 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 17 ompega Steven Morrell 189 Stone/imp 18 Frogz Franz 172 Q^2 -> Paper 19 The Machine Anton Marsden 164 Scanner 20 Memories Beppe 152 Scanner 21 Vain Ian Oversby 147 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 22 Head or Tail Christian Schmidt 142 Q^2 -> Paper 23 Electric Head Anton Marsden 140 P-warrior 24 Vigor Ken Espiritu 138 Q^2 -> Paper 25 Fixed Ken Espiritu 135 Q^2 -> Paper 26 Tiberius 3.1 Franz 130 Q^2 -> Paper 27 Ultraviolet-B Ken Espiritu 120 Q^2 -> Paper 28 obvious to those who k Robert Macrae 117 Q^2 -> Paper 29 Solomon v0.8 Ian Oversby 116 Stone and scanner 30 CC Paper 3.3 Franz 107 Q^2 -> Paper 31 mrb-test M R Bremer 106 *Unknown* 32 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 105 Bomber = Pulp v0.5 Ian Oversby 105 Q^2 -> Paper 34 Fugitive David Moore 102 Q^2 -> Paper/imp 35 Vengeance Robert Hale 101 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 36 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 100 P-warrior = Fire and Ice David Moore 100 P-warrior 38 Oblivion Ian Sutton 99 P-warrior 39 Recycled Bits David Moore 97* P-warrior = The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 97* Q^2 -> Stone/imp 41 Silver Talon 1.2 Edgar 93 Scanner 42 Bodge 1 Robert Macrae 85 Q^2 -> Scanner 43 Inferno 2.4 Philip Kendall 84 Qscan -> Bomber 44 Test Anton Marsden 83 *Unknown* = NCC-1701-A Philip Kendall 83 P-warrior 46 RetroQ Paul Kline 82 Q^2 -> Paper 47 Tornado 4 Beppe Bezzi 78 Bomber 48 death by redcode Simon Wainwright 76* Q^2 -> Bomber = He Scans Again Paul Kline 76 Scanner 50 Digitalis 4 Christian Schmidt 73 Q^2 -> Clear/imp Congratulations to Wainwright whose Death By Redcode gains him access to the Hall of Fame. Recycled Bits and The Stormbringer climb 9 ranks. _______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server Beginner Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 maximum age: At age 100, warriors are retired. rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 54.3/ 34.4/ 11.3 Nuke it! Silvio Sampietro 174.3 46 2 44.3/ 25.3/ 30.5 PC WFB 163.3 18 3 39.1/ 19.3/ 41.6 Quickest Zeta Leonardo Humberto 158.9 49 4 41.9/ 29.0/ 29.1 Silken Half Life v4.0 Dale Neal 154.7 54 5 44.6/ 36.3/ 19.1 da mutant Paul-V Khuong 152.9 27 6 36.3/ 20.1/ 43.6 Quicker Zeta Leonardo Humberto 152.6 71 7 41.0/ 30.3/ 28.6 Silken Half Life Dale Neal 151.7 57 8 45.8/ 40.4/ 13.8 Nuke it! (V 0.2) Silvio Sampietro 151.2 53 9 43.5/ 39.2/ 17.3 B-52 #001 A.S. Mehlos 147.8 1 10 32.4/ 22.8/ 44.8 Quick Zeta Leonardo Humberto 142.0 76 11 37.9/ 35.7/ 26.4 Arsonic C P._V._K. 140.1 25 12 41.3/ 43.5/ 15.2 Neverland II John Metcalf 139.2 17 13 37.0/ 37.5/ 25.5 FireMaster 2 P._V._K. 136.6 23 14 39.1/ 41.9/ 19.0 Wild-Fire P_.V_.K./John Metcal 136.2 28 15 37.8/ 40.6/ 21.7 Mel the Great Ken Hubbard 135.0 29 16 28.3/ 21.8/ 49.9 HardCore v0.2b Simon Duff 134.7 77 17 35.8/ 38.3/ 25.9 Red Sand Ken Hubbard 133.2 60 18 36.7/ 40.2/ 23.2 1 shot bomber 0.1 P._V._K. 133.2 26 19 36.9/ 40.8/ 22.3 Simpsons4Ever v0.4 Maurice Fernández 133.1 3 20 36.3/ 39.6/ 24.1 Fire Master P_.V_.K. 133.0 61 21 32.4/ 32.6/ 35.0 Radio Flyer Ken Hubbard 132.2 32 22 24.9/ 18.9/ 56.1 Caladan Ingo S Kacza 131.0 2 23 40.2/ 50.1/ 9.7 UltiBomber P._V._K. 130.4 24 24 31.4/ 32.9/ 35.8 quatrefoil 133 Steve Gunnell 129.9 47 25 35.1/ 43.0/ 21.9 Simpsons4Ever v0.3 Maurice Fernández 127.2 5 Redemption retired, and Death Kiss almost made it, dropping off aged 96 :-( Welcome to the new players - the two currently on the hill and the three or four who haven't quite made it yet. _______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the KOTH.ORG '94 No Pspace Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 250 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft, excluding ldp and stp # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 39/ 21/ 41 nPaper II Paul-V Khuong 157 2 2 46/ 40/ 14 Zooom... John Metcalf 151 138 3 46/ 42/ 12 aTest 4 P.Kline 151 1 4 35/ 21/ 44 Jade Ben Ford 149 71 5 36/ 25/ 38 Omnibus John Metcalf 148 11 6 45/ 42/ 13 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 147 264 7 46/ 45/ 10 Win! David Moore 146 237 8 36/ 26/ 38 Icen Ben Ford 146 96 9 45/ 45/ 10 Qshot Christian Schmidt 145 8 10 37/ 28/ 35 Ant Factory Christian Schmidt 145 97 11 38/ 32/ 30 The Pendragon Christian Schmidt 144 75 12 38/ 31/ 31 Blacken Ian Oversby 144 249 13 34/ 26/ 40 EvoP Ken Espiritu 142 4 14 43/ 44/ 14 goonie David Moore 142 64 15 39/ 37/ 25 PC WFB 140 88 16 40/ 39/ 22 Napalm Ken Espiritu 140 51 17 41/ 41/ 18 Men-An-Tol-7 John Metcalf 140 20 18 35/ 31/ 33 Recovery Ian Oversby 139 262 19 39/ 41/ 19 K5000R Christian Schmidt 138 6 20 41/ 45/ 14 myBlur2(3) Paulsson 137 18 In the 87 successful challenges since last issue a total of 12 warriors have left this hill - including the warriors which held 1st, 2nd and 3rd ranks. Vain (age 330), The Fugitive (274), The Stormbringer (262) and Romanian Killah (218) all perished... Khuong's nPaper dominates the hill, see this issue's hint for more details. _______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Koenigstuhl Recursive ICWS '94 Draft Hill: Koenigstuhl is an infinite hill similar to Planar's Mount Olympus and can be found on Christoph C. Birk's Core War page: http://andromeda.ociw.edu/COREWAR/ Below we show the top 20 of a total 1066 warriors: 1 Zooom... John Metcalf 174.69 2 The Machine Anton Marsden 174.29 3 Silver Talon 1.2 Edgar 173.50 4 Phantasm 50 Robert Macrae 172.91 5 Newt Ian Oversby 172.86 6 Scan Man David van Dam 172.67 7 Fixed Ken Espiritu 172.26 8 The Question David Moore 172.19 9 Recovery Ian Oversby 171.92 10 The Bloodhound Ian Sutton 171.67 11 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 171.57 12 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 171.44 13 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 171.23 14 Alien Christian Schmidt 170.25 15 Recycled Paper Planar 169.99 16 Forty Anton Marsden 169.87 17 Head or Tail Christian Schmidt 168.92 18 Digitalis 4 Christian Schmidt 168.89 19 Gigolo Core Warrior staff 168.76 20 myBlur2 Paulsson 167.55 Many recently published warriors hold positions in the top 20 ranks, though Newt is still the top rating stone/imp. Other recent entries in the top 100 are Puddleglum (29th), WingShot (30th), Shadow (31st), Sharkrage (47th), Icepick (49th), Digital Dragon (52nd), Burning Water (62nd) and Z-Shot (80th). Also to be found on the same page are the Koenigstuhl '88 Hill of which Freight Train is the King with a lead of 13 points over 2nd place, and the Open Hill ('94 Draft + P-Space) where Pattel's Virus recently became KotH. _______________________________________________________________________________ The Intelligent Warrior Tournament (1999) RESULTS! In what would later be called an amazing display of corewar programming power, eight programmers battled it out for control of the RedOS. In the end only one would be crowned King. In a tournament filled with both luck and skill, the eight Warriors would fight over RedOS registers, attempting to enter a higher score in their own register than their opponent could. The fighting would be fierce and started out with a round robin to determine who would move on to the Knock Out rounds. Only four would survive this grueling test. The contestants were as follows: ;redcode-94 ;name silly & slow ;author Ryan Coleman ;strategy Set my score to 7999! ;strategy set his score to 0 ;strategy then spl bomb ;redcode-iwt99 ;name Inconspicuous ;author John Metcalf ;strategy .8c scan -> spl carpet -> alter values ;redcode-94 ;author Robert Macrae ;name Bride of :-= ; [or, Better Late Than