From: jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Re: Guenzel Clear Date: 1996/07/01 Message-ID: <199607011914.OAA21726@mail.utexas.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >couple of suggestions: > > dat/djn clear - akin to 'spl/jmp bomb' > Dclear clear - first appearance, also convenient reference > Dclear wipe - not quite so redundant > >(actually the real reason for this is that neither Anders nor I can >spell Guenzel) Well, prior to Anders posting that message, that name of that type of clear was probably still up in the air, but now I think "Guenzel clear" is carved in stone. :-) From: PK6811S@ACAD.DRAKE.EDU Subject: Guenzel Clear Date: 1996/07/01 Message-ID: <01I6K24NKRHE000BJ0@ACAD.DRAKE.EDU>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Anders writes: >I think we need to come up with a name for Guenzel's >DAT/DJN clear. (No offence, Bjoern, but code is not >usually named after its inventor) >These things usually name themselves, but nothing catchy >has come up so far. couple of suggestions: dat/djn clear - akin to 'spl/jmp bomb' Dclear clear - first appearance, also convenient reference Dclear wipe - not quite so redundant (actually the real reason for this is that neither Anders nor I can spell Guenzel) Paul Kline pk6811s@acad.drake.edu From: Anders Ivner Subject: Guenzel's clear. Date: 1996/07/01 Message-ID: <9607011040.AA07736@su5-3.ida.liu.se>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar I think we need to come up with a name for Guenzel's DAT/DJN clear. (No offence, Bjoern, but code is not usually named after its inventor) These things usually name themselves, but nothing catchy has come up so far. Some suggestions off the top of my head: fast-forward clear alternate dat clear perforating clear /Anders From: KOTH Tourney Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 07/01/96 Date: 1996/07/01 Message-ID: <199607010400.AAA28615@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/01/96 ***NEW*** On line pre-compile and the Wilkies Benchmark now available! ***NEW*** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.stormking.com/~koth *FAQ* http://www.stormking.com/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Thu Jun 6 04:48:49 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 36/ 4/ 60 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 169 21 2 43/ 30/ 27 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 157 12 3 48/ 40/ 12 Memories Beppe Bezzi 155 28 4 43/ 34/ 23 BigBoy Robert Macrae 153 46 5 45/ 38/ 16 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 153 7 6 45/ 41/ 15 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 149 51 7 46/ 45/ 9 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 147 22 8 34/ 22/ 44 Variation M-1 Jay Han 147 1 9 45/ 43/ 12 Pagan John K W 147 6 10 42/ 39/ 20 Derision M R Bremer 144 38 11 43/ 42/ 14 Illusion-94/55 Randy Graham 144 3 12 32/ 24/ 44 Aleph 1 Jay Han 140 11 13 31/ 24/ 45 Hector 2 Kurt Franke 137 41 14 36/ 37/ 27 Tornado 2.0 x Beppe Bezzi 136 45 15 39/ 42/ 19 Fire Master Xv1 JS Pulido 136 43 16 39/ 44/ 17 Watcher Kurt Franke 134 44 17 39/ 45/ 16 Watcher-h Kurt Franke 133 40 18 31/ 36/ 33 Nice Try M R Bremer 127 50 19 33/ 40/ 26 Riff Steven Morrell 126 2 20 36/ 55/ 9 Withershins Thrice P.Kline 118 4 21 22/ 71/ 6 Escape2 Philipp Offermann 73 0 From: KOTH Tourney Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - ICWS Tournament 07/01/96 Date: 1996/07/01 Message-ID: <199607010400.AAA23467@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/01/96 ***NEW*** On line pre-compile and the Wilkies Benchmark now available! ***NEW*** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.stormking.com/~koth *FAQ* http://www.stormking.com/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Annual ICWS Tournament CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Tue Jun 4 06:47:05 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 11/ 44 Cannonade Paul Kline 180 91 2 51/ 34/ 16 Miss Carefree Derek Ross 167 23 3 46/ 33/ 20 Giskard v0.5 Ken Mitton 159 64 4 33/ 15/ 52 Nothing Special G. Eadon 151 6 5 33/ 18/ 49 Turkey Beppe Bezzi 149 7 6 47/ 45/ 8 Agony T Stefan Strack 149 92 7 39/ 29/ 32 Pommes-Ketchup V1.35 S. Schroeder 149 4 8 43/ 42/ 14 test88 P.Kline 144 10 9 41/ 41/ 18 Old Tire Swing Randy Graham 142 48 10 39/ 38/ 23 Yop La Boum v2.1 P.E.M & E.C. 140 21 11 40/ 44/ 16 Miss Carry Derek Ross 135 55 12 29/ 24/ 47 One Fat Lady Robert Macrae 134 8 13 39/ 46/ 14 Traper3_t Waldemar Bartolik 132 1 14 39/ 47/ 14 Slaver v1.1i Christoph C. Birk 131 52 15 37/ 46/ 17 Illusion Randy Graham 127 50 16 37/ 49/ 15 DoubleStone v0.7 Christoph C. Birk 125 34 17 30/ 36/ 33 Chris Steven Morrell 124 13 18 38/ 54/ 7 xtc stefan roettger 121 96 19 35/ 52/ 13 Traper3 Waldemar Bartolik 117 3 20 35/ 52/ 13 Traper3 Waldemar Bartolik 117 2 21 32/ 49/ 19 WhirlWind-88 Randy Graham 114 28 From: KOTH Tourney Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - Standard 07/01/96 Date: 1996/07/01 Message-ID: <199607010400.AAA21405@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/01/96 ***NEW*** On line pre-compile and the Wilkies Benchmark now available! ***NEW*** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.stormking.com/~koth *FAQ* http://www.stormking.com/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Wed Jun 26 00:54:04 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 43/ 35/ 22 PacMan v5 David Moore 151 2 2 41/ 38/ 21 Stasis David Moore 143 10 3 30/ 19/ 51 CAPS KEY IS STUCK AGAIN Steven Morrell 139 100 4 27/ 14/ 59 ttti nandor sieben 139 84 5 33/ 28/ 38 Yop La Boum v2.1 P.E.M & E.C. 139 34 6 41/ 44/ 15 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 138 228 7 26/ 16/ 58 Cannonade P.Kline 136 134 8 35/ 35/ 29 Keystone t21 P.Kline 135 121 9 27/ 19/ 54 Blue Funk 88 Steven Morrell 135 98 10 26/ 19/ 55 K-test P.E.M 134 6 11 27/ 20/ 53 Hydra Stephen Linhart 134 208 12 27/ 24/ 49 Test Wayne Sheppard 131 123 13 21/ 11/ 67 Imperfic II John Wilkinson 131 20 14 36/ 41/ 23 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 131 178 15 25/ 19/ 56 Peace Mr. Jones 130 108 16 33/ 37/ 30 Giskard v0.5 Ken Mitton 128 72 17 32/ 37/ 31 Christopher Stephen Morrell 127 99 18 34/ 42/ 24 Tuctest Elmer J. Fudd 126 28 19 34/ 44/ 22 Request v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 124 70 20 8/ 74/ 18 Gisela 1F6 Andrzej Maciejczak 41 1 21 3/ 0/ 2 test John Wilkinson 11 7 From: KOTH Tourney Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - Multiwarrior Experimental 94 07/01/96 Date: 1996/07/01 Message-ID: <199607010400.AAA23491@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/01/96 ***NEW*** On line pre-compile and the Wilkies Benchmark now available! ***NEW*** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.stormking.com/~koth *FAQ* http://www.stormking.com/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries MultiWarrior Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Thu Jun 6 02:34:44 EDT 1996 # Name Author Score Age 1 TimeScapeX (0.1) J. Pohjalainen 5901 59 2 This is Test1 Kurt Franke 5901 24 3 Test2 George Eadon 5901 19 4 jaded M R Bremer 5901 30 5 Paper8 G. Eadon 5877 25 6 Paperone Beppe Bezzi 5854 44 7 Fork v0.2-9p/51b Christoph C. Birk 5852 1 8 Gluttony J E Long 5851 17 9 Saat V2.01 S. Schroeder 5748 13 10 Shwing! T. H. Davies 5747 55 11 Wait A Lot v0.1 Justin Kao 5732 4 12 Anthill 5 Planar 5400 21 13 Pommes-Ketchup V1.35 S. Schroeder 5236 8 14 life Nandor Sieben 5193 60 15 Leviathan2 harleyQ2 5180 11 16 lifedwarf Nandor Sieben 4930 36 17 Hidden M.C.Diskett Bullfrog 4851 29 18 Variation M-1 Jay Han 4798 6 19 Leviathan harleyQ2 4352 12 20 Piggy 3 Bob Uhl 4163 32 21 Escape2 Philipp Offermann 151 0 From: KOTH Tourney Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - MultiWarrior 94 07/01/96 Date: 1996/07/01 Message-ID: <199607010400.AAA33204@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/01/96 ***NEW*** On line pre-compile and the Wilkies Benchmark now available! ***NEW*** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.stormking.com/~koth *FAQ* http://www.stormking.com/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Wed Jun 26 00:19:02 EDT 1996 # Name Author Score Age 1 Super Evol Cap John Wilkinson 5035 4 2 90% Cotton v5c Wilkinson 5035 22 3 Son of Imp Steven Morrell 5035 40 4 TJ Maurizio Vittuari 5035 16 5 60% Cotton Wilkinson 5035 23 6 sisyphus Kafka 5035 5 7 TESTI Maurizio Vittuari 5023 15 8 Die Hard P.Kline 5022 27 9 Evol Cap -- John Wilkinson 4999 6 10 rhodium v1.4 Martin M. Pedersen 4962 1 11 Fork v0.2-9p/51b Christoph C. Birk 4951 2 From: Joel Kelso Subject: Biomass programming game Date: 1996/07/01 Message-ID: <31D78A49.41C6@eng.murdoch.edu.au>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Something that I thought might interest the inhabitants of rec.games.corewar: Announcing Biomass 1.0 The Biomass project is best described as an ecological simulation. Individual creatures roam a cellular world collecting food, reproducing and dying; each controlled by a "brain" program written in a simple stack-based assembly language. I have finally got around to putting together a package with the current Biomass source code, a little bit of documentation and a few example Biomass creatures. If anyone is interesting in installing it (I have versions working under Solaris and Linux, but it should compile under any Unix/X-windows platform) and playing around with it, you can get a copy of the package from my home page at: http://www.cs.murdoch.edu.au/~joel/biomass.html If you can't retrieve it from this page, send me some mail and I'll mail you a copy. If you download it, drop me a line to know how you got on: joel@cs.murdoch.edu.au The idea behind Biomass was to produce a programming game combining some of the attributes of games like RoboWars and CoreWar. Like RoboWars, the programmer/player devises the program that contols his/her creature, and pits it against other creations in an arena. Unlike RoboWars, and perhaps a bit similar to CoreWar, the creatures are capable of reproducing and controlling their development. What I'd really like to do is play around with various strategies that the creatures can employ for capturing the energy (or biomass) of the system. With the first few creatures I tried, I produced a plant-like organism, a grazer and a gatherer: I'm sure there's predators, parasites, social organisms and other things that biologists would know the right names for, but I just haven't got the time to spend on this. -- joel@babbage.cs.murdoch.edu.au ------------------------------ "... If your name is `Bruce Root' or `Jane Daemon' and you can document this, we will happily rewrite the server to remove this restriction. Yes, we know about Norman Mailer and Waverly Root. Norman doesn't use netmail and Waverly is dead." - Xlib Programming Manual, 3rd Edition -- http://www.cs.murdoch.edu.au/~joel -------------------------- From: allane@ifront.com (Allan Earle) Subject: Gamesmania Launches July 1 Date: 1996/07/01 Message-ID: <4r7b9c$64p@nr1.toronto.istar.net>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Check out the Web�s first weekly PC games e-zine, called Gamesmania, which launches July 1, from Toronto. Featuring news, reviews and a searchable database of PC games, the e-zine will publish in five languages�English, French, German, Italian and Japanese. It is an e-zin devoted to uncovering news about games-related technology, market trends, events and the best new computer games. A searchable database allows users to find information about individual games, including hardware requirements; tricks and tips to win; cheat codes; downloadable demos and FAQs. The site is at http://www.gamesmania.com. From: Dave Darling Subject: Re: Guenzel Clear Date: 1996/07/02 Message-ID: <4rc463$do9@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>#1/1 references: <199607011914.OAA21726@mail.utexas.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar In article <4rb0o9$d0v@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de> Bjoern Guenzel, guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de writes: >I called it d-clear for "dirty"-clear, and I still like the name... >"d" could also stand for dat-clear. > >dat/djn clear would be more illustrative, though. Hmmm... So, what about a "dd" clear? I think I like that one... (Gee, I wonder why??? ;) --DD Dave Darling darling@simlab.arc.nasa.gov From: Justin Kao <102741.2022@CompuServe.COM> Subject: hill suggestion/question Date: 1996/07/02 Message-ID: <960702232142_102741.2022_GHT112-2@CompuServe.COM>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Is it possible to request the scores of your program against all the others on the hill? So it would be easier to see what you're doing badly against, instead of looking though a lot of challenges. If not, that would be nice to have. Justin Kao From: Justin Kao <102741.2022@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: Mirrored Imps Date: 1996/07/02 Message-ID: <960702232141_102741.2022_GHT112-1@CompuServe.COM>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar What are mirrored imps? Justin Kao PS Sorry, accidentally sent this as email to JKW.... From: bremermr@cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu (Myer R. Bremer) Subject: Core Warrior 36 Date: 1996/07/02 Message-ID: <4rc6rb$nd6@mozo.cc.purdue.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar .xX$$x. .x$$$$$$$x. d$$$$$$$$$$$ ,$$$$$$$P' `P' , . $$$$$$P' ' .d b $$$$$P b ,$$x ,$$x ,$$x ,$$b $$. Y$$$$' `$. $$$$$$. $$$$$$ $$P~d$. d$$$b d d$$$ `$$$$ ,$$ $$$$$$$b $$$P `$ $$$b.$$b `Y$$$d$d$$$' . . a . a a .aa . a `$$$ ,$$$,$$' `$$$ $$$' ' $$P$XX$' `$$$$$$$$$ .dP' `$'$ `$'$ , $''$ `$'$ `Y$b ,d$$$P `$b,d$P' `$$. `$$. , `$$P $$$' Y $. $ $ $ Y..P $ `$$$$$$$' $$$P' `$$b `$$$P `P `$' `Y'k. $. $. $. $$' $. Issue 36 July 1, 1996 ______________________________________________________________________________ Core Warrior is a weekly newsletter promoting the game of corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills--currently the '94 draft hill and the beginner hill. Coverage will follow where ever the action is. If you have no clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star internet locals for more information: FAQs are available by anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z FTP site is: ftp.csua.berkeley.edu /pub/corewar Web pages are at: http://www.stormking.com/~koth ;Stormking http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza http://pauillac.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/ ;Planar Newbies should check the stormking page for the FAQ, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! If ftp.csua.berkeley.edu is unreachable, you can download pMARS at: Terry's web page--http://www.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ Planar fpt site--ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars Fechter ftp site--ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar ______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings. At least some of the hill changes have been implemented at Pizza. Check out all the spiffy decimals on the hill reports for greater precision. Apologies to our European players who prefer commas. It will definitely take some getting used to. If you have any comments or requests for new features, mail them to Thos at . In case you missed them, I have kept the 'New Pizza Features' seen in the last issue. Personally, I was hoping the ;test option could be used to fight individual warriors in addition to challenging the entire hill. Otherwise, I fully support all the changes proposed. Just a reminder that the 'limited process hill' is open. Send your warriors to with a ;redcode-94lp header. To get more information, send an e-mail with a subject line of 'help' (no quotation) marks to the above address. Thanks to J K Lewis and Andrew Fabbro for their work on the new hill. Next week, we will have a very special issue brought to you by Anton Marsden. Check out some of his work in this week's hint. Before anyone yells at me, I just noticed that the hill reports Bezzi has been feeding me are _very_ out of order my apologies for any confusion. It's not Beppe's fault. I need to get back on the hill soon. --M R Bremer ______________________________________________________________________________ New Pizza features o Remove self fights on all hills that use pspace. o Add the "test" command to decrease artificial aging of the hill. I think the best (and easiest) way to do this would be as an argument to the ";redcode" command like "quiet" and "verbose" are now. ";redcode test" would challenge all the warriors on the hill (only 100 times?), but the results would be discarded. This way you could see how your changes affect your performance against all the warriors on the hill, but you get the results back twice as fast. o Add the ";password" command, to make it harder to forge ";kill" commands. o Make ";name" commands mandatory, and make blank ";kill" commands illegal. o Add the ";url" and ";show" commands for web access. ";url" is pretty much self explanatory, but ";show" will be used to customize how much info on your warrior you want to make public. "[no]source" and "[no]score" are two possible arguments to add. o Add the ";change [warrior name]" command to allow you to change info in your warrior without having to kill it and resubmit it. If you wanted to make it "quiet" while you go on vacation, or change the ";url", just send one piece of mail with ";change" in it. This would do a substring match like ";kill", and any other commands in the mail would be changed in the warrior. Does this make sense? Any other ideas, or comments on the above proposals? Thos ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server ICWS '94 Draft Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 42.8/ 39.9/ 17.3 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 145.7 2 2 41.7/ 41.8/ 16.5 myVamp5.3 Paulsson 141.5 11 3 37.6/ 34.3/ 28.1 Goliath David van Dam 140.9 3 4 38.8/ 38.0/ 23.3 Yogi Bear P.Kline 139.5 59 5 40.4/ 43.9/ 15.7 Goldfinch P.Kline 137.0 4 6 37.4/ 39.4/ 23.2 Twister Beppe Bezzi 135.5 309 7 36.0/ 37.3/ 26.7 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 134.8 573 8 36.0/ 37.5/ 26.5 test Anonymous 134.6 20 9 35.8/ 37.9/ 26.3 Thermite II Robert Macrae 133.6 2194 10 26.7/ 20.1/ 53.2 blue flame c2 bjoern guenzel 133.3 23 11 32.0/ 31.2/ 36.8 Simple v0.3 Ian Oversby 132.9 14 12 34.2/ 35.7/ 30.1 Jo Clark II Ian Oversby 132.8 213 13 30.0/ 27.2/ 42.8 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 132.8 212 14 29.1/ 26.8/ 44.1 Armory II John K W 131.3 48 15 29.1/ 27.1/ 43.8 the historian bjoern guenzel 131.1 328 16 38.7/ 46.3/ 15.0 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 131.1 1007 17 19.1/ 7.2/ 73.7 The Avalanche John Wilkinson 131.0 78 18 27.6/ 24.6/ 47.9 blue candle bjoern guenzel 130.6 442 19 25.5/ 20.6/ 53.9 Rosebud Beppe 130.5 528 20 32.7/ 35.5/ 31.8 test Maurizio 130.0 253 21 29.3/ 29.3/ 41.3 Pulp v0.1 Ian Oversby 129.3 12 22 22.4/ 16.0/ 61.6 test Maurizio Vittuari 128.7 7 23 36.7/ 46.1/ 17.2 HopScotch 1.6 Robert Macrae 127.3 322 24 19.4/ 11.7/ 68.9 ompega Steven Morrell 127.1 206 25 35.0/ 44.8/ 20.2 Yet 3c Justin Kao 125.1 1 Weekly age: 56 ( 108 last week, 67 the week before ) New warriors: 11 Turnover/age rate 20% Average age: 275 ( 296 last week, 269 the week before ) Average score: 133 ( 127 last week, 133 the week before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by 13 authors: Vittuari, Bezzi, guenzel, and Oversby with 3 (hogs), and Kline, Macrae, and JKW with 2. King Report: Blur 2 has had a commanding hold on the hill, but there were a few surprises this week. Miro by Ivner popped up into first place on its second submission, and just as quickly, he killed it from the hill. Interesting strategy. blue flame by guenzel also appeared briefly in the king position. blue flame c2 is already out, but at the less prestigious position of 10th place. Kline had both Goldfinch and Yogi Bear on top at times, but that's no real surprise there. I would hazard a guess that Kline has had more different warriors on top of the '94 hill than any current author on the hill. I could be wrong though . . . Speaking of Kline: his test retinA was seen on the hill tying over 80% when paired with mirrored imps. One reason I find replicators so frustrating is that they can't win massively against any other warrior. I believe Evol Cap used separate bombers to help gain some wins. However, as a p-component, papers do take losses and turn them into ties. Heavy pspacer Armory II and Goliath are doing well. Goliath did have Scan Man, Bomber Boy, and a move bomber in it, but a test with Goliath's brain and three basic warriors called 'Paper, Scissors, and Stone' actually scored a bit higher when it was submitted aginst the hill. There are lots of pspacers and imp heavy programs on the hill. If you want to make it on, you could utilize a quick scan (but not as effective with the new qscan detection system) or be extremely imp hostile. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 7 27.2/ 20.0/ 52.7 blue flame c2 bjoern guenzel 134.4 1 8 36.7/ 38.4/ 25.0 test Anonymous 134.9 1 13 25.8/ 22.2/ 52.0 Armory II John K W 129.3 1 1 41.7/ 40.6/ 17.7 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 142.7 1 3 41.7/ 42.6/ 15.6 Goldfinch P.Kline 140.8 1 4 37.0/ 34.9/ 28.1 Goliath David van Dam 139.2 1 4 41.7/ 41.7/ 16.7 myVamp5.3 Paulsson 141.7 1 24 28.6/ 29.9/ 41.5 Pulp v0.1 Ian Oversby 127.4 1 16 30.8/ 29.6/ 39.6 Simple v0.3 Ian Oversby 132.1 1 22 22.0/ 15.1/ 62.9 test Maurizio Vittuari 129.0 1 25 35.0/ 44.8/ 20.2 Yet 3c Justin Kao 125.1 1 Half of the top ten warriors are, again, new submissions. Although most are slight tweaks on old versions. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 26 31.2/ 35.4/ 33.5 * Satura * bjoern guenzel 127.0 12 26 22.2/ 17.7/ 60.3 Hazy Shade II John K W 126.8 1102 26 1.6/ 2.0/ 0.4 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 5.0 6 26 2.1/ 1.7/ 0.1 Goldfinch P.Kline 6.4 11 26 1.3/ 1.6/ 1.0 Goliath David van Dam 4.9 43 26 1.2/ 1.2/ 1.6 myVamp5.1 Paulsson 5.0 53 26 31.0/ 35.0/ 34.2 Thalamus mod Edgar 127.0 203 26 2.0/ 1.1/ 4.6 rhodium v1.3 Martin M. Pedersen 10.6 64 26 29.8/ 37.9/ 32.3 Scotch Broth 1.2 Robert Macrae 121.8 98 26 0.3/ 0.7/ 2.9 test E P.Kline 3.8 19 26 0.2/ 0.2/ 3.6 test jb21 Beppe Bezzi 4.1 15 Hazy Shade II is dead. JKW is in mourning, evidenced by his Armory submissions . . . A challenger has arrived on the ICWS '94 Draft hill! Vital statistics: Program "Armory II" (length 100) by "John K W" (contact address "jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu"): ;strategy Alas, poor Hazy, I knew thee well... The loss of Edgar's Thalamus mod pushed him completely off the hill. Hopefully he will have a new one on the '94 hill soon. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 9 35.8/ 37.9/ 26.3 Thermite II Robert Macrae 133.6 2194 16 38.7/ 46.3/ 15.0 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 131.1 1007 7 36.0/ 37.3/ 26.7 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 134.8 573 19 25.5/ 20.6/ 53.9 Rosebud Beppe 130.5 528 18 27.6/ 24.6/ 47.9 blue candle bjoern guenzel 130.6 442 15 29.1/ 27.1/ 43.8 the historian bjoern guenzel 131.1 328 23 36.7/ 46.1/ 17.2 HopScotch 1.6 Robert Macrae 127.3 322 6 37.4/ 39.4/ 23.2 Twister Beppe Bezzi 135.5 309 Stepping Stone breaks the 1000 mark, the first vampire to do so. ______________________________________________________________________________ HALL OF FAME * means the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Thermite II Robert Macrae 2194 * Qscan -> bomber 2 Impfinity v4g1 Planar 1993 Stone/ imp 3 Jack in the box Beppe Bezzi 1620 P-warrior 4 Tornado 3.0 Beppe Bezzi 1567 Bomber 5 Torch t18 P.Kline 1539 Bomber 6 Chameleon Myer R Bremer 1437 P-warrior 7 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 1420 One shot scanner 8 Evol Cap 6.6 John Wilkinson 1299 Imp / stone 9 quiz Schitzo 1262 Scanner/ bomber 10 T.N.T. Maurizio Vittuari 1204 Bomber 11 Grilled Octopus v0.5 David Boeren 1154 P-warrior 12 Hazy Shade II John Wilkinson 1102 P-warrior 13 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 1007 * Qscan -> Vampire 14 Iron Gate 1.5 Wayne Sheppard 926 CMP scanner 15 Agony II Stefan Strack 912 CMP scanner 16 Barrage Anton Marsden 876 Qscan -> replicator 17 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 869 Stone/ imp 18 Flurry Anton Marsden 835 Qscan -> pwarrior 19 Thermite 1.0 Robert Macrae 802 Qscan -> bomber 20 Blue Funk 3 Steven Morrell 766 Stone/ imp 21 Night Train Karl Lewin 755 Replicator 22 Mirage 1.5 Anton Marsden 736 Scanner/ bomber 23 Blizzard Anton Marsden 713 Qscan -> replicator 24 HeremScimitar A.Ivner,P.Kline 666 Bomber 25 La Bomba Beppe Bezzi 650 Qscan -> replicator Thermite II continues on, yaddah, yaddah--the thing is like the Energizer Bunny. Qscan detectors are a definite threat though and someone has a anti- qscan qscan, whatever that is. But Thermite seems to be holding it's own, even with the wave of new blood entering the hill. ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server Beginner's Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 maximum age: At age 100, warriors are retired. rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 52.4/ 29.1/ 18.5 Versatility 1.2 Ross Morgan-Linial 175.7 58 2 53.9/ 33.3/ 12.8 Syzygy 1.0 Philip Kendall 174.5 43 3 53.6/ 34.2/ 12.2 Saboteur 0.4k shar 173.0 1 4 52.7/ 34.3/ 13.0 Yet 3c Justin Kao 171.0 39 5 49.6/ 35.3/ 15.1 Phoenix Alpha Andy Nevermind 163.9 44 6 51.0/ 38.8/ 10.2 Saboteur v0.3p shar 163.3 65 7 50.8/ 39.3/ 10.0 Thalamus Edgar 162.2 91 8 48.8/ 36.1/ 15.1 Sandwich Bags Andy Nevermind 161.4 32 9 46.2/ 43.2/ 10.6 3-clear 0.6 Ilmari Karonen 149.1 66 10 45.6/ 44.2/ 10.2 Not Very Pretty 2.0 Ross Morgan-Linial 147.1 89 11 45.1/ 43.6/ 11.3 Yet 3a Justin Kao 146.6 40 12 41.6/ 37.5/ 20.9 Antivenin Ross 145.7 31 13 40.3/ 37.9/ 21.8 test Justin Kao 142.8 55 14 43.5/ 44.2/ 12.2 Switch Hitter 0.3t Ross Morgan-Linial 142.8 70 15 34.4/ 26.4/ 39.2 Cannon Fodder I. Karonen 142.3 45 16 31.6/ 20.9/ 47.5 Ties, Ties, Ties!+ Ross 142.2 10 17 25.4/ 9.5/ 65.1 Nematode v1.3c Jonathan Stott 141.3 25 18 41.0/ 41.0/ 18.0 3-clear 0.5 I. Karonen 141.0 80 19 42.3/ 46.2/ 11.5 hyper 1.0 Ross 138.5 63 20 28.8/ 20.0/ 51.2 Ties, Ties, Ties! Ross 137.7 28 21 30.8/ 27.3/ 41.9 Avenger I Oliver Fechner 134.2 62 22 32.2/ 42.4/ 25.4 Utility Knife Robert J. Street 122.1 2 23 19.8/ 60.4/ 19.8 WarHawk Robert J. Street 79.1 7 24 23.1/ 70.8/ 6.2 Kevorkian Robert J. Street 75.4 5 25 3.8/ 0.0/ 0.0 1234567890123456789012345 Anonymous 11.5 17 Versatility is still on top. With strong components from '94 hill warriors, this code should live up to its name. Syzygy 1.0 is a scan/spl carpet to spl/dat clear. Is the scan one shot or repetitive. Check out this week's hint. Blur utilizes a scan/carpet --> spl/dat clear. Lots of pspace and core clear warriors. Make sure you check out the latest and greatest core clear innovation. d-clear by guenzel is a dat/djn clear wiping at 1.0c. It makes a great p-component, especially if you can get it a spl clear tacked onto it without increasing the length (I'm trying). ______________________________________________________________________________ The Hint I suppose this should be an Extra Extra and not a Hint, but if I had any good hints, I would be on the hill right now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Mirage/Blur Scanner Series by Anton Marsden Mirage 1.5 was my first successful warrior. It was a 33% scanner with continuous 33% carpet in the scanning loop. It did quite well against imp-type warriors and papers but was thrashed by bombers. I wrote several similar warriors similar to Mirage 1.5 and didn't want to publish them immediately - I was still experimenting. But now I'm quite happy with my latest version and have decided to release them all now, including the Hill version. I haven't included the booting code and decoy but they're nothing special. If there's enough demand for the full versions I'll post them in the newsgroup at a later date. Mirage 2 was based on the same technique as Mirage 1.5 but used a SEQ scan. Here is Mirage 2: ;redcode-94 ;name Mirage 2 ;author Anton Marsden ;strategy Faster version, boot and decoy, no pspace ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;kill Mirage 2 ORG scan step EQU 3024; mod-16 ptr: dat.f >0,$step dat.f >0,$btm-ptr+3 cc: spl.a #1,$btm-ptr+4 top: mov.i $cc,>ptr scan: seq.i $2*step+8,$2*step mov.b $scan,$ptr a: add.f $inc,$scan jmn.b $top,$scan inc: spl.a #step,>step mov.i @1,>ptr btm: djn.b $-1,{cc This warrior had several weaknesses, the major one being that it was only a mod-8 scan. I knew that mod-5 was achievable (and also mod-4) but had the disadvantage that the locations scanned would be only 5 apart (not exactly optimal!). As Mirage 2 slowly made its way off the Hill I was wrote a mod-5 version and named it Blur (two versions is enough for me!): ;redcode-94 ;name Blur ;author Anton Marsden ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;strategy 0.5c scan, 0.25c carpet -> SPL/DAT core clear ;strategy Mirage 2 with a better step and some other changes. ;strategy This product is PSpace Free :-) ;kill Blur ptr: dat.f $0,$step+5 dat.f $0,$0 dat.f $0,$0 dat.f >0,#btm-ptr+3 cc: spl.i #0,#btm-ptr+3 ; DJN stream protection top: mov.i $cc,>ptr ; Putting this line here enhances protection scan: seq.i $2*step,}2*step+5 ; A-indirect ensures B field is attacked with mov.b $scan,$ptr ; no delay. Also leaves decoy for scanners a: add.f $inc,$scan jmn.a $top,$scan ; Falls through when all locations scanned inc: spl.a #step,>step mov.i @1,>ptr btm: djn.b $inc+1,{cc The A-indirect scan improved Blur's score against bombers but left "bombs" in core that a decent dodger could take advantage of. One of the things I had discovered about all these scanners was that if the mod step in the scan was sufficiently good (ie. enough scans were done) then there was no need for a SPL/DAT core clear against non-imp warriors. Then I found the perfect clear for Blur - DAT/DJN (dclear?). I added this to Blur and made a few more adjustments and came up with Blur 2: ;redcode-94 ;name Blur 2 ;author Anton Marsden ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;strategy 0.5c scan, 0.25c SPL carpet -> DAT/DJN clear ;strategy Final version (for a while) ;kill Blur ORG scan step EQU 70; mod-10 gate EQU top ptr: mov.i $inc+1,>step ; New DJN protection... better than a SPL? top: mov.i $inc,>ptr ; Or worse? scan: seq.i $2*step+5,$2*step chg: mov.b $scan,@top a: add.f $inc,$scan djn.b $top,#800 inc: spl.i #step,#step mov.i $clr,>gate btm: djn.f $-1,>gate clr: dat.f <1,#clr-gate+2 Note on booting: The decoy and boot code was aligned such that Blur didn't attack it's old code at all. There are many variations on the basic engine I have tried and probably a few that I haven't. Can you improve on it? Things to try: - different gap, eg. seq.i $2*step+15,$2*step, mod-5 scan - different (ptr-scan) offsets - psuedo mod-1 scan using A/B indirect scanning, eg. top: mov.i $BOMB,>ptr ; bomb should probably be spl #0,0 scan: seq.F $2*step,}2*step+5 ; could also try seq.f >2*step,}2*step+5 mov.b $scan,$ptr a: add.f $inc,$scan djn.b $top,#0 inc: spl.i #step,#step mov.i $clr-10,>gate; A field incremented 10 times in 8000 loops ______________________________________________________________________________ Questions? Concerns? Comments? Complaints? Mail them to people who care. authors: Beppe Bezzi or Myer Bremer From: jxidus@aol.com (JXidus) Subject: pMARS 0.8.0 286 binaries? Aaaugh! Date: 1996/07/02 Message-ID: <4rblo2$s35@newsbf02.news.aol.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar I can't find a copy of the pMARS 286 binaries anywhere! The KOTH site claims to have one at http://www.stormking.com/~koth/pmars.html, but the link to pmars286.zip returns not a ZIP file, but a plaintext LS listing of some directory. I've reported this to Thos, but it hasn't been fixed yet. At some other site (I forgot where) that claimed to have the 0.8.0 386+ executables, the 286 executables were of some other version. Enough ranting and raving. :) Does anyone have a copy of the pMARS v0.8.0 286 binaries on the web, FTP, or that they could send me? Thanx... Jeremy Weatherford jxidus@aol.com --- Looking for a quick and easy way to 'fly' a 'camera' around your OGl scene? Contact me at the above address for info on the CAM module, v1.1. From: JKW Subject: Mirrored Imps Date: 1996/07/02 Message-ID: <4rbkej$ld4@excelsior.flash.net>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >Miro lost horribly to your mirrored imps. Now >I think I know why: > >gate dat 0,0 > dat 4000,0 > ^^^^ > >May I borrow your code so I can check this out? > >/Anders Well, I think the most important thing to keep in mind is nothing more than what you can learn from 'Two Pac', which I posted a while back. If a mirrored imp is excecuting the lines in parellel, then when it hits a gate, the imp portion which lands on the line AFTER the gate is not affected by the gate itself. The reason is that every other line if placed by the "mirror," and excutes directly after, or three cycles after the previous imp. Therefore, if the line two after the "gate" is an EXCECUTABLE line, then the mirrored imp will never be stopped by the gate, but will continue by excecuting some of your own code, whatever that may be... Oh, and one more thing, "mov.i #d, *0" style imps do not work as well in mirrored imps as the "mov.i #x, d" style... this has to do with how they get affected by "dat #1/1 references: <199607011914.OAA21726@mail.utexas.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu wrote: >>couple of suggestions: >> >> dat/djn clear - akin to 'spl/jmp bomb' >> Dclear clear - first appearance, also convenient reference >> Dclear wipe - not quite so redundant >> >>(actually the real reason for this is that neither Anders nor I can >>spell Guenzel) You did it right (at least as good as can be with ASCII :-( ) >Well, prior to Anders posting that message, that name of that type of >clear was probably still up in the air, but now I think "Guenzel clear" >is carved in stone. :-) Thank's everybody, but I think that would really be too much honour :-) I think others have tried the same thing as well, it is only through Paul Kline's article that it has become so famous. (Besides Paul introduced a small but crucial improvement - the ">" in the spl is not really needed!) I called it d-clear for "dirty"-clear, and I still like the name... "d" could also stand for dat-clear. dat/djn clear would be more illustrative, though. Bjoern From: guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: one small suggestion... Date: 1996/07/02 Message-ID: <4rav0q$a4u@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar My suggestion for additional hill output: giving both scores, the 26th warrior counted in and not. This would make it much easier to compare the performance of different versions. Bjoern From: guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: I will be king forever... Date: 1996/07/03 Message-ID: <4remen$c2l@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 references: <4ree16$a4h@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar > # %W/ %L/ %T P Name Author Score Age > 1 56/ 24/ 19 * red virus v1.0 bjoern guenzel 8994 5 > 2 56/ 27/ 16 * blue torch bjoern guenzel 8929 13 > 3 55/ 26/ 18 Rimmer John K W 8853 20 [...] ... if you don't start exploring for the wasted youth hill soon :-) I am eagerly awaiting some new, tough challenges - come on everybody, give it a try! It's fun! The wasted youth conditions are well suited for fierce battle. See you soon with sharpened claws... Bjoern From: birk@nica.mpia-hd.mpg.de (Christoph C. Birk) Subject: New 'Koenigstuhl' leader(s) Date: 1996/07/03 Message-ID: <199607031808.UAA15631@nica.mpg.de>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Congratulations to Paul Kline, he wrote "Yogi Bear", the new #1 on the 94-Open-Koenigstuhl. Beppe's "Twister" is now #2. Kurt's "Stepping Stone" (former #1) is now on the third place. Christoph http://nica.mpia-hd.mpg.de/COREWAR/koenigstuhl.html From: Ross Morgan-Linial Subject: A few warriors... Date: 1996/07/03 Message-ID: #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Here are two of my warriors which both died of old age on the beginner hill. They have been formated for legibility. ;redcode-94b ;name 1,000lb weight ;author Ross Morgan-Linial ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;strategy Simple bomber -> coreclear -> imp gate start mov b+1, @1 add.ab #2364, #3 mov b, >-1 jmp start clear mov.i cbom, <-5 jmp clear, <-32 cbom dat <-31, <-31 b spl 0, <-30 jmp -1, <-31 end start ;redcode-94b ;name Not Very Pretty 2.0 ;author Ross Morgan-Linial ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;strategy FAST bomber -> two-pass coreclear -> imp gate ;version 1.0 ;first, a 50% of C bombing loop start loop1 add. i addto, indic mov bomb, @indic mov bomb, *indic djn loop1, #799 jmp cclear addto dat #4730, #4730 indic dat #start+3999, #start+4 bomb dat 0, 10 FOR 80 DAT 0, 0 ROF ; now, a two-pass coreclear ptr dat.f 0, 0 dat.f 0, 10 cclear spl #0, 10 mov.i @bptr, >ptr mov.i @bptr, >ptr bptr djn.b -2, {cclear end start Comments, suggestions, etc. are welcome. --------- [This space for rent] Ross Morgan-Linial rmorganl@fhcrc.org From: jklewis@ren.us.itd.umich.edu (John K. Lewis) Subject: Limited Process Standings Date: 1996/07/03 Message-ID: <4ree16$a4h@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Current status of the wastedyouth Limited Process Hill as of Wed Jul 3 14:12:43 1996. Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft Last challenge was on Fri Jun 28 09:45:36 1996. Last successful challenge was on Fri Jun 28 09:45:36 1996. # %W/ %L/ %T P Name Author Score Age 1 56/ 24/ 19 * red virus v1.0 bjoern guenzel 8994 5 2 56/ 27/ 16 * blue torch bjoern guenzel 8929 13 3 55/ 26/ 18 Rimmer John K W 8853 20 4 53/ 36/ 10 Yet Another Try 2 LP Justin Kao 8192 24 5 46/ 23/ 29 * oldtimer bjoern guenzel 8171 15 6 47/ 25/ 26 Yet Another Try 2b Justin Kao 8147 23 7 38/ 14/ 46 Iocane John K W 7840 28 8 38/ 14/ 47 test John K W 7783 8 9 42/ 27/ 29 * tiny scan lp bjoern guenzel 7578 10 10 46/ 39/ 14 gundam John K. Lewis 7306 31 11 42/ 43/ 14 Miss Careless Derek Ross 6766 9 12 39/ 44/ 16 * Bloodhound Andrew Fabbro 6735 32 13 30/ 34/ 34 invicta John K. Lewis 6097 21 14 20/ 14/ 64 Imp++ 0.1 Justin Kao 6051 2 15 34/ 45/ 20 * Mr A Speculative Derek Ross 5901 7 16 18/ 15/ 66 * rabble Andrew Fabbro 5843 35 17 32/ 43/ 24 RedPixel.3 John K. Lewis 5816 22 18 30/ 51/ 17 rhodium v1.4 Martin M. Pedersen 5288 26 19 16/ 24/ 59 test Spire JKW 5240 3 20 30/ 52/ 16 Miss Timing Derek Ross 5217 6 21 18/ 32/ 48 * JuJu 7 Andrew Fabbro 5029 29 22 13/ 26/ 60 * Spire JKW 4833 27 23 24/ 61/ 13 * Imp Gate various & bjoern guen 4177 14 24 17/ 55/ 26 * Unknown bjoern guenzel 3808 1 25 0/ 47/ 52 Imp Anonymous 2618 17 A '*' in the 'P' column means that the warrior's code has been made public by the author and its source code can be requested via the 'see' command. From: Robert Macrae Subject: Re: ;kill Date: 1996/07/03 Message-ID: <4rdqbi$a9b@soap.news.pipex.net>#1/1 references: <458@arbroath.win-uk.net> <4qn132$g0i@charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar sd@ecst.csuchico.edu (Lord Kymbote) wrote: > >How would you propose doing so? I can't think of a simple way. Perhaps >checking every kill string for "^", and inserting ";name " after it, but >what if someone uses two spaces, or a tab? It won't match. I'm not a unix user -- but wouldn't grep allow you to start a search after the first whitespace ie ignoring ";name". Personally, I don't think ;kills should use too flexible a match as they're so final... From: jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Re: showing selected portions of your source Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <199607041518.KAA13701@mail.utexas.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >If everyone agrees that individual scores should be available for all >the warriors, I guess we don't need the ";show [no]scores" command. >Is this the general consensus? It looks like it. >About showing only selected portions of source, I like Beppe's >;show [on / off] idea, but its sure to be abused with "for 0 / rof". >How about something like ";show [nosource / noequ / source]"? >Either showing no source at all, no lines containing equ's, or >all source. I'm open to other ideas too. Hmmmmm. I thought about this, and all in all I think that's the best solution. When warriors that are currently running are published, the constants are usually the only thing removed if they are important. As for qscans, if you want to hide them, you'll just have to substitute the numbers with constants, which is usually done anyway. (By everyone except me. :) From: guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: Re: I will be king forever... Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <4rfs20$c8a@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 references: <4ree16$a4h@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu> <4remen$c2l@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar ... and forgive me that I produce so many typos lately... Bjoern From: guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: spiral launch Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <4rh46i$ifm@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar I don't know what kind of spiral launch is John's favourite, but I recently made a small change to the standard continuous binary spiral launch. It was often said that executing like stone/spiral1/stone/spiral2 is an advantage, so I changed the spiral launch from blue candle for running with two processes. Very simple, just leaving out some '}' ... The disadvantage is, that I now have to use 18 (=2*9) processes in the imp, instead of 15 as in blue candle. I haven't really tested how much better the new spiral launch does (or if at all...). Initially my idea was to do it with a vector launch like spl #0 mov.a #vector-j1,j1 spl 1,{j2 .... produce as many processes as you need spl 2 j1 jmp }vector+y,}0 j2 jmp >vector+x,}0 vector dat imp,... ... but I couldn't make it work immediately (perhaps planar knows what's wrong...:), and then I realised that it works shorter and faster with binary launch... Bjoern ;redcode-94 ;name The Impian ;author bjoern guenzel ;strategy continuous spiral launch ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;release 19.5.96 ;kill test istep equ 2667 start spl 1 ;this is only for demonstration spl #0,<-200 ;put two processes here spl 4,<-1 spl 2,#j1 j1 jmp imp,}0 j2 jmp imp+istep,}0 nop #j2,#j3 ;use for extra attack... j3 jmp imp+2*istep,}0 imp mov.i #istep,*0 end start From: JKW Subject: Toot!Toot! (Tooting my own horn. :-) Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <4rgof2$e18@excelsior.flash.net>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar I believe that's a new record for least ties in first place on the -94 Hill. And, if I'm the only one around who cares about this, just let me live in my own blissful ignorance, ok? ;-) Your program Return Of The Jedimp fights 200 times: Return Of The Jedimp wins: 46 Silicone v0.1 wins: 4 Ties: 150 Your overall score: 142.942308 (Placing 1st!) Manfred v0.3 has been pushed off the ICWS '94 Draft hill. The current ICWS '94 Draft hill: # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 26.0/ 9.1/ 64.9 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 142.9 9 -- / John K. Wilkinson - jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu \ \ -=- http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~ifio452/ -=- / From: kfranke@rice.edu (Kurt Alan Franke) Subject: Re: New 'Koenigstuhl' leader(s) Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <4rglpk$2s0@larry.rice.edu>#1/1 references: <199607031808.UAA15631@nica.mpg.de> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Christoph C. Birk (birk@nica.mpia-hd.mpg.de) wrote: : Congratulations to Paul Kline, he wrote "Yogi Bear", the : new #1 on the 94-Open-Koenigstuhl. Beppe's "Twister" is now #2. : Kurt's "Stepping Stone" (former #1) is now on the third place. And Stepping was pushed off the 94 hill.. Oh well- congrats Paul. Kurt From: Robert Macrae Subject: Re: Guenzel Clear Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <4rgieu$o65@soap.news.pipex.net>#1/1 references: <199607011914.OAA21726@mail.utexas.edu> <4rb0o9$d0v@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de (Bjoern Guenzel) wrote: >Thank's everybody, but I think that would really be too much honour :-) .. >I called it d-clear for "dirty"-clear, and I still like the name... >"d" could also stand for dat-clear. > >dat/djn clear would be more illustrative, though. > DD-clear? From: Edgar Subject: Pspace switching mechanisms Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <4rfqmu$902@bagan.srce.hr>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar After a two week's absence I ha a lot of surprises when I logged on: all my warriors either died of old age or were pushed off, the server I use has been down for a week so I had to subscribe to all mailing lists again, the news server doesn't work propperly and I have 3 tests in the next 4 weeks. Jeez, isn't Life Wonderful ? Anyways,Paul Kline wrote in Core Warrior 35: "Also nice if people would POST a few :-) (p-switching mechanisms)" Here is the one I use. It isn't as effective as some more complex switchers but it allows fast switching of a large number of strategies, which is ideal if your different 'strategies' consist of the same warriors with different constants (bombers). brain ldp.a #0,eye ;load result ldp.a #1,ear ;load strategy djn.a cnt,{eye ;modify strategy cnt mod.a #-(nose-ear+1),ear ;fix out-of-range results stp.ab ear,#1 ;store strategy ear jmp @0,switch1 ;jump to selected strategy eye dat 0,switch2 dat 0,switch3 nose dat 0,switch4 You can put something 'special' behind the djn. The special will be executed every time the strategy value reaches 0. This could check for brainwash attempts or something, and the check costs 0 additional cycles. Also note that the strategy choice will cycle backwards through the table. Any other bold authors who want to publish their products? Edgar p.s. If you are answering to this post please mail the reply to me in addition. As I've said the news server I use isn't exactly reliable. From: sd@ecst.csuchico.edu (Lord Kymbote) Subject: showing selected portions of your source Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <4rf7p3$k69@charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar If everyone agrees that individual scores should be available for all the warriors, I guess we don't need the ";show [no]scores" command. Is this the general consensus? About showing only selected portions of source, I like Beppe's ;show [on / off] idea, but its sure to be abused with "for 0 / rof". How about something like ";show [nosource / noequ / source]"? Either showing no source at all, no lines containing equ's, or all source. I'm open to other ideas too. Thos From: sd@ecst.csuchico.edu (Lord Kymbote) Subject: Re: one small suggestion... Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <4rf739$jok@charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu>#1/1 references: <4rav0q$a4u@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Bjoern Guenzel wrote: >My suggestion for additional hill output: giving both scores, the 26th >warrior counted in and not. This would make it much easier to compare the >performance of different versions. What do the rest of you think about this? Would you like two tables full of info at the end of each mail? Maybe only while "test"ing? Thos From: Planar Subject: A message from Ian Oversby Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <4rftn5$r2@news-rocq.inria.fr>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar I got the following message from Ian. I think it was meant for this newsgroup, but Ian can't receive mail right now, so I can't ask confirmation. Anyway, this will end up in my warrior collection. -- Planar (I've fixed broken line breaks) ------------ message from Ian I just thought that I would warn you all that I am thinking of using this little thing as a P-component unless I can get my other idea to work :-> It is probably not very original but never mind. A quick description: It bombs at 0.33c and decrements at 0.33c for 0.66c if the enemy is vulnerable to decrements. The bomb and decrement are each mod-4 for an overall mod-2. When the bombing run is over, the SPL is layed on the DJN line, the loop line is decremented and I think it continues bombing while the core is cleared, probably using DAT. It scores pretty well against Blur, Miro and Torch. Goes about evens against Tornado, TNT and Thermite (why??) and loses really badly against anything with imps or paper in it. Paper is the worst, I think that is what is in Return of the Jedimp. Imp/stones score between 10/50/140 and 10/100/90, I expected them to do better. MyVamp surprised me, scoring 92/102/6. Maybe it is mod-4 (or 8) and my coloured bombs don't decoy it very much. I think it does OK against one-shots as well, against Goliath it scored 86/78/36 and against Goldfinch 81/98/21. ;redcode-94 quiet ;name Poke v0.1 ;author Ian Oversby ;strategy Testing components ;assert 1 stone SPL.B #76, >-76 ; mod-4 loop MOV.I {0+76, 2-76 ADD.F stone, loop DJN.F loop, <-1900 ; SPL is placed here MOV.I 1, <-10 ; for the core-clear for 95 DAT.F $0, $0 rof end From: Geoff Phillips Subject: PC robots Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <31DB6791.5F1E@phillips.powernet.co.uk>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Hello people, Some years ago I wrote a PC robots robot, and entered it into the PCrobots competition that PCW magazine held. I have recently been told by a kind person that there is a page http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/~hbecker/pcrob.html of an updated version and other competing robots. My question is that on the newer version of PCrobots, some sort of change to the game is causing my robot to fair very badly - it seems to keep missing! I'm going to have to thoroughly read the doc. file, but off-hand does anyone know of a specific difference that would have such a drastic change on its performance? Geoff. __________________________________Life, don't talk to me about life. Geoff@Phillips.powernet.co.uk From: Planar Subject: Hazy Shade II Date: 1996/07/04 Message-ID: <4rgsiq$77p@news-rocq.inria.fr> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar John K. Wilkinson asked me to repost this if it never made it to the ^^^^^^^^^ group. I've never seen it posted. Apologies if this is a duplicate. -- Planar, reposter extraordinaire ----------- Date: Thu, 04 Jul 96 10:52:02 -0700 From: JKW Well, Kline mentioned something about publishing Hazy Shade II. Well, I'm not yet ready to publish the EvolCap-style imp launch. However, I tested it with an in-line 16 process jmp/add launch, and the scores were almost exactly the same. I marked the four new lines, and where they are is where the old implaunch resided. The real key, however, to the success of this warrior is the pspace. It survived the death of Lithium, and the death of Evol Cap, so obviously the two components on their own couldn't have done it without a good switcher. It's pretty simple, too. If my opponent ever beats me five times more than I've beaten him since the last time I'd beaten him more than 50% of the time, then I switch strategies. Well, it doesn't sound so simple in English, but in pcode it's about as simple as it gets, with the exception of switch-on-loss warriors... The strategies are stored with 'key numbers,' so if I'm brainwashed the odds are only 2 in 8000 that I won't notice it. That's as brainwash resistant as you can get, without using extra pspace locations. :/ ;redcode-94 ;name Hazy Shade II ;kill Hazy Shade II ;author John K W ;assert CORESIZE == 8000 ;strategy p-warrior. very brainwash resistant. ;strategy v-8.3. more aggresive post-brainwashing decisions. ;strategy v-8.4. best of both worlds. _RESULT equ #0 _LOSS equ #117 _STR equ #238 LIMIT equ 5 _FIRST equ EvolCap _SECOND equ lithium _CODE1 equ 2137 _CODE2 equ 3379 org res ;********** Evol Cap 10.1 d equ 2667 BOOT_DIST equ 2600 BOOT_DIST2 equ 2851 S equ 2365 imp: mov.i #d, *0 jclr: dat >1, 70 EvolCap: mov.i imp, EvolCap+BOOT_DIST mov.i jclr, EvolCap+BOOT_DIST2+31+5 mov.i jclr, EvolCap+BOOT_DIST2+31+5+4000 spl.i 1, >-1250 spl.i 1, >-1400 spl.i 1, >1250 mov.i {pptr2, 1250 ;new spl 2 ;new jmp EvolCap+BOOT_DIST, >1400 ;new add.a #d, -1 ;new spl @pptr2 jmp @pptr p spl #S, >-S mov }S+1, -S+2 add -2, -1 djn.f -2, <-560 mov 32, >-60 dat 0, 0 dat 0, 0 dat 0, 0 pptr: nop 0, EvolCap+BOOT_DIST2+8 pptr2: nop -1, EvolCap+BOOT_DIST2+8+4000 ;*************pcode won: ldp LOS0, #0 jmz.b go, won ;if losses is zero, just go djn.b go, res ;if it was a tie, just go... add.ab #-1, won LOS0: stp.b won, _LOSS jmp go res: ldp _RESULT,#0 ;load last result into B-field sne #-1, res jmp naive ;setup start jmn won, res ;a one indicates a win in the last round loss: ldp LOS0, #0 ;_LOSS, #0 add #1, loss slt loss, #LIMIT jmp switch stp.b loss, LOS0 go: ldp STR0, #0 sne.ab #_CODE2, go ;if both of these jmp _SECOND ;are skipped over, sne.ab #_CODE1, go ;then we've been brainwashed, jmp _FIRST ;but we didn't lose STR0 second stp #_CODE2, _STR ;if the opponent is so un-aggresive jmp _SECOND ;as to not kill me, when it got a ;chance to brainwash me, then it ;deserves a dose of Lithium switch: ldp LOS0, #0 stp #0, LOS0 swstr: ldp STR0, #0 sne.ab #_CODE2, swstr ;if both of these jmp first ;are skipped over sne.ab #_CODE1, swstr ;then we've been jmp second ;brainwashed, and we lost first stp #_CODE1, STR0 jmp _FIRST for 10 dat 0, 0 rof naive stp #LIMIT-1, LOS0 stp #_CODE1, STR0 jmp _FIRST for 10 dat 0, 0 rof ;*************Lithium (torch t18) step equ 54 count equ 2000 BOOTDIST equ 2300 lithium spl 1 ;compressed boot. mov -1, 0 ;5 cycles slower mov {bptr, bptr sm2 mov step+1, >step+1 ; mov half of the incendiary dat -10-341, 26 sp2 spl #-1-step,-step ; spl half of the incendiary sub #step+step,1 msm2 mov sm2, *tgt2+(-step*2000)-17228 msp2 mov sp2, @msm2 tgt2 jmz sp2+1, #0 clr2 mov @1, >sm2-13 cp2 djn.b clr2, {sp2 bptr dat 0, BOOTDIST -- / John K. Wilkinson - jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu \ \ -=- http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~ifio452/ -=- / From: Ross Morgan-Linial Subject: Re: showing selected portions of your source Date: 1996/07/05 Message-ID: #1/1 references: <199607041518.KAA13701@mail.utexas.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar On 4 Jul 1996 jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu wrote: :-)>If everyone agrees that individual scores should be available for all :-)>the warriors, I guess we don't need the ";show [no]scores" command. :-)>Is this the general consensus? :-) :-)It looks like it. Yep. :-)>About showing only selected portions of source, I like Beppe's :-)>;show [on / off] idea, but its sure to be abused with "for 0 / rof". :-)>How about something like ";show [nosource / noequ / source]"? :-)>Either showing no source at all, no lines containing equ's, or :-)>all source. I'm open to other ideas too. Or we could just always show for/rof lines... And put a comment in the code saying lines have been hidden, like, ; 10 lines not shown You could make this another choice. :-)Hmmmmm. I thought about this, and all in all I think that's the best :-)solution. When warriors that are currently running are published, the :-)constants are usually the only thing removed if they are important. As :-)for qscans, if you want to hide them, you'll just have to substitute the :-)numbers with constants, which is usually done anyway. (By everyone except :-)me. :) Yeah, FORCE people to program clearly. --------- [This space for rent] Ross Morgan-Linial rmorganl@fhcrc.org From: PK6811S@ACAD.DRAKE.EDU Subject: Re: Mirrored Imps Date: 1996/07/06 Message-ID: <01I6QYGJFK5K000SJU@ACAD.DRAKE.EDU>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Justin Kao <102741.2022@CompuServe.COM> wrote: >What are mirrored imps? They are an adaptation of imp-spirals where two spirals at distance 4000 feed each other instructions. A 3-point spiral can be made into a 6-point mirrored spiral executing this instruction: mov.i #0,2667+4000 A pretty good launch: spl 1 mov -1,0 spl 1 mov newsgroups: rec.games.corewar,rec.answers,news.answers Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-Modified: 95/10/12 Version: 3.6 These are the Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) from the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.corewar. A plain text version of this document is posted every two weeks. The hypertext version is available as _________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents 1. What is Core War 2. Is it Core War or Core Wars? 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? 4. Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? 5. What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? 6. What is the ICWS? 7. What is TCWN? 8. How do I join? 9. What is the EBS? 10. Where are the Core War archives? 11. Where can I find a Core War system for ...? 12. I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? 13. I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? 14. Are there any Core War related WWW sites? 15. When is the next tournament? 16. What is KotH? How do I enter? 17. Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? 18. How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? 19. What is the difference between in-register and in-memory evaluation? 20. What does (expression or term of your choice) mean? 21. Other questions? _________________________________________________________________ What is Core War? 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 processes of the opposing program 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. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Is it "Core War" or "Core Wars"? 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. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Where can I find more information about Core War? 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 two anthologies: 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 Author: Dewdney, A. K. Title: The Magic Machine: A Handbook of Computer Sorcery Published: New York: W. H. Freeman (c) 1990 ISBN: 0-7167-2125-2 (Hardcover), 0-7167-2144-9 (Paperback) Library of Congress Call Number: QA76.6 .D5173 1990 A.K. Dewdney's articles are still the most readable introduction to Core War, even though the Redcode dialect described in there is no longer current. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? A draft of the official standard (ICWS'88) is available as . This document is formatted awkwardly and contains ambiguous statements. For a more approachable intro to Redcode, take a look at Mark Durham's tutorial, and . Steven Morrell (morrell@math.utah.edu) is preparing a more practically oriented Redcode tutorial that discusses different warrior classes with lots of example code. Mail him for a preliminary version. Michael Constant (mconst@csua.berkeley.edu) is reportedly working on a beginner's introduction. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? 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. You can try out the new standard by submitting warriors to the '94 hills of the KotH servers. Two corewar systems currently support ICWS'94, pMARS (many platforms) and Redcoder (Mac), both available at ftp.csua.berkeley.edu. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is the ICWS? 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). [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is TCWN? 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 files. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ How do I join? 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. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is the EBS? 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. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Where are the Core War archives? 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 (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@csua.berkeley.edu) is the archive administrator. When uploading to /pub/corewar/incoming, ask Jon to move your upload to the appropriate directory and announce it on the net. 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. The plain text version of this FAQ is automatically archived by news.answers. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Where can I find a Core War system for . . . ? Core War systems are available via anonymous ftp from ftp.csua.berkeley.edu in the /pub/corewar/systems directory. Currently, there are UNIX, IBM PC-compatible, Macintosh, and Amiga Core War systems available there. It is a good idea to check for program updates first. 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 ftp.csua.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 ftp.csua.berkeley.edu: MADgic41.lzh - corewar for the Amiga, v4.1 MAD4041.lzh - older version? MAD50B.lha - corewar for the Amiga, beta version 5.0 Redcoder-21.hqx - corewar for the Mac, supports ICWS'88 and '94 (without extensions) 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 ran the former 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 (broken 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) pmars08s.zip - portable system, ICWS'88 and '94, runs on UNIX, PC, Mac, Amiga. C source archive pmars08s.tar.Z - same as above pmars08.zip - PC executables with graphics display, req 386+ macpmars02.sit.hqx - pMARS executable for Mac (port of version 0.2) buggy, no display MacpMARS1.99a.cpt.hqx - port of v0.8 for the Mac, with display and debugger MacpMARS1.0s.cpt.hqx - C source (MPW, ThinkC) for Mac frontend ApMARS03.lha - pMARS executable for Amiga (port of version 0.3.1) wincor11.zip - MS-Windows system, shareware ($15) [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? 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. If you don't have access to the net at all, send me a 3.5 '' diskette in a self-addressed disk mailer with postage and I will mail it back with an image of the Core War archives in PC format. My address is at the end of this post. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? To receive rec.games.corewar articles by email, join the COREWAR-L list run on the Stormking.Com list processor. To join, send the message 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. Responsible for the listserver is Scott J. Ellentuch (tuc@stormking.com). Another server that allows you to post (but not receive) articles is available. Email your post to rec-games-corewar@cs.utexas.edu and it will be automatically posted for you. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Are there any Core War related WWW sites? You bet. Each of the two KotH sites sport a world-wide web server. Stormking's Core War page is ; pizza's is . A third WWW site is in Koeln, Germany: . Last but not least, Stephen Beitzel's "Unofficial Core War Page" is . All site are in varying stages of construction, so it would be futile to list here what they have to offer. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ When is the next tournament? 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. Informal double-elimination and other types of tournaments are held frequently among readers of the newsgroup; watch there for announcements or contact me. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is KotH? How do I enter? King Of The Hill (KotH) is an ongoing Core War tournament available to anyone with email. You enter by submitting via email a Redcode program (warrior) with special comment lines. You will receive a reply indicating how well your program did against the current top programs "on the hill". There are two styles of KotH tournaments, "classical" and "multi-warrior". The "classical" KotH is a one-on-one tournament, that is your warrior 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. In "multi-warrior" KotH, all warriors on the hill fight each other at the same time. Score calculation is a bit more complex than for the one-on-one tournament. Briefly, points are awarded based on how many warriors survive until the end of a round. A warrior that survives by itself gets more points than a warrior that survives together with other warriors. Points are calculated from the formula (W*W-1)/S, where W is the total number of warriors and S the number of surviving warriors. The pMARS documentation has more information on multi-warrior scoring. The idea for an email-based Core War server came from David Lee. The original KotH was developed and run by William Shubert at Intel starting in 1991, and discontinued after almost three years of service. Currently, KotHs based on Bill's UNIX scripts but offering a wider variety of hills are are running at two sites: "koth@stormking.com" is maintained by Scott J. Ellentuch (tuc@stormking.com) and "pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu" by Thomas H. Davies (sd@ecst.csuchico.edu). Up until May '95, the two sites provided overlapping services, i.e. the some of the hill types were offered by both "pizza" and "stormking". To conserve resources, the different hill types are now divided up among the sites. The way you submit warriors to both KotHs is pretty much the same. Therefore, the entry rules described below apply to both "pizza" and "stormking" unless otherwise noted. 