From: jwolf@pyra.co.uk (Jonathan Wolf) Subject: New standard and KOTH Date: 1 Sep 1993 08:29:07 -0500 Message-ID: <14118.9309011330@pyrfect.pyra.co.uk> Sorry if this is an obvious question: Having just achieved email access after a long absence I resubscribed to rec.games.corewar and read the FAQ. However, it does not mention the 94 standard at all with reference to KOTH. A message however suggested that KOTH (or KOTH-x what is the difference now?) does run with the provisional standard. Is this true? I'm sending this on news and not to wms because the FAQ definitely needs clearing up - I am surely not the only person who finds this confusing. All the same, it's great to be back and with anon ftp and all this time! Cheers Jonathan Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1993 15:38:29 MST From: Message-ID: <93244.153829AZNXS@ASUACAD.BITNET> Subject: Re: New standard and KOTH There are two servers. The original has two hills: the regular(ICWS-88) and the experimental (involves read-write limitations and nothing to do with the proposed-94 hill) . The new server at koth@stormking.com has three hills: regular, experimental and proposed-94 . To send warriors include the line ;redcode-94 into your warrior. The new server runs pMARS (portable MARS ) . C source and DOS executable available at soda.berkeley.edu by anonymous FTP . Nandor. From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: FAQ update, etc. Message-ID: Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1993 21:49:02 GMT The long overdue FAQ list update is ready. I added an ICWS'94 entry, description of the stormking.com KotH and a brief description of the contents of the /systems directory at soda. Posted again on the 9th. If you can't wait that long, grab it from rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/rec.games.corewar/corewar-faq.Z For a short time only at soda in pub/corewar/incoming: disk.zip "The Big Core War Disk for the PC", a snapshot of the soda archive containing standards, tutorials, warriors, digests of this newsgroup and all PC corewar simulators. All textfiles are repacked as DOS ZIP files. Size: ca. 1MB. For those without ftp access: The disk will be sold by the ICWS for a small fee. Contact Jon Newman (jonn@microsoft.com) for details. -Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1993 11:26:21 EDT From: BARON RAWLINS Message-ID: <93246.112621BMR116@psuvm.psu.edu> Subject: Help! I want to play This is to anyone who can help me get started in CoreWars. I'm an experienced programmer in all versions of C,Pacal, and BASIC and would like to get into this game. I'm having trouble trying to contact jonn.microsoft.com and a few other people I've found the addresses of. Help! Thanks in advance, Baron M Rawlins +--------------------------------------------------------------+ bmr116@psuvm.psu.edu Penn State University, USA From: collins@powdml.enet.dec.com (David Alpert) Subject: soda.berkeley.edu /pub/corewar/documents/tutorial.*.z Message-ID: <1993Sep5.144151.16176@peavax.mlo.dec.com> Date: Sun, 5 Sep 1993 14:40:07 GMT I can't seem to ftp the tutorial.1.z and tutorial.2.z documents properly from soda. Would somebody please either post them or email them to me, in unzipped, uncompressed, etc. ascii form? Thanks very very much. -- "Okay, you can have a five-minute break while I go to the bathroom - in here." - Our IPSY.LAN.1 teacher From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: Minor update to pMARS Message-ID: Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1993 04:20:41 GMT I already uploaded this last week, but forgot to announce it: soda.berkeley.edu: pub/corewar/systems/pmars01s.zip - source, zip format pmars01s.tar.Z - source, tar.Z pmars01.zip - DOS executables This is a minor update (0.1.1) to pMARS, the portable corewar simulator with ICWS'94 extensions. Mostly cosmetic changes including the following corrected example in the documentation: > label. EQU expansion is done after macro processing. It is > therefore possible to write > > dest01 EQU 500 > dest02 EQU 1000 > dest03 EQU 1500 > > idx FOR 3 > MOV src,dest&idx > MOV src+1,dest&idx > ROF > > src MOV <-1,<-1 > JMP src,<-2 -Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: EBS Fall '93 tournament Message-ID: Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1993 04:31:41 GMT Announcing: Fall '93 EBS corewar tournament Like the summer tourney this will be a double-elimination tournament with rounds played every week. Players submit new warriors by email or keep their entry from the previous week. Code from the previous round will be distributed to all players. In order to promote the proposed new standard I have decided to allow ICWS'94 extensions. Since ICWS'94 is a superset of ICWS'88, you can submit your KotH warriors, but we'll have to see how they will do against warriors that take advantage of ICWS'94 extensions. In short: -instruction modifiers that allow A- and B-field access -post-increment indirect addressing mode -all instruction/adressing mode combinations allowed (no illegal instructions) Take a look at soda.berkeley.edu:pub/corewar/documents/icws94.draft for a full description or primer.94 in systems/pmars01(s).zip for an abbreviated intro. You can develop warriors on portable MARS which is also used to run this tournament. The FOR macro and multi-line EQUates are allowed. A few simple ICWS'94 warriors are included with the pMARS archive. Deadline for submissions for the first round (address below) is Friday, September 17th. We play by KotH rules (coresize, maxprocesses = 8000, ..). I especially encourage beginners to participate; this is your chance to compete on equal terms, since no one has experience with the new standard yet. Cheers, Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) From: pk6811s@acad.drake.edu Subject: _Push Off_ Message-ID: <1993Sep7.170344.1@acad.drake.edu> Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1993 23:03:44 GMT _PUSH OFF_ A midweek review of Corewar September 7, 1993 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. The Standings: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 33/ 23/ 45 FlyPaper 3.0 J.Layland 142 452 2 32/ 23/ 45 ttt nandor sieben 140 252 3 32/ 24/ 44 NC II Wayne Sheppard 140 7 4 29/ 20/ 51 pMARS pMARS project 138 77 5 31/ 23/ 46 Imprimis 7 P.Kline 138 268 6 36/ 36/ 29 Winter Werewolf 3 W. Mintardjo 136 346 7 40/ 43/ 17 Grimm's Vampyre c w blue 136 211 8 29/ 23/ 48 Hydra Stephen Linhart 136 97 9 30/ 25/ 45 Night Crawler Wayne Sheppard 136 1028 10 30/ 25/ 46 Sphinx v2.8 W. Mintardjo 135 2026 11 41/ 47/ 12 Impurge Fredrik Ohrstrom 134 352 12 29/ 24/ 48 Impact v1.0 Anders Ivner 134 165 13 40/ 48/ 12 Iron Gate 1.01 Wayne Sheppard 133 171 14 34/ 36/ 30 Keystone t6 P.Kline 131 1 15 41/ 50/ 9 Agony 6.0 Stefan Strack 131 282 16 33/ 37/ 29 Herem VI Anders Ivner 129 200 17 39/ 50/ 12 Dragon Spear c w blue 128 1130 18 35/ 44/ 21 Distance v6.4 Brant D. Thomsen 127 107 19 34/ 42/ 24 Leprechaun 1b Anders Ivner 127 96 20 2/ 2/ 1 Keystone t5 P.Kline 7 2 21 1/ 2/ 2 Keystone t4 P.Kline 6 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- II. The Basics: -Core War Archives are available via anonymous FTP at soda.berkeley.edu in pub/corewar... -FAQ for this newsgroup is available via anonymous FTP at rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.z ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. The Scoop: More accolades to W. Mintardjo whose Sphinx v2.8 just went over 2000 challenges. Most of us have found that it is not hard to design a program that clobbers Sphinx, its just hard to get those programs on the Hill. Night Crawler also passed a rare milestone, age 1000. Congratulations! One notable casualty was B. Thomsen's Incrimination v1.0 which was pushed off at the respectable age of 380. With Snake and Incrimination off, have we put to bed the vampire/spiral combination? Time will tell :-) Then there was the appearance of 'ttt' and pMARS, both presumably N. Sieben offerings, and both very tough customers. ttt scores remarkably like Shepard's NC II (version of Night Crawler), which uses a short 3-point spiral and a fast stone. pMARS scores a little lower and my guess is it's just ttt with a 7-point spiral instead of 3-point. (your mileage may vary :-) Now if L. Tumbe could just change a few ties into wins: 21 0/ 50/ 50 Megimp Christopher L. Tumbe And a big WELCOME! to all you newcomers who have been hitting the Hill lately. Don't give up too easy. It takes time to understand the many intricacies of today's warriors. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IV. The Outlook: 1 36/ 24/ 40 FlyPaper 3.02 J.Layland 147 3 3 31/ 22/ 47 NC II Wayne Sheppard 140 1 7 28/ 19/ 53 pMARS pMARS project 137 1 10 35/ 34/ 31 Emerald 6 P.Kline 136 1 10 35/ 35/ 30 Keystone t4 P.Kline 135 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- V. The Quick Look: 18 28/ 33/ 39 Anti-Impaper c w blue 122 1 19 25/ 58/ 17 Flakey J. Craig Brunson && 91 1 19 30/ 50/ 20 Stoned II Geoff 110 1 20 0/ 48/ 52 Timtest (not mine, but I'm M 53 1 20 12/ 73/ 15 Rattle 'n Hum(b) J-D Mountjoy 52 1 20 14/ 45/ 41 Shwing! v2.0 T. H. Davies 83 1 20 20/ 57/ 23 bangle 3.0 Steve Gunnell 83 1 20 20/ 63/ 17 TimTest2 (Dewdney) This is a 77 1 20 24/ 59/ 17 weevil 2 Steve Gunnell 89 1 20 25/ 61/ 13 Spiral Stephen Linhart 90 1 20 27/ 39/ 34 just some junk c w blue 115 1 20 28/ 50/ 23 Glass House 3.0 J.Layland 106 1 20 37/ 44/ 19 sub-type-os c w blue 130 1 20 38/ 50/ 12 Cleaver Wayne Sheppard 125 1 21 0/ 46/ 53 Megimp Christopher L. Tumbe 54 0 21 0/ 48/ 52 imp Unknown 52 0 21 0/ 58/ 42 Imp Army Mike Olson 42 0 21 0/ 72/ 28 PitcherIII J Kyle Kelso 29 0 21 0/ 86/ 14 Exponential2 Mike Olson 14 0 21 0/ 90/ 10 JMPbomb Mike Olson 10 0 21 0/ 93/ 7 Impgate J Kyle Kelso 7 0 21 1/ 38/ 62 Megimp2 Christopher L. Tumbe 64 0 21 1/ 61/ 38 smurf Mike Olson 40 0 21 1/ 61/ 39 Smurf Mike Olson 40 0 21 1/ 78/ 21 IMPair Mike Olson 23 0 21 1/ 87/ 12 assassin7 Mike Olson 15 0 21 1/ 93/ 6 Jumper Christopher L. Tumbe 8 0 21 2/ 61/ 37 Giant Mike Olson 43 0 21 2/ 71/ 27 DavidK Ben (-: bena@bruce.c 33 0 21 2/ 72/ 26 Giant1.1 Mike Olson 32 0 21 2/ 85/ 13 Assassin7.51 Mike Olson 19 0 21 2/ 98/ 0 Exponential Mike Olson 7 0 21 3/ 87/ 10 assassin7.2 Mike Olson 19 0 21 3/ 87/ 11 Assassin7.5 Mike Olson 19 0 21 3/ 97/ 0 Copy Cat Mike Olson 8 0 21 4/ 63/ 33 SUBmarine Jonathan Wolf 46 0 21 5/ 56/ 38 Doppleganger1.5 Mike Olson 55 0 21 5/ 56/ 40 Doppleganger Mike Olson 54 0 21 5/ 82/ 14 Migrator I J-D Mountjoy 27 0 21 5/ 85/ 10 IMPlode3 Mike Olson 25 0 21 5/ 90/ 5 Dugite 7004 Steve Gunnell 21 0 21 6/ 53/ 41 Combinatoris 0.1 J Kyle Kelso 60 0 21 7/ 71/ 22 BomboozalII Mountjoy 42 0 21 8/ 65/ 26 Parasite Kirk R. Gorden 51 0 21 8/ 65/ 27 Impring J Kyle Kelso 51 0 21 8/ 86/ 7 Red_Oktober Paul && Craig 30 0 21 9/ 86/ 5 base Greg Watkins 33 0 21 10/ 54/ 36 Tracy Paul S. Kilroy (kilr 66 0 21 10/ 66/ 23 Dugite B Steve Gunnell 55 0 21 11/ 77/ 12 Dugite A 1756 Steve Gunnell 45 0 21 11/ 84/ 5 Imp Killer? Paul 38 0 21 12/ 81/ 7 The Warne J Kyle Kelso 44 0 21 13/ 38/ 49 Lemmings Kirk R. Gorden 88 0 21 13/ 77/ 10 Repair1.0 Mike Olson 49 0 21 13/ 83/ 4 Rock-o-Gibraltar Geoff 42 0 21 14/ 66/ 20 Spy4.0 Kirk Gorden 61 0 21 14/ 76/ 10 WASP I J-D Mountjoy 52 0 21 14/ 82/ 4 Daemon spawn Graham L. Smith 47 0 21 15/ 59/ 25 jumpy/2 Paul Kilroy 71 0 21 15/ 68/ 17 Deadfall v2.7 Remy Wetzels 61 0 21 15/ 70/ 15 Reverse Dwarf10 Mike Olson 60 0 21 15/ 81/ 4 Double Engine Kirk R. Gorden 49 0 21 17/ 35/ 48 toilet paper v2.0 Steven Morrell 100 0 21 18/ 70/ 13 Reverse Dwarf Mike Olson 65 0 21 18/ 78/ 4 Encroacher 0.1 J Kyle Kelso 59 0 21 20/ 55/ 25 SplBomber Twist T. H. Davies 86 0 21 20/ 66/ 14 Dwarf T. H. Davies 74 0 21 20/ 69/ 12 New Kid Greg 70 0 21 20/ 72/ 8 Nosferatu 0.1 J Kyle Kelso 69 0 21 25/ 61/ 14 Dugite Steve Gunnell 89 0 21 25/ 67/ 8 jumpy Paul Kilroy 83 0 21 29/ 49/ 23 Opal Stephen Linhart 108 0 21 32/ 57/ 11 Creampuff II P. Kline 106 0 21 33/ 42/ 25 Tomb Stone c w blue 123 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VI. The Hint: Hopefully, everyone is familiar with the 'optimal' numbers, those that very efficiently scan/bomb core. One more time, here they are: mod-1 3359/3039 under-100 -> 73 mod-2 3094/2234 under-100 -> 98 mod-4 3364/3044 under-100 -> 76 mod-5 3315/2365 under-100 -> 95 mod-8 2936/2376 mod-10 2930/2430 Here's a trivia question, what do these mod-1 numbers have in common: 13, 407, and 2527 Answer: they (and a bunch more) are much more efficient at finding an opponent of size 13 than 3359 and 3039. The optimal numbers work by subdividing core into smaller and smaller chunks. Ideally such a number would continually bisect the largest outstanding chunk of core until every location had been checked/bombed. So the optimal numbers are optimized against a variety of opponent lengths, from 4000 to 1 (or their mod-size). But in reality there are a limited number of opponent sizes on KotH. In particular, 4-5 and 11-13 seem to be natural sizes for many fighters. So here are some numbers that are efficient at finding a size-13 fighter: mod-1 mod-2 mod-4 mod-5 13 438 268 335 407 514 1028 555 649 578 2172 715 1141 982 2396 895 1411 1198 2404 1235 2183 1906 2932 1345 2323 2042 716 1645 2527 2534 876 1815 2671 3354 988 2385 2791 4646 1156 2565 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VII. The End: Paul Kline pk6811s@acad.drake.edu Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1993 00:02:46 MST From: Message-ID: <93251.000246AZNXS@ASUACAD.BITNET> Subject: Re: soda.berkeley.edu /pub/corewar/documents/tutorial.*.z Did you try get tutorial.1 in text mode ? Nandor. From: jwolf@pyra.co.uk (Jonathan Wolf) Subject: Core Wras for C Programmers? Date: 8 Sep 1993 07:42:46 -0500 Message-ID: <18297.9309081244@pyrfect.pyra.co.uk> The draft standard is very good, except for one thing (well maybe there's more :-) ) the section which has code which fully explains how the different commands work is written in C. Most of this is clear enough, but not all. What does this mean: if ( (IRB.ANumber != 0) && (IRB.BNumber != 0) ) It's obviously a boolean function but is it AND or OR ? A little bit of explanation should be placed in so that non-C programmers like me can understand what's going on I think, as that section is very useful for people who AREN'T writing their own simulators and just need to understand what will happen. Jonathan From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 9 Sep 1993 10:31:01 -0400 Message-ID: Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-modified: 1993/09/06 Version: 2.1.1 These are the Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) from the USENET newsgroup rec.games.corewar. This FAQ list is also available by anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z. TABLE OF CONTENTS Line ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. What is Core War? 69 2. Is it Core War or Core Wars? 82 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? 90 4. Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get 108 a copy of the current instruction set? 5. What is this ICWS'94? 122 6. What is the ICWS? 138 7. What is TCWN? 148 8. How do I join? 156 9. Are back issues of TCWNs available? 176 10. What is the EBS? 183 11. Where are the Core War archives? 199 12. Where can I find a Core War system for . . . ? 216 13. I do not have ftp. How do I get all of this great stuff? 263 14. I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? 270 15. When is the next tournament? 301 16. What is KOTH? How do I enter? 310 17. Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? 440 18. How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? 452 19. What does (expression or term of your choice) mean? 464 20. Other questions? 592 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 1: What is Core War? A 1: Core War is a game played by two or more programs (and vicariously by their authors) written in an assembly language called Redcode and run in a virtual computer called MARS (for Memory Array Redcode Simulator). The object of the game is to cause all of the opposing programs to terminate, leaving your program in sole posession of the machine. There are Core War systems available for most computer platforms. Redcode has been standardized by the ICWS, and is therefore transportable between all standard Core War systems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 2: Is it "Core War" or "Core Wars"? A 2: Both terms are used. Early references were to Core War. Later references seem to use Core Wars. I prefer "Core War" to refer to the game in general, "core wars" to refer to more than one specific battle. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 3: Where can I find more information about Core War? A 3: Core War was first described in the "Core War Guidelines" of March, 1984 by D. G. Jones and A. K. Dewdney of the Department of Computer Science at The University of Western Ontario (Canada). Dewdney wrote several "Computer Recreations" articles in "Scientific American" which discussed Core War, starting with the May 1984 article. Those articles are contained in an anthology: Author: Dewdney, A. K. Title: The Armchair Universe: An Exploration of Computer Worlds Published: New York: W. H. Freeman (c) 1988 ISBN: 0-7167-1939-8 Library of Congress Call Number: QA76.6 .D517 1988 The Redcode language has changed somewhat since; see Q 4. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 4: Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? A 4: A draft of the official standard (ICWS'88) is available by anonymous FTP from the Core War archives (soda.berkeley.edu) as pub/corewar/documents/standards/redcode-icws-88.Z This document is formatted awkwardly and contains ambiguous statements. For a more approachable intro to Redcode, take a look at pub/corewar/documents/tutorial.1.Z tutorial.2.Z (See also Q11) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 5: What is this ICWS'94? A 5: There is an ongoing discussion about future enhancements to the Redcode language. A proposed new standard, dubbed ICWS'94, is currently being evaluated. A major change is the addition of "instruction modifiers" that allow instructions to modify A-field, B-field or both. Also new is a post-increment indirect addressing mode and unrestricted opcode and addressing mode combination ("no illegal instructions"). ICWS'94 is backwards compatible; i.e. ICWS'88 warriors will run correctly on an ICWS'94 system. Take a look at the ICWS'94 draft for more information (soda.berkeley.edu pub/corewar/documents/icws94.draft.Z). You can try out the new standard by submitting warriors to the experimental '94 KotH server (see Q16). pMARS, a corewar system that implements ICWS'94 is available at soda (see Q12). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 6: What is the ICWS? A 6: About one year after Core War first appeared in Sci-Am, the "International Core War Society" (ICWS) was established. Since that time, the ICWS has been responsible for the creation and maintenance of Core War standards and the running of Core War tournaments. There have been six annual tournaments and two standards (ICWS'86 and ICWS'88). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 7: What is TCWN? A 7: Since March of 1987, "The Core War Newsletter" (TCWN) has been the official newsletter of the ICWS. It is published quarterly and recent issues are also available as Encapsulated PostScript on soda.berkeley.edu (see Q9). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 8: How do I join? A 8: For more information about joining the ICWS (which includes a subscription to TCWN), contact: A 7: For more information about joining the ICWS (which includes a subscription to TCWN), or to contribute an article, review, cartoon, letter, joke, rumor, etc. to TCWN, please contact: Jon Newman 13824 NE 87th Street Redmond, WA 98052-1959 email: jonn@microsoft.com (Note: Microsoft has NO affiliation with Core War. Jon Newman just happens to work there, and we want to keep it that way!) Current annual dues are $15.00 in US currency. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 9: Are back issues of TCWN available? A 9: Recent issues can be found on soda.berkeley.edu (see Q11). Older issues (up to Winter 1991) are also available (see the next TCWN for details). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q10: What is the EBS? A10: The Electronic Branch Section (EBS) of the ICWS is a group of Core War enthusiasts with access to electronic mail. There are no fees associated with being a member of the EBS, and members do reap some of the benefits of full ICWS membership without the expense. For instance, the ten best warriors submitted to the EBS tournament are entered into the annual ICWS tournament. All EBS business is conducted in the rec.games.corewar newsgroup. The current goal of the EBS is to be at the forefront of Core War by writing and implementing new standards and test suites in preparation for the tenth anniversary of Core War in May of 1994 (see Q 5). Its immediate business will be to set up a Charter and establish its officers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A11: Where is the Core War archive? Q11: Many documents such as the guidelines and the ICWS standards along with previous tournament Redcode entries and complete Core War systems are available via anonymous ftp from soda.berkeley.edu (128.32.149.19) in the /pub/corewar directories. Also, most of past rec.games.corewar postings (including Redcode source listings) are archived there. Jon Blow (blojo@soda.berkeley.edu) is the archive administrator. Much of what is available on soda is also available on the German archive at iraun1.ira.uka.de (129.13.10.90) in the /pub/X11/corewars directory. This FAQ is automatically archived by news.answers. See the header for the current archive name and news.answers for how to get it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q12: Where can I find a Core War system for . . . ? A12: Core War systems are available via anonymous ftp from soda.berkeley.edu in the pub/corewar/systems directory. Currently, there are Unix X-Window, IBM PC-compatible (sorry, no systems specifically designed for MS-Windows yet), Macintosh, and Amiga Core War systems available there. CAUTION! There are many, many Core War systems available which are NOT ICWS'88 (or even ICWS'86) compatible available at various archive sites other than soda.berkeley.edu. Generally, the older the program - the less likely it will be ICWS compatible. Reviews of Core War systems would be greatly appreciated in the newsgroup and in the newsletter. Below is a not necessarily complete or up-to-date list of what's available at soda: MADgic41.lzh - corewar for the Amiga, v4.1 MAD4041.lzh - older version? MAD50B.lha - corewar for the Amiga, beta version 5.0 Redcoder-10.hqx - corewar for the Mac core-11.hqx - corewar for the Mac core-wars-simulator.hqx - same as core-11.hqx? corewar_unix_x11.tar.Z - corewar for UNIX/X-windows, ICWS'86 but not ICWS'88 compatible koth31.tar.Z - corewar for UNIX/X-windows. This program runs the KotH server at intel.com koth.shar.Z - older version kothpc.zip - port of older version of KotH to the PC deluxe20c.tar.Z - corewar for UNIX (X-windows or curses) mars.tar.Z - corewar for UNIX, likely not ICWS'88 compatible icons.zip - corewar icons for MS-Windows macrored.zip - a redcode macro-preprocessor (PC) c88v49.zip - PC corewar, textmode display mars88.zip - PC corewar, graphics mode display corwp302.zip - PC corewar, textmode display, slowish mercury2.zip - PC corewar written in assembly, fast! mtourn11.zip - tournament scheduler for mercury (req. 4DOS) pmars01s.zip - portable system, ICWS'88 and '94, runs on UNIX, PC, Mac, Amiga. C source archive pmars01s.tar.Z - same as above pmars01s.sit.hqx - packaged for Mac pmars01.zip - PC executables, graphics display version ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q13: I do not have ftp. How do I get all of this great stuff? A13: There is an ftp email server at ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com. Send email with a subject and body text of "help" (without the quotes) for more information on its usage. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q14: I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? A14: If you have access to telnet, you can read rec.games.corewar (and many more groups) through the gopher information retrieval system. Telnet to consultant.micro.umn.edu (134.84.132.4) or any of the other gopher servers and go through these menus: 1 - Information about Gopher 10 - Gopher+ example server 11 - non-Gopher+ link 7 - News 11 - USENET news 24 - rec 21 - games 6 - corewar Another way is to join the COREWAR-L list run on the Stormking.Com ListProcessor. To join, send : SUB COREWAR-L FirstName LastName to: LISTPROC@STORMKING.COM You can send mail to corewar-l@stormking.com to post even if you are not a member of the list. If you somehow receive rec.games.corewar but just can't post, you can email your post to rec-games-corewar@cs.utexas.edu and it will be automatically posted for you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q15: When is the next tournament? A15: The ICWS holds an annual tournament. Traditionally, the deadline for entering is the 15th of December. The EBS usually holds a preliminary tournament around the 15th of November and sends the top finishers on to the ICWS tournament. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q16: What is KOTH? How do I enter? A16: King Of The Hill (KOTH) is an ongoing Core War tournament available to anyone with email provided by William Shubert (wms@iwarp.intel.com). You enter by submitting via email a Redcode program with special comment lines. You will receive a reply indicating how well your program did against the current top twenty programs "on the hill". Your program will play 100 battles against each of the 20 other programs currently on the Hill. You receive 3 points for each win and 1 point for each tie. (The existing programs do not replay each other, but their previous battles are recalled.) All scores are updated to reflect your battles and all 21 programs are ranked from high to low. If you are number 21 you are pushed off the Hill, if you are higher than 21 someone else is pushed off. Entry rules for King of the Hill Corewar: 1) Write a corewar program. KotH is fully ICWS '88 compatible, EXCEPT that a comma (",") is required between two arguments. 2) Put the line ";redcode" at the top of your program. This MUST be the first line. Anything before it will be lost. If you wish to receive mail on every new entrant, use ";redcode verbose". Otherwise you will only receive mail if a challenger makes it onto the hill. Use ";redcode quiet" if you wish to receive mail only when you get shoved off the hill. (Also, see 5 below). Additionally, adding ";name " and ";author " will be helpful in the performance reports. Do NOT have a line beginning with ";address" in your code; this will confuse the mail daemon and you won't get mail back. In addition, it would be nice if you have lines beginning with ";strategy" that describe the algorithm you use. 3) Mail this file to "wms@iwarp.intel.com". 4) Within a few minutes you should get mail back telling you whether your program assembled correctly or not. If it did assemble correctly, sit back and wait; if not, make the change required and re-submit. 5) In an hour or so you should get more mail telling you how your program performed against the current top 20 programs. If no news arrives in an hour, don't worry; entries are put in a queue and run through the tournament one at a time. A backlog may develop. Be patient. If your program makes it onto the hill, you will get mail every time a new program makes it onto the hill. If this is too much mail, you can use ";redcode quiet" when you first mail in your program; then you will only get mail when you make it on the top 20 list or when you are knocked off. Using ";redcode verbose" will give you even more mail; here you get mail every time a new challenger arrives, even if they don't make it onto the top 20 list. Often programmers want to try out slight variations in their programs. If you already have a program named "foo V1.0" on the hill, adding the line ";kill foo" to a new program will automatically bump foo 1.0 off the hill. Just ";kill" will remove all of your programs when you submit the new one. MORE ON KOTH COREWAR IMPLEMENTATION Core size: 8 000 instructions Max processes: 8 000 per program Duration: After 80 000 cycles per program, a tie is declared. Max entry length: 100 instructions Programs are guaranteed a 100 instruction block (inclusive of their warrior's instructions) without overlapping their opponent. SAMPLE ENTRY: ;redcode ;name Dwarf ;author A. K. Dewdney ;strategy Throw DAT bombs around memory, hitting every 4th memory cell. ;strategy This program was presented in the first Corewar article. bomb DAT #0 dwarf ADD #4, bomb MOV bomb, @bomb JMP dwarf END dwarf ; Programs start at the first line unless ; an "END start" pseudo-op appears to indicate ; the first logical instruction. Also, nothing ; after the END instruction will be assembled. Rule variants for "eXperimental" corewar: The same as above but use ";redcode-x" to start your program. Your program will be entered into a second tournament with slightly different rules. The rules are: - All addressing modes are allowed with all instructions. - There is an additional addressing mode, called "postincrement". To use it try an instruction like "mov >5,6". - The maximum write distance is 250 instructions. That is, every time your program tries to modify memory, the address is checked; if it is more than 250 instructions from the process doing the modify, then memory is left unchanged, but the instruction continues as normal. - A tie is not declared until 150,000 cycles per program have elapsed. KotH runs on any Unix system with an X windows interface. The source code to KotH is available by email from William Shubert. Write to him at (wms@iwarp.intel.com) for a copy or get it by anonymous FTP from soda.berkeley.edu in the pub/corewar/systems directory (see Q12). STORMKING.COM KOTH: A second KotH server is installed at stormking.com. Send your warrior to koth@stormking.com. Since this is an UUCP site, it may take a day before you get results back. There are currently four separate hills that you can select by starting your program with ;redcode, ;redcode-x ;redcode-icws or ;redcode-94. ;redcode and ;redcode-x select hills with rules of the regular and experimantal hills at intel.com (see above). ;redcode-icws sends your warrior to the ICWS-hill. Rules here follow that of the annual ICWS tournament, in short: Core size: 8 192 instructions Max processes: 64 per program Duration: After 100 000 cycles per program, a tie is declared. Max entry length: 200 instructions ;redcode-94 selects the experimental ICWS'94 hill run by the pMARS program. See Q 5 for more on this proposed new standard. Core size, Max processes, etc. are identical to the regular hills at stormking and intel.com. The contact person is for this server is Scott Ellentuch (tuc@stormking.com). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q17: Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? A17: Core is initialized to DAT 0, 0. This is an "illegal" instruction under ICWS'88 rules and strictly compliant assemblers (such as KotH) will not let you write a DAT 0, 0 instruction - only DAT #0, #0. So this begs the question, how to compare something to see if it is empty core. The answer is, most likely the instruction before your first instruction and the instruction after your last instruction are both DAT 0, 0. You can use them, or any other likely unmodified instructions, for comparison. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q18: How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? A18: SLT gives some people trouble because of the way modular arithmetic works. It is important to note that all negative numbers are converted to positive numbers before a battles begins. Example: (-1) becomes (M - 1) where M is the memory size. Once you realize that all numbers are treated as positive, it is clear what is meant by "less than". It should also be clear that no number is less than zero. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q19: What does (expression or term of your choice) mean? A19: Here is a selected glossary of terms. If you have a definition and/or term you wish to see here, please send it to me. (References to an X-like program mean that the term X is derived from the specific program X and has become a generic term). Bootstrapping - Strategy of copying the active portion of the program away from the initial location, leaving a decoy behind and making the relocated program as small as possible. B-Scanners - Scanners which only recognize non-zero B-fields. example add #10,scan scan jmz example,10 C - Measure of speed, equal to one location per cycle. Speed of light. CMP-Scanner - A Scanner which uses a CMP instruction to look for opponents. example add step,scan scan cmp 10,30 jmp attack jmp example step dat #20,#20 Color - Property of bombs making them visible to scanners, causing them to attack useless locations, thus slowing them down. example dat #100 Core-Clear - code that sequentially overwrites core with DAT instructions; usually the last part of a program. Decoys - Bogus or unused instructions meant to slow down Scanners. Typically, DATs with non-zero B-fields. DJN-Stream (also DJN-Train) - Using a DJN command to rapidly decrement core locations. example . . . . . . djn example,<4000 Dwarf - the prototypical small bomber. Imp - Program which only uses the MOV instruction. example MOV 0, 1 or example MOV 0, 2 MOV 0, 2 Imp-Gate - A location in core which is bombed or decremented continuously so that an Imp can not pass. Also used to describe the program-code which maintains the gate. example ... ... SPL 0, Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1993 16:41:58 GMT You may want to check out the latest FAQ; it contains a lot of new information: added Q5: ICWS'94 upd. Q12:system descriptions upd. Q14:new r.g.cw listserver upd. Q16:four new hills at stormking.com The listserver allows people without usenet access to receive and post rec.games.corewar articles. See the FAQ on how to join the mailing list and tell your News-deprived friends. -Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) From: lind0014@gold.tc.umn.edu (Christian A Lindensmith-1) Subject: Mac pMars Message-ID: Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1993 17:25:47 GMT I finally posted a copy of pMars compiled for the mac to soda. It's currently in the /pub/corewar/incoming and is called "macpmars01.sit". It's in MacBinary format. I had some troubles with Xfer-it while ftping it, so let me know if there are any problems. It should be ok, as I managed to retrieve it and open the file with Stuffit. Included in the file are two warriors and validate.red. These also come with the source code. This is not a mac version, it is the bare pMars01 code compiled with the Think C console interface to let it run with a command line interface on the mac. It works, but it's not pretty. My research has been going not so well, so I haven't had much time to work on a mac front end (I expected to start a few weeks ago), but it's on the agenda. Please let me know if you have any problems. Chris Lindensmith lind0014@gold.tc.umn.edu University of Minnesota From: durhamm@news.delphi.com (DURHAMM@DELPHI.COM) Subject: I am back! Date: 11 Sep 1993 00:06:04 -0400 Message-ID: <26rirc$1sr@news.delphi.com> I am back online at durhamm@delphi.com Mark A. Durham durhamm@delphi.com From: IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU Subject: strategies.... Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 14:50 Message-ID: <19930911145055IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> Finally figured out how to send entries to the various koths.... loads of fun.... but i can't seem to make headway..... is there a strategy guide somewhere, or can someone discuss it here? And is there a difference between the Winter Werewolf 3 on wms@iwarp.intel.com and the Winter Werewolf 3 that i got, i believe, together with pmars01? Fumitaka Hayashi, new at this thing From: civic1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu (TRACY REED) Subject: Best PC Corewar? Date: 11 Sep 1993 18:23 PST Message-ID: <11SEP199318235114@ucsvax.sdsu.edu> Can anybody tell me what the best Corewar program is for the PC? One that is compatible with the latest standard. I would like to experiment on this before entering any programs. Also, just out of curiosity, I read in the Corewar FAQ that each program entered into KOTH is run 100 times against each of the 20 opponents. Is this correct? I have several Corewar programs for my PC and they all seem WAY too slow to support this sort of thing. What kind of machine are they being run on? ----------------------------------------------------------- Mr. Tracy R. Reed SDSU CIVIC1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu Two sodium atoms are walking down the street when one says, "I think I just lost an electron!" The other says, "Are you sure?" To which the first replies, "Yes, I'm positive!!!!!" ----------------------------------------------------------- From: aladdin@rahul.net (Dan Melchione) Subject: Re: Best PC Corewar? Message-ID: Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 04:06:24 GMT TRACY REED (civic1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu) wrote: : Can anybody tell me what the best Corewar program is for the PC? : One that is compatible with the latest standard. I would like to experiment : on this before entering any programs. Also, just out of curiosity, I read : in the Corewar FAQ that each program entered into KOTH is run 100 times : against each of the 20 opponents. Is this correct? I have several Corewar : programs for my PC and they all seem WAY too slow to support this sort of : thing. What kind of machine are they being run on? Mercury2 is probably the fastest corewars program for the PC. It is written in assembly and it blazes. Mars88 is good for developing programs as it includes a good RedCode debugger. It also comes with a macro preprocesser. Both of these are available in pub\corewar\systems @ soda.berekely.edu. -Dan -- Dan Melchione From: sky@soda.berkeley.edu (Skyler King) Subject: koth Date: 12 Sep 1993 06:07:20 GMT Message-ID: <26ueao$f3i@agate.berkeley.edu> Has anyone gotten koth31 to compile under Net/Free/386BSD? If so could you explain what you did to get it too build? Thanks Skyler King sky@soda.berkeley.edu From: IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU Subject: Re: Best PC Corewar? Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 11:20 Message-ID: <19930912112007IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> In article , aladdin@rahul.net (Dan Melchione) writes: >TRACY REED (civic1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu) wrote: > >: Can anybody tell me what the best Corewar program is for the PC? >: One that is compatible with the latest standard. I would like to experiment >: on this before entering any programs. Also, just out of curiosity, I read >: in the Corewar FAQ that each program entered into KOTH is run 100 times >: against each of the 20 opponents. Is this correct? I have several Corewar >: programs for my PC and they all seem WAY too slow to support this sort of >: thing. What kind of machine are they being run on? > >Mercury2 is probably the fastest corewars program for the PC. It is written in assembly and it blazes. Mars88 is good for developing programs as it includes a good RedCode debugger. It also comes with a macro preprocesser. Both of these are available >in pub\corewar\systems @ soda.berekely.edu. > The latest system is pMars01, available at the same place. Not sure what koth is run on, but it is probably something better than an IBM pc.... :) Fumitaka Hayashi From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: Re: Best PC Corewar? Message-ID: Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1993 20:09:04 GMT >Not sure what koth is run on, but it is probably something better >than an IBM pc.... :) Fumitaka Hayashi Still Big Blue though :-) pMARS at stormking.com runs on an IBM RS6000 workstation. Version 0.2.0 is now at soda.berkeley.edu:/pub/corewar/incoming as pmars02s.zip and pmars02s.tar.Z (only source archives, we haven't had time to make the DOS executables yet). New: - unmodified core (dat.f 0,0) is shown as blank lines by the debugger - cdb commands can be chained and repeated non-interactively (see the docs) - changed Mac predefined symbol __THINK__ to the correct THINK_C Sorry about those frequent updates. If you want to download pMARS in the future, check /incoming first, as the most recent version will probably reside there. -Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) From: fraserc@dcs.gla.ac.uk Subject: Re: King of the Hill Results Message-ID: <9309130929.AA11904@sumatra.dcs.gla.ac.uk> Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 09:29:50 GMT Hi all, it's really happening on the stormking icws 88 hill. NOT !! > None has been pushed off the ICWS '88 hill. > The current ICWS '88 hill: > # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age > 1 97/ 3/ 1 intangible worm 88.2 campbell fraser 291 1 > 2 93/ 6/ 0 leap toad m. skala 280 2 > 3 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 4 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 5 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 6 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 7 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 8 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 9 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 10 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 11 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 12 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 13 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 14 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 15 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 16 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 17 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 18 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 19 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > 20 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > > 21 0/ 10/ 0 None Nobody 0 2 > From: paul.furber@digitec.co.za (Paul Furber) Subject: NEW corewars instrcutions Message-ID: <36.155.uupcb@digitec.co.za> Date: 13 Sep 93 13:47:00 GMT I am a keen corewars fan and have recently written a VGA version with graphics display of the battle. I have heard of new weird instructions like SPL and PCT. Could anyone explain these please ? My version only uses the usual ADD, SUB, DGZ etc . Thanks --- . SLMR 2.1a . Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic ---- - Digitec Online - 10 Nodes - Johannesburg - South Africa - +27-11-476-7136 - - @digitec.co.za - ILink - Weather - BASNet - RsaNet - Fidonet - From: olsonmd@po.NeXTwork.Rose-Hulman.Edu (Frosh93 ) Subject: Re: NEW corewars instrcutions Date: 14 Sep 1993 15:59:47 GMT Message-ID: <274ppj$e7a@master.cs.rose-hulman.edu> In article <36.155.uupcb@digitec.co.za> paul.furber@digitec.co.za (Paul Furber) writes: > I am a keen corewars fan and have recently written a VGA version with > graphics display of the battle. I have heard of new weird instructions > like SPL and PCT. Could anyone explain these please ? My version only > uses the usual ADD, SUB, DGZ etc . Thanks You can FTP the docs for ICWS '88 standard instructions from soda.berkeley.edu in /pub/corewar/documents/standards/ or you can E-mail me at olsonmd@po.nextwork.rose-hulman.edu and I'll send you back the docs via E-mail. The FAQ for this area has more info... -Mike Olson From: olsonmd@po.NeXTwork.Rose-Hulman.Edu (Frosh93 ) Subject: Re: NEW corewars instructions Date: 14 Sep 1993 16:00:14 GMT Message-ID: <274pqe$e7t@master.cs.rose-hulman.edu> In article <36.155.uupcb@digitec.co.za> paul.furber@digitec.co.za (Paul Furber) writes: > I am a keen corewars fan and have recently written a VGA version with > graphics display of the battle. I have heard of new weird instructions > like SPL and PCT. Could anyone explain these please ? My version only > uses the usual ADD, SUB, DGZ etc . Thanks You can FTP the docs for ICWS '88 standard instructions from soda.berkeley.edu in /pub/corewar/documents/standards/ or you can E-mail me at olsonmd@po.nextwork.rose-hulman.edu and I'll send you back the docs via E-mail. The FAQ for this area has more info... -Mike Olson From: civic1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu (TRACY REED) Subject: Re: NEW corewars instrcutions Date: 14 Sep 1993 16:53 PST Message-ID: <14SEP199316533574@ucsvax.sdsu.edu> In article <36.155.uupcb@digitec.co.za>, paul.furber@digitec.co.za (Paul Furber writes... > >I am a keen corewars fan and have recently written a VGA version with >graphics display of the battle. I have heard of new weird instructions >like SPL and PCT. Could anyone explain these please ? My version only >uses the usual ADD, SUB, DGZ etc . Thanks Is SPL a weird new instruction? I thought it had been around for quite a while. ;----------------------------------------------------------- ; Tracy R. Reed ; SDSU ; CIVIC1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu ;----------------------------------------------------------- From: civic1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu (TRACY REED) Subject: Corewar Date: 14 Sep 1993 16:59 PST Message-ID: <14SEP199316593630@ucsvax.sdsu.edu> Hello all. I am relatively new to Corewar, but hope to learn how to write decent programs. Thanks to everyone who told me where I could get a decent implementation for the PC. A couple of years ago I had a version of Corewar for the PC written by Albero Pasquale. I thought the game was a really neat idea, but I couldn't find anyone to compete against because few of my high school friends would tolerate computer talk, much less write a program. I guess it was viewed as a nerd thing to do. Anyway, now I have Koth to play! The version by Pasquale was SLOW compared to Mercury2!!! It was a real pain to use and it took a long time to run a whole battle. Where can I get source code for the programs that are currently in the top 20 in Koth? Is there a way to get these from the machine, or must I contact the authors? Thanks... ;----------------------------------------------------------- ; Tracy R. Reed ; SDSU ; CIVIC1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu ;----------------------------------------------------------- From: IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU Subject: Re: Read/Write Ranges Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1993 17:22 Message-ID: <19930914172208IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> In article <1993Sep14.185334.23032@unlv.edu>, maniac@unlv.edu (Eric J. Schwertfeger) writes: >In article <27509s$2je@agate.berkeley.edu> mconst@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Michael Constant) writes: >>I don't know if this opinion has been voiced before, but I don't >>like the idea of read/write ranges for '94. I have done a little >>playing around on the X-hill and discovered that write ranges >>promote one type of programming above all others: the replicator. >>ALL programs must include some replicator component (unless they >>are imp-rings) and this restricts programming styles immensely. >> >> - Michael Constant >> mconst@ocf.berkeley.edu > > >I *LIKE* that. the KOTH X-Hill was a lot more interesting than the >standard hill to me. Unfortunately, Imprings are murder on my >programs (You'd have to watch the battles to understand, but my >programs invariably wind up replicating a bunch of SPL 0 instructions >instead of themselves, then jumping to them). > >You'd never see anything like Spider or Chameleon without write >limits, because without write limits, you have no time to think or to >plan. Chameleon was an early attempt of mine to determine what type >of opponent it faced, and adjust its attack accordingly. >-- >Eric J. Schwertfeger, maniac@cs.unlv.edu There is no write limits in '94 as of yet, is there? pMARS is suppose to use icws94 as it is proposed now, and there doesn't seem to be a read write limit... Fumitaka Hayashi, who will have to learn this all over again if they add read/write limits... :( From: mconst@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Michael Constant) Subject: Read/Write Ranges Date: 14 Sep 1993 17:50:52 GMT Message-ID: <27509s$2je@agate.berkeley.edu> I don't know if this opinion has been voiced before, but I don't like the idea of read/write ranges for '94. I have done a little playing around on the X-hill and discovered that write ranges promote one type of programming above all others: the replicator. ALL programs must include some replicator component (unless they are imp-rings) and this restricts programming styles immensely. - Michael Constant mconst@ocf.berkeley.edu From: IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU Subject: Re: Corewar Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1993 18:25 Message-ID: <19930914182531IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> In