Never...] ;strategy 0.66 Vamp, Decoy and Pit ;redcode ;name Reverse Vampire ;author Josh Yeager ;strategy Find RedOS, then copy self over middle of it. ;strategy Hopefully, opponent won't hit me because he thinks I'm the OS! ;strategy Also, any proccesses the OS has will be running me! ;redcode-94 ;name Quick Thinking ;author Ben Ford ;strategy qscan -> HSAish scanner ;strategy ;strategy instead of bombing, qscan sets starting values for scanner ;strategy scanner based on HSA, added part to set my score properly ;strategy also never switches to dat-bombing (stun everything but me!) ;strategy ;strategy beats test warrior (and simple improvements) 80%+ ;strategy better than nothing, I suppose someone could try to take ;strategy advantage of 'flaws' in the hsa engine ;redcode-94 ;name Mine v0.3 ;author John K Wilkinson ;strategy my entry. this is mine. hence the name. ;redcode-94 ;name StupidWarrior ;author Planar ;redcode-94 ;name Starving Hacker ;author David Moore ;strategy Score 1 point :-) Optimized for single-elimination combat. The round robin featured single combat between each competitor. Position was randomly assigned by a coin toss (terribly high tech.) The chart below shows the results of the round robin portion. Coleman Metcalf Macrae Yeager Ford Wilkinson Doligez Moore Coleman X X X 0* -1 0* -7980 1 1 -1 Metcalf 0* X X X -1 0 -7980 0 0 -1 Macrae 1 1 X X X 1 1 5623 1 3 Yeager 0* 0 -1 X X X -7980 -7998 0 -1 Ford 7980 7980 -1 7980 X X X 7980 7980 -1 Wilkinson -1 0 -5623 7998 -7980 X X X 7998 -1 Doligez -1 0 -1 0 -7980 -7998 X X X 0 Moore 1 1 -3 1 1 1 0 X X X * denotes a fight where the RedOS died. Total Scores (Round Robin) 39899 Ford -7980 Coleman 5631 Macrae -7982 Metcalf 2391 Wilkinson -15980 Yeager 2 Moore -15980 Doligez With the round robin finished we came to the four Warrior Knock Out! As we can see, Ben Ford's entry "Quick Thinking" is clearly the odds on favorite having scored so highly in the round robin. Macrae and Moore both entered "dumber" programs that cleared core with sequential clears, hoping to trade score for speed that might help in the Knock Out portion of the tourney. Wilkinson's "Mine v0.3" was a jmp stunner/scanner with bootstrap. The first battle was between Ben Ford's "Quick Thinking" and David Moore's "Starving Hacker". Ben had lost in the round robin to "Starving Hacker" and was looking to take the battle to Moore's quicker program. Unfortunately for Ben, Moore's attack was too fast and he fell. Having easily dominated the round robin, "Quick Thinking" was ironically beaten by a quicker program. (Note: Ben had, in my opinion, on of the best programs written and might had taken it all had the rules been slightly different.) The second battle was going to be one of the most contentious. Macrae's "Bride of :-=" would face third place "Mine v0.3". The battle took four rounds to decide as the score was a tie the first three tries. In the end, "Mine v0.3" was triumphant. The stage was set for the final round: Our MAIN EVENT... ;name Starving Hacker ;name Mine v0.3 ;author David Moore ;author John K Wilkinson The first battle lit up the screen with green and yellow pixels as the two programs battle furiously for control of the registers. Fighting with all their might, they fought the first round to a tie! The tie breaker was decided early when Moore's "Starving Hacker" was struck squarely with a jmp bomb from "Mine v0.3". The rest was clean up and John K. Wilkinson's program did this brilliantly. The winner of the 1999 Intelligent Warrior Tournament is: John K. Wilkinson! Congratulations to John and thanks to all the contestants for taking the time to code what was a hard fought battle. I'm glad that this competitions winner was a program of some size and that it needed a bit of intelligence to win. The warriors will