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 a line starting with ";redcode" (or ";redcode-94, etc., see below) 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. There are currently seven separate hills you can select by starting your program with ;redcode-b, ;redcode-94, ;redcode-94x, ;redcode, ;redcode-icws, ;redcode-94m or ;redcode-94xm. The former three run at "pizza", the latter four at "stormking". More information on these hills is listed below. 3) Mail this file to koth@stormking.com or pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu. "Pizza" requires a subject of "koth" (use the -s flag on most mailers). 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 (or 10) programs. If no news arrives during that time, 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. The server kills programs by assigning an impossibly low score; it may therefore take another successful challenge before a killed program is actually removed from the hill. 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. Here are the Specs for the various hills: ICWS'88 Standard Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode", available at "stormking") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 instruction set: ICWS '88 ICWS Annual Tournament Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-icws", available at "stormking") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 8192 instructions max. processes: 8000 per program duration: After 100,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 300 minimum distance: 300 instruction set: ICWS '88 ICWS'94 Draft Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-94", available at "pizza") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 instruction set: extended ICWS '94 Draft ICWS'94 Beginner's Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-b", available at "pizza") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 instruction set: extended ICWS '94 Draft max. age: after 100 successful challenges, warriors are retired. ICWS'94 Experimental (Big) Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-94x", available at "pizza") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 55440 max. processes: 10000 duration: after 500,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 200 minimum distance: 200 instruction set: extended ICWS '94 Draft ICWS'94 Draft Multi-Warrior Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-94m", available at "stormking") hillsize: 10 warriors rounds: 200 coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 instruction set: extended ICWS '94 Draft ICWS'94 Experimental (Big) Multi-Warrior Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-94xm", available at "stormking") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 55440 max. processes: 10000 duration: after 500,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 200 minimum distance: 200 instruction set: extended ICWS '94 Draft If you just want to get a status report without actually challenging the hills, send email with ";status" as the message body (and don't forget "Subject: koth" for "pizza"). If you send mail to "pizza" with "Subject: koth help" you will receive instructions that may be more up to date than those contained in this document. At stormking, a message body with ";help" will return brief instructions. If you submit code containing a ";test" line, your warrior will be assembled but not actually pitted against the warriors on the hill. All hills run portable MARS (pMARS) version 0.8, a platform-independent corewar system available at ftp.csua.berkeley.edu. The '94 and '94x hills allow three experimental opcodes and addressing modes currently not covered in the ICWS'94 draft document: SEQ - Skip if EQual (synonym for CMP) SNE - Skip if Not Equal NOP - (No OPeration) * - indirect using A-field as pointer { - predecrement indirect using A-field } - postincrement indirect using A-field [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? Core is initialized to DAT 0, 0. This is an "illegal" instruction under ICWS'88 rules and strictly compliant assemblers (such as KotH or pmars -8) 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. Note that under ICWS'94, DAT 0, 0 is a legal instruction. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? 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. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is the difference between in-register and in-memory evaluation? These terms refer to the way instruction operands are evaluated. The '88 Redcode standard ICWS'88 is unclear about whether a simulator should "buffer" the result of A-operand evaluation before the B-operand is evaluated. Simulators that do buffer are said to use in-register evaluation, those that don't, in-memory evaluation. ICWS'94 clears this confusion by mandating in-register evaluation. Instructions that execute differently under these two forms of evaluation are MOV, ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV and MOD where the effective address of the A-operand is modified by evaluation of the B-operand. This is best illustrated by an example: L1 mov L2, mov.i #0,impsize 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. Gate-busting (also gate-crashing) technique to "interweave" a decrement-resistant imp-spiral (e.g. MOV 0, 2668) with a standard one to overrun imp-gates. Hybrids warriors that combine two or more of the basic strategies, either in sequence (e.g. stone->paper) or in parallel (e.g. imp/stone). 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, mov.i #0,impsize Mirror see reflection. On-axis/off-axis On-axis scanners compare two locations M/2 apart, where M is the memory size. Off-axis scanners use some other separation. Optimal Constants (also optima-type constants) Bomb or scan increments chosen to cover core most effectively, i.e. leaving gaps of uniform size. Programs to calculate optimal constants and lists of optimal numbers are available at ftp.csua.berkeley.edu. Paper A Paper-like program. One which replicates itself many times. Part of the Scissors (beats) Paper (beats) Stone (beats Scissors) analogy. Pit-Trapper (also Slaver, Vampire). A program which enslaves another. Usually accomplished by bombing with JMPs to a SPL 0 pit with an optional core-clear routine. Quick Scan 2c scan of a set group of core locations with bombing if anything is found. Both of the following codes snips scan 16 locations and check for a find. If anything is found, it is attacked, otherwise 16 more locations are scanned. Example: start s1 for 8 ;'88 scan cmp start+100*s1, start+100*s1+4000 ;check two locations mov #start+100*s1-found, found ;they differ so set pointer rof jmn attack, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 8 cmp start+100*(s2+6), start+100*(s2+6)+4000 mov #start+100*(s2+6)-found, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing attack cmp @found, start-1 ;does found points to empty space? add #4000, found ;no, so point to correct location mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 In ICWS'94, the quick scan code is more compact because of the SNE opcode: start ;'94 scan s1 for 4 sne start+400*s1, start+400*s1+100 ;check two locations seq start+400*s1+200, start+400*s1+300 ;check two locations mov #start+400*s1-found, found ;they differ so set pointer rof jmn which, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 4 sne start+400*(s2+4), start+400*(s2+4)+100 seq start+400*(s2+4)+200, start+400*(s2+4)+300 mov #start+400*(s2+4)-found-100, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing add #100, -1 ;increment pointer till we get the which jmn -1, @found ;right place mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 Reflection Copy of a program or program part, positioned to make the active program invisible to a CMP-scanner. Replicator Generic for Paper. A program which makes many copies of itself, each copy also making copies. Self-Splitting Strategy of amplifying the number of processes executing a piece of code. example SPL 0 loop ADD #10, example MOV example, @example JMP loop Scanner A program which searches through core for an opponent rather than bombing blindly. Scissors A program designed to beat replicators, usually a (B-field scanning) vampire. Part of the Paper-Scissors-Stone analogy. Self-Repair Ability of a program to fix it's own code after attack. Silk A replicator which splits off a process to each new copy before actually copying the code. This allows it to replicate extremely quickly. This technique is only possible under the '94 draft, because it requires post-increment indirect addressing. Example: spl 1 mov.i -1, 0 spl 1 ;generate 6 consecutive processes silk spl 3620, #0 ;split to new copy mov.i >-1, }-1 ;copy self to new location mov.i bomb, >2000 ;linear bombing mov.i bomb, }2042 ;A-indirect bombing for anti-vamp jmp silk, {silk ;reset source pointer, make new copy bomb dat.f >2667, >5334 ;anti-imp bomb Slaver see Pit-Trapper. Stealth Property of programs, or program parts, which are invisible to scanners, accomplished by using zero B-fields and reflections. Stone A Stone-like program designed to be a small bomber. Part of the Paper-Scissors-Stone analogy. Stun A type of bomb which makes the opponent multiply useless processes, thus slowing it down. Example is referred to as a spl-jmp bomb. example spl 0 jmp -1 Two-Pass Core-Clear (also spl/dat Core-Clear) core clear that fills core first with SPL instructions, then with DATs. This is very effective in killing paper and certain imp-spiral variations. Vampire see Pit-Trapper. Vector Launch one of several means to start an imp-spiral running. As fast as Binary Launch, but requiring much less code. See also JMP/ADD Launch and Binary Launch. This example is one form of a Vector Launch: impsize equ 2667 example spl 1 ; extend by adding more spl 1's spl 1 djn.a @imp,#0 ; jmp @ a series of pointers dat #0,imp+(3*impsize) dat #0,imp+(2*impsize) dat #0,imp+(1*impsize) dat #0,imp+(0*impsize) imp mov.i #0,impsize [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Other questions? Just ask in the rec.games.corewar newsgroup or contact me (address below). If you are shy, check out the Core War archives first to see if your question has been answered before. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Credits Additions, corrections, etc. to this document are solicited. Thanks in particular to the following people who have contributed major portions of this document: Paul Kline, Randy Graham. Mark Durham wrote the first version of the FAQ. The rec.games.corewar FAQ is Copyright 1995 and maintained by: Stefan Strack, PhD stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu Dept. Molecular Physiol. and Biophysics stst@idnsun.gpct.vanderbilt.edu Rm. 762, MRB-1 stracks@vuctrvax.bitnet Vanderbilt Univ. Medical Center Voice: +615-322-4389 Nashville, TN 37232-6600, USA FAX: +615-322-7236 _________________________________________________________________ $Id: corewar-faq.html,v 3.6 1995/10/12 22:44:37 stst Exp stst $ From: Robert Macrae Subject: Re: A few warriors... Date: 1996/07/06 Message-ID: <4rm4te$42p@soap.news.pipex.net>#1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Ross Morgan-Linial wrote: >Here are two of my warriors which both died of old age on the beginner >hill. They have been formated for legibility. > >;redcode-94b >;name 1,000lb weight >;author Ross Morgan-Linial >;assert CORESIZE==8000 >;strategy Simple bomber -> coreclear -> imp gate > >start mov b+1, @1 > add.ab #2364, #3 > mov b, >-1 > jmp start >clear mov.i cbom, <-5 > jmp clear, <-32 >cbom dat <-31, <-31 >b spl 0, <-30 > jmp -1, <-31 I think this is meant to jump to the clear when "jmp start" is bombed with the SPL, but it looks to me as if you bomb "clear" with JMP -1 on the first instruction? From: guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: Re: Mirrored Imps Date: 1996/07/06 Message-ID: <4rk886$fi5@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 references: <960702232141_102741.2022_GHT112-1@CompuServe.COM> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Justin Kao <102741.2022@CompuServe.COM> wrote: >What are mirrored imps? Take a look at spiral 4000 by Paul Kline, that's the prototype. I don't try to explain it here, because I have not yet used them, and I don't want to tell you something wrong. >Justin Kao >PS Sorry, accidentally sent this as email to JKW.... No problem 8-} Bjoern From: Anton Marsden Subject: Core Warrior 37 Date: 1996/07/07 Message-ID: newsgroups: rec.games.corewar .xX$$x. .x$$$$$$$x. d$$$$$$$$$$$ ,$$$$$$$P' `P' , . $$$$$$P' ' .d b $$$$$P b ,$$x ,$$x ,$$x ,$$b $$. Y$$$$' `$. $$$$$$. $$$$$$ $$P~d$. d$$$b d d$$$ `$$$$ ,$$ $$$$$$$b $$$P `$ $$$b.$$b `Y$$$d$d$$$' . . a . a a .aa . a `$$$ ,$$$,$$' `$$$ $$$' ' $$P$XX$' `$$$$$$$$$ .dP' `$'$ `$'$ , $''$ `$'$ `Y$b ,d$$$P `$b,d$P' `$$. `$$. , `$$P $$$' Y $. $ $ $ Y..P $ `$$$$$$$' $$$P' `$$b `$$$P `P `$' `Y'k. $. $. $. $$' $. Issue 37 July 8, 1996 ______________________________________________________________________________ Core Warrior is a weekly newsletter promoting the game of corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills--currently the '94 draft hill and the beginner hill. Coverage will follow where ever the action is. If you have no clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star internet locals for more information: FAQs are available by anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z FTP site is: ftp.csua.berkeley.edu /pub/corewar Web pages are at: http://www.stormking.com/~koth ;Stormking http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza http://pauillac.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/ ;Planar Newbies should check the stormking page for the FAQ, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! If ftp.csua.berkeley.edu is unreachable, you can download pMARS at: Terry's web page--http://www.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ Planar ftp site--ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars Fechter ftp site--ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar ______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings. Some interesting activity on the hill this week including the fall of Thermite II and Stepping Stone. In this issue we find out why Q^2 Miro is doing so well and JKW discusses mirrored imps. This is the first Core Warrior issue I've compiled and there's bound to be a few mistakes somewhere so not too many flames please :-) Reminder: the 'limited process hill' is open. Send your warriors to with a ;redcode-94lp header. To get more information, send an e-mail with a subject line of 'help' (no quotation) marks to the above address. --Anton Marsden ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server ICWS '94 Draft Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 48.1/ 38.3/ 13.6 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 157.9 33 2 49.0/ 42.2/ 8.8 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 155.8 31 3 45.4/ 37.8/ 16.8 myVamp5.3 Paulsson 152.9 102 4 42.6/ 35.3/ 22.0 Yogi Bear P.Kline 149.9 150 5 29.6/ 10.2/ 60.2 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 148.9 22 6 41.7/ 34.5/ 23.8 Paper, Scissors and Stone David van Dam 148.9 74 7 44.4/ 40.3/ 15.3 Goldfinch P.Kline 148.4 95 8 37.0/ 26.7/ 36.2 Simple v0.4 Ian Oversby 147.3 42 9 35.9/ 24.9/ 39.2 Armory II John K W 146.8 85 10 42.0/ 38.7/ 19.2 Twister Beppe Bezzi 145.3 400 11 40.5/ 35.9/ 23.6 Goliath David van Dam 145.1 94 12 35.4/ 26.5/ 38.1 Pulp v0.2 Ian Oversby 144.2 41 13 40.2/ 36.6/ 23.2 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 143.8 664 14 34.1/ 25.4/ 40.5 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 142.8 303 15 34.2/ 27.5/ 38.2 the historian bjoern guenzel 140.9 419 16 43.5/ 46.8/ 9.7 test me2 Beppe Bezzi 140.2 26 17 42.4/ 44.7/ 12.9 test A P.Kline 140.0 2 18 29.0/ 18.5/ 52.5 Rosebud Beppe 139.6 619 19 38.1/ 37.2/ 24.7 Scimitar 2 P.Kline 139.0 12 20 31.2/ 24.9/ 43.8 blue candle bjoern guenzel 137.6 533 21 25.3/ 13.6/ 61.1 ompega Steven Morrell 136.9 61 22 35.3/ 37.0/ 27.7 Versatility 1.5 Ross Morgan-Linial 133.6 19 23 33.6/ 33.6/ 32.8 Simple v0.3 Ian Oversby 133.5 105 24 37.0/ 48.2/ 14.8 pavement v0.14 bjoern guenzel 125.9 5 25 11.6/ 43.3/ 45.2 Jam Sponge Dave Newton 79.8 1 Weekly age: 90 ( 56 last week, 108 the week before ) New warriors: 14 Turnover/age rate 16% Average age: 158 ( 275 last week, 296 the week before ) Average score: 141 ( 133 last week, 127 the week before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by 13 authors: Bezzi, Kline with 4, Guenzel, Oversby with 3, and van Dam, JKW with 2. King Report: Blur 2 was on top for the majority of the challenges this week. But towards the end of the week Q^2 Miro by Ivner started to dominate. This is not surprising - Ivner has developed a very good qscan (see Extra Extra for the details). JKW's new warrior Return Of The Jedimp also had a few moments of glory (as John hastened to mention in the newsgroup). A huge loss of age this week (approximately 2925 points)! Thermite II finally kicks the bucket (will we see a Thermite III soon?), as does Stepping Stone making T.N.T pro the oldest warrior on the Hill. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 13 25.8/ 22.2/ 52.0 Armory II John K W 129.3 1 4 36.5/ 36.0/ 27.5 Paper, Scissors and Stone David van Dam 136.9 1 18 21.4/ 13.3/ 65.2 ompega Steven Morrell 129.6 1 7 30.0/ 24.1/ 45.9 Simple v0.4 Ian Oversby 135.8 1 6 31.6/ 25.3/ 43.1 Pulp v0.2 Ian Oversby 137.9 1 1 42.9/ 39.5/ 17.6 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 146.2 1 1 44.6/ 44.5/ 10.9 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 144.7 1 20 39.5/ 49.6/ 10.9 test me2 Beppe Bezzi 129.4 1 1 25.2/ 9.5/ 65.2 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 141.0 1 24 30.2/ 38.9/ 30.9 Versatility 1.5 Ross Morgan-Linial 121.4 1 15 34.9/ 37.8/ 27.3 Scimitar 2 P.Kline 132.0 1 24 34.1/ 50.9/ 15.0 pavement v0.14 bjoern guenzel 117.3 1 14 42.6/ 45.6/ 11.8 test A P.Kline 139.7 1 25 8.8/ 44.2/ 47.0 Jam Sponge Dave Newton 73.5 1 6 of the 14 new warriors entered the Hill in the top 10. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 26 1.0/ 1.2/ 1.6 Armory II John K W 4.7 55 26 18.5/ 12.4/ 69.1 ompega Steven Morrell 124.6 225 26 0.0/ 0.1/ 3.8 test Maurizio Vittuari 3.8 33 26 36.1/ 47.5/ 16.4 HopScotch 1.6 Robert Macrae 124.7 363 26 35.7/ 47.0/ 17.2 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 124.4 1049 26 1.3/ 1.4/ 1.1 Pulp v0.2 Ian Oversby 5.1 19 26 29.7/ 35.6/ 34.7 Jo Clark II Ian Oversby 123.8 266 26 28.9/ 35.1/ 36.0 test Maurizio 122.7 307 26 1.6/ 1.6/ 0.7 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 5.4 30 26 3.2/ 4.2/ 0.3 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 9.9 24 26 16.2/ 8.7/ 75.1 The Avalanche John Wilkinson 123.8 142 26 32.7/ 41.5/ 25.8 Thermite II Robert Macrae 123.8 2262 26 0.8/ 0.5/ 6.5 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 8.7 15 26 1.2/ 1.3/ 1.3 Hint Test Anton Marsden 4.8 14 26 2.0/ 1.2/ 0.7 Torch t18 P.Kline 6.7 30 26 2.6/ 0.5/ 0.8 blue flame c1/10 bjoern guenzel 8.5 48 Thermite II and Stepping Stone Cease To Exist as do a few warriors over the age of 200. Lots of ;killing went on this week. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 13 40.2/ 36.6/ 23.2 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 143.8 664 18 29.0/ 18.5/ 52.5 Rosebud Beppe 139.6 619 20 31.2/ 24.9/ 43.8 blue candle bjoern guenzel 137.6 533 15 34.2/ 27.5/ 38.2 the historian bjoern guenzel 140.9 419 10 42.0/ 38.7/ 19.2 Twister Beppe Bezzi 145.3 400 14 34.1/ 25.4/ 40.5 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 142.8 303 Jack in the box II pops into the 300 club. ______________________________________________________________________________ HALL OF FAME * means the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Thermite II Robert Macrae 2262 Qscan -> bomber 2 Impfinity v4g1 Planar 1993 Stone/ imp 3 Jack in the box Beppe Bezzi 1620 P-warrior 4 Tornado 3.0 Beppe Bezzi 1567 Bomber 5 Torch t18 P.Kline 1539 Bomber 6 Chameleon Myer R Bremer 1437 P-warrior 7 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 1420 One shot scanner 8 Evol Cap 6.6 John Wilkinson 1299 Imp / stone 9 quiz Schitzo 1262 Scanner/ bomber 10 T.N.T. Maurizio Vittuari 1204 Bomber 11 Grilled Octopus v0.5 David Boeren 1154 P-warrior 12 Hazy Shade II John Wilkinson 1102 P-warrior 13 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 1049 Qscan -> Vampire 14 Iron Gate 1.5 Wayne Sheppard 926 CMP scanner 15 Agony II Stefan Strack 912 CMP scanner 16 Barrage Anton Marsden 876 Qscan -> replicator 17 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 869 Stone/ imp 18 Flurry Anton Marsden 835 Qscan -> pwarrior 19 Thermite 1.0 Robert Macrae 802 Qscan -> bomber 20 Blue Funk 3 Steven Morrell 766 Stone/ imp 21 Night Train Karl Lewin 755 Replicator 22 Mirage 1.5 Anton Marsden 736 Scanner/ bomber 23 Blizzard Anton Marsden 713 Qscan -> replicator 24 HeremScimitar A.Ivner,P.Kline 666 Bomber 25 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 664 * Bomber LaBomba by Beppe Bezzi was kicked off this week by T.N.T. pro, now the only active warrior in the HoF (with Rosebud not far behind). Thermite II has a comfortable hold on 1st place even if it has stopped growing older and Stepping Stone settles for 13th place. ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server Beginner's Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 maximum age: At age 100, warriors are retired. rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 50.3/ 28.8/ 20.9 Versatility 1.2 Ross Morgan-Linial 171.7 85 2 51.8/ 31.9/ 16.4 Syzygy 1.0 Philip Kendall 171.6 70 3 51.3/ 32.5/ 16.2 Yet 3c Justin Kao 170.2 66 4 48.3/ 33.0/ 18.7 Phoenix Alpha Andy Nevermind 163.6 71 5 48.9/ 35.7/ 15.4 Saboteur v0.4k shar 162.2 27 6 45.3/ 34.0/ 20.7 Sandwich Bags Andy Nevermind 156.6 59 7 42.0/ 30.9/ 27.0 Inferno 1.0 Philip Kendall 153.1 9 8 44.2/ 39.8/ 16.0 Yet 3a Justin Kao 148.6 67 9 42.4/ 39.3/ 18.3 3-clear 0.6 Ilmari Karonen 145.5 93 10 40.2/ 35.8/ 24.0 Antivenin Ross 144.7 58 11 38.1/ 32.0/ 29.9 (-: :-) Ross 144.3 19 12 31.5/ 21.5/ 47.0 Ties, Ties, Ties! (+2) Ross 141.5 21 13 41.2/ 41.8/ 17.0 hyper 1.0 Ross 140.6 90 14 37.9/ 36.4/ 25.7 test Justin Kao 139.4 82 15 39.8/ 44.9/ 15.3 Switch Hitter 0.3t Ross Morgan-Linial 134.8 97 16 20.2/ 7.8/ 72.0 Nematode v1.3e Jonathan Stott 132.8 26 17 27.7/ 27.9/ 44.4 Cannon Fodder I. Karonen 127.5 72 18 18.6/ 10.3/ 71.1 Nematode v1.3c Jonathan Stott 126.8 52 19 22.7/ 21.2/ 56.1 Wasps 1.3 Ross 124.1 20 20 25.4/ 26.8/ 47.8 Avenger I Oliver Fechner 124.0 89 21 30.2/ 38.2/ 31.6 Utility Knife Robert J. Street 122.2 29 22 24.6/ 33.1/ 42.4 Fork 4/13 Christoph C. Birk 116.0 13 23 19.4/ 25.2/ 55.4 Mama's Boy Robert J. Street 113.6 12 24 10.5/ 64.2/ 25.4 D-Scan Ross 56.8 1 25 3.8/ 0.0/ 0.0 Yet Another stupid pun... Justin Kao 11.5 4 Versatility is still on top. The top three warriors appear to be in a class of their own. I noticed there are quite a few pspacers on the Hill at the moment. I believe that the best way to learn to code well is to concentrate on one type of warrior and see how much you can improve it... you may not make it to the top of the Hill but you will certainly come to understand the game a bit better. You don't have to take my advice :-) ______________________________________________________________________________ The Hint Quick Scanners by Anton Marsden Quick scanners (qscanners) have become a common ingredient in many modern warriors (mainly bombers and papers) recently. However, the qscans used are all very similar in structure and performance. In this article I will be discussing a "new" method of attack for qscans. If you are unfamiliar with the classic qscans check out Core Warrior #7 for a good tutorial (by Robert Macrae). It may also be helpful to take a look at Thermite II (CW 24) or Twister (CW 35). In a standard qscan about 16 locations are scanned (in 8 cycles) and then a JMN check is made to see if anything was found: s3 for 4 sne.i qst+4*bigst*(s3+0), qst+4*bigst*(s3+0)+bigst*1 seq.i qst+4*bigst*(s3+0)+bigst*2, qst+4*bigst*(s3+0)+bigst*3 mov.ab #qst+4*bigst*(s3+0)-found, found rof jmn.b which, found The code required for this setup is very small and this is probably the reason it became a very popular qscan method. But it's inefficient because of the huge delay between finding a location and bombing the location. This means that booting warriors are likely to escape the bombs as are most pspacers. To remedy this, I started experimenting with this type of scan: seq.i qst+4*bigst, qst+4*bigst+bigst*1 jmp kill1 seq.i qst+4*bigst+bigst*2, qst+4*bigst+bigst*3 jmp kill2 kill1: ; find correct location ; bomb it ; jump to boot routine kill2: ; similar to kill1 It works, but requires a large amount of code for every scanned location. There are many possible variations on this "engine". The trick is to find a nice compromise between size and speed. Here is one of the better qscans I have written: offset EQU (start+1000) COUNT EQU 6 start: N FOR COUNT scan&N: seq.i offset+400*N,offset+400*N+100 jmp kill&N+1 seq.i offset+400*N+200,offset+400*N+300 jmp kill&N ROF jmp boot GAP EQU 15 REP EQU 6 datb: dat GAP,-GAP dat200: dat 200,200 dat100: dat 100,100 N FOR COUNT kill&N: add.f dat200,pos&N sne.i datz,*pos&N add.f dat100,pos&N hit&N: mov.i datb,*pos&N pos&N: mov.i offset+400*N,offset+400*N+GAP/2 add.f datb,pos&N djn.b hit&N,#REP jmp boot ROF Anders Ivner has also contributed to this issue with his qscan (Q^2) which has a slightly slower response time than mine but uses a _lot_ less instructions. Testing QScan Performance ------------------------- QScans can be hard to test well so here are some tips on how to test your own qscans: - Replace all warrior code with NOP instructions and a JMP to the first NOP instruction. This technique can be adapted to work with fragmented (non- sequential) code as well (using JMPs). This way all your booted code will be executed and you'll die if you warrior was hit by a DAT bomb (this is a Good Thing for testing purposes). - pmars -r 8000 -c 100 (8000 rounds, 100 cycles maximum) This will give you a good idea of how your qscan will perform. Note that booting warriors will be the toughest to kill followed by pspacers then qscanners. - Without actually testing your qscan you can describe its performance by noting the cycle numbers at which it will actually attack a scanned location. For example, a standard qscan similar to the one in Twister will roughly attack in the 14th cycle (for any of 12 locations) and then in the 23rd cycle and so forth. The qscan in this article will attack in these cycles: 4,5,6,6,7,7,...,14,14,15,15,16,17. Most opponents are very vulnerable in the early cycles of the battle so attacking as early as possible has its advantages. I submitted a warrior to the '94 Hill called Hint Test which was Twister (Tornado) with the qscan replaced by an earlier, slower version of the qscan above. Here are some of the results: Hint Test vs. Twister: 111/68/21 Hint Test vs. Thermite II: 103/59/38 # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age ... 7 37.1/ 38.1/ 24.8 Hint Test Anton Marsden 136.2 1 ... 23 34.8/ 42.7/ 22.6 Twister Beppe Bezzi 126.8 373 As you can see, qscan response can have a major effect on your score. ______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra Q^2 by Anders Ivner [Editor note: Anders wrote a good intro and I decided not to edit it even though it repeats some of what is said in the hint.] In a standard quickscan there is a delay between when something (presumably the enemy) is found and when the quickscan actually reacts. To shorten this time tests are generally inserted (say) every fifth qscan block. Q^2 instead uses the inc/decrementing abilities of the JMP instruction to react immediately when something is found. This allows it to attack the enemy on average five cycles earlier than a standard qscan, time that may be important to catch it in its booting phase. An example to illustrate what I mean: sne seq jmp attack, attack sne seq jmp attack, {attack sne seq jmp attack, }attack sne seq jmp attack, >attack sne seq jmp attack, a01 HOP05 equ jmp SIG05 equ Okay, here's a good place to start, the mirror imp launch from Two Pack. I'll try to explain the idea a little more. First, note the initial weakness inherent to the mirror imp. The line "mov imp, imp2" is necessary because a mirrored imp spiral requires TWO imp instructions intact in the core in order for it to survive. ------------- imp_sz equ 4001 imp2 equ imp+4000 start mov imp, imp2 spl 1 spl 1 spl 1 spl 1 spl 2 jmp @vector,{0 jmp *vector,{0 for 15 jmp imp2+imp_sz*vector, imp+imp_sz*vector rof vector jmp imp2, imp imp mov.i #11, imp_sz ------------- This is a two-point mirrored imp. If you run it, you'll see that there are two lines of executing processes 4000 spaces apart. Since 4001 is NOT an imp number, the executing imp process is not always updated immediately before it's own execution. This makes mirror imps more vulnerable to traditional attack. Ok, lets look at an example. Say that we're watching a 2-process, 2-point mirrored imp spiral. Two Pack simply launches a 32 process, 2point imp, but we'll deal with a 2-process one for simplicity. [100] mov.i #11, 4001 [4100] mov.i #11, 4001 [101] mov.i #11, 4001 [4101] mov.i #11, 4001 [102] mov.i #11, 4001 [4102] mov.i #11, 4001 Here are the executing processes, with the locations they execute in brackets. You'll note that while all the intructions on the "top" half of the mirror are executed immediately after being updated, those on the bottom half (4100, 4101, 4102) are updated three steps before they are executed. Hence, the weakness to traditional attack. However, it does have one clear advantage. When you go up against a warrior which uses a 'spiral clear' like that used in SETI or Memories, a two-point imp will not be cleared away with the assurance that a 3 or 7 point imp would be. Also, any warrior which attempts to "decode" the impstep, and use that to wipe imps away will get the number 4001, which will only wipe away half of the imp. Next advantage? Let's imagine a warrior has a 100% ">" gate at 4101... [100] mov.i #11, 4001 [4100] mov.i #11, 4001 [101] mov.i #11, 4001 [4101] mov.i #11, 4004 ;got inc'd 3 times, totally screwing us up [102] dat 0, 0 ;lost half the imp! :_( [4102] mov.i #11, 4001 ;But hark! THIS location already had an imp on it, because the imp was unaffected at the time the process at 101 was executed. Therefore, if we're lucky enough to have 4103 be an exectuable instruction, we have busted the gate, and saved our ass from a sure loss. After that, we can only pray that whatever part of our opponent's code we're executing doesn't go suicide on us. :-) The second problem is an inherent consequence of the first difficulty. That is, when you only have two imp points, and two of them need to be intact in order to survive, a single stun attack AUTOMATICALLY will be at least somewhat effective. The solution to these two problems? Well, Paul Kline came up with the idea for the 6-point mirrored imp. In fact, any imp_number+4000 will work as a mirrored imp step size. In addition to the most important advantage of not putting all your eggs(imps:) in two baskets, the 6-point imp gives a second advantage to the mirroring idea: increased resistance to gates. Here's a code snipet from the six-point imp warrior I was working on. It's jmp/add launched, which helps a great deal against certain scanners and bombers. ------------- imp_sz equ (2667+4000) imp equ (impin+2000) imp2 equ (imp+4000) start mov impin, imp mov imp, imp2 spl 1 spl 1 spl 1 spl adder-1 spl 2 jmp *vector, 0 jmp @vector, 0 jmp 1 adder add.f inc, vector inc dat imp_sz, imp_sz vector jmp imp2, imp impin mov.i #11, imp_sz ------------- Now, I'll leave it up to you to see why it is that the greater-than- two-point variety of mirrored spiral performs a little better against gates. However, I must confess that mirrored imps' ability to perform in battle alone doesn't justify my interest in them. Mirrored imps only have _significant_ advantages against scanners with a spiral clears and warriors with those special mirror-vulnerable gates, so use them with care. ;-) ______________________________________________________________________________ Questions? Concerns? Comments? Complaints? Mail them to people who care. authors: Beppe Bezzi or Myer Bremer or Anton Marsden From: sd@ecst.csuchico.edu (Lord Kymbote) Subject: new x hill idea Date: 1996/07/08 Message-ID: <4rs3u9$4uc@charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar I had idea for an experimental hill the other day. What about a hill where wins are worth more points, like 5 or 7? Or ties are worth 0? It would promote different techniques, but would anyone try it? I suppose it wouldn't get less traffic than the current x hill. :) Thos From: sd@ecst.csuchico.edu (Lord Kymbote) Subject: Re: showing selected portions of your source Date: 1996/07/08 Message-ID: <4rs3pl$4u5@charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu>#1/1 references: <199607041518.KAA13701@mail.utexas.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar In article , Ross Morgan-Linial wrote: >On 4 Jul 1996 jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu wrote: > >:-)>If everyone agrees that individual scores should be available for all >:-)>the warriors, I guess we don't need the ";show [no]scores" command. >:-)>Is this the general consensus? >:-) >:-)It looks like it. > >Yep. Very well. Individual scores will be available for all warriors. >:-)>About showing only selected portions of source, I like Beppe's >:-)>;show [on / off] idea, but its sure to be abused with "for 0 / rof". >:-)>How about something like ";show [nosource / noequ / source]"? >:-)>Either showing no source at all, no lines containing equ's, or >:-)>all source. I'm open to other ideas too. > >Or we could just always show for/rof lines... >And put a comment in the code saying lines have been hidden, like, >; 10 lines not shown hmm. A nice idea, but I think I like the nosource / noequ idea the most. It would make it possible to change it later. At first, you could have it set to nosource, then if it lives a long time, you could change it to noequ, giving a glimpse without giving too much away. What do the rest of you think? Thos -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\/~~\ /~~~\/\ / \ \ / /~\ /~~~~~YY~~~\\ /~~ Thomas "Thos" Davies V \/\ /\ V / V |\/\/| V\ / sd@ecst.csuchico.edu V \ / | / | V Internet Pizza Server \/ | /\ | Member C.W.M. Corewar King of the Hill information |/oo\| CAVE ON Since 1987 http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth/ |/\| From: KOTH Tourney Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - MultiWarrior 94 07/08/96 Date: 1996/07/08 Message-ID: <199607080400.AAA12148@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/08/96 ***NEW*** On line pre-compile and the Wilkies Benchmark now available! ***NEW*** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.stormking.com/~koth *FAQ* http://www.stormking.com/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Wed Jun 26 00:19:02 EDT 1996 # Name Author Score Age 1 Super Evol Cap John Wilkinson 5035 4 2 90% Cotton v5c Wilkinson 5035 22 3 Son of Imp Steven Morrell 5035 40 4 TJ Maurizio Vittuari 5035 16 5 60% Cotton Wilkinson 5035 23 6 sisyphus Kafka 5035 5 7 TESTI Maurizio Vittuari 5023 15 8 Die Hard P.Kline 5022 27 9 Evol Cap -- John Wilkinson 4999 6 10 rhodium v1.4 Martin M. Pedersen 4962 1 11 Fork v0.2-9p/51b Christoph C. Birk 4951 2 From: KOTH Tourney Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 07/08/96 Date: 1996/07/08 Message-ID: <199607080400.AAA24197@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/08/96 ***NEW*** On line pre-compile and the Wilkies Benchmark now available! ***NEW*** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.stormking.com/~koth *FAQ* http://www.stormking.com/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Tue Jul 2 01:33:04 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 35/ 3/ 62 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 166 21 2 47/ 38/ 15 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 156 51 3 47/ 38/ 14 Illusion-94/55 Randy Graham 156 3 4 47/ 40/ 13 Memories Beppe Bezzi 153 28 5 41/ 30/ 28 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 153 12 6 44/ 36/ 21 Derision M R Bremer 151 38 7 42/ 34/ 24 BigBoy Robert Macrae 151 46 8 44/ 38/ 17 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 150 7 9 34/ 22/ 45 Variation M-1 Jay Han 145 1 10 44/ 46/ 10 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 143 22 11 43/ 44/ 13 Pagan John K W 143 6 12 37/ 34/ 29 Tornado 2.0 x Beppe Bezzi 139 45 13 31/ 24/ 45 Aleph 1 Jay Han 139 11 14 39/ 41/ 20 Fire Master Xv1 JS Pulido 138 43 15 38/ 44/ 18 Watcher Kurt Franke 132 44 16 28/ 24/ 48 Hector 2 Kurt Franke 131 41 17 38/ 46/ 16 Watcher-h Kurt Franke 131 40 18 39/ 51/ 11 Withershins Thrice P.Kline 126 4 19 32/ 40/ 28 Riff Steven Morrell 124 2 20 30/ 36/ 35 Nice Try M R Bremer 124 50 21 10/ 64/ 26 Magicus #1 The Mage aka Chris C 56 0 From: KOTH Tourney Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - ICWS Tournament 07/08/96 Date: 1996/07/08 Message-ID: <199607080400.AAA26217@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/08/96 ***NEW*** On line pre-compile and the Wilkies Benchmark now available! ***NEW*** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.stormking.com/~koth *FAQ* http://www.stormking.com/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Annual ICWS Tournament CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Tue Jun 4 06:47:05 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 11/ 44 Cannonade Paul Kline 180 91 2 51/ 34/ 16 Miss Carefree Derek Ross 167 23 3 46/ 33/ 20 Giskard v0.5 Ken Mitton 159 64 4 33/ 15/ 52 Nothing Special G. Eadon 151 6 5 33/ 18/ 49 Turkey Beppe Bezzi 149 7 6 47/ 45/ 8 Agony T Stefan Strack 149 92 7 39/ 29/ 32 Pommes-Ketchup V1.35 S. Schroeder 149 4 8 43/ 42/ 14 test88 P.Kline 144 10 9 41/ 41/ 18 Old Tire Swing Randy Graham 142 48 10 39/ 38/ 23 Yop La Boum v2.1 P.E.M & E.C. 140 21 11 40/ 44/ 16 Miss Carry Derek Ross 135 55 12 29/ 24/ 47 One Fat Lady Robert Macrae 134 8 13 39/ 46/ 14 Traper3_t Waldemar Bartolik 132 1 14 39/ 47/ 14 Slaver v1.1i Christoph C. Birk 131 52 15 37/ 46/ 17 Illusion Randy Graham 127 50 16 37/ 49/ 15 DoubleStone v0.7 Christoph C. Birk 125 34 17 30/ 36/ 33 Chris Steven Morrell 124 13 18 38/ 54/ 7 xtc stefan roettger 121 96 19 35/ 52/ 13 Traper3 Waldemar Bartolik 117 3 20 35/ 52/ 13 Traper3 Waldemar Bartolik 117 2 21 32/ 49/ 19 WhirlWind-88 Randy Graham 114 28 From: KOTH Tourney Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - Multiwarrior Experimental 94 07/08/96 Date: 1996/07/08 Message-ID: <199607080400.AAA33408@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/08/96 ***NEW*** On line pre-compile and the Wilkies Benchmark now available! ***NEW*** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.stormking.com/~koth *FAQ* http://www.stormking.com/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries MultiWarrior Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Thu Jun 6 02:34:44 EDT 1996 # Name Author Score Age 1 TimeScapeX (0.1) J. Pohjalainen 5901 59 2 This is Test1 Kurt Franke 5901 24 3 Test2 George Eadon 5901 19 4 jaded M R Bremer 5901 30 5 Paper8 G. Eadon 5877 25 6 Paperone Beppe Bezzi 5854 44 7 Fork v0.2-9p/51b Christoph C. Birk 5852 1 8 Gluttony J E Long 5851 17 9 Saat V2.01 S. Schroeder 5748 13 10 Shwing! T. H. Davies 5747 55 11 Wait A Lot v0.1 Justin Kao 5732 4 12 Anthill 5 Planar 5400 21 13 Pommes-Ketchup V1.35 S. Schroeder 5236 8 14 life Nandor Sieben 5193 60 15 Leviathan2 harleyQ2 5180 11 16 lifedwarf Nandor Sieben 4930 36 17 Hidden M.C.Diskett Bullfrog 4851 29 18 Variation M-1 Jay Han 4798 6 19 Leviathan harleyQ2 4352 12 20 Piggy 3 Bob Uhl 4163 32 21 Escape2 Philipp Offermann 151 0 From: KOTH Tourney Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - Standard 07/08/96 Date: 1996/07/08 Message-ID: <199607080400.AAA33371@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/08/96 ***NEW*** On line pre-compile and the Wilkies Benchmark now available! ***NEW*** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.stormking.com/~koth *FAQ* http://www.stormking.com/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Thu Jul 4 15:03:04 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 43/ 35/ 21 PacMan v5 David Moore 152 4 2 33/ 20/ 47 CAPS KEY IS STUCK AGAIN Steven Morrell 146 102 3 30/ 15/ 55 ttti nandor sieben 145 86 4 31/ 20/ 49 Hydra Stephen Linhart 142 210 5 29/ 17/ 54 Cannonade P.Kline 142 136 6 31/ 20/ 50 Blue Funk 88 Steven Morrell 141 100 7 40/ 40/ 20 Stasis David Moore 140 12 8 35/ 31/ 34 Yop La Boum v2.1 P.E.M & E.C. 139 36 9 31/ 23/ 45 Test Wayne Sheppard 139 125 10 29/ 20/ 50 K-test P.E.M 139 8 11 37/ 36/ 27 Keystone t21 P.Kline 137 123 12 25/ 12/ 63 Imperfic II John Wilkinson 137 22 13 28/ 20/ 52 Peace Mr. Jones 136 110 14 40/ 45/ 15 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 134 230 15 37/ 42/ 21 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 131 180 16 33/ 37/ 30 Christopher Stephen Morrell 128 101 17 35/ 42/ 23 Tuctest Elmer J. Fudd 127 30 18 33/ 39/ 28 Giskard v0.5 Ken Mitton 127 74 19 33/ 45/ 21 Request v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 121 72 20 30/ 50/ 20 Gisela 2G6 Andrzej Maciejczak 111 1 21 18/ 75/ 7 Speedy V 1.0 Robert F. Tobler 62 0 From: stst@idnsun.gpct.Vanderbilt.Edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: Re: showing selected portions of your source Date: 1996/07/09 Message-ID: <9607092344.AA06582@idnsun.gpct.Vanderbilt.Edu.noname>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar JKW wrote: >I really don't like that. If you really want to hide entire lines >you could do something like this: > >AAA equ jmp >BBB equ -1 >CCC equ >AAA BBB CCC Or: gater EQU jmp -1, #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Woo! This may not do to well on the Hill, but, as the ;strategy line says, I've finally created a warrior that is able to hold it's own against every imp/stone I ran it against! At the moment, there are only 2 on the -94 Hill, so it didn't make it big... However, as a p-component, it could be a way to get some wins v ompega and rosebud, and to guard yourself against future imp/stones... because I can't imagine this doing TOO poorly against any of them. :/ I may stick this in a new Armory II... As you may notice this was myZizzor originally. The main problem I saw with that warrior was that if it found a decoy, such as a djn train, it doomed itself to lose by wasting all of it's time carpet bombing it. The solution? Well, I moved the pointer back from the code, and replaced the "jmz" line with a "djn." This allows the warrior to give up, if it's done too much bombing... presumably against a large decoy of some sort. It then switches over, in a sort of one-shot-scanner fashion to a p-clear, starting at the location it last scanned. And, the bomb it uses for stunning has a "1" b-field, so when it hits the check line, it automatically stops, and goes to the core clear. Also, if you want it to kill papers, you could just replace the d-clear with a spl/dat clear. You'd lose something against imp/stones, though... Not too effective against most bombers and scanners, but it has it's niche. Enjoy. :) ;redcode-94 ;name Da Ziz ;kill Da Ziz ;author John K W ;assert CORESIZE > 100 ;strategy Gets about 185/100 vs blue candle, impfinity, rosebud ;strategy and blue funk 3... does ok against evolcap 6.6, and ;strategy juliet storm as well. org start step EQU 8 for step-1 dat 1, 1 rof check dat 1, 25 for 5 dat 0, 0 rof gate dat 0, 100 for 10 dat 0, 0 rof start p add.ab #step, gate rep jmz.f p, @gate mov.i b1, >gate djn.b rep, check b2 spl #-1, {gate mov.i 3, >gate mov.i 2, >gate djn.f -1, >gate b3 dat.f -1, -1+b1-check+10 b1 spl -1, 1 From: jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Re: new x hill idea Date: 1996/07/09 Message-ID: <199607091519.KAA31840@mail.utexas.