article <275p2i$23a@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>, dh118@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (M. E. Burton) writes: > >In a previous article, civic1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu (TRACY REED) says: > >>Hello all. I am relatively new to Corewar, but hope to learn how to write >>decent programs. Thanks to everyone who told me where I could get a decent > >It ain't easy :) I have yet to get a program onto the top 20. (Someone, >please : how do you stop a bomber from nailing itself!?) > >>Where can I get source code for the programs that are currently in the top >>20 in Koth? Is there a way to get these from the machine, or must I contact >>the authors? Thanks... > >I dunno. If you find a place with them, though, let me know! >-- >+-------------------------------------+ >| Mitch Burton -- mburton@cap.gwu.edu | >| dh118@cleveland.freenet.edu | >+---- dh118 forwarded to mburton ----+ Stopping bombers from bombing itself? You should use a DJN instead of JMP, and make it decrement an actual value like DJN bomb,#4000 That would put you out of the loop after 4000 bombings, etc. depends on your bombing interval.... Of course, there are other ways... i just let my Disruptor program bomb itself to get to the coreclear part. Fumitaka Hayashi, perpetually stuck in the bottom 5 of koth.... From: maniac@unlv.edu (Eric J. Schwertfeger) Subject: Re: Read/Write Ranges Message-ID: <1993Sep14.185334.23032@unlv.edu> Date: Tue, 14 Sep 93 18:53:34 GMT In article <27509s$2je@agate.berkeley.edu> mconst@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Michael Constant) writes: >I don't know if this opinion has been voiced before, but I don't >like the idea of read/write ranges for '94. I have done a little >playing around on the X-hill and discovered that write ranges >promote one type of programming above all others: the replicator. >ALL programs must include some replicator component (unless they >are imp-rings) and this restricts programming styles immensely. > > - Michael Constant > mconst@ocf.berkeley.edu I *LIKE* that. the KOTH X-Hill was a lot more interesting than the standard hill to me. Unfortunately, Imprings are murder on my programs (You'd have to watch the battles to understand, but my programs invariably wind up replicating a bunch of SPL 0 instructions instead of themselves, then jumping to them). You'd never see anything like Spider or Chameleon without write limits, because without write limits, you have no time to think or to plan. Chameleon was an early attempt of mine to determine what type of opponent it faced, and adjust its attack accordingly. -- Eric J. Schwertfeger, maniac@cs.unlv.edu From: IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU Subject: Re: Learning CoreWar strategy... Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1993 22:48 Message-ID: <19930914224834IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> In article , kisrael@jade.tufts.edu (Kirk Israel) writes: >Can anyone point me to a place to learn basic corewar strategy, >I mean beyond the basic commands and Imps? *Is* there any place >to learn except bitter experience? > KIRK > kisrael@jade.tufts.edu There'ssome interesting documents at soda.berkeley.edu anonymous ftp in pub�corewar�documents i believe. There are also loads of redcode to learn from. Fumitaka Hayashi..... trying to write a program to compete with the big boys....... I can't beat Iron Gate :( From: dh118@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (M. E. Burton) Subject: Re: Corewar Date: 15 Sep 1993 00:53:38 GMT Message-ID: <275p2i$23a@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> In a previous article, civic1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu (TRACY REED) says: >Hello all. I am relatively new to Corewar, but hope to learn how to write >decent programs. Thanks to everyone who told me where I could get a decent It ain't easy :) I have yet to get a program onto the top 20. (Someone, please : how do you stop a bomber from nailing itself!?) >Where can I get source code for the programs that are currently in the top >20 in Koth? Is there a way to get these from the machine, or must I contact >the authors? Thanks... I dunno. If you find a place with them, though, let me know! -- +-------------------------------------+ | Mitch Burton -- mburton@cap.gwu.edu | | dh118@cleveland.freenet.edu | +---- dh118 forwarded to mburton ----+ From: kisrael@jade.tufts.edu (Kirk Israel) Subject: Learning CoreWar strategy... Message-ID: Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 01:05:15 GMT Can anyone point me to a place to learn basic corewar strategy, I mean beyond the basic commands and Imps? *Is* there any place to learn except bitter experience? KIRK kisrael@jade.tufts.edu From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: Re: Read/Write Ranges Message-ID: Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 05:47:58 GMT In article <19930914172208IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU writes: >There is no write limits in '94 as of yet, is there? pMARS is suppose >to use icws94 as it is proposed now, and there doesn't seem to be a >read write limit... > >Fumitaka Hayashi, who will have to learn this all over again if > they add read/write limits... :( The draft includes read/write ranges. These are flexible tournament parameters and as such, the value is not part of the standard. Neither is the core size or task limit for that matter. pMARS currently implements only read range = write range = core size. We chose not to make this a command line option for performance reasons. If people would like to experiment with read/write ranges < core size (like the x-hill) we can easily add this. -Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) From: sah@ee.ed.ac.uk (Simon A Hovell) Subject: Stormking x-hill Message-ID: Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 08:30:51 GMT What are the experimental parameters on the stormking x-hill? Presumably redcode sent to it should be labled ;redcode-x Cheers, Si. xxx -- S.A.Hovell, Dept. Electrical Engineering, University of Edinburgh, U.K. (+44) 31 650 5655 (S.Hovell@ed.ac.uk) ----- "Stress is irrelevant" said Mr.Borg, ----- ----- as he relaxed in his big flowery chair ----- Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 11:59:51 MST From: Message-ID: <93258.115951AZNXS@ASUACAD.BITNET> Subject: Re: Read/Write Ranges I kind of agree, but we don't have to use it ( I mean use coresize as limitation ) . So if we don't use it it doesn't make any harm in the standard. So why should it be in the standard? Because if we change our mind and use the limitations then we have a standard way to do it. Nandor. From: rs@rkw.rau.ac.za (Riaan Swart) Subject: HELP Message-ID: Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 12:24:23 GMT Hi, no flames please . I need info on CoreWar . I'm new to the rec.games.corewar and any help would be welcome. Thanks ... From: IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU Subject: pushoff Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 15:26 Message-ID: <19930915152636IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> I am overwhelmingly happy that my Disruptor program stayed on the hill long enough to make one issue of Push Off :) Time to work on a whole new program i think.... Fumitaka Hayashi From: pk6811s@acad.drake.edu Subject: Re: Corewar, 'stop a bomber from nailing itself' Message-ID: <1993Sep15.101119.1@acad.drake.edu> Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 16:11:19 GMT In article <...> dh118@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (M. E. Burton) writes: > > It ain't easy :) I have yet to get a program onto the top 20. (Someone, > please : how do you stop a bomber from nailing itself!?) > Keystone puts appropriate jmp -1, and 'djn 0,<-13' instructions out in core so they are picked up by the bomber just in time to drop them on it's own code. Herem VI does this and so do Moonstone and Emerald 4. You have to watch and see where the bomb is coming from, then put your instruction there. An alternative is to use a step that always misses your code, like a mod-8 or mod-10, though that does not seem very effective against some opponents. Paul Kline pk6811s@acad.drake.edu From: pk6811s@acad.drake.edu Subject: _Push Off_ Message-ID: <1993Sep15.101356.1@acad.drake.edu> Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 16:13:56 GMT _PUSH OFF_ A midweek review of Corewar September 15, 1993 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. The Standings: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 42/ 12 Iron Gate 1.01 Wayne Sheppard 148 225 2 45/ 47/ 8 Agony 6.0 Stefan Strack 142 34 3 41/ 39/ 20 Beholder's Eye v2 W. Mintardjo 142 2 4 32/ 23/ 45 Night Crawler Wayne Sheppard 142 1082 5 32/ 25/ 43 ttt nandor sieben 140 306 6 37/ 35/ 28 QuickFreeze t24 P.Kline 139 4 7 42/ 46/ 12 Dragon Spear c w blue 139 1184 8 29/ 20/ 51 pMARS pMARS project 139 131 9 30/ 24/ 46 Impact v1.0 Anders Ivner 137 219 10 30/ 25/ 45 Imprimis 7 P.Kline 135 322 11 36/ 37/ 27 Keystone t13 P.Kline 135 40 12 32/ 29/ 39 FlyPaper 3.0 J.Layland 135 506 13 36/ 37/ 26 Winter Werewolf 3 W. Mintardjo 135 400 14 40/ 47/ 13 Impurge Fredrik Ohrstrom 134 406 15 36/ 40/ 24 Leprechaun 1b Anders Ivner 133 150 16 38/ 43/ 20 Grimm's Vampyre c w blue 132 265 17 29/ 26/ 45 Sphinx v2.8 W. Mintardjo 131 2080 18 38/ 45/ 17 Eclipse II P.Kline 131 1 19 28/ 27/ 46 Hydra Stephen Linhart 129 151 20 34/ 39/ 27 Herem VI Anders Ivner 129 254 21 26/ 42/ 32 Disruptor v2.7 Fumitaka Hayashi 110 11 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- II. The Basics: -Core War Archives are available via anonymous FTP at soda.berkeley.edu in pub/corewar... -FAQ for this newsgroup is available via anonymous FTP at rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.z ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. The Scoop: Man, things have been tight on the Hill. Several days only 15 points separated the top from the bottom. When scores are that close, every challenge mixes up the rankings making it hard to tell what is holding the top spot. In part this is due to my own Keystone, which brought down the scores of those high-flying scanners and also the score of Fly Paper. Keystone looks exactly like Emerald 4 (except for constants), unless it thinks the opponent is paper, then it goes for the tie. Any guesses as to how a stone detects paper? Last week I suggested that imp-vampire combos like Snake and Incrimination might have been made obsolete by anti-vamp programs. For those of you not getting reports from KotH (you have to have a fighter on KotH), W. Shepard put up Snake just to see. It placed 11th. But he knocked it off because "it takes too many points away from Night Crawler". Now, I thought we were trying to knock OFF the imps :-) W. Mintardjo has been recycling some of his old favorites, Medusa and Beholder's Eye. They are still tough. Working on some improvements or just more constant tweaking? And what happened to Deck of Many Things by C. Blue? Looked very good but he knocked it off. Seems like there are a lot of tough programs out there. Maybe KotH is too small. Or maybe people are exercising their warriors in preparation for the upcoming tournament. Can anybody give us a report on KotH at Stormking? Welcome back! to Mark Durham, who is reconnected now, through Delphi. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IV. The Outlook: 3 30/ 24/ 46 Deck of Many Things c w blue 137 1 5 39/ 39/ 23 sub-type-cmp c w blue 139 1 5 39/ 40/ 20 Beholder's Eye v2 W. Mintardjo 138 1 8 36/ 34/ 30 QuickFreeze t24 P.Kline 137 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- V. The Quick Look: 18 38/ 45/ 17 Eclipse II P.Kline 131 1 19 25/ 39/ 36 Disruptor v2.7 Fumitaka Hayashi 112 1 19 39/ 51/ 10 Agony 7.0 Stefan Strack 128 1 20 3/ 69/ 28 sub-type-impx c w blue 37 1 20 11/ 31/ 58 bangle 4.1 Steve Gunnell 90 1 20 16/ 63/ 21 Smart Bomb 2.0 Devin Kilminster 68 1 20 24/ 58/ 18 ScanR2 Jonathan Wolf 91 1 20 25/ 62/ 13 Spiral Stephen Linhart 87 1 20 35/ 44/ 21 Distance v6.5 Brant D. Thomsen 127 1 21 1/ 37/ 62 Clinched Fist v1 Mitch Burton 66 0 21 2/ 50/ 47 sweep Fumitaka Hayashi 55 0 21 2/ 78/ 21 Jump! Jump! v1 Mitch Burton 25 0 21 4/ 39/ 56 impi II Geoff 69 0 21 4/ 65/ 30 Thief v1.3 Mitch Burton 44 0 21 5/ 88/ 7 Jester3 Fumitaka Hayashi 23 0 21 8/ 56/ 36 JuMPer Mitch Burton 61 0 21 11/ 44/ 45 Shwing! v2.1 T. H. Davies 78 0 21 13/ 45/ 42 test Campbell Fraser 81 0 21 16/ 62/ 22 Invest Andre van Dalen 70 0 21 18/ 75/ 7 Daemon's BANE ]I[ Bryan 62 0 21 19/ 78/ 3 Inswarm Andre van Dalen 60 0 21 20/ 71/ 9 Dwarf AK Dewdney 69 0 21 24/ 24/ 52 Incrimination v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 123 0 21 25/ 49/ 26 BombR Jonathan Wolf 101 0 21 26/ 56/ 18 BS1 J.Layland 97 0 21 29/ 60/ 11 ScanR Jonathan Wolf 97 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VI. The Hint: Let's talk about a little-used bombing technique that I picked up from 'B-scanners-live-in-vain' by Matt Hastings, master of tiny programs. ;redcode quiet ;name B-scanners live in vain ;author Matt Hastings add #1226,3 start jmz -1,@2 b1 mov grave,@1 b2 mov prog,<-2+1226 jmn -4,-4 prog spl 0,0 mov @10,<-1 grave jmp -1,0 (The labels 'b1' and 'b2' were added for this discussion.) Notice how b1 moves 'grave' to where b2 is pointing, then b2 moves 'prog' to one position above that by using the 'grave' b1 dropped as a pointer. This was Matt's solution to the problem of dropping a second bomb (prog) without decrementing his bscan pointer, which would have altered his scan sequence unpredictably. Also, notice that prog and grave have zero b-operands, making them invisible to his own scanning and to other b-scanners. Today there are few successful b-scanners so most of us don't bother about zero b-operands. And of course, under the '94 standard, you could scan for a-operands. Anyway I want to focus on the use of a first bomb as a pointer for a second. The pointer can be anywhere. For example, a dumb spl-jmp type bomber could be written like this: step equ 2936 ; mod-8 step next add #step,b2 b1 mov bjmp,@b2 b2 mov bspl,@bspl b3 jmp next bspl spl 0 bclr mov 10,<-10 bjmp jmp -1,step-1 In this version, the bjmp's are dropped and used as pointers so the bspl's are dropped step-minus-1 locations away. The final bspl is dropped on b3 to start the core-clear. Next, look at this dat-bomber which bombs N and N+DIST which is what QuickFreeze does. (W. Mintardjo and A. Ivner take note :-) DIST equ 1000 b1 mov bbmb,@b2 b2 mov bbmb,@-100 sub #4,b2 jmp b1 bbmb dat #DIST With a little work this could be turned into a bombing loop that would bomb two and decrement two locations for every four instructions. Of course any constant could be used, 4000 for instance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VII. The End: Paul Kline pk6811s@acad.drake.edu From: pk6811s@acad.drake.edu Subject: QuickFreeze Message-ID: <1993Sep15.102948.1@acad.drake.edu> Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 16:29:48 GMT Since so many programs are using decoys, I designed a program to find them very quickly and hopefully catch the opponent in the act of booting. (gee, did I recommend booting :-). It works very well against slow-starting imps and FlyPaper, but some programs are away and running before QuickFreeze starts its attack. Then it is just paper and anti-vamp. How many instructions are needed to check every 100th location? Answer - 40, since you can compare two instructions at once. So QuickFreeze uses a sequence like this: cmp a,a+4000 mov #a+4000-bomber,bomber cmp b,b+4000 mob #b+4000-bomber,bomber . . . Then at bomber, bomb every 4th location and every 4000th offset from those bombs. (see 9/15/93 _Push Off_). The scan-bomb process works very well against imp-launchers which create lengthy imps, while the anti-imp paper works well against short imps. It gets clobbered by scanners. Some scores: against ttt 49/10/41 against Night Crawler 27/10/63 against Imprimis 7 28/05/67 against Sphinx v2.8 38/05/57 against FlyPaper 3.0 61/09/30 ;redcode ;name QuickFreeze ;kill QuickFreeze ;author P.Kline ;strategy faster-than-c scan finds large opponents fast ;strategy also anti-imp paper and anti-vamp cmpsp equ 53 ; scan every 2*cmpsp locations cmpdif equ 4000 ; cmp N and N+cmpdif+1 cmpstrt equ start+150 ; start scanning at cmpstrt boffset equ 5 ; adjustment for bombing bspl