be displayed on the website soon. Side Note: I welcome feedback on this tournament and what could be done to make it more interesting for the programmers. It was my hope to reward complexity of strategy and it seems to have worked in most cases. Feel free to send me an email at or start a thread on r.g.c. The tournament's homepage can be found at: http://www.concentric.net/~liminal/IWT/index.html _______________________________________________________________________________ The Hint - Improving a Beginner's Warrior by Paul-V Khuong and John Metcalf Once again this hint will follow the development process of a warrior. This time the warrior is Paul's nPaper and our aim is to improve it sufficiently to allow it to gain a place on Pizza's '94 draft hill. Here is the original: ;redcode-94nop ;name nPaper ;author Paul-V Khuong ;strategy Paper ;assert CORESIZE==8000 pStep1 equ 3944 pStep2 equ 2616 pStep3 equ -624 x equ -373 y equ 1915 z equ -287 spl 1 spl 1 spl 1 pap1:spl @0, pap1 pap2:spl @0, {pStep2 mov }pap2, >pap2 mov.i #1, }1 mov {x, Paper ;assert CORESIZE==8000 org qGo pStep1 equ 560 pStep2 equ 2680 pStep3 equ -1120 x equ -3781 y equ -2013 pGo: spl 1, >424 spl 1, {761 spl 1, {933 mov {pap1, {pBoo pBoo:spl pEnd+4000,{2093 pap1:spl @pEnd, pap1 pap2:spl @0, {pStep2 mov.i }pap2, >pap2 mov.i #1, {1 mov x, ] 0/1 cycles [(<+- qGo: seq qd+qf+qs, qf+qs ; 1 jmp qSki, {qd+qf+qs+qi seq qd+qf+6*qs, qf+6*qs ; B jmp qFas, {qd+qf+6*qs+qi seq qd+qf+5*qs, qf+5*qs ; B-1 jmp qFas, qBmb seq qd+qf+9*qs, qf+9*qs ; A-1 djn qFas, {qFas seq qd+qf+10*qs, qf+10*qs ; A jmp qFas, {qFas ; -+>)] 2 cycles [(<+- seq qd+qf+3*qs, qf+3*qs ; C jmp >qFas, {qd+qf+3*qs+qi seq qd+qf+2*qs, qf+2*qs ; C-1 jmp >qFas, {qSlo seq qd+qf+4*qs, qf+4*qs ; C+1 jmp >qFas, }qSlo seq qd+qf+12*qs, qf+12*qs ; B*C-B jmp qSlo, {qSlo seq qd+qf+15*qs, qf+15*qs ; B*C-C jmp qSlo, qBmb seq qd+qf+24*qs, qf+24*qs ; B*C+B jmp qSlo, }qSlo seq qd+qf+27*qs, qf+27*qs ; A*C-C djn qSlo, {qFas seq qd+qf+30*qs, qf+30*qs ; A*C jmp qSlo, {qFas sne qd+qf+18*qs, qf+18*qs ; B*C jmz.f pGo, qd+qf+18*qs-10 qSlo:mul.ab #3, qKil ; C=3 qFas:mul.b qBmb, @qSlo qSki:sne >3456, @qKil add #qd, qKil qLoo:mov qBmb, @qKil qKil:mov qBmb, *qs sub #qi, qKil djn qLoo, #qr jmp pGo, >10 ; A=10 qBmb:dat {qi*qr-10, {6 ; B=6 end So how does our final version score? King of the '94nop and in the top ten on the '94 draft :-) On entering the '94nop hill it scored 40%+ wins against 11 of the warriors - 50%+ against 7. However, it would not surprise us to see a few more b-driven imps appearing on the hills... 1 36/ 22/ 42 nPaper II Paul-V Khuong 151 1 _______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra - SnooPy by Paul Kline You may remember Alladin's Cave, onetime leader on Pizza's 94 hill. I thought it might still have some potential and started working on a replacement, using the same base components and changing over to a p^3 switcher. I really could not get it going however, the one-shot scanner just is no longer strong enough and AC would end up carouseling the various parts against stronger opponents. This is one of the problems with p-programming, if you do not have a good 'stopper' in there, you end up rotating weaker opponents and give up way too many losses. So I went looking for some good code, especially something that would perform well against stone-imps and strong silks. The modern stone-imps seem to be structured similarly, a small stone with core wipe and a small imp-pump that is spaced far away from the stone. Both are hard to find by scanning, and a core-clear takes too long to kill them together. My approach was to try a quick one-pass something that would stun at least one of the parts with spl's, followed by a dclear. That way the dclear would have more time to do its job, and the imp-spiral would not grow too long. I