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar > >I had idea for an experimental hill the other day. What about >a hill where wins are worth more points, like 5 or 7? Or ties >are worth 0? It would promote different techniques, but would >anyone try it? > >I suppose it wouldn't get less traffic than the current x hill. :) > >Thos How about S = W*3 + L Just a reversal of ties and losses? Ie, "give me victory or give me death!" :) From: jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Re: showing selected portions of your source Date: 1996/07/09 Message-ID: <199607091528.KAA09666@mail.utexas.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >>Or we could just always show for/rof lines... >>And put a comment in the code saying lines have been hidden, like, >>; 10 lines not shown > >hmm. A nice idea, but I think I like the nosource / noequ idea the >most. It would make it possible to change it later. At first, you >could have it set to nosource, then if it lives a long time, you could >change it to noequ, giving a glimpse without giving too much away. I really don't like that. If you really want to hide entire lines you could do something like this: AAA equ jmp BBB equ -1 CCC equ #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Well, I found that overall this was about the best pit I could imagine. Due to the nature of "spl 1" and "spl -1", this will not accidentally turn into a place that the enemy can find solace. Ie, were I to use an "spl 0"... The brainwash washes just about every location with 1... and still creates lots of processes... qclr dat 1, 1 qpit spl 1, 0 spl -1, 0 stp.ab >-1, -1 mov qclr, >1 jmp -1, 100 It actually earned an extra 3 points over the pit that I ripped straight from Die Hard... From: sieben@imap1.asu.edu Subject: Re: Core War/Redcode as a teaching tool? Date: 1996/07/10 Message-ID: <4s0k0c$8g8@news.asu.edu>#1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Michael Barlow (spike@dolphin.cs.adfa.oz.au) wrote: : I was wondering if anyone has any experience of or knowledge : regarding the use of Core Wars/Redcode in teaching assembler? I saw a homepage about a class description, where the students had to write a corewar system. Something like filling out a skeleton system. I realize it's different but maybe they tried other things. I don't remember the location, but I've found it by following the links in one of the corewar pages. Nandor. From: bremermr@cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu (Myer R. Bremer) Subject: Re: Core War/Redcode as a teaching tool? Date: 1996/07/10 Message-ID: <4rvfft$cnr@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>#1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.corewar In article , Michael Barlow wrote: > >This session I am teaching "Computer Systems Architecture 2" >which is basically a 1 session, 2nd year course that introduces >students to assembler programming and operating systems. > >For the assembler component I've decided on James Larus' >excellent MIPS emulator (spim/xspim). > >However it occured to me that Core Wars might serve as an additional >tool to capture student interest and teach various addressing modes. >School of Computer Science ADFA, Uni of NSW >ACT, Australia (stuff deleted. i can't post unless i write more than i quote.) greetings. i am a quasi-computer science major, actually an engineering major trying desparately to get my CS degree at the same time, and i had a computer architecture class using the same MIPS emulator. it's been awhile and anyone can jump in here, but i think MIPS and redcode aren't very similar when it comes to addressing modes. sure all the instructions are nearly the same, but i don't remember any indirect addressing in MIPS, let alone all the pre/post inc/dec indirect addressing. plus MIPS is load/store and thankfully redcode isn't. hopefully i'm wrong, because i think it is a great idea. playing a game is always more fun than writing memory managers (and a lot easier). plus i'd love to see a whole computer science class addicted to core war. bring on the new blood. m r bremer From: Robert Macrae Subject: Re: Core War/Redcode as a teaching tool? Date: 1996/07/10 Message-ID: <4rvqjd$gt0@soap.news.pipex.net>#1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.corewar spike@dolphin.cs.adfa.oz.au (Michael Barlow) wrote: >I was wondering if anyone has any experience of or knowledge >regarding the use of Core Wars/Redcode in teaching assembler? > >This session I am teaching "Computer Systems Architecture 2" >which is basically a 1 session, 2nd year course that introduces >students to assembler programming and operating systems. .. Great idea on the motivational front. Not sure that structure fetishists would approve :) From: spike@dolphin.cs.adfa.oz.au (Michael Barlow) Subject: Core War/Redcode as a teaching tool? Date: 1996/07/10 Message-ID: #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar I was wondering if anyone has any experience of or knowledge regarding the use of Core Wars/Redcode in teaching assembler? This session I am teaching "Computer Systems Architecture 2" which is basically a 1 session, 2nd year course that introduces students to assembler programming and operating systems. For the assembler component I've decided on James Larus' excellent MIPS emulator (spim/xspim). However it occured to me that Core Wars might serve as an additional tool to capture student interest and teach various addressing modes. I'm keen to hear of anyone's experience of Core Wars as a teaching tool. Thanks in advance......................................Spike Bun Bu RyoDo ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Michael Barlow spike@csadfa.cs.adfa.oz.au School of Computer Science ADFA, Uni of NSW ACT, Australia From: "Steven C. Morrell" Subject: Re: showing selected portions of your source Date: 1996/07/11 Message-ID: #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Stefan Strack wrote: ]JKW wrote: ]>I really don't like that. If you really want to hide entire lines ]>you could do something like this: ]> ]>AAA equ jmp ]>BBB equ -1 ]>CCC equ ]>AAA BBB CCC ] ]Or: ] ]gater EQU jmp -1, Subject: Re: showing selected portions of your source Date: 1996/07/11 Message-ID: <9607111141.AA06527@su1-4.ida.liu.se>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar > >OK, so I guess you're in favor of ";show [on/off]" and always showing > >for lines? I guess if they want you to see the whole thing, they could > >just publish it. > > > >Anyone else want to get into this discussion? > > > > I like more the 'show on/off' thing, mainly because not all equ are of the > same importance, while one may want to hide some code even if publishing the > remaining part of the warrior. One bad thing about show on/off is that you can't ;change it. For that purpouse it would be better with something like ;hide [LINENUMBERS] or maybe ;hide [EQUs], ie hide specific EQUs (;hide STEP, BOOTDIST etc) /Anders From: Ross Morgan-Linial Subject: Re: new x hill idea Date: 1996/07/11 Message-ID: #1/1 references: <199607091519.KAA31840@mail.utexas.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar On 9 Jul 1996 jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu wrote: //> //>I had idea for an experimental hill the other day. What about //>a hill where wins are worth more points, like 5 or 7? Or ties //>are worth 0? It would promote different techniques, but would //>anyone try it? //> //>I suppose it wouldn't get less traffic than the current x hill. :) //> This is OK... //>Thos // //How about S = W*3 + L // //Just a reversal of ties and losses? Ie, "give me victory or give me death!" :) // No. Another idea. How about a "small hill"? Coresize 1000 or so. 50 instruction limit, mabie. ******************** *Ross Morgan-Linial* *rmorganl@fhcrc.org* ******************** Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when _you_ walk into an open sewer and die. -- Mel Brooks From: bremermr@cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu (Myer R. Bremer) Subject: Re: Core War/Redcode as a teaching tool? Date: 1996/07/11 Message-ID: <4s3665$iev@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>#1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.corewar In article , Anton Marsden wrote: >On 10 Jul 1996, Michael Barlow wrote: >> I was wondering if anyone has any experience of or knowledge >> regarding the use of Core Wars/Redcode in teaching assembler? > >The way I see it, the advantages to learning Redcode are: >1) The instructions are all 1 word long and there's a great simulator >(pmarsv) which can be used to trace through a program. Additionally, >there's the visual component - you see which instructions are being executed. >2) Indirect addressing is easy to demonstrate using Redcode... however, >since you can use both the A-field and B-field of a word for indirection >it could be kind of confusing. > you could eliminate the confusion by just teaching the old '88 standard of redcode. and then the players could assult the '88 hill at stormking. maybe that will make it easier for them to get on. or create your own hill. sending beginner assembler programmers against the '94 hill veterans could be discouraging for young minds. 8) m r bremer From: Anton Marsden Subject: Re: Core War/Redcode as a teaching tool? Date: 1996/07/11 Message-ID: #1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.corewar On 10 Jul 1996, Michael Barlow wrote: > I was wondering if anyone has any experience of or knowledge > regarding the use of Core Wars/Redcode in teaching assembler? The way I see it, the advantages to learning Redcode are: 1) The instructions are all 1 word long and there's a great simulator (pmarsv) which can be used to trace through a program. Additionally, there's the visual component - you see which instructions are being executed. 2) Indirect addressing is easy to demonstrate using Redcode... however, since you can use both the A-field and B-field of a word for indirection it could be kind of confusing. > However it occured to me that Core Wars might serve as an additional > tool to capture student interest and teach various addressing modes. It may be difficult to capture student interest... even writing your first successful warrior can take some time... but for little non-warrior programs it would be easy to use. From: jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Re: showing selected portions of your source Date: 1996/07/11 Message-ID: <199607110634.BAA32247@mail.utexas.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >OK, so I guess you're in favor of ";show [on/off]" and always showing >for lines? I guess if they want you to see the whole thing, they could >just publish it. > >Anyone else want to get into this discussion? What?? No no no. I like the ;show on/off/noequ idea! You can hide entire segments of code, through equ lines, if you want to... it's the perfect solution. From: Beppe Bezzi Subject: Re: showing selected portions of your source Date: 1996/07/11 Message-ID: #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar sd@ecst.csuchico.edu (Lord Kymbote) wrote: >Stefan Strack wrote: >>JKW wrote: >>>I really don't like that. If you really want to hide entire lines >>>you could do something like this: >>> >>>AAA equ jmp >>>BBB equ -1 >>>CCC equ > >>Or: >> >>gater EQU jmp -1, >OK, so I guess you're in favor of ";show [on/off]" and always showing >for lines? I guess if they want you to see the whole thing, they could >just publish it. > >Anyone else want to get into this discussion? > I like more the 'show on/off' thing, mainly because not all equ are of the same importance, while one may want to hide some code even if publishing the remaining part of the warrior. It's true that the show on/off allows things like: ;name Jack in the box ... ;show off [warrior code] ;show on mov 0,1 for MAXLENGTH-CURLINE dat 0,0 rof But this will be the same thing as using fake strategy lines or posting a warrior for another, nothing but a joke :-) >Thos > > -Beppe From: Justin Kao <102741.2022@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Corewar documents Date: 1996/07/11 Message-ID: <960711035348_102741.2022_GHT84-1@CompuServe.COM>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Would anyone want Corewar documents collected and linked as html files? And are there any free programs to convert Windows help files to html? So far my help file includes: Core War FAQ My First Corewar Book by Steven Morrell Introduction to Redcode by Mark A. Durham cdb Primer & 94 Primer both from pMARS Core Warrior Hints by Beppie Bezzi Intro to Art in 88 Annotated Draft of the Proposed 1994 Core War Standard 3.2 Redcode Reference from pMARS and I am almost finished adding the Hint/Helps from The '94 Warrior. Justin Kao http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jkao From: sd@ecst.csuchico.edu (Lord Kymbote) Subject: Re: showing selected portions of your source Date: 1996/07/11 Message-ID: <4s1jgm$odc@charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu>#1/1 references: <9607092344.AA06582@idnsun.gpct.Vanderbilt.Edu.noname> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Stefan Strack wrote: >JKW wrote: >>I really don't like that. If you really want to hide entire lines >>you could do something like this: >> >>AAA equ jmp >>BBB equ -1 >>CCC equ >Or: > >gater EQU jmp -1, #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >//No? What do you mean "no?" > >I don't "no"... Uhm. >//I think bigger cores would be more interesting. I think Stormking's -94x >//Hill should be increased to 554,400 cycles or more, and the maximum program >//length increased to 600, 650, or maybe 700 instructions. > >My only objection is, nobody seems interested in the 'x hill like it is, >so just expanding on the idea might not help... The only problem with the -94x Hill is that really the only viable strategy are imp/stones... The main reason being that the cramped 200 instruction limit, and the 500,000 cycle time limit contrict your options, and don't give gates enough time to catch imps, respectively. >//This would allow for gigantic high-components pspacers, something we've never >//seen before, really, and for Big Hill qscanners. > >On the other hand, it would make it a little harder for non-pspacers, and >just have the same strategies, scaled up... Perhaps, but I think the idea of having 15 or so pspace strategies would be interesting! From: jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Re: A suggestion for hill format Date: 1996/07/12 Message-ID: <199607122116.QAA04708@mail.utexas.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >Your program Rosebud fights 200 times: >Rosebud wins: 114 pts: 364 (182) >Mist wins: 64 pts: 214 (107) >Ties: 22 > >The score in () is averaged to 100 fights, like the hill score, and perhaps >more meaningful. I mailed this to thos a while back, but never got a reply... Currently it's like this: --- Your program Armory II fights 200 times: Armory II wins: 110 test me1 wins: 74 Ties: 16 --- I would like to see this: --- "Armory II" vs. "test me 1" Your wlt: 110 / 74 / 16 Your score: 173 Its score: 119 --- Their are two major advantages. Obviously, you don't need to whip out a calculator to compute individual scores. And by putting the names up on top, everything can be organized and well spaced to be in a sort of homogenous fashion, so it's easier to find the scores at-a-glance. Surely no one could object to THIS change? :-) From: jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Re: new x hill idea Date: 1996/07/12 Message-ID: <199607122106.QAA22149@mail.utexas.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >//How about S = W*3 + L >// >//Just a reversal of ties and losses? Ie, "give me victory or give me death!" :) >// > >No. No? What do you mean "no?" >Another idea. How about a "small hill"? Coresize 1000 or so. 50 >instruction limit, mabie. I think bigger cores would be more interesting. I think Stormking's -94x Hill should be increased to 554,400 cycles or more, and the maximum program length increased to 600, 650, or maybe 700 instructions. This would allow for gigantic high-components pspacers, something we've never seen before, really, and for Big Hill qscanners. From: stst@idnsun.gpct.Vanderbilt.Edu (Stefan Strack) Subject: Re: pMARS 0.8.0 286 binaries? Aaaugh! Date: 1996/07/12 Message-ID: <9607120623.AA07155@idnsun.gpct.Vanderbilt.Edu.noname>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >I can't find a copy of the pMARS 286 binaries anywhere! [..] pmars286.zip is back at http://www.stormking.com/~koth/pmars.html -Stefan From: Beppe Bezzi Subject: Re: new x hill idea Date: 1996/07/12 Message-ID: #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar At 21.13 08/07/96 -0400, you wrote: > >I had idea for an experimental hill the other day. What about >a hill where wins are worth more points, like 5 or 7? Or ties >are worth 0? It would promote different techniques, but would >anyone try it? > >I suppose it wouldn't get less traffic than the current x hill. :) > What about this one: Count the warrior vs warrior score and give 3 points to the winner if the difference is more than 20 (10%) wins, if not 1 point each. The overall score can be used but as a tie break for pushoffs. >Thos > > -Beppe From: Beppe Bezzi Subject: A suggestion for hill format Date: 1996/07/12 Message-ID: #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar If it's not a big trouble, reporting also the score, in pints, togther with the wins and losses against each warrior. Example: ... A challenger has arrived on the ICWS '94 Draft hill! Vital statistics: ... Your program Rosebud fights 200 times: Rosebud wins: 114 pts: 364 (182) Mist wins: 64 pts: 214 (107) Ties: 22 The score in () is averaged to 100 fights, like the hill score, and perhaps more meaningful. -Beppe From: kelvin@unix.infoserve.net (Kelvin) Subject: GAMER SURVEY! PC GAMERS SHOULD PARTICIPATE! Date: 1996/07/12 Message-ID: <4s4bgu$d5n@news.infoserve.net>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Hi everyone! This is a PC games survery for every gamers! Your opinions are very important to every game programmers, and affect the next generation of PC gaming. Please answer the following question. GAMERS SURVEY -=-=-=-=-=-=- 1. How old are you? 2. Where do you live? 3. What type of computer(s) do you have? (Speed and RAM) 4. What Operating system are you using? 5. Which types of game do you like? (Arcade, Action, Wargame, etc...) 6. What is your favoraite PC games? 