dat <2667,#4003 ; bomb avamp spl 0,cmpstrt-4000 ; stationary anti-vamp av2 sub Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 16:30:36 GMT Just a reminder that this friday is the deadline for entering the EBS fall tournament. To recap: this is a double-elimination tourney with rounds every week. You can submit new warriors or keep the one from the last round. Code for all warriors is shared after each round. Parameters are KotH standard (coresize: 8000, maxtasks: 8000, ..) for the first round. All ICWS'94 extensions are allowed (e.g. using dat 0,0 to seperate code segments), but you can submit your ICWS'88 warrior as well. If enough of you participate, there'll be a "veteran" and a "novice" league. So don't be shy, submit, even if it's just a dwarf. Email your entry to stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu by friday, 20:00 CDT. Regards, Stefan Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 18:39:50 MST From: Message-ID: <93258.183950AZNXS@ASUACAD.BITNET> Subject: Re: Read/Write Ranges Read-write limits are in the the proposed 94 standard. We didn't include it into pMARS becuse of speed and other reasons :-) For strategy tips one can look at the FAQ . It contains a Corewar vocabulary for different stategies. I guess most of the succesfull warriors use those ideas. Anyway we need some new ideas too, so go ahead and invent something new. Nandor. From: collins@powdml.enet.dec.com (David Alpert) Subject: Good programs Message-ID: <1993Sep16.131738.29086@peavax.mlo.dec.com> Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1993 13:15:53 GMT I am new to Core War. All I have read are Dewdney's articles. Could some people please send me some good programs, perhaps ones that were on KOTH for a time but are no longer on it (or still there, if you don't mind sending me the code.) I just would like to see what good Core War programs look like and what kinds of strategies there are. Does soda have archives of Core War programs? -- "Just say no to Kraft Singles." - IPSY.LAN.1 From: civic1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu (TRACY REED) Subject: Re: Good programs Date: 16 Sep 1993 16:22 PST Message-ID: <16SEP199316220371@ucsvax.sdsu.edu> In article <1993Sep16.131738.29086@peavax.mlo.dec.com>, collins@powdml.enet.dec.com (David Alp writes... > >I am new to Core War. All I have read are Dewdney's articles. Could some >people please send me some good programs, perhaps ones that were on KOTH for a >time but are no longer on it (or still there, if you don't mind sending me the >code.) I just would like to see what good Core War programs look like and what >kinds of strategies there are. > >Does soda have archives of Core War programs? > Yes, soda is practically THE official corewar site. That was the first place I went when I became re-interested in corewar. They have several systems for several different kinds of machines, as well as source code you can take a look at and learn from. ;----------------------------------------------------------- ; Tracy R. Reed ; SDSU ; CIVIC1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu ;----------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1993 17:09:13 MST From: Message-ID: <93259.170913AZNXS@ASUACAD.BITNET> Subject: proposed 94 hill on koth@stormking.com The current ICWS '94 Draft hill: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 2 39/ 19/ 43 Chimera v3.5 W. Mintardjo 159 25 3 42/ 25/ 34 Sphinx v5.1 W. Mintardjo 159 21 4 51/ 44/ 5 Rave 2 Stefan Strack 158 3 5 50/ 42/ 8 Medusa's v6 Mintardjo & Strack 157 23 6 40/ 24/ 36 NC II Wayne Sheppard 156 18 7 40/ 26/ 34 JustTakingALookSee J.Layland 153 17 8 43/ 39/ 18 RotLD TNG nandor sieben 148 19 9 37/ 30/ 33 Hydra Stephen Linhart 144 2 10 44/ 47/ 9 Fire Storm v1.1 W. Mintardjo 141 24 11 43/ 46/ 11 rontgen nandor sieben 140 5 12 40/ 43/ 17 Beholder's Eye v1.7 W. Mintardjo 137 30 13 42/ 49/ 9 Paratroops v3.0 W. Mintardjo 136 22 14 34/ 15/ 32 Chimera v3.5 W. Mintardjo 133 29 15 37/ 45/ 18 RotLD TNG nandor sieben 128 26 16 38/ 29/ 5 Medusa's v6 Mintardjo & Strack 118 27 17 34/ 52/ 13 hit3 nandor sieben 116 11 18 33/ 53/ 14 A-stounding Simon Hovell 113 8 19 31/ 49/ 20 scratchers nandor sieben 113 16 20 32/ 57/ 11 hit94 nandor sieben 108 15 From: bcturner@eos.ncsu.edu Subject: Inconsistency pMARS docs vs. '94 standard - maybe Message-ID: <1993Sep16.185954.16076@ncsu.edu> Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1993 18:59:54 GMT This may just be poorly worded documentation, but it looks like an error to me. This is a clip from 'primer.94' included with pMARS: The next code example uses indirect addressing with both A- and B-field: ptr DAT.AB 10,20 MOV.A ptr,@ptr MOV.AB ptr,@ptr Sounds to me like this program first moves the instruction 'ptr' indirectly by ptr's A-argument. Then moves the instruction 'ptr' indirectly by ptr's B-argument. However (like my last post pointed out) indirection only uses the B-field! Anyone in the know, please explain why this was chosen upon. What I want is: mov.?? @ptr, @ptr ;??= 'f' or what? to move the instruction pointed to by argA of PTR to the instruction pointed to by argB of PTR. Why isn't this available? --Bryan bcturner@eos.ncsu.edu From: blue@zeta.uleth.ca (Chris Blue) Subject: Corewar Help Offer Message-ID: Date: 17 Sep 93 05:11:40 GMT Okay I may not be an expert on the game, but I frequently have warriors in the top five. If there is anyone who wants advice, hints or anything like this....email me I'll see if I can help. c w blue blue@zeta.uleth.ca From: jwolf@pyra.co.uk (Jonathan Wolf) Subject: Write limits Date: 17 Sep 1993 05:49:23 -0500 Message-ID: <9577.9309171051@pyrfect.pyra.co.uk> I completely disagree with objections to write limits. Look at the complexity of osmething like SPider. This can be achieved because nothing can get to the inside of a program without coming within 250 instructions of it. This means that careful scanning, etc cqan catch anything coming up ,and do all sorts of smart stuff in return. There is no doubt that KOTH-x produces MUCh more compicated and smart programs. The idea that only Mice work on KOTH-X is ridiculous. long range imps (mov 0,2667) do not work at all, while mice can only move forward a max of 250 instructions, this makes them quite hard to overwhelm core efficiently. In fact much harder than in normal KOTH. It forces you to write code that relocates itself to ensure the core is cleared and generally forces longer, more complicated code. It's key advantage however, as I have stated is that it allows long programs to survive safe from the attack of a blinding bomber or scanner. In KOTH, an 100 line program cannot expect to last for more than 80 instruction cycles - less than its length! In KOTH-X, provided it can prevent anything getting within 250 cycles and then executing onto it, it can last indefinitely. I suspect that KOTH normal may reach optimum situations where there can be no major developments, simply because nothing can be written which is long. AT the moment KOTH-X is not being used so much, because KOTH gets all the attenbtion (as per Push Off), I hope that the new standard will replace the current different tournament standard with only two: KOTH w ICWS94 rules and KOTH-X w ICW94 rules +write 500 Jonathan my tuppence worth! From: IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU Subject: the various '94 hills Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1993 14:03 Message-ID: <19930917140351IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> Does the program have to use '94 extensions to be put on these hills? It'll be interesting to know if non '94 redcode can compete with '94. Fumitaka Hayashi, will he ever get back on the hill!?!?! From: sadkins@bigbird.cs.ohiou.edu (Scott W. Adkins) Subject: Re: Read/Write Ranges Message-ID: <1993Sep17.154209.909@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu> Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1993 15:42:09 GMT In article <19930914172208IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU writes: >There is no write limits in '94 as of yet, is there? pMARS is suppose >to use icws94 as it is proposed now, and there doesn't seem to be a >read write limit... I am not sure... (I am not up 100% on the '94 proposed standard) but I thought that the read/write limits would be an optional parameter that could be used in a typical game. It would be no different than a standard core size or cycle limit. And probably by default, the limits are not used. (Or in other words, the limits are set to the size of the core.) Scott -- Scott W. Adkins Internet: sadkins@ohiou.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ak323@cleveland.freenet.edu Ohio University of Athens Bitnet: adkins@ouaccvma.bitnet From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: primer.94, ranges and mass ack Message-ID: Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1993 16:12:33 GMT Good eye, Bryan. I indeed botched up this example in primer.94. Fact is, indirection only uses the B-field, regardless of modifier. It would get _really_ hairy if we also added "indirection modifiers" to the language. Ranges: the draft committee felt that read/write ranges could make the game more interesting and therefor included it in the standard as a tournament option. Keep in mind though that '94 ranges are different from x-hill ranges: The x-hill simply blocks out-of-range write attempts, whereas '94 ranges are a wrap-around mini core. As we state already in pmars.doc, support for read/write ranges will be added by popular demand. We can also set up the stormking x-hill with '94 and ranges, but we'll probably wait until traffic at the other hills picks up to see if it's worth the effort. I haven't been sending out individual confirmations, so here's a mass acknowledgement. At this time (11:00 CDT) I have received tournament warriors from the following players: Jon-Dean Mountjoy Fumitaka Hayashi Tim Scheer Stephen Linhart Anders Ivner Pierre Baillargeon P.Kline T. H. Davies Devin Kilminster Brant D. Thomsen You still have until 20:00 tonite. Since the number of players needs to be a power of two, I may have to reject entries 17, 18, etc. if there's only slightly more than 16. If it's closer to 32, I'll fill up with "dummy warriors" like last time. If a few more veterans participate, we'll have two leagues. -Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) From: mconst@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Michael Constant) Subject: Re: Write limits Date: 17 Sep 1993 18:33:15 GMT Message-ID: <27cvtb$ame@agate.berkeley.edu> In article <9577.9309171051@pyrfect.pyra.co.uk>, Jonathan Wolf wrote: >I completely disagree with objections to write limits. >Look at the complexity of osmething like SPider. This can be achieved >because nothing can get to the inside of a program without coming >within 250 instructions of it. This means that careful scanning, etc >cqan catch anything coming up ,and do all sorts of smart stuff in >return. There is no doubt that KOTH-x produces MUCh more compicated >and smart programs. Yes and no. It is true that more complicated programs CAN be produced on KOTH-X. However, the time it takes - careful scanning aside - for any program to attack another allows progams like my own Jester 2.0. This progam simply starts 2 separate, triply-redundant, 63-point imp spirals. It got into second place on the X-hill because nothing could ever catch it during the IMMENSE amount of start-up time! This program, in my opinion, should not have scored. It is simple and slow. It does no careful scanning of its 250-instruction block. And yet, the KOTH-X limitations allow it to easily overwhelm faster, smarter, more complicated programs. - Michael Constant mconst@ocf.berkeley.edu From: IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU Subject: Re: Corewar Help Offer Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1993 12:29 Message-ID: <19930918122933IZZYOY9@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> In article , blue@zeta.uleth.ca (Chris Blue) writes: >Okay I may not be an expert on the game, but I frequently have warriors >in the top five. If there is anyone who wants advice, hints or anything like >this....email me I'll see if I can help. > >c w blue > >blue@zeta.uleth.ca > > I think if you frequently have warriors in the top five, you are an expert. :) Fumitaka hayashi, hmm, i bet all those imps are beating mine.... Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1993 22:55:21 MST From: Message-ID: <93261.225521AZNXS@ASUACAD.BITNET> Subject: Re: the various '94 hills Since the 88 instruction set is a subset of the 94 set you can send your 88 warrior to the 94 hill. In fact many of the warriors on the hill are old 88 warriors. Nandor. From: paul.furber@digitec.co.za (Paul Furber) Subject: ICWS STANDARDS Message-ID: <60.155.uupcb@digitec.co.za> Date: 19 Sep 93 10:26:00 GMT Thanks for helpful replies from all. Stefan Strack mentions /pub/corewars/documents is the place to look. However don't have access to FTP - but I have a friend who does. What is the name of the document I should ask for ? Ciao. P.S. Meant DJZ not DGZ last time around ! --- . SLMR 2.1a . Can't decide whether to use edlin or WordPerfect 6.0 .... ---- - Digitec Online - 10 Nodes - Johannesburg - South Africa - +27-11-476-7136 - - @digitec.co.za - ILink - Weather - BASNet - RsaNet - Fidonet - From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: EBS fall tournament: round 1 results Message-ID: Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1993 08:03:01 GMT Round 1 of the EBS fall 93 tournament is over. There are 14 players; enough for two leagues. The A-league consists of people that currently have at least one warrior on the intel-hill: Stephen Linhart Mintardjo Wangsaw Nandor Sieben Paul Kline Brant D. Thomsen Anders Ivner The B-league is: Jon-Dean Mountjoy Raz Fumitaka Hayashi Devin Kilminster Tim Scheer Pierre Baillargeon Jonathan Wolf T. H. Davies The A-league has only six players; to make eight, I threw in two warriors of mine (before the pairings were randomly chosen). I won't distribute source for "Mystery" and "Enigma" until they are out of the tournament. Four of the 16 warriors in round 1 use ICWS'94 extensions (Mystery, Sylvester, Rotld TNG and Enigma, ranking 1, 2, 7, and 16 in the round-robin; see below). 100 rounds were played per confrontation on a Silicon Graphics Iris. I used the "-f" switch ("no fluctuations"), so you can verify the results at home. -------------------- A-league results: Enigma by Stefan Strack scores 3 (0 97 3) Hydra by Stephen Linhart scores 294 (97 0 3) Impact v1.0 by Anders Ivner scores 117 (20 23 57) Sphinx v5.1 by W. Mintardjo scores 126 (23 20 57) QuickFreeze by P.Kline scores 171 (39 7 54) RotLD TNG by nandor sieben scores 75 (7 39 54) Mystery by Stefan Strack scores 165 (47 29 24) Sylvester v1.0 by Brant D. Thomsen scores 111 (29 47 24) -------------------- B-league results: BomboozalIII by Jon-Dean Mountjoy scores 103 (27 51 22) The Ice Cube V1.6 by Raz scores 175 (51 27 22) Disruptor v2.7 by Fumitaka Hayashi scores 201 (63 25 12) Smart Bomb 2.0 by Devin Kilminster scores 87 (25 63 12) DuoTrac by Tim Scheer scores 187 (50 13 37) Newt X by Pierre Baillargeon scores 76 (13 50 37) ScanR4 by Jonathan Wolf scores 90 (1 12 87) Shwing! v2.1 by T. H. Davies scores 123 (12 1 87) Winners move into the winner brackets; losers into the loser bracket of round 2. Double-elimination means you have to lose twice to be out of the tournament. Even if you've lost once, you can still win the tournament by beating the finalist of the winner bracket. -------------------- Here the pairings for round 2: A-league, winner bracket: Stephen Linhart vs. W. Mintardjo Paul Kline vs. Mystery B-league, winner bracket: Raz vs. Fumitaka Hayashi Tim Sheer vs. T. H. Davies A-league, loser bracket: Enigma vs. Anders Ivner Nandor Sieben vs. Brant D. Thomsen B-league, loser bracket: Jon-Dean Mountjoy vs. Devin Kilminster Pierre Baillargeon vs. Jonathan Wolf Deadline for new submissions for round 2 is Friday, September 24th, 20:00 CDT. Else, your entry from round 1 is going to play again. You should have received all warrior sources from round 1 by now. If not, I lost your email address in the network crash my site experienced this weekend. Contact me again with your email address and I'll send you the source. -------------------- Round-robin results: (just for fun) Elapsed time: 7382 seconds (02:03:02) Rank Name Author %W %L %T Score __________________________________________________________________________ 1 Mystery Stefan Strack 61 27 12 3320 2 Sylvester v1.0 Brant D. Thomsen 54 25 20 3123 3 Impact v1.0 Anders Ivner 43 10 46 2999 4 Sphinx v5.1 W. Mintardjo 40 16 43 2798 5 QuickFreeze P.Kline 43 24 32 2766 6 Disruptor v2.7 Fumitaka Hayashi 45 28 27 2755 7 RotLD TNG nandor sieben 42 28 30 2633 8 Hydra Stephen Linhart 34 16 50 2574 9 Smart Bomb 2.0 Devin Kilminster 37 44 19 2198 10 ScanR4 Jonathan Wolf 18 19 63 1983 11 Shwing! v2.1 T. H. Davies 18 29 54 1810 12 BomboozalIII Jon-Dean Mountjoy 26 47 27 1795 13 The Ice Cube V1.6 Raz 26 46 28 1781 14 Newt X Pierre Baillargeon 5 29 67 1379 15 DuoTrac Tim Scheer 21 73 6 1189 16 Enigma Stefan Strack 21 73 6 1181 -Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: EBS fall tourney: Round 1 results Date: 20 Sep 1993 09:40:19 -0500 Message-ID: <9309201440.AA03332@necs.vuse> Round 1 of the EBS fall 93 tournament is over. There are 14 players; enough for two leagues. The A-league consists of people that currently have at least one warrior on the intel-hill: Stephen Linhart Mintardjo Wangsaw Nandor Sieben Paul Kline Brant D. Thomsen Anders Ivner The B-league is: Jon-Dean Mountjoy Raz Fumitaka Hayashi Devin Kilminster Tim Scheer Pierre Baillargeon Jonathan Wolf T. H. Davies The A-league has only six players; to make eight, I threw in two warriors of mine (before the pairings were randomly chosen). I won't distribute source for "Mystery" and "Enigma" until they are out of the tournament. Four of the 16 warriors in round 1 use ICWS'94 extensions (Mystery, Sylvester, Rotld TNG and Enigma, ranking 1, 2, 7, and 16 in the round-robin; see below). 