went through a number of Torch and vamp variations, but finally settled on a Blur attack, one scanning pass and a dclear. It works pretty well against stone-imps and not so well against stronger silks. Additional stunning would be useful but to kill s-i's you have to start dclear-ing early, or you will not have time to kill all the spl's and the imp. Other p-spacers can be expected to try a simple stone which is deadly against scanners, so I added a paper component. After much diddling I selected a variation on an old theme of mine, which is a non-silk replicator with a lot of imp-deadly dat-bombing. This version kills s-i's like Rosebud and Blue Funk about 50% of the time, but is mainly guaranteed to at least get a tie. It also effectively kills a class of non-looping silk replicators. Because they do not loop, they act like simple hopper generators, once all the generators are dead, the hoppers are quite vulnerable. CC Paper is a good example. To protect the replicator against HSA and f-scan attacks I added a Wimp, which is just a JMP #0,#0 program that is invisible to them. For a little more punch against certain opponents I included the one-shot dclear component from Alladin's Cave. SnooPy is a good all-round performer, so far no programs on the hill are killing it badly and it is not killing anything else badly either (except one new one :-). Some challengers are giving up nearly 90% losses however, which is interesting. I think what is happening is that while SnooPy does a 16-byte forward scan in 3 steps (actually a 10 and a 6), the opponent is doing a backward scan with a smaller step or at a slower rate. I described this situation in an old Push Off article and it is fatal to the slower program. Other than that I can not explain such a high ratio. The p-code drives the trio on successive losses from scan to paper to one-shot and round again. The only variation is that if the paper gets a tie it returns to the scanner, which works quite well when the opponent is a replicator or imp. ;redcode-94 ;name SnooPy ;author P.Kline ;assert CORESIZE == 8000 ;strategy blurish scanner, paper, oneshot-clear ;strategy did i mention a wimp? w0 EQU vBoot w1 EQU slPaper w2 EQU cBoot PSTATE EQU 278 wimp jmp #0 ,#0 ; frustrate HSA-types, used with paper for 15 dat 0,0 rof clGate jmp OsClear,OsClear-6 ; one-shot to a dat-clear clIncr dat 13 ,13 OsClear add clIncr ,clGate sne.x *clGate,@clGate djn.f OsClear,<-1500 clSpl spl #0 ,clGate djn.f -1 ,>clGate clBomb dat <5535 ,1-clGate dat 0,0 btClear jmp 1000 ,clGate+10-btV for 5 dat 0,0 rof think ldp.a #0 ,in ldp.a #PSTATE ,table mod.ba *in ,table stp.b *table ,#PSTATE ; S L W T table jmp }0 ,0441 ; 00 1 0 0 dat #w0 ,0154 ; 01 2 0 1 ; w0 = scanner dat #w0 ,0163 ; 02 3 2 1 ; w1 = paper dat #w0 ,0092 ; 03 4 1 2 ; w2 = one-shot/clear dat #w1 ,0102 ; 04 6 4 3 dat #w2 ,0446 ; 05 6 5 5 dat #w2 ,0362 ; 06 2 5 2 dat #w2 ,0362 ; 07 2 5 2 dat #w2 ,0362 ; 08 2 5 2 in dat 0,8 ; must have non-zero b-field in the previous cell dat 0,7 dat 0,9 cBoot mov btClear ,btV ; boot one-shot or scanner vBoot a for 10 mov vPtr vScan seq vStep-6 ,vStep mov.ab vScan ,vPtr add vIncr ,vScan djn vNext ,#7900/16 vIncr spl #vStep ,#vStep mov vClr ,>vGate djn.f -1 ,>vGate vClr dat <2667 ,2-vGate for 8 dat 0,0 rof slPaper spl wimp spl 1 ,{1000 spl 1 ,{2000 spl 1 ,{3000 p1s mov p1b,>8 ; imp- and stone-killing paper p1c mov -1356 mov p1b,200 jmn.f @0,>p1s p1b dat <2667,<5334 end think "History has pretty well established that no program is going to last forever, publishing accelerates the demise yet advances the game." _______________________________________________________________________________ Questions? Concerns? Comments? Complaints? Mail them to people who care. Beppe Bezzi , Philip Kendall , Anton Marsden , John Metcalf and Christian Schmidt