7. Is there any game(s) that you feel the gameplaying is great, but lot of improvement have to make? (eg. graphics, sound, etc...) (Optional) 8. What type of game(s) do you expect to be appear in the gaming world? (Please gives sugguest on GamePlaying or anything....) -=-= Finish =-=- Thanks for your participate. Please mail to: kelvin@unix.infoserve.net From: Ross Morgan-Linial Subject: Re: new x hill idea Date: 1996/07/13 Message-ID: #1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.corewar On 12 Jul 1996, Beppe Bezzi wrote: //At 21.13 08/07/96 -0400, you wrote: //> //>I had idea for an experimental hill the other day. What about //>a hill where wins are worth more points, like 5 or 7? Or ties //>are worth 0? It would promote different techniques, but would //>anyone try it? //> //>I suppose it wouldn't get less traffic than the current x hill. :) //> // //What about this one: // //Count the warrior vs warrior score and give 3 points to the winner if the //difference is more than 20 (10%) wins, if not 1 point each. The overall //score can be used but as a tie break for pushoffs. How about each program gets (its wins) - (opponent's wins) + 10 points, with a maximum of 50 and a minimum of 0? p1.wins-p2.wins p1.score p2.score 40+ 50 0 30 40 0 20 30 0 10 20 0 5 15 5 0 10 10 Notice that, if the diffrence is 0 or 20, the scores are 10* Beppe's system. // // //>Thos //> //> // //-Beppe // // // // ******************** *Ross Morgan-Linial* *rmorganl@fhcrc.org* ******************** Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when _you_ walk into an open sewer and die. -- Mel Brooks From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS change fo Date: 1996/07/13 Message-ID: <199607132135.RAA02792@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Hello, Please let this serve as a change of address: Old: http://www.stormking.com/~koth/ koth@stormking.com 25Mhz IBM RS/6000, AIX 3.2.5 CERN Web Server Hill Maintainer - Tuc New: http://www.koth.org/ koth@koth.org 133Mhz Pentium PC, Linux 1.2.13 Apache Web Server Hill Maintainer - Tuc (Some things never change!) Koth@KotH.Org From: Justin Kao <102741.2022@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: Hill suggestion Date: 1996/07/13 Message-ID: <960713063251_102741.2022_GHT71-2@CompuServe.COM>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar A score report for your warrior, ranked by score, would be nice... Something like: Yet 4b current scores: vvvvvvv vvvvvvvvv # %W / %L / %T Name Author ItScore Age YourScore 3 12.3/ 50.0/ 37.7 Phoenix Alpha Andy Nevermind 187.7 99 74.4 4 25.0/ 25.0/ 50.0 Versatility 1.5 Ross Morgan-Linial 125.0 14 125.0 1 40.0/ 40.0/ 20.0 Yet 4b Justin Kao 140.0 24 140.0 2 50.0/ 12.3/ 37.7 Sandwich Bags Andy Nevermind 74.4 87 187.7 Justin Kao From: Justin Kao <102741.2022@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: new x hill idea Date: 1996/07/13 Message-ID: <960713061028_102741.2022_GHT38-2@CompuServe.COM>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar How about a group of three hills, where your score on hill A would be how well you do against warriors on B. Programs on B would get a score against programs on C, and those on C would be scored against A. I don't know if this is possible, or if would be any good, but it sounds interesting :) Justin Kao From: jchester@ozemail.com.au (Jacques Chester) Subject: RBML seeking contact. Date: 1996/07/14 Message-ID: <4sa0vh$fjr@reader1.reader.news.ozemail.net>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Ayo choombas; I represent the Robot Battle Mailing List. Robot Battles (RB, robatl) is a windows 3.x programming game. In each game, there are six robots in the arena. Programming happens in RSL; Robot Scripting Language. RSL is a 4GL, not a an assembler language. Each of the robots is allocated a program to tell it how to behave. We at the RBML are interested in trying to contact all the programming/combat games groups around the internet and try to start a sort of communication. In this fashion, we are simultaneously trying to contact the authors and players of C-Robots, P-Robots, AT-Robots, Omega and Xtank amongst others. RB is almost completely different from CW. The language is the most obvious difference. Each robot is a tank-like affair, with a radar and a gun. Like CW, the last to survive gets the highest score. Strategies vary immensely. There is no limit on program size, and I personally have seen one robot weigh in at a whopping 40 kilobytes! This allows robots to be tremendously advanced, as proven by the ever increasingly complex algorithms employed by the world champion programmers. Interested at all? Email me, or visit the official Robot Battle WWW site, maintained by the author of RB at: http://www.RobotBattle.com/ There you will be able to read the FAQ, download RB and join the RBML. We are always looking for new players. We are always looking for new programming games; some on the RBML will probably take up CW as well. At the moment, the next world tournament is coming and RBML members are scrambling to enter their robots, to topple world champ SA Van Ness. See you. \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ Ripperjack - for the dough, choombatta! jchester@ozemail.com.au NOTE- Ripperjack Enterprises is a figment of my imagination. The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the fictitious organization I don't work for. From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - Standard 07/15/96 Date: 1996/07/15 Message-ID: <199607151229.IAA06707@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/15/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/ *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Tue Jul 9 08:34:07 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 46/ 34/ 20 PacMan v5 David Moore 157 4 2 33/ 20/ 47 CAPS KEY IS STUCK AGAIN Steven Morrell 146 102 3 30/ 15/ 55 ttti nandor sieben 146 86 4 42/ 38/ 20 Stasis David Moore 145 12 5 31/ 20/ 49 Hydra Stephen Linhart 143 210 6 36/ 30/ 34 Yop La Boum v2.1 P.E.M & E.C. 142 36 7 29/ 17/ 54 Cannonade P.Kline 142 136 8 31/ 20/ 50 Blue Funk 88 Steven Morrell 141 100 9 38/ 35/ 26 Keystone t21 P.Kline 141 123 10 32/ 23/ 45 Test Wayne Sheppard 140 125 11 41/ 44/ 15 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 139 230 12 25/ 12/ 63 Imperfic II John Wilkinson 139 22 13 29/ 20/ 50 K-test P.E.M 139 8 14 28/ 20/ 52 Peace Mr. Jones 136 110 15 38/ 41/ 21 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 136 180 16 35/ 36/ 29 Christopher Stephen Morrell 134 101 17 36/ 37/ 27 Giskard v0.5 Ken Mitton 134 74 18 37/ 41/ 22 Tuctest Elmer J. Fudd 133 30 19 36/ 44/ 20 Request v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 128 72 20 32/ 49/ 19 Gisela 2G6 Andrzej Maciejczak 116 1 21 2/ 98/ 0 Dwarf A. K. Dewdney 7 0 From: Beppe Bezzi Subject: Core Warrior 38 Date: 1996/07/15 Message-ID: newsgroups: rec.games.corewar .xX$$x. .x$$$$$$$x. d$$$$$$$$$$$ ,$$$$$$$P' `P' , . $$$$$$P' ' .d b $$$$$P b ,$$x ,$$x ,$$x ,$$b $$. Y$$$$' `$. $$$$$$. $$$$$$ $$P~d$. d$$$b d d$$$ `$$$$ ,$$ $$$$$$$b $$$P `$ $$$b.$$b `Y$$$d$d$$$' . . a . a a .aa . a `$$$ ,$$$,$$' `$$$ $$$' ' $$P$XX$' `$$$$$$$$$ .dP' `$'$ `$'$ , $''$ `$'$ `Y$b ,d$$$P `$b,d$P' `$$. `$$. , `$$P $$$' Y $. $ $ $ Y..P $ `$$$$$$$' $$$P' `$$b `$$$P `P `$' `Y'k. $. $. $. $$' $. Issue 38 July 15, 1996 ______________________________________________________________________________ Core Warrior is a weekly newsletter promoting the game of corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills--currently the '94 draft hill and the beginner hill. Coverage will follow where ever the action is. If you have no clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star internet locals for more information: FAQs are available by anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z FTP site is: ftp.csua.berkeley.edu /pub/corewar Web pages are at: (Please note new Stormking's address) http://www.koth.org/ ;Stormking http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza http://pauillac.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/ ;Planar Newbies should check the stormking page for the FAQ, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! If ftp.csua.berkeley.edu is unreachable, you can download pMARS at: Terry's web page--http://www.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ Planar ftp site--ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars Fechter ftp site--ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar ______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings. Summer brings some news in the hills; last year was pmars 08 with pspace, this year we have our beloved hill maintainer working hard at hill format. Thos, Pizza lord, is working at many small changes in formatting and new sintax, last new has been the automatic calculation of scores averages, thank you from the Core Warrior staff. Tuc, Stormking boss, completed his planned phase 1 and changed the address of his web page, now frame based and very cool, and hills, moving them on a faster server. New addresses are: web page: http://www.koth.org/ hills: koth@koth.org With the new server I think that the 94x (big) hill can have answer in a much shorter time and so get some more traffic. Stormking new web page implements many interesting features, give a look at it, it's worth the time. You are encouraged to send them your opinions, suggestions, congratulations and flames; they need our feedback. This week I had a few problem submitting a warrior to the limited processes hill because of a bug; now the bug has been fixed, thank to Andrew work, so you can submit your warriors to with a ;redcode-94lp header. --Beppe Bezzi ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server ICWS '94 Draft Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 43.1/ 34.6/ 22.3 Probe Anton Marsden 151.6 30 2 31.3/ 10.9/ 57.8 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 151.6 18 3 45.9/ 40.5/ 13.5 Mist P.Kline 151.3 3 4 46.7/ 42.7/ 10.7 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 150.7 80 5 36.9/ 26.2/ 36.9 Simple v0.4 Ian Oversby 147.6 126 6 43.7/ 41.0/ 15.4 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 146.3 29 7 34.6/ 25.6/ 39.8 Pulp v0.2 Ian Oversby 143.7 125 8 42.7/ 42.0/ 15.3 myVamp5.4 Paulsson 143.5 78 9 39.7/ 36.4/ 23.9 Dura v0.1 Ian Oversby 143.0 59 10 39.6/ 37.0/ 23.4 Yogi Bear P.Kline 142.2 234 11 31.8/ 23.6/ 44.6 Armory II John K W 140.0 169 12 40.7/ 41.4/ 17.8 Harmony P.Kline 140.0 2 13 30.5/ 21.5/ 48.0 Rosebud Beppe 139.4 703 14 33.2/ 27.2/ 39.5 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 139.2 387 15 31.0/ 23.3/ 45.8 blue flame c1/10 bjoern guenzel 138.6 14 16 37.9/ 37.9/ 24.2 Paper, Scissors and Stone David van Dam 137.8 158 17 40.2/ 43.3/ 16.5 Goldfinch P.Kline 137.0 179 18 37.5/ 38.4/ 24.0 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 136.6 748 19 25.6/ 14.9/ 59.4 ompega Steven Morrell 136.3 145 20 36.8/ 38.0/ 25.2 airBag Paulsson 135.6 71 21 38.0/ 40.8/ 21.2 Twister Beppe Bezzi 135.2 484 22 37.4/ 39.9/ 22.7 Goliath David van Dam 134.9 178 23 36.3/ 38.7/ 25.0 Scimitar 2 P.Kline 133.9 96 24 31.8/ 31.1/ 37.1 the historian bjoern guenzel 132.5 503 25 27.8/ 23.6/ 48.7 Ties, Ties, Ties! (+3) Ross Morgan-Linial 132.0 1 Weekly age: 84 ( 90 last week, 56 the week before ) New warriors: 11 Turnover/age rate 13% Average age: 184 ( 158 last week, 275 the week before ) Average score: 141 ( 141 last week, 133 the week before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by 12 authors: Kline with 5; Bezzi, and Oversby with 3; Marsden, Guenzel, van Dam, JKW and Paulsson with 2. King Report: Q^2 Miro dominated the begiining of the week until come Probe then and Return of Jedimp that kept the lead until last challenge. All those warriors use the advanced qscan architecture explained in the last CW hint. Other good warriors entering in the first spots are myVamp 5.4, see Extra extra for details, and Mist a scanner based on Blur, both reaching second spot. The hill is still changing quickly and all veteran are suffering, confined in the lower half; expecially true for Twister and the historian, often seen in the red alert zone. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 2 47.7/ 41.8/ 10.5 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 153.6 1 2 44.2/ 39.6/ 16.2 myVamp5.4 Paulsson 148.9 1 7 39.0/ 36.9/ 24.0 airBag Paulsson 141.1 1 6 40.0/ 37.6/ 22.4 Dura v0.1 Ian Oversby 142.4 1 1 31.0/ 10.3/ 58.7 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 151.7 1 2 45.6/ 41.7/ 12.8 Mist P.Kline 149.4 1 2 43.8/ 36.5/ 19.8 Probe Anton Marsden 151.1 1 8 41.5/ 43.2/ 15.3 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 139.8 1 17 31.3/ 24.4/ 44.3 blue flame c1/10 bjoern guenzel 138.2 1 19 36.1/ 40.8/ 23.1 earthquake v0.1 Bjoern & Ian 131.3 1 25 31.2/ 35.7/ 33.0 Test F Ian Oversby 126.7 1 A lot of high quality new warriors entered the high spots of the 94 hill. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 26 1.7/ 1.9/ 0.2 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 5.4 32 26 7.8/ 46.8/ 45.3 Jam Sponge Dave Newton 68.9 7 26 1.2/ 1.3/ 1.3 myVamp5.3 Paulsson 4.9 109 26 35.9/ 49.6/ 14.5 pavement v0.14 bjoern guenzel 122.2 13 26 2.6/ 2.2/ 2.8 Simple v0.3 Ian Oversby 10.7 116 26 1.6/ 2.0/ 0.2 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 5.2 48 26 0.6/ 1.3/ 1.9 test me2 Beppe Bezzi 3.7 42 26 31.2/ 39.2/ 29.6 Versatility 1.5 Ross Morgan-Linial 123.3 41 26 2.2/ 1.5/ 0.1 test A P.Kline 6.7 29 26 27.6/ 29.0/ 43.5 blue candle bjoern guenzel 126.1 574 26 0.3/ 0.9/ 2.9 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 3.7 71 Guenzel's blue camdle is the oldest warrior pushed off this week, and the only one worth mention, being others killed by their author or very young. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 18 37.5/ 38.4/ 24.0 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 136.6 748 13 30.5/ 21.5/ 48.0 Rosebud Beppe 139.4 703 24 31.8/ 31.1/ 37.1 the historian bjoern guenzel 132.5 503 21 38.0/ 40.8/ 21.2 Twister Beppe Bezzi 135.2 484 14 33.2/ 27.2/ 39.5 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 139.2 387 No new entries and a loss: blue candle. ______________________________________________________________________________ HALL OF FAME * means the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Thermite II Robert Macrae 2262 Qscan -> bomber 2 Impfinity v4g1 Planar 1993 Stone/ imp 3 Jack in the box Beppe Bezzi 1620 P-warrior 4 Tornado 3.0 Beppe Bezzi 1567 Bomber 5 Torch t18 P.Kline 1539 Bomber 6 Chameleon Myer R Bremer 1437 P-warrior 7 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 1420 One shot scanner 8 Evol Cap 6.6 John Wilkinson 1299 Imp / stone 9 quiz Schitzo 1262 Scanner/ bomber 10 T.N.T. Maurizio Vittuari 1204 Bomber 11 Grilled Octopus v0.5 David Boeren 1154 P-warrior 12 Hazy Shade II John Wilkinson 1102 P-warrior 13 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 1049 Qscan -> Vampire 14 Iron Gate 1.5 Wayne Sheppard 926 CMP scanner 15 Agony II Stefan Strack 912 CMP scanner 16 Barrage Anton Marsden 876 Qscan -> replicator 17 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 869 Stone/ imp 18 Flurry Anton Marsden 835 Qscan -> pwarrior 19 Thermite 1.0 Robert Macrae 802 Qscan -> bomber 20 Blue Funk 3 Steven Morrell 766 Stone/ imp 21 Night Train Karl Lewin 755 Replicator 22 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 748 * Bomber 23 Mirage 1.5 Anton Marsden 736 Scanner/ bomber 24 Blizzard Anton Marsden 713 Qscan -> replicator 25 Rosebud Beppe 703 * Stone/ imp Rosebud enters the Hall, pushing HeremScimitar off; T.N.T. pro begins climbing the standings. No new warrior is near entering being the historian still far from the threshold, now at more than 700 age. ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server Beginner's Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 maximum age: At age 100, warriors are retired. rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 63.3/ 19.5/ 17.3 Yet 4b Justin Kao 207.0 36 2 56.3/ 25.3/ 18.4 Sandwich Bags Andy Nevermind 187.4 99 3 53.5/ 21.6/ 24.9 Versatility 1.5 Ross Morgan-Linial 185.3 26 4 55.2/ 26.2/ 18.6 Velveeta Shift-F shar 184.2 34 5 50.6/ 19.0/ 30.4 (-: :-) Ross 182.2 59 6 53.5/ 27.2/ 19.3 Saboteur v0.4k shar 179.9 67 7 46.4/ 26.5/ 27.1 Inferno 1.0 Philip Kendall 166.3 49 8 43.6/ 27.9/ 28.5 Antivenin Ross 159.2 98 9 31.3/ 12.7/ 55.9 Ties, Ties, Ties! (+2) Ross 150.0 61 10 31.3/ 25.7/ 43.0 Utility Knife Robert J. Street 137.0 69 11 23.8/ 10.7/ 65.5 Wasps 1.3 Ross 137.0 60 12 23.3/ 12.6/ 64.1 Ties and Wasps Ross 133.9 13 13 23.8/ 14.9/ 61.3 more testing Anonymous 132.8 20 14 20.1/ 8.6/ 71.2 Nematode v1.4b Jonathan Stott 131.6 33 15 22.4/ 20.2/ 57.4 Fork 4/13 Christoph C. Birk 124.5 53 16 18.7/ 29.6/ 51.8 Handy Man Robert J. Street 107.7 27 17 17.6/ 36.7/ 45.7 silken stomp harleyQ2 98.6 9 18 6.9/ 16.8/ 76.3 Impy Stalker II Edgar 96.9 15 19 9.3/ 24.3/ 66.3 silkbombQ2 harleyQ2 94.4 32 20 8.0/ 22.2/ 69.8 Mama's Boy Robert J. Street 93.7 14 21 13.5/ 38.9/ 47.7 b3 harleyQ2 88.0 1 22 13.2/ 38.8/ 47.9 silken train harleyQ2 87.6 2 23 6.7/ 36.4/ 56.9 b harleyQ2 77.1 8 24 19.3/ 7.4/ 9.3 Centurion 2.01 Edgar 67.3 19 25 10.6/ 54.5/ 34.9 b2 harleyQ2 66.6 3 The three leaders of last week died for old age. Kao is new King with a good lead over the others even if it proved unable to stay on the 94 hill. ______________________________________________________________________________ The Hint Bomb dodgers by Ian Oversby Since the advent of P-space it has been possible to write components, specifically to beat certain warrior classes. For example, that small stone which would have been no use before as it loses really badly to papers and imps can be very good against bombers and scanners. One component, which was designed specifically to beat a certain class of warriors is the bomb dodger. The bomb dodger is based on a very simple principle: A bomber usually produces many bombs in a regular pattern and only bombs each location once before entering the core-clear. Therefore, if we scan for the bombs, we are far more likely to find a bomb, before that bomb finds us. Then, we can place a small component over the bomb where we are safe from attack. Here is the dodger from Wind-up Toy v0.4. spt equ (dodge-130) safe DAT.F $0, $0 ... ... ... ... dodge JMN.F dboot, safe ; monitor for one-shots JMZ.F dodge, spt ; linear bomb-scan SUB.AB #2, spt ; 2 seems to be good cloop MOV.I >bptr, >spt DJN.B cloop, #5 SUB.AB #3, spt bptr JMP.B @spt, #gat gat DAT.F #0, #5 bomb DAT.F #0, #5 SPL.B #0, >gat+2667 dloop MOV.I bomb, >gat dlt DJN.F dloop, >gat The location that this is copied over looks like this: Code: DAT DAT SPL MOV DJN Core locations: . X . . . Why this is better than any other pattern, I don't know. I tried placing the SPL and the MOV over the X, all with worse results. Other differences between this and the old dodger are, this does not monitor for one-shots attacks. Then, the bomb that I find is closer to the enemy bomber. We now no longer have a problem with imps, even Rosebud with MOV #2667, *0 style imps seems to succumb. This also scored very well against Thermite, I believe the reason is that the clear is functioning so fast, we hit Thermite before another bomb lands near us. Also, there are only three vulnerable locations for the bomb to land. If the gate is overwritten, we merely start clearing from somewhere else. This dodger, when submitted on its own actually got to number 8! However, that was when there was no paper on the hill. It no longer stands a chance on its own. Finally, here is a complete warrior including the dodger. An earlier version reached number 1 when the hill was a little more receptive to the dodger. I'm not sure how it would do now. The p-space brain is also very susceptible to brainwashing with 0. ;redcode-94 ;name Manfred v0.3 ;author Ian Oversby ;strategy P-Spacer ;strategy v0.1 Imps/Imp gates/... ;strategy v0.2 Stronger gate ;strategy v0.3 Updated components ;kill Manfred ;assert 1 org str plc equ 5 ; Not really dval equ 800 spt equ (last+300) gate1 equ (stone-3) impstep equ 2667 sval equ 1900 ;;------------------------------------------------------------ str LDP.A #plc, pval ;load wins/losses ADD.A pval, check MOD.A #13, check JMN.A boot, check ;permanent switch res LDP.AB #0, #0 sec SNE.AB #0, res ;check for loss lost ADD.A #13, pval SNE.AB #1, res ;check for win won SUB.A #13, pval STP.AB pval, #plc jump JMP.B dboot, <-100 pval DAT.F $0, $0 check DAT.F $7904, $0 ; 13 / 8 ;;---------------------- Dodger , 11 lines ------------------------ for 15 DAT.F $0, $0 rof dboot MOV.I {dptr, spt ; linear bomb-scan SUB.AB #2, spt ; Try 2, 3 and 4 cloop MOV.I >bptr, >spt DJN.B cloop, #5 SUB.AB #3, spt bptr JMP.B @spt, #gat gat DAT.F #0, #5 bomb DAT.F >2667, #5 SPL.B #0, >gat+2667 dloop MOV.I bomb, >gat ; anti-imping dirty core-clear dl DJN.F dloop, >gat ; Thank you Bjoern. ;;---------- Simple v0.2a with 16 process, point spiral ----------- for 20 DAT.F $0, $0 rof mimp SPL.B 1, <-500 ; 16 process 3 point imp SPL.B 1, {-500 ; and decoy-maker :-) SPL.B 1, <-500 SPL.B 1, <-500 SPL.B 2, {-500 JMP.B imp ADD.A #impstep, -1 die DAT.F $0, $0 imp MOV.I #-5, impstep boot MOV.I {sptr, -95 SPL.B #0, >gate1-hit loop MOV.I {0+95, 2-95 ADD.F stone, loop hit DJN.F loop, <1900 last MOV.I gate, }gate1 gate DAT.F gate-gate1+2, >gate1 end Further work: I wanted to alter it so I placed a multi-pass clear over the bomb. This, I hoped, would give me wins against Ompega and Impfinity style imp/stones. So far, I have been unable to get it to work. ______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra myVamp 5.4 by Magnus Paulsson Hi there, thought I should publish myVamp 5.4 now that it has been on (I mean near, that fu..ing Blur and Miro!) top for a while, and when I'm at it, I might as well write a lot of rubbish :-) myVamp 3.7's engine was like this: fang jmp *trap,0 next add.f step,fang mov.i @0,@fang jmz.a next,*fang mov.i fang,*fang mov.x *fang,*fang jmp next It also had a spl/spl/dat coreclear and boot. When I had optimized 3.7 I thought that there wasen't anything more to improve, how wrong I was! After a while I learned a much better coreclear that was a lot better and faster while still as small : ptr dat.f 0,0 dat -20,20 dat -20,20 cclear spl #-20,20 mov.i @bmbp,>ptr mov.i @bmbp,>ptr djn.b -2,{cclear I tried to get this coreclear into myVamp 4.? several times but the result was always worse than 3.7, very anoying.... Then came Stepping Stone by K.Franke which improved myVamp removing the unnessesary "mov.x *fang,*fang" (egg on my face, having a line of code that isn't realy needed!) and now Stepping Stone is the leader (competitive thinking, can't stand that someone else wrote a better vampire, but I will get past SteppingStone in the hall of fame this authum (Praing for it at least)). Then came d-clear (my first favorite on the naming, the second is: the clear that is VERY god against imps and stones and scanners but VERY bad against papers, tctiVgaiasasbVbap?) and that was that thing that got me started with myVamp5.0. I'm sure that everyone playing (? ARE WE PLAYING ?) Corewar has some inferior complex against some of the wariors, my favorite complex is Torcht18 which beats myVamp3.7, this brings me to the second improvement in myVamp5.0, the ability to take a hit of a spl bomb (YES, myVamp now beats Torch!!), this give 4-5 points against my test series (se below)! fang jmp *trap+st,-st check dat.f 0,0 ;******* dat.f 0,0 ptr dat.f 0,100 dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 jmp cclear next add.f step,fang ;The engine from SteppingStone start mov.i @0,>fang jmz.a next,*fang mov.i check ;******* step spl #st,-st-1 ;d-clear cclear mov.i bmb,>ptr djn.f cclear,>ptr Look at the lines marked with *******, normal operation is timed to work like normal, if there is a hit with a spl bomb the timing will be off and the d-clear will be executed. There is some thought put into the engine and clear that makes the d-clear execute if a djn stream overruns the code. The above warior(?) "drops like a stone" against paper, because of the d-clear. This made me put in a spl/spl/dat clear that is only run when myVamp has catched something. This increases the score against papers and lowers it against stones. Then I had some trouble with one-shot scanners and I added a decoy maker since there is a lot of code to boot. I still don't lose to q-scans but my luck might run out ... To test my wariors I've written the ugglies unix script ever (I'll mail it to anyone who wants a realy god laugh) that runs 100 battles against the 17 wariors below. Armory-A5 Impfinityv4g1 SteppingStone Twister Chameleon