100 rounds were played per confrontation on a Silicon Graphics Iris. I used the "-f" switch ("no fluctuations"), so you can verify the results at home. -------------------- A-league results: Enigma by Stefan Strack scores 3 (0 97 3) Hydra by Stephen Linhart scores 294 (97 0 3) Impact v1.0 by Anders Ivner scores 117 (20 23 57) Sphinx v5.1 by W. Mintardjo scores 126 (23 20 57) QuickFreeze by P.Kline scores 171 (39 7 54) RotLD TNG by nandor sieben scores 75 (7 39 54) Mystery by Stefan Strack scores 165 (47 29 24) Sylvester v1.0 by Brant D. Thomsen scores 111 (29 47 24) -------------------- B-league results: BomboozalIII by Jon-Dean Mountjoy scores 103 (27 51 22) The Ice Cube V1.6 by Raz scores 175 (51 27 22) Disruptor v2.7 by Fumitaka Hayashi scores 201 (63 25 12) Smart Bomb 2.0 by Devin Kilminster scores 87 (25 63 12) DuoTrac by Tim Scheer scores 187 (50 13 37) Newt X by Pierre Baillargeon scores 76 (13 50 37) ScanR4 by Jonathan Wolf scores 90 (1 12 87) Shwing! v2.1 by T. H. Davies scores 123 (12 1 87) Winners move into the winner brackets; losers into the loser bracket of round 2. Double-elimination means you have to lose twice to be out of the tournament. Even if you've lost once, you can still win the tournament by beating the finalist of the winner bracket. -------------------- Here the pairings for round 2: A-league, winner bracket: Stephen Linhart vs. W. Mintardjo Paul Kline vs. Mystery B-league, winner bracket: Raz vs. Fumitaka Hayashi Tim Sheer vs. T. H. Davies A-league, loser bracket: Enigma vs. Anders Ivner Nandor Sieben vs. Brant D. Thomsen B-league, loser bracket: Jon-Dean Mountjoy vs. Devin Kilminster Pierre Baillargeon vs. Jonathan Wolf Deadline for new submissions for round 2 is Friday, September 24th, 20:00 CDT. Else, your entry from round 1 is going to play again. You should have received all warrior sources from round 1 by now. If not, I lost your email address in the network crash my site experienced this weekend. Contact me again with your email address and I'll send you the code for round 1. -------------------- Round-robin results: (just for fun) Elapsed time: 7382 seconds (02:03:02) Rank Name Author %W %L %T Score __________________________________________________________________________ 1 Mystery Stefan Strack 61 27 12 3320 2 Sylvester v1.0 Brant D. Thomsen 54 25 20 3123 3 Impact v1.0 Anders Ivner 43 10 46 2999 4 Sphinx v5.1 W. Mintardjo 40 16 43 2798 5 QuickFreeze P.Kline 43 24 32 2766 6 Disruptor v2.7 Fumitaka Hayashi 45 28 27 2755 7 RotLD TNG nandor sieben 42 28 30 2633 8 Hydra Stephen Linhart 34 16 50 2574 9 Smart Bomb 2.0 Devin Kilminster 37 44 19 2198 10 ScanR4 Jonathan Wolf 18 19 63 1983 11 Shwing! v2.1 T. H. Davies 18 29 54 1810 12 BomboozalIII Jon-Dean Mountjoy 26 47 27 1795 13 The Ice Cube V1.6 Raz 26 46 28 1781 14 Newt X Pierre Baillargeon 5 29 67 1379 15 DuoTrac Tim Scheer 21 73 6 1189 16 Enigma Stefan Strack 21 73 6 1181 -Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) From: agp@biobase.aau.dk (Anders Gorm Pedersen) Subject: Help: Mars88 graphic output? Message-ID: Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1993 10:47:06 GMT Having only recently gained acces to the internet, I was very pleased to discover a newsgroup on core war. I read the original Dewdney Sci-Am paper in 84 and have wanted to try it out ever since, but I never got around to implement MARS. So now I've downloaded some of the pc versions from soda.berkeley.edu, I've read the FAQ, I've reread the Sci-Am papers, and I am slowly beginning to understand some basic strategy. My problem is: How to interpret the graphic output from mars88 (or pmars01) ? Ok: The square boxes are presumably the warriors, but what is the significance of them being highlighted? What exactly do the dots mean? (I noticed that you can set read, write and increment display on).What are the colored bars in the top of the screen? (The white one is number of turns left - right?). So if someone could mail me a short introduction to this I would be very grateful. Thanks in advance Anders Gorm Pedersen, internet: agp@biobase.aau.dk University of Copenhagen, institute of molecular biology. Hvem er jeg? Hvor er jeg? Og hvem bestilte kalvekoteletten? Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1993 12:39:18 MST From: Message-ID: <93263.123918AZNXS@ASUACAD.BITNET> Subject: Re: Help: Mars88 graphic output? I admit I'm not very good in writing documentation. The display in pmarsv and mars88 is basically the same. pmasv.doc contains some info about it. the rctangle means that a process is alive on that location. The different color means that a process has died on that location. In mars88 a dot means that a write/read/increment happened on that location. We don't know which but for example it can be a read if the read flag is on on the right bottom corner. Is if the read flag the only one which is on then a dot means a read for sure. In pmarsv the flags can't be switched individually. On the top the white line means the remaining number of cycles. The colored lines mean the number of processes in the warriors. I hope this will help but if not let me know. Nandor. From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: Re: Help: Mars88 graphic output? Message-ID: Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1993 15:38:19 GMT In article agp@biobase.aau.dk (Anders Gorm Pedersen) writes: >My problem is: How to interpret the graphic output from mars88 (or pmars01) ? Hope Nandor doesn't mind my answering for him here: boxes are core addresses being executed. They turn blue (how appropriate :-) if processes die (i.e. DAT is executed). Dots are "core writes" (B-field or whole instruction overwritten) in mode 1, core writes and core decrements in mode 2, and writes, decrements and reads in mode 3. It's a bit confusing to have writes, decrements and reads all represented by the same symbol; the all new display version of pMARS will fix this. Plug: the new pMARSv will also have mouse support, an alternative fast textmode display (run-time switchable) and full debugger integration. The two colored bars on the top of the display are "process meters"; if one extends to the right edge of the screen, it means the warrior is running all available processes. -Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) P.S.: Sorry for posting the tourney results twice; we've had network problems and I didn't think my first attempt got thru. From: g88m0396@kudu.ru.ac.za (Mr JD Mountjoy) Subject: 94 Standard and limits Message-ID: Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1993 15:52:15 GMT Hi I have just read the 94 standard draft, found at soda. In it, are references to read and write limits in the core, but nowhere do I find any values given to them.......? Does anybody know what they are, or if there are any. Thanks J-D -- csjm@alpha.ru.ac.za -- Rhodes University -- These views are mine and mine only From: pk6811s@acad.drake.edu Subject: _Push Off_ Message-ID: <1993Sep23.142313.1@acad.drake.edu> Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1993 20:23:13 GMT _PUSH OFF_ A midweek review of Corewar September 23, 1993 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. The Standings: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 43/ 28/ 29 QuickFreeze v1.4 P.Kline 159 1 2 48/ 41/ 11 Iron Gate 1.01 Wayne Sheppard 154 240 3 46/ 43/ 11 Dragon Spear c w blue 148 1199 4 47/ 46/ 7 Agony 6.0 Stefan Strack 147 49 5 34/ 22/ 44 Deck of Many Things c w blue 146 13 6 42/ 40/ 18 Beholder's Eye v2 W. Mintardjo 144 17 7 40/ 37/ 24 Winter Werewolf 3 W. Mintardjo 143 415 8 34/ 26/ 40 FlyPaper 3.0 J.Layland 143 521 9 33/ 24/ 43 ttt nandor sieben 143 321 10 30/ 19/ 51 pMARS pMARS project 141 146 11 32/ 25/ 43 Night Crawler Wayne Sheppard 140 1097 12 42/ 45/ 12 Impurge Fredrik Ohrstrom 140 421 13 31/ 23/ 45 Impact v1.0 Anders Ivner 139 234 14 36/ 34/ 29 Keystone t13 P.Kline 138 55 15 31/ 24/ 45 Imprimis 7 P.Kline 137 337 16 37/ 39/ 24 Leprechaun 1b Anders Ivner 136 165 17 30/ 24/ 46 Hydra Stephen Linhart 135 166 18 30/ 25/ 45 Sphinx v2.8 W. Mintardjo 135 2095 19 39/ 44/ 17 Grimm's Vampyre c w blue 134 280 20 35/ 37/ 27 Herem VI Anders Ivner 134 269 21 2/ 98/ 0 test P.Kline 7 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- II. The Basics: -Core War Archives, including many helpful articles, warrior source code, and reliable emulators, are available via anonymous FTP at soda.berkeley.edu in pub/corewar. -FAQ for this newsgroup is available via anonymous FTP at rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.z ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. The Scoop: What do Core War veterans consider to be the _real_ terror, the one opponent they never hope to meet? 'Hard Disk Crash' of course! C.W. Blue had one and he is scrambling to recover his warriors. Hmm. looks like he found the source to Deck of Many Things, a program whose motto might be "yield no losses!". Not a bad strategy either :-) [Blue, I tried responding to your request, but my replies bounced] After publishing QuickFreeze last week, I realized that not only can he scan faster than c, but he can JMN to the attack much sooner. Thus the improved performance. Sorry, ttt, that seemed to make a BIG difference. I'm even starting to pick up a few points against scanners. S. Strack's new tournament is underway. After the first round winners and losers are equally divided :-) Should be interesting to see whether the '94 standard fighters have any unusual advantage. Remember, participants, you have until Friday, the 23rd, to submit a new program, otherwise the old one will go into the second round. Speaking of '94 standard, is koth.stormking active? I've sent three programs that way with no response. Maybe someone could repost the submission syntax for us. And the standings. Funny, every couple of weeks someone posts Dwarf or Imp, copied right out of the old Dewdney articles. And they never make it on the Hill. Note to all newcomers: today's programs can out-bomb Dwarf, out-tie Imp, out-reproduce Mice, and out-lasso Cowboy. Better check the archives at soda. But hang in there, it takes time to learn enough to become dangerous. Just keep repeating: "it's a harmless addiction, it's a harmless addiction, . . .". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IV. The Outlook: 2 34/ 22/ 44 Deck of Many Things c w blue 147 1 2 40/ 29/ 30 QuickFreeze v1.4 P.Kline 151 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- V. The Quick Look: 20 0/ 70/ 29 ImpSpawn Tim Scheer 31 1 20 20/ 77/ 3 BackTrack Tim Scheer 62 1 21 0/ 47/ 53 Unknown TR Reed 54 0 21 0/ 90/ 10 Anti-IMP v1.0 Bryan Turner Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-modified: 1993/09/22 Version: 2.1.2 These are the Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) from the USENET newsgroup rec.games.corewar. This FAQ list is also available by anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z. TABLE OF CONTENTS Line ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. What is Core War? 69 2. Is it Core War or Core Wars? 82 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? 90 4. Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get 108 a copy of the current instruction set? 5. What is this ICWS'94? 122 6. What is the ICWS? 138 7. What is TCWN? 148 8. How do I join? 156 9. Are back issues of TCWNs available? 176 10. What is the EBS? 183 11. Where are the Core War archives? 199 12. Where can I find a Core War system for . . . ? 216 13. I do not have ftp. How do I get all of this great stuff? 264 14. I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? 271 15. When is the next tournament? 302 16. What is KOTH? How do I enter? 311 17. Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? 443 18. How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? 455 19. What does (expression or term of your choice) mean? 467 20. Other questions? 595 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 1: What is Core War? A 1: Core War is a game played by two or more programs (and vicariously by their authors) written in an assembly language called Redcode and run in a virtual computer called MARS (for Memory Array Redcode Simulator). The object of the game is to cause all of the opposing programs to terminate, leaving your program in sole posession of the machine. There are Core War systems available for most computer platforms. Redcode has been standardized by the ICWS, and is therefore transportable between all standard Core War systems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 2: Is it "Core War" or "Core Wars"? A 2: Both terms are used. Early references were to Core War. Later references seem to use Core Wars. I prefer "Core War" to refer to the game in general, "core wars" to refer to more than one specific battle. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 3: Where can I find more information about Core War? A 3: Core War was first described in the "Core War Guidelines" of March, 1984 by D. G. Jones and A. K. Dewdney of the Department of Computer Science at The University of Western Ontario (Canada). Dewdney wrote several "Computer Recreations" articles in "Scientific American" which discussed Core War, starting with the May 1984 article. Those articles are contained in an anthology: Author: Dewdney, A. K. Title: The Armchair Universe: An Exploration of Computer Worlds Published: New York: W. H. Freeman (c) 1988 ISBN: 0-7167-1939-8 Library of Congress Call Number: QA76.6 .D517 1988 The Redcode language has changed somewhat since; see Q 4. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 4: Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? A 4: A draft of the official standard (ICWS'88) is available by anonymous FTP from the Core War archives (soda.berkeley.edu) as pub/corewar/documents/standards/redcode-icws-88.Z This document is formatted awkwardly and contains ambiguous statements. For a more approachable intro to Redcode, take a look at pub/corewar/documents/tutorial.1.Z tutorial.2.Z (See also Q11) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 5: What is this ICWS'94? A 5: There is an ongoing discussion about future enhancements to the Redcode language. A proposed new standard, dubbed ICWS'94, is currently being evaluated. A major change is the addition of "instruction modifiers" that allow instructions to modify A-field, B-field or both. Also new is a post-increment indirect addressing mode and unrestricted opcode and addressing mode combination ("no illegal instructions"). ICWS'94 is backwards compatible; i.e. ICWS'88 warriors will run correctly on an ICWS'94 system. Take a look at the ICWS'94 draft for more information (soda.berkeley.edu pub/corewar/documents/icws94.draft.Z). You can try out the new standard by submitting warriors to the experimental '94 KotH server (see Q16). pMARS, a corewar system that implements ICWS'94 is available at soda (see Q12). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 6: What is the ICWS? A 6: About one year after Core War first appeared in Sci-Am, the "International Core War Society" (ICWS) was established. Since that time, the ICWS has been responsible for the creation and maintenance of Core War standards and the running of Core War tournaments. There have been six annual tournaments and two standards (ICWS'86 and ICWS'88). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 7: What is TCWN? A 7: Since March of 1987, "The Core War Newsletter" (TCWN) has been the official newsletter of the ICWS. It is published quarterly and recent issues are also available as Encapsulated PostScript on soda.berkeley.edu (see Q9). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 8: How do I join? A 8: For more information about joining the ICWS (which includes a subscription to TCWN), contact: A 7: For more information about joining the ICWS (which includes a subscription to TCWN), or to contribute an article, review, cartoon, letter, joke, rumor, etc. to TCWN, please contact: Jon Newman 13824 NE 87th Street Redmond, WA 98052-1959 email: jonn@microsoft.com (Note: Microsoft has NO affiliation with Core War. Jon Newman just happens to work there, and we want to keep it that way!) Current annual dues are $15.00 in US currency. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 9: Are back issues of TCWN available? A 9: Recent issues can be found on soda.berkeley.edu (see Q11). Older issues (up to Winter 1991) are also available (see the next TCWN for details). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q10: What is the EBS? A10: The Electronic Branch Section (EBS) of the ICWS is a group of Core War enthusiasts with access to electronic mail. There are no fees associated with being a member of the EBS, and members do reap some of the benefits of full ICWS membership without the expense. For instance, the ten best warriors submitted to the EBS tournament are entered into the annual ICWS tournament. All EBS business is conducted in the rec.games.corewar newsgroup. The current goal of the EBS is to be at the forefront of Core War by writing and implementing new standards and test suites in preparation for the tenth anniversary of Core War in May of 1994 (see Q 5). Its immediate business will be to set up a Charter and establish its officers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A11: Where is the Core War archive? Q11: Many documents such as the guidelines and the ICWS standards along with previous tournament Redcode entries and complete Core War systems are available via anonymous ftp from soda.berkeley.edu (128.32.149.19) in the /pub/corewar directories. Also, most of past rec.games.corewar postings (including Redcode source listings) are archived there. Jon Blow (blojo@soda.berkeley.edu) is the archive administrator. Much of what is available on soda is also available on the German archive at iraun1.ira.uka.de (129.13.10.90) in the /pub/X11/corewars directory. This FAQ is automatically archived by news.answers. See the header for the current archive name and news.answers for how to get it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q12: Where can I find a Core War system for . . . ? A12: Core War systems are available via anonymous ftp from soda.berkeley.edu in the pub/corewar/systems directory. Currently, there are Unix X-Window, IBM PC-compatible (sorry, no systems specifically designed for MS-Windows yet), Macintosh, and Amiga Core War systems available there. CAUTION! There are many, many Core War systems available which are NOT ICWS'88 (or even ICWS'86) compatible available at various archive sites other than soda.berkeley.edu. Generally, the older the program - the less likely it will be ICWS compatible. Reviews of Core War systems would be greatly appreciated in the newsgroup and in the newsletter. Below is a not necessarily complete or up-to-date list of what's available at soda: MADgic41.lzh - corewar for the Amiga, v4.1 MAD4041.lzh - older version? MAD50B.lha - corewar for the Amiga, beta version 5.0 Redcoder-10.hqx - corewar for the Mac core-11.hqx - corewar for the Mac core-wars-simulator.hqx - same as core-11.hqx? corewar_unix_x11.tar.Z - corewar for UNIX/X-windows, ICWS'86 but not ICWS'88 compatible koth31.tar.Z - corewar for UNIX/X-windows. This program runs the KotH server at intel.com koth.shar.Z - older version kothpc.zip - port of older version of KotH to the PC deluxe20c.tar.Z - corewar for UNIX (X-windows or curses) and PC mars.tar.Z - corewar for UNIX, likely not ICWS'88 compatible icons.zip - corewar icons for MS-Windows macrored.zip - a redcode macro-preprocessor (PC) c88v49.zip - PC corewar, textmode display mars88.zip - PC corewar, graphics mode display corwp302.zip - PC corewar, textmode display, slowish mercury2.zip - PC corewar written in assembly, fast! mtourn11.zip - tournament scheduler for mercury (req. 4DOS) pmars0?s.zip - portable system, ICWS'88 and '94, runs on UNIX, PC, Mac, Amiga. C source archive pmars0?s.tar.Z - same as above pmars0?s.sit.hqx - packaged for Mac pmars0?.zip - PC executables, graphics display version macpmars0?.sit.hqx - pMARS executables for Mac ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q13: I do not have ftp. How do I get all of this great stuff? A13: There is an ftp email server at ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com. Send email with a subject and body text of "help" (without the quotes) for more information on its usage. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q14: I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? A14: If you have access to telnet, you can read rec.games.corewar (and many more groups) through the gopher information retrieval system. Telnet to consultant.micro.umn.edu (134.84.132.4) or any of the other gopher servers and go through these menus: 1 - Information about Gopher 10 - Gopher+ example server 11 - non-Gopher+ link 7 - News 11 - USENET news 24 - rec 21 - games 6 - corewar Another way is to join the COREWAR-L list run on the Stormking.Com ListProcessor. To join, send : SUB COREWAR-L FirstName LastName to: LISTPROC@STORMKING.COM You can send mail to corewar-l@stormking.com to post even if you are not a member of the list. If you somehow receive rec.games.corewar but just can't post, you can email your post to rec-games-corewar@cs.utexas.edu and it will be automatically posted for you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q15: When is the next tournament? A15: The ICWS holds an annual tournament. Traditionally, the deadline for entering is the 15th of December. The EBS usually holds a preliminary tournament around the 15th of November and sends the top finishers on to the ICWS tournament. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q16: What is KOTH? How do I enter? A16: King Of The Hill (KOTH) is an ongoing Core War tournament available to anyone with email provided by William Shubert (wms@iwarp.intel.com). You enter by submitting via email a Redcode program with special comment lines. You will receive a reply indicating how well your program did against the current top twenty programs "on the hill". Your program will play 100 battles against each of the 20 other programs currently on the Hill. You receive 3 points for each win and 1 point for each tie. (The existing programs do not replay each other, but their previous battles are recalled.) All scores are updated to reflect your battles and all 21 programs are ranked from high to low. If you are number 21 you are pushed off the Hill, if you are higher than 21 someone else is pushed off. Entry rules for King of the Hill Corewar: 1) Write a corewar program. KotH is fully ICWS '88 compatible, EXCEPT that a comma (",") is required between two arguments. 2) Put the line ";redcode" at the top of your program. This MUST be the first line. Anything before it will be lost. If you wish to receive mail on every new entrant, use ";redcode verbose". Otherwise you will only receive mail if a challenger makes it onto the hill. Use ";redcode quiet" if you wish to receive mail only when you get shoved off the hill. (Also, see 5 below). Additionally, adding ";name " and ";author " will be helpful in the performance reports. Do NOT have a line beginning with ";address" in your code; this will confuse the mail daemon and you won't get mail back. In addition, it would be nice if you have lines beginning with ";strategy" that describe the algorithm you use. 3) Mail this file to "wms@iwarp.intel.com". 4) Within a few minutes you should get mail back telling you whether your program assembled correctly or not. If it did assemble correctly, sit back and wait; if not, make the change required and re-submit. 5) In an hour or so you should get more mail telling you how your program performed against the current top 20 programs. If no news arrives in an hour, don't worry; entries are put in a queue and run through the tournament one at a time. A backlog may develop. Be patient. If your program makes it onto the hill, you will get mail every time a new program makes it onto the hill. If this is too much mail, you can use ";redcode quiet" when you first mail in your program; then you will only get mail when you make it on the top 20 list or when you are knocked off. Using ";redcode verbose" will give you even more mail; here you get mail every time a new challenger arrives, even if they don't make it onto the top 20 list. Often programmers want to try out slight variations in their programs. If you already have a program named "foo V1.0" on the hill, adding the line ";kill foo" to a new program will automatically bump foo 1.0 off the hill. Just ";kill" will remove all of your programs when you submit the new one. MORE ON KOTH COREWAR IMPLEMENTATION Core size: 8 000 instructions Max processes: 8 000 per program Duration: After 80 000 cycles per program, a tie is declared. Max entry length: 100 instructions Programs are guaranteed a 100 instruction block (inclusive of their warrior's instructions) without overlapping their opponent. SAMPLE ENTRY: ;redcode ;name Dwarf ;author A. K. Dewdney ;strategy Throw DAT bombs around memory, hitting every 4th memory cell. ;strategy This program was presented in the first Corewar article. bomb DAT #0 dwarf ADD #4, bomb MOV bomb, @bomb JMP dwarf END dwarf ; Programs start at the first line unless ; an "END start" pseudo-op appears to indicate ; the first logical instruction. Also, nothing ; after the END instruction will be assembled. Rule variants for "eXperimental" corewar: The same as above but use ";redcode-x" to start your program. Your program will be entered into a second tournament with slightly different rules. The rules are: - All addressing modes are allowed with all instructions. - There is an additional addressing mode, called "postincrement". To use it try an instruction like "mov >5,6". - The maximum write distance is 250 instructions. That is, every time your program tries to modify memory, the address is checked; if it is more than 250 instructions from the process doing the modify, then memory is left unchanged, but the instruction continues as normal. - A tie is not declared until 150,000 cycles per program have elapsed. KotH runs on any Unix system with an X windows interface. The source code to KotH is available by email from William Shubert. Write to him at (wms@iwarp.intel.com) for a copy or get it by anonymous FTP from soda.berkeley.edu in the pub/corewar/systems directory (see Q12). STORMKING.COM KOTH: A second KotH server is installed at stormking.com. Send your warrior to koth@stormking.com. Since this is an UUCP site, it may take a day before you get results back. There are currently four separate hills that you can select by starting your program with ;redcode, ;redcode-x ;redcode-icws or ;redcode-94. ;redcode and ;redcode-x select hills with rules of the regular and experimantal hills at intel.com (see above). ;redcode-icws sends your warrior to the ICWS-hill. Rules here follow that of the annual ICWS tournament, in short: Core size: 8 192 instructions Max processes: 64 per program Duration: After 100 000 cycles per program, a tie is declared. Max entry length: 300 instructions ;redcode-94 selects the experimental ICWS'94 (see Q 5 for more on this proposed new standard. Core size, Max processes, etc. are identical to the regular hills at stormking and intel.com. All hills at stormking.com except for the x-hill run portable MARS, a platform-independent corewar system available at soda (see Q12). The contact person is for this server is Scott Ellentuch (tuc@stormking.com). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q17: Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? A17: Core is initialized to DAT 0, 0. This is an "illegal" instruction under ICWS'88 rules and strictly compliant assemblers (such as KotH) will not let you write a DAT 0, 0 instruction - only DAT #0, #0. So this begs the question, how to compare something to see if it is empty core. The answer is, most likely the instruction before your first instruction and the instruction after your last instruction are both DAT 0, 0. You can use them, or any other likely unmodified instructions, for comparison. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q18: How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? A18: SLT gives some people trouble because of the way modular arithmetic works. It is important to note that all negative numbers are converted to positive numbers before a battles begins. Example: (-1) becomes (M - 1) where M is the memory size. Once you realize that all numbers are treated as positive, it is clear what is meant by "less than". It should also be clear that no number is less than zero. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q19: What does (expression or term of your choice) mean? A19: Here is a selected glossary of terms. If you have a definition and/or term you wish to see here, please send it to me. (References to an X-like program mean that the term X is derived from the specific program X and has become a generic term). Bootstrapping - Strategy of copying the active portion of the program away from the initial location, leaving a decoy behind and making the relocated program as small as possible. B-Scanners - Scanners which only recognize non-zero B-fields. example add #10,scan scan jmz example,10 C - Measure of speed, equal to one location per cycle. Speed of light. CMP-Scanner - A Scanner which uses a CMP instruction to look for opponents. example add step,scan scan cmp 10,30 jmp attack jmp example step dat #20,#20 Color - Property of bombs making them visible to scanners, causing them to attack useless locations, thus slowing them down. example dat #100 Core-Clear - code that sequentially overwrites core with DAT instructions; usually the last part of a program. Decoys - Bogus or unused instructions meant to slow down Scanners. Typically, DATs with non-zero B-fields. DJN-Stream (also DJN-Train) - Using a DJN command to rapidly decrement core locations. example . . . . . . djn example,<4000 Dwarf - the prototypical small bomber. Imp - Program which only uses the MOV instruction. example MOV 0, 1 or example MOV 0, 2 MOV 0, 2 Imp-Gate - A location in core which is bombed or decremented continuously so that an Imp can not pass. Also used to describe the program-code which maintains the gate. example ... ... SPL 0, >Funny, every couple of weeks someone posts Dwarf or Imp, copied right >out of the old Dewdney articles. And they never make it on the Hill. >Note to all newcomers: today's programs can out-bomb Dwarf, out-tie >Imp, out-reproduce Mice, and out-lasso Cowboy. Better check >the archives at soda. But hang in there, it takes time to learn >enough to become dangerous. Just keep repeating: "it's a harmless >addiction, it's a harmless addiction, . . .". Heh heh heh. I am the one postinf Dwarf and Imp. I KNEW that they wouldn't make it on the hill. I am new at this and just wanted to make sure I understood how to submit and to see what would happen. ;----------------------------------------------------------- ; Tracy R. Reed | ; SDSU | ; CIVIC1027@ucsvax.sdsu.edu | ;----------------------------------------------------------- From: sah@ee.ed.ac.uk (Simon A Hovell) Subject: Stormking-94 standings and an observation Message-ID: Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1993 09:34:03 GMT Shown below is the current ICWS '94 Draft hill. This is as of Wednesday 22nd. I sent a new warrior in on Wednesday, and received a "successful compilation" message, but nothing else. Presumably the line to Stormking - or even Stormking itself - is down. # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 39/ 19/ 42 Chimera v3.5 W. Mintardjo 159 28 2 41/ 23/ 36 NC II Wayne Sheppard 158 21 3 41/ 25/ 35 JustTakingALookSee J.Layland 156 20 4 45/ 37/ 18 RotLD TNG nandor sieben 154 22 5 39/ 25/ 35 Sphinx v5.1 W. Mintardjo 153 24 6 48/ 43/ 9 Rave Stefan Strack 153 4 7 44/ 35/ 21 Sylvester v1.0 Brant D. Thomsen 153 3 8 45/ 45/ 10 Medusa's v6 Mintardjo & Strack 144 26 9 45/ 47/ 8 Rave 2 Stefan Strack 144 6 10 36/ 18/ 32 Chimera v3.5 W. Mintardjo 139 32 11 35/ 30/ 36 Hydra Stephen Linhart 139 5 12 42/ 47/ 11 Fire Storm v1.1 W. Mintardjo 137 27 13 39/ 43/ 18 RotLD TNG nandor sieben 135 29 14 41/ 48/ 11 rontgen nandor sieben 133 8 15 38/ 44/ 17 Beholder's Eye v1.7 W. Mintardjo 133 33 16 40/ 49/ 11 Paratroops v3.0 W. Mintardjo 131 25 17 36/ 43/ 21 tiny J.Layland 128 1 18 33/ 50/ 17 A-stounding Simon Hovell 117 11 19 33/ 51/ 16 hit3 nandor sieben 116 14 20 35/ 54/ 12 Sauron v1.3 Michael Constant 116 2 ttfn, Si. xxx -- S.A.Hovell, Dept. Electrical Engineering, University of Edinburgh, U.K. (+44) 31 650 5655 (S.Hovell@ed.ac.uk) ----- "Stress is irrelevant" said Mr.Borg, ----- ----- as he relaxed in his big flowery chair ----- From: Michael N Nonemacher Subject: KotH troubles Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1993 10:08:30 -0400 Message-ID: Is the KotH server down or something? I've been trying to send my newest warrior to the hill since 3am, and haven't heard a thing! I've sent a few (pathetic) warriors to the hill before, and they worked fine, but when I get a warrior that I think might be able to do something, I can't send it. HELP!!!! From: Michael N Nonemacher Subject: Re: KotH troubles Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1993 21:00:41 -0400 Message-ID: Nevermind. The problem (if there really was one, and it wasn't just my imagination) cleared itself up. False alarm. From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: koth'94 hangs Message-ID: Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1993 18:06:29 GMT The redcode-94 server at stormking.com is apparently down. Assembly reports are returned, but the waiting queue has grown to 13 without any results coming back. I have the growing suspicion that Scott forgot to compile the latest pMARS with the SERVER option, which disables the debugger. pMARS now probably hangs at the debugger prompt waiting for user input that never comes, because a warrior included a source debug directive such as ;trace. The ;redcode and ;redcode-icws hills are still ok; but please strip any ;trace/ ;debug/;break lines from your warrior before submitting. I have informed Scott, but it might take a couple of days until this is fixed, since he's currently on a consulting job in Australia and has to telnet back. -Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) From: stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: EBS fall tourney: round 2 results Message-ID: Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1993 21:38:34 GMT Results for round 2 are in. Of the new warriors this week, DEC and Grep v1.0 use '94 extensions, the remaining are ICWS'88 warriors. Tim Scheer, your site doesn't know about user 'tscheer'. Please give me an alternate address, so I can send you this week's code. As usual, new entries for round 3 have to be in by this coming Friday, Oct. 1. Cheers, Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) A-league, winner bracket: Sphinx v5.1 by W. Mintardjo scores 77 (4 31 65) Hydra by Stephen Linhart scores 158 (31 4 65) Emerald 4 by P.Kline scores 206 (65 24 11) Mystery by Stefan Strack scores 83 (24 65 11) Stephen Linhart and Paul Kline advance in the winner bracket and meet each other in round 3. W. Mintardjo fights Mystery in the loser bracket next week. B-league, winner bracket: Disruptor v2.7 by Fumitaka Hayashi scores 227 (73 19 8) The Ice Cube V1.6 by Raz scores 65 (19 73 8) Cat v2.0 by Tim Scheer scores 271 (89 7 4) Shwing! v2.1 by T. H. Davies scores 25 (7 89 4) In the B-league, Fumitaka Hayashi beats Raz, and Tim Scheer beats T. H. Davies. The winners meet in the winner bracket, the losers in the loser bracket of round 3. A-league, loser bracket: Enigma by Stefan Strack scores 14 (2 90 8) Impact v1.0 by Anders Ivner scores 278 (90 2 8) pappir by Nandor Sieben scores 30 (8 86 6) Grep v1.0 by Brant D. Thomsen scores 264 (86 8 6) Enigma loses against Anders Ivner and drops out of the tournament (Enigma is a buggy A-scanner). Nandor Sieben's pappir is shredded by Brant Thomsen's CMP-scanner Grep v1.0. Anders and Brant meet each other in round 3. B-league, loser bracket: Smart Bomb 2.1 by Devin Kilminster scores 81 (21 61 18) H_2 SO_6 by Jon-Dean Mountjoy scores 201 (61 21 18) DEC by Jonathan Wolf scores 69 (20 71 9) Imperor VII by Pierre Baillargeon scores 222 (71 20 9) Jon-Dean Mountjoy beats Devin Kilminster with an impossible chemical; Jonathan Wolf is defeated by Pierre Baillargeon. Jon-Dean and Pierre will fight in round 3. Devin and Jonathan leave the tournament. The round-robin ranking from which the scores above were extracted: Elapsed time: 12082 seconds (03:21:22) Rank Name Author %W %L %T Score ___________________________________________________________________________ 1 Sphinx v5.1 W. Mintardjo 51 14 35 3173 2 Mystery Stefan Strack 59 33 9 3135 3 Impact v1.0 Anders Ivner 47 14 38 3070 4 Grep v1.0 Brant D. Thomsen 54 37 9 2925 5 Emerald 4 P.Kline 51 33 17 2867 6 Hydra Stephen Linhart 41 15 44 2835 7 Disruptor v2.7 Fumitaka Hayashi 45 30 25 2737 8 H_2 SO_6 Jon-Dean Mountjoy 46 42 12 2557 9 Cat v2.0 Tim Scheer 44 45 11 2430 10 Smart Bomb 2.1 Devin Kilminster 37 45 18 2187 11 Imperor VII Pierre Baillargeon 34 45 22 2087 12 pappir Nandor Sieben 23 32 45 1921 13 The Ice Cube V1.6 Raz 32 51 17 1906 14 Shwing! v2.1 T. H. Davies 19 39 42 1673 15 Enigma Stefan Strack 31 67 2 1628 16 DEC Jonathan Wolf 12 83 5 683 From: camo@deakin.edu.au (Tim Taylor) Subject: IMPs Date: 29 Sep 1993 20:30:12 +1000 Message-ID: <28bo3k$9ro@eros.ccs.deakin.edu.au> Is there any way to kill imp effectively??? I've heard talk of 'imppaper' what is this and does it kill imps effectively? Much thanx, Luke P.S. Is there a site with any demo code or strategy tips besides soda.berkely.edu???? -- +-------------------------+------------------------------------------+ | camo@deakin.edu.au | I am Dr .sigmund Freud, | | | Tell me about your mother | +-------------------------+------------------------------------------+ From: pk6811s@acad.drake.edu Subject: _Push Off_ Special Imps Edition Message-ID: <1993Sep29.174034.1@acad.drake.edu> Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1993 23:40:34 GMT _PUSH OFF_ A midweek review of Corewar September 29, 1993 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. The Standings: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 31/ 29 QuickFreeze v1.4 P.Kline 150 8 2 45/ 44/ 11 Iron Gate 1.01 Wayne Sheppard 146 247 3 34/ 24/ 42 Deck of Many Things c w blue 143 7 4 45/ 48/ 8 Agony 6.0 Stefan Strack 142 56 5 44/ 46/ 11 Dragon Spear c w blue 142 1206 6 39/ 38/ 24 Winter Werewolf 3 W. Mintardjo 139 422 7 42/ 45/ 13 Impurge Fredrik Ohrstrom 138 428 8 33/ 27/ 40 FlyPaper 3.0 J.Layland 138 528 9 40/ 42/ 18 Beholder's Eye v2 W. Mintardjo 137 24 10 42/ 48/ 9 Backstabber Anders Ivner 136 2 11 35/ 37/ 28 Herem VI Anders Ivner 134 276 12 29/ 25/ 46 Impact v1.0 Anders Ivner 133 241 13 29/ 26/ 45 Hydra Stephen Linhart 133 173 14 34/ 36/ 30 Keystone t13 P.Kline 132 62 15 30/ 27/ 43 ttt nandor sieben 132 328 16 36/ 41/ 23 Leprechaun 1b Anders Ivner 130 172 17 26/ 23/ 51 pMARS pMARS project 129 153 18 28/ 26/ 46 Imprimis 7 P.Kline 129 344 19 28/ 29/ 43 Night Crawler Wayne Sheppard 128 1104 20 38/ 51/ 11 Cleaver Wayne Sheppard 126 1 21 27/ 28/ 45 Sphinx v2.8 W. Mintardjo 125 2102 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- II. The Basics: -Core War Archives, including many helpful articles, warrior source code, and reliable emulators, are available via anonymous FTP at soda.berkeley.edu in pub/corewar. -FAQ for this newsgroup is available via anonymous FTP at rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.z ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. The Scoop: ** EXTRA ** EXTRA ** EXTRA ** EXTRA ** EXTRA ** EXTRA ** EXTRA ** Today saw the ever-durable Sphinx v2.8 pushed off KotH, at the record age of 2102. After A. Ivner's "Backstabber" dropped *all* the imps to the bottom ranks, W. Sheppard's "Cleaver" finished the job - barely - by a single point nosing Sphinx off the Hill. KotH now awaits the 'imp'roved Sphinx, which has been flexing its muscles in the wings, faster launch, offset boot, unique stone and all! Is this a conspiracy or what :-) All the other imp-authors are holding their breath to see who's next for the chop, since all are firmly settled in the bottom rankings (Imprimis nooo!) ***************************************************************************** It happened last October! A mighty wind swept the Hill. Brave and hardened warriors were whisked away like paper dolls. Imps were back, and this time they meant business! The Corewar world watched in dismay as Anders Ivner's "The IMPire strikes back" dismantled such valiant fighters as "Charon", "No Mucking About", "B-scanners live in vain", and "Sucker". Even venerable "Flash Paper" dropped in the rankings. As Ivner put up test after test afficionados marveled at his ;strategy line: "What is the optimal setup?". Imps? There were no imps on KotH. Imps can only tie and ties only bring 1 point. After basking in the glory a day or so, Ivner posted his source, and we all pondered the fact that fast imps only tie, but slow imps can kill you. Here is a report from October 13, 1992: # %W/%L/%T Name Author Score Age 1 40/11/49 The IMPire strikes back Anders Ivner 169 1 2 47/42/10 No Mucking About Campbell Fraser 152 596 3 38/28/34 Atomic Sheep c w blue 149 54 4 45/45/ 9 nandor sieben 146 383 5 33/23/44 dead end nandor sieben 144 20 6 36/30/34 Chaff v2.8 Patrick Hunt 142 107 7 43/44/13 Falling Leaf 1.21 Matt Hastings 142 734 8 34/26/41 Flash Paper3.7 Matt Hastings 142 648 9 42/43/15 testing Roadrunner S. Halvorsen 140 440 10 41/41/18 Pale Shears Matt Hastings 140 385 11 43/46/11 Charon v7.0 J.Cisek & S.Strack 139 244 12 42/47/11 Sucker 4 Stefan Strack 138 849 13 41/45/14 Dain7 1 Dan Nabutovsky 137 14 14 40/44/16 B-scanners live in vain Matt Hastings 136 578 15 36/38/26 Smooth Noodle Map 6 Matt Hastings 135 400 16 39/44/17 Gimli Dan Nabutovsky 135 10 17 38/42/20 SNAKE Wayne Sheppard 134 5 18 40/46/14 Twilight Pits 3 W. Mintardjo 133 86 19 38/46/16 Eclipse v3.0 P.Kline 131 67 20 42/53/ 5 Orc c w blue 130 117 A quick scan down the loss column tells the story. IMPire was not yielding any losses. If he wasn't beating you he was stealing your wins with ties. Authors scrambled to unravel this mystery. Better and faster imp-launchers appeared. Something called 'imp-gates' were uncovered in the archives, dusted off, and tacked into programs. A new form made its appearance - the stone-imp combination, shortly followed by the vampire-imp. Here is a report from October 20, 1992 - one week later: # %W/%L/%T Name Author Score Age 1 38/12/50 Impression 1 Dan Nabutovsky 164 19 2 35/13/52 Red Dragon c w blue 156 6 3 43/38/19 Beholder's Eye v1.1 W. Mintardjo 148 41 4 39/34/27 Winter Werewolf W. Mintardjo 145 25 5 45/45/10 test Stefan Strack 145 2 6 33/22/45 The Sender of Eight Matt Hastings 143 47 7 43/45/12 Emerald P.Kline 141 17 8 38/36/26 a B-scanner Darkly Matt Hastings 141 9 9 25/10/64 repimp nandor sieben 141 30 10 33/27/41 Atomic Sheep c w blue 139 175 11 32/28/40 Tarrasque c w blue 135 10 12 40/50/11 sproba nandor sieben 130 8 13 33/37/29 Pale Shears2 Matt Hastings 129 26 14 37/45/19 Dain Dan Nabutovsky 129 16 15 35/43/22 A CMP-Scanner Darkly Matt Hastings 128 12 16 23/20/57 The IMPire strikes back Anders Ivner 126 70 17 37/48/15 Eclipse 2.0 P.Kline 126 1 18 38/50/12 nandor sieben 125 504 19 34/48/17 Charon v7.0 J.Cisek & S.Strack 121 365 20 33/52/15 No Mucking About Campbell Fraser 113 717 Compare the age columns from these reports and you will see how great the "impact" of this new warrior-form. Programs that had been on the Hill for months had vanished. Some 'imp'ortant facts: The standard form of the imp-spiral is: a mov 0,b b mov 0,c c mov 0,d ... n mov 0,a+1 where a,b,c,...n are equidistant in core and execute in the above order. After n, the process at a advances to a+1 and executes. Attacking a single point in the spiral only kills it if it is his turn to execute, or if it is the trailing process (a). And if you are overrun by the spiral while executing fewer processes than he is, you will outrun him and die. There are 1224 imp-numbers in a core size of 8000. Since all mod-one steps are imp-numbers, there are no core sizes (larger than 2) which support no imp-spirals. Any prime number which is not a factor of the core size would be an imp-number. Some interesting imp-numbers are: #pts imp# (#pts and imp# can be interchanged) 1 1 (8001) 3 2667 7 1143 9 889 11 5091 13 3077 17 2353 19 7579 31 3871 63 127 2571 2571 7981 429 (the largest) To find imp-numbers, solve for N in both of these equations: 1. (J*coresize + 1) mod N = 0 2. (J*coresize + 1) / N < coresize where J is any positive integer. I once wrote a 3-point launcher that calculated its imp-number at startup, so it would work on any core size. What did I call it? "Improvise" of course! Unfortunately in many core sizes, 3 is not an imp-number. However it may be possible to do a startup search for imp-sizes up to 13 (which would cover all core sizes up to 30030), and guarantee an imp-launch. While much progress has been made in combatting imps, it appears they are here to stay, just like paper, stone, and scissors. By adding forms to the mix on KotH, however, it becomes harder for new programs to break in - they just don't have a large advantage against enough forms to create a sufficiently high score. You might have a great scanner-killer but there aren't enough scanners out there to boost your score. So new programs may need multiple strategies to make it on KotH. And adding a spiral may be an attractive option :-) **************************************************************************** On a non-imp topic, we can't overlook the passing of Grimm's Vampyre at the respectable age of 282. With Grimm's goes the last vampire on the Hill (as far as I can tell :-) Also, welcome back to S. Morrell and Imps! Imps! Imps!. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IV. The Outlook: 5 43/ 47/ 9 Backstabber Anders Ivner 140 1 6 30/ 24/ 46 Deck of Many Things c w blue 137 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- V. The Quick Look: 16 23/ 15/ 63 Imps! Imps! Imps! Steven Morrell 131 1 16 29/ 29/ 43 NC Test Wayne Sheppard 129 1 20 38/ 51/ 11 Cleaver Wayne Sheppard 126 1 21 0/ 78/ 22 SPL-Bomb Slava Shinderov 22 0 21 2/ 54/ 44 SPLIMP v1.1 Remy A. G. Wetzels 49 0 21 2/ 56/ 42 PiggyBack 0.2 Ben Byer 47 0 21 5/ 67/ 28 pb bb 44 0 21 14/ 39/ 47 Thundering buttocks J Horwich 90 0 21 15/ 68/ 17 Nosferatu 0.21 J Kyle Kelso 63 0 21 16/ 28/ 56 Sauron v3.0 Michael Constant 103 0 21 16/ 48/ 36 spriteII Cormac Walsh 85 0 21 17/ 27/ 56 sub-type-something or oth c w blue 106 0 21 17/ 58/ 25 All That Glitters v2.1 Mike Nonemacher 76 0 21 17/ 61/ 22 Imperor VII Pierre Baillargeon 74 0 21 19/ 40/ 41 Tangle 1.0 Devin Kilminster 99 0 21 19/ 77/ 4 Test Ray Cromwell 60 0 21 21/ 18/ 60 Wriggler III Geoff Rehmet 124 0 21 21/ 21/ 59 Wriggler II Geoff Rehmet 120 0 21 22/ 24/ 54 Red Baron v3.3 Mike Nonemacher 121 0 21 22/ 69/ 10 Morticia v1.0 Mike Nonemacher 75 0 21 24/ 34/ 42 Hunger Pangs Steven Morrell 115 0 21 26/ 64/ 11 Cat v2.0 Tim Scheer 88 0 21 28/ 52/ 21 bugII shaun 103 0 21 32/ 51/ 16 Sunburst 31 Jay Han 113 0 21 36/ 49/ 15 Grimm's Vampyre c w blue 123 0 21 39/ 52/ 9 Tiny Gate Wayne Sheppard 126 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VI. The Hint: On Killing Imps. Oh yes, they can be killed. Here are some of the ways. 1. Gates. Gates. Gates. Say again. Gates. Gates. Gates Here is the form W. Mintardjo used in Beholder's Eye and Winter Werewolf: gate equ example-10 example spl 0,