Jackinthebox T.N.T..tx YogiBear thehistorian Frontwardsv2 NightTrain ThermiteII bluecandle GemOfTheOcean Rosebud Torcht18 stoninc myVamp 5.4 : 154.5 Stepping stone : 145 myVamp3.7 : 133 And finaly after all the talk about how good I am here is myVamp5.4: (If you did understand any of the above congratulations, I reread it and it's not very pretty with a lot of weird () comments). -Magnus Paulsson ************************************************************ ;redcode-94 ;name myVamp5.4 ;author Paulsson ;strategy 5.0, Chasing SteppingStone ;strategy 5.1, Spl/Spl/Dat CoreClear ;strategy 5.2 small changes, + some points... ;strategy 5.3&4 Decoy, small changes ;strategy July, 1996 ;kill myVamp ;for Planar, vamp,scan,coreclear,decoy(?) st equ 912 org decoy trap jmp pit,#0 dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 fang jmp *trap+st,-st ;hit check dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 ptr dat.f 0,100 dat.f -20,0 dat.f 0,0 jmp cclear next add.f step,fang start mov.i @0,>fang ;scan jmz.a next,*fang mov.i check step spl #st,-st-1 cclear mov.i bmb,>ptr djn.f cclear,>ptr dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 ;hit dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,18 bmb dat.f 0,18 for 32 dat.f 0,0 rof ptr2 dat.f 0,20 dat.f 0,20 ;hit dat.f -10,20 dat.f -10,20 cclear2 spl #4000,20 mov.i @2,>ptr2 mov.i @1,>ptr2 djn.b -2,{cclear2 dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 stop2 jmp cclear2-stop,stop offsA equ (start-4000) offsB equ (start-2005) stepD equ 127 decoy mov or Myer Bremer or Anton Marsden From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - ICWS Tournament 07/15/96 Date: 1996/07/15 Message-ID: <199607151229.IAA06711@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/15/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Annual ICWS Tournament CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Tue Jun 4 06:47:05 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 11/ 44 Cannonade Paul Kline 180 91 2 51/ 34/ 16 Miss Carefree Derek Ross 167 23 3 46/ 33/ 20 Giskard v0.5 Ken Mitton 159 64 4 33/ 15/ 52 Nothing Special G. Eadon 151 6 5 33/ 18/ 49 Turkey Beppe Bezzi 149 7 6 47/ 45/ 8 Agony T Stefan Strack 149 92 7 39/ 29/ 32 Pommes-Ketchup V1.35 S. Schroeder 149 4 8 43/ 42/ 14 test88 P.Kline 144 10 9 41/ 41/ 18 Old Tire Swing Randy Graham 142 48 10 39/ 38/ 23 Yop La Boum v2.1 P.E.M & E.C. 140 21 11 40/ 44/ 16 Miss Carry Derek Ross 135 55 12 29/ 24/ 47 One Fat Lady Robert Macrae 134 8 13 39/ 46/ 14 Traper3_t Waldemar Bartolik 132 1 14 39/ 47/ 14 Slaver v1.1i Christoph C. Birk 131 52 15 37/ 46/ 17 Illusion Randy Graham 127 50 16 37/ 49/ 15 DoubleStone v0.7 Christoph C. Birk 125 34 17 30/ 36/ 33 Chris Steven Morrell 124 13 18 38/ 54/ 7 xtc stefan roettger 121 96 19 35/ 52/ 13 Traper3 Waldemar Bartolik 117 3 20 35/ 52/ 13 Traper3 Waldemar Bartolik 117 2 21 32/ 49/ 19 WhirlWind-88 Randy Graham 114 28 From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 07/15/96 Date: 1996/07/15 Message-ID: <199607151229.IAA06723@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/15/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Thu Jul 11 15:21:01 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 33/ 4/ 63 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 162 22 2 36/ 11/ 53 Rosebud Beppe 162 1 3 44/ 39/ 17 Illusion-94/55 Randy Graham 149 4 4 44/ 40/ 17 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 148 52 5 44/ 42/ 14 Memories Beppe Bezzi 146 29 6 39/ 32/ 29 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 146 13 7 42/ 40/ 19 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 144 8 8 40/ 35/ 25 BigBoy Robert Macrae 144 47 9 40/ 37/ 23 Derision M R Bremer 143 39 10 31/ 22/ 47 Variation M-1 Jay Han 139 2 11 43/ 47/ 10 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 139 23 12 40/ 46/ 14 Pagan John K W 135 7 13 35/ 36/ 29 Tornado 2.0 x Beppe Bezzi 134 46 14 37/ 43/ 20 Fire Master Xv1 JS Pulido 132 44 15 28/ 24/ 48 Aleph 1 Jay Han 131 12 16 26/ 24/ 49 Hector 2 Kurt Franke 128 42 17 35/ 47/ 19 Watcher Kurt Franke 123 45 18 35/ 48/ 17 Watcher-h Kurt Franke 122 41 19 36/ 53/ 11 Withershins Thrice P.Kline 120 5 20 27/ 37/ 36 Nice Try M R Bremer 116 51 21 29/ 42/ 29 Riff Steven Morrell 116 3 From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - Multiwarrior Experimental 94 07/15/96 Date: 1996/07/15 Message-ID: <199607151229.IAA06719@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/15/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries MultiWarrior Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Fri Jul 12 18:24:04 EDT 1996 # Name Author Score Age 1 TimeScapeX (0.1) J. Pohjalainen 5729 60 2 This is Test1 Kurt Franke 5729 25 3 Test2 George Eadon 5729 20 4 Paper8 G. Eadon 5729 26 5 jaded M R Bremer 5707 31 6 Fork v0.2-9p/51b Christoph C. Birk 5707 2 7 Paperone Beppe Bezzi 5680 45 8 Shwing! T. H. Davies 5563 56 9 Gluttony J E Long 5490 18 10 Wait A Lot v0.1 Justin Kao 5397 5 11 Saat V2.01 S. Schroeder 5225 14 12 life Nandor Sieben 5203 61 13 Anthill 5 Planar 5130 22 14 Leviathan2 harleyQ2 4983 12 15 Pommes-Ketchup V1.35 S. Schroeder 4929 9 16 lifedwarf Nandor Sieben 4802 37 17 Hidden M.C.Diskett Bullfrog 4703 30 18 Variation M-1 Jay Han 4661 7 19 Leviathan harleyQ2 4421 13 20 Bigring Jonathan Stott 4030 1 21 Piggy 3 Bob Uhl 4022 33 From: iltzu@sci.fi (Ilmari Karonen) Subject: Cannon Fodder Date: 1996/07/15 Message-ID: <15199646.Amiga@sci.fi>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Well, here is Cannon Fodder, my first attempt to create an aggressive paper. This is the unmodified code, even the constants are as bad as they really were. =) Thanks for ideas everybody, I might've even used some but I got totally fed up with papers for a while.. (This'll certainly be the last time I ever use 'verbose'! I go on a vacation while the hill is being tested, and when I come back I get "You have 346 new mails!") ;redcode-b verbose ;name Cannon Fodder ;version 0.1 ;kill Cannon Fodder ;author Ilmari Karonen ;strategy Aggressive paper with crappy constants. :( ;comments Use as many kinds of bombs as possible. ;comments Idea from Toxin.. ;history 0.1 - works? ;date June 19, 1996 ;planar paper ;assert CORESIZE == 8000 step1 equ -1718 step2 equ 2524 step3 equ 2841 hit1 equ (bomb1+4024) hit2 equ (2667) hit3 equ (-2666) hit4 equ (bomb2+1) hit5 equ (-501) org start start spl 1, {500 ; \. spl 1, {1500 ; -\ create 16 spl 1, {2000 ; -/ inline processes spl 1, {2500 ; / split1 spl @0, split1 split2 spl @0, split2 split3 spl @0, split3 mov.i #1, }hit2 mov.i bomb2, }hit3 foo1 mov.i {hit4, #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar A good scanning sequence for a dodger: sne {watch1,{watch1 jmz.f -1,watch2 where 'watch1' is the pointer searching for bombs and 'watch2' is located to detect a forward-bombing attack on your code. Or use jmz.f -1,@watch2 where watch2 is located +N locations away and points back -2N locations. So you can detect forward attacks and backward djn's. Paul Kline pk6811s@acad.drake.edu From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - MultiWarrior 94 07/15/96 Date: 1996/07/15 Message-ID: <199607151229.IAA06715@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/15/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Thu Jul 11 23:58:49 EDT 1996 # Name Author Score Age 1 Son of Imp Steven Morrell 5026 41 2 60% Cotton Wilkinson 5026 24 3 TESTI Maurizio Vittuari 5026 16 4 Evol Cap -- John Wilkinson 5026 7 5 TJ Maurizio Vittuari 5026 17 6 Super Evol Cap John Wilkinson 5026 5 7 Nematode v1.4e Jonathan Stott 5002 1 8 90% Cotton v5c Wilkinson 5000 23 9 Die Hard P.Kline 4990 28 10 sisyphus Kafka 4990 6 11 rhodium v1.4 Martin M. Pedersen 4976 2 From: PK6811S@ACAD.DRAKE.EDU Subject: myVamp Date: 1996/07/15 Message-ID: <01I73RJ6Y28Y00312B@ACAD.DRAKE.EDU>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar One of the happy sidebars to d-clear is the ability to turn a weak anti-paper performer into a very strong one. Just a little stun/vamping and launch d-clear. By leaving half the spl-zero's in place during the first pass the paper never really gets unglued and d-clear can eventually kill it. The main reason vampires disappeared from the 94x hill was Silk replication, which just overwhelmed the mediocre stun-effect of a vampire pit. Now d-clear seems to re-balance the equation. Watch out for post-increment bombing on the a-operand however :-) Blur and Mist also depend on this attribute, combining short scan times with lengthy d-clear. Previous scanners depended on extended scanning or very wide bombs to sufficiently stun the opponent. Against a stone-imp it is very useful to go to d-clear after a short scan pass, you can catch the stone before he gets you, then kill the imps when they come in. The way things stand now, a program using d-clear should commit to it early. Several opponents will be doing that and whoever starts first will have the best chance. If your strategy requires a late start to the clear, you don't need d-clear and a spl-dat wipe may work better. On the other hand, Clisson's dodger seems quite capable of defeating some of the d-clearing programs. After all, his core-clear is also 100% - but backward, so whoever starts first will get the win :-) Just don't use it against an imp :-( Paul Kline pk6811s@acad.drake.edu From: jklewis@ren.us.itd.umich.edu (John K. Lewis) Subject: Re: wy hill temporarily down Date: 1996/07/16 Message-ID: <4sgqps$rsk@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>#1/1 references: <4sgonr$ras@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar I believe the hill is back up. John K. Lewis From: Justin Kao <102741.2022@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Yet 4b Date: 1996/07/16 Message-ID: <960716023915_102741.2022_GHT113-1@CompuServe.COM> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar I'm stuck on the beginner's hill! The top of the hill though :-> Well anyway, this is Yet 4b. Does mixing up the qscans like I did help any? It's more random this way, instead of proceeding from top to bottom. I've also tried Anders qscan(in Yet 4c) but it didn't do as well, maybe because it covers less places? The djn.a switches the clear to dats after about 2 spl passes and allows 1s in b, slowing down a lot of warriors. Yet does even or worse against all the warriors on the 94 hill except for one bomb dodger...any help will be very much appreciated. :-) ;redcode-94b ;name Yet 4b ;author Justin Kao ;strategy This is Yet Another core clear w/quickscan ;assert CORESIZE == 8000 ;put the pointers a bit farther away to hide in the spots between? ;#:0123456789012345678901234567890 ;4:x x x x x x x x ;5:x x x x x x x ;me:xx xxxxx ;a bit big for avoiding bombs now.... sep equ 17 bootdist equ 6000 org scan ;begin quick scan space equ (CORESIZE/81) ; Step when scanning for code. qbomb equ 6 ; Step when bombing. scan sne.X space*1+bottom, space*3+bottom seq.X space*2+bottom, space*4+bottom mov #space*1+bottom-found, found sne.X space*45+bottom, space*47+bottom seq.X space*46+bottom, space*48+bottom mov #space*45+bottom-found, found sne.X space*65+bottom, space*67+bottom seq.X space*66+bottom, space*68+bottom mov #space*65+bottom-found, found jmn.B found, found ; Get out early if found something. sne.X space*13+bottom, space*15+bottom seq.X space*14+bottom, space*16+bottom mov #space*13+bottom-found, found sne.X space*57+bottom, space*59+bottom seq.X space*58+bottom, space*60+bottom mov #space*57+bottom-found, found sne.X space*69+bottom, space*71+bottom seq.X space*70+bottom, space*72+bottom mov #space*69+bottom-found, found jmn.B found, found ; Get out early if found something. sne.X space*5+bottom, space*7+bottom seq.X space*6+bottom, space*8+bottom mov #space*5+bottom-found, found sne.X space*25+bottom, space*27+bottom seq.X space*26+bottom, space*28+bottom mov #space*25+bottom-found, found sne.X space*73+bottom, space*75+bottom seq.X space*74+bottom, space*76+bottom mov #space*73+bottom-found, found jmn.B found, found ; Get out early if found something. sne.X space*17+bottom, space*19+bottom seq.X space*18+bottom, space*20+bottom mov #space*17+bottom-found, found sne.X space*37+bottom, space*39+bottom seq.X space*38+bottom, space*40+bottom mov #space*37+bottom-found, found sne.X space*77+bottom, space*79+bottom seq.X space*78+bottom, space*80+bottom mov #space*77+bottom-found, found jmn.B found, found ; Get out early if found something. sne.X space*9+bottom, space*11+bottom seq.X space*10+bottom, space*12+bottom mov #space*9+bottom-found, found sne.X space*29+bottom, space*31+bottom seq.X space*30+bottom, space*32+bottom mov #space*29+bottom-found, found sne.X space*49+bottom, space*51+bottom seq.X space*50+bottom, space*52+bottom mov #space*49+bottom-found, found jmn.B found, found ; Get out early if found something. sne.X space*21+bottom, space*23+bottom seq.X space*22+bottom, space*24+bottom mov #space*21+bottom-found, found sne.X space*41+bottom, space*43+bottom seq.X space*42+bottom, space*44+bottom mov #space*41+bottom-found, found sne.X space*61+bottom, space*63+bottom seq.X space*62+bottom, space*64+bottom mov #space*61+bottom-found, found jmn.B found, found ; Get out early if found something. sne.X space*33+bottom, space*35+bottom seq.X space*34+bottom, space*36+bottom mov #space*33+bottom-found, found sne.X space*53+bottom, space*55+bottom seq.X space*54+bottom, space*56+bottom mov #space*53+bottom-found, found jmn.B found, found ; Quick-bomb if found something. jmp warrior ; Execute regular code, because nothing found. add #space, found found jmz.F -1, 0 ; Goto the location where we found something. mov.B found, backwd ; Save this value for use in backward bomb. forward mov.I b1, >found mov.I b2, @found add #(qbomb-1), found jmn.F forward, @found sub #(2*qbomb), backwd ; Don't re-bomb over forward-scan. backwd mov.I b2, 0 mov.I b1, -4-sep-1 ;== djn.a -2, >djnptr ;qscan bombs b1 spl #2, 0 b2 mov -1, }-1 bottom end Justin Kao From: PK6811S@ACAD.DRAKE.EDU Subject: Re: Indirect Jumps Date: 1996/07/17 Message-ID: <01I76AY7K0MG002LOR@ACAD.DRAKE.EDU>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Criss wrote: >Years ago I programed some Core-Warriors. > >Standard '86 or '88 can't remember. I used inderect jumps >to 'catch' the other program. > >I 'poked' into the other program something like: > >jmp @3 >jmp @2 >jmp @1 >dat -3128 > >the 'DAT' pointed to some pit of mine. > >A direct jump was not possible back that days, since you couldn't >mix the A and B fields, so calculating the right jump address was >sort of tricky. Check out this '88 vampire to see how to use direct jumping: ;redcode verbose ;name Sucker 3 ;kill Sucker ;author Stefan Strack ;strategy Self-splitting, pattern-bombing vampire ;strategy 2: with confusion ;strategy 3: merger of Union and Sucker: much denser, mod-2 bomb-pattern ;strategy Submitted: @date@ mark equ start-1-4+10+44+350+44 ;development history mess jump jmp clear-mark,mark start spl 0 loop sub clear,jump ;'jump' will land here after 12,000 cycles mov jump,@jump djn loop,<4003 ;mutagenize core/confuse scanners clear mov 34,<-34 ;entry for captured processes spl clear jmp clear end start -------------------------------------------- >OK my problem now. I downloaded PMARS (MSDOS) version 0.8. > >When I compile my old version the above sequence doesn't work the way it >used to work. The jump instructions 'JUMP' to the DAT instruction >rather then to the address it is pointing to. Why is that? >I checked the papers (instruction) I downloaded as well and in my >opinion the above SHOULD work allright. > >I just did some other testing, a program like > >------------------------------------------------------------- >mov #1,1 >jmp @this_is_changing >dat -2 >------------------------------------------------------------- > >would have been an infinite loop. Under any proper implementation this would never have worked, and the '94 standard is 100% backward compatible. Your code actually looks like this: mov #1,1 jmp @this_is_changing,0 dat 0,-2 The #1 gets moved to the b-field of the jmp under any of the standards, and the jmp has always jumped to the address pointed to by it's a-operand. We're not getting any younger Criss, and they say memory is the first to go :-) Welcome back to CoreWars. Paul Kline pk6811s@acad.drake.edu From: Beppe Bezzi Subject: Re: Indirect Jumps Date: 1996/07/17 Message-ID: #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar PK6811S@acad.drake.edu wrote: >Criss wrote: ... > >Check out this '88 vampire to see how to use direct jumping: > >;redcode verbose >;name Sucker 3 ... > >mark equ start-1-4+10+44+350+44 ;development history mess > ... >Under any proper implementation this would never have worked, and the '94 >standard is 100% backward compatible. Your code actually looks like this: > That's not exact. As Planar pointed out we have to add () around old equ to make old warriors work properly, and Sucker 3 is an example of 88 warrior not working under pmars08 > >Paul Kline >pk6811s@acad.drake.edu > -Beppe Bezzi From: ngreen@plains.nodak.edu (Nathan D Green) Subject: Re: Indirect Jumps! Date: 1996/07/17 Message-ID: <4sjidu$1rj@daily-planet.nodak.edu>#1/1 references: <4shscl$9nm@newsbf02.news.aol.com> <4siva0$pi6@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Bjoern Guenzel (guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de) wrote: : chrissalo@aol.com (Chrissalo) wrote: [problem with old warrior and new standard.] : >I 'poked' into the other program something like: : >jmp @3 : >jmp @2 : >jmp @1 : >dat -3128 : '@' is b-field indirect, you have dat -3128,0, therefore the jump goes to the : dat. : Use '*' instead of '@', that is a-field indirect, or put the value in the : b-field of the dat. : Perhaps in the old standard dat -3128 was compiled to dat 0,-3128? The current standard (and pmars 0.8) compiles it to dat #0,$-3128. From icws94.0202: 0256 final value. If there is only one operand associated with a DAT 0257 instruction, this operand is assembled into the B-mode and B-address 0258 fields, while #0 is assembled into the A-mode and A-address fields. : >It just doesn't work anymore :-(. : >Any clue why it doesn't work anymore? It seems to work fine for me... Script started on Wed Jul 17 14:53:34 1996 $ cat x.red jmp @3 jmp @2 jmp @1 dat -3128 $ pmars x.red -e Warning: Missing ';assert'. Warrior may not work with the current setting Source: filename 'x.red' Number of warnings: 1 Program "Unknown" (length 4) by "Anonymous" ORG START START JMP.B @ 3, $ 0 JMP.B @ 2, $ 0 JMP.B @ 1, $ 0 DAT.F # 0, $ -3128 00000 JMP.B @ 3, $ 0 (cdb) s 04875 (cdb) s Unknown by Anonymous scores 0 $ exit Script done on Wed Jul 17 14:54:02 1996 The jmp instruction jumps -3128 from the dat instruction at location 3. 3 + (-3128) + 8000 = 4875. -- Nathan Green (ngreen@plains.nodak.edu) GCS d? s: a21.6>21.7 C+++ UV P>+ L++>+++ E W N++ o++ K+ w---(--) !O M- V PS PE Y PGP- t+ 5 X R tv-(--) b++>+++ DI++>+++ D+ G+>++++ e(*)>+ h!>++ !r !y+ (Version 3.12) From: guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: hill features? Date: 1996/07/17 Message-ID: <4sj1op$t20@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Hello! My next vacation is getting closer, and after that I willl move and lose my e-mail address. Not that I really expect my warriors would stay on the hill for that long... Anyway, I wonder how far the 'change attributes' features on the pizza hills have come? It would be really nice to have them. Thank's for all the work! Bjoern From: guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: Re: Indirect Jumps! Date: 1996/07/17 Message-ID: <4siva0$pi6@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 references: <4shscl$9nm@newsbf02.news.aol.com> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar chrissalo@aol.com (Chrissalo) wrote: >Hi! >New to Core 94 standard! >Years ago I programed some Core-Warriors. >Standard '86 or '88 can't remember. I used inderect jumps >to 'catch' the other program. >I 'poked' into the other program something like: >jmp @3 >jmp @2 >jmp @1 >dat -3128 '@' is b-field indirect, you have dat -3128,0, therefore the jump goes to the dat. Use '*' instead of '@', that is a-field indirect, or put the value in the b-field of the dat. Perhaps in the old standard dat -3128 was compiled to dat 0,-3128? >It just doesn't work anymore :-(. >Any clue why it doesn't work anymore? only the a-field/b-field problem. >Chris Bjoern From: jklewis@ren.us.itd.umich.edu (John K. Lewis) Subject: Re: Indirect Jumps! Date: 1996/07/17 Message-ID: <4sipsg$h7b@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>#1/1 references: <4shscl$9nm@newsbf02.news.aol.com> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Subject: Re: Indirect Jumps! Newsgroups: rec.games.corewar References: <4shscl$9nm@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Distribution: Lines: 96 X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0] Subject: Re: Indirect Jumps! Newsgroups: rec.games.corewar References: <4shscl$9nm@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Distribution: Lines: 89 X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0] Subject: Re: Indirect Jumps! Newsgroups: rec.games.corewar References: <4shscl$9nm@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Distribution: Lines: 82 X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0] Chrissalo (chrissalo@aol.com) wrote: : jmp @3 : jmp @2 : jmp @1 : dat -3128 : : the 'DAT' pointed to some pit of mine. Change either of the following: jmp @3 jmp *3 jmp @2 jmp *2 jmp @1 jmp *1 dat 0,-3128 dat -3128 The dat now has an effective a and b field. In your previous example the jmp's were looking into the b field of the dat, which was empty (0). The solution is to either point to a significant b field (column one) or point to the a field (column two). : ------------------------------------------------------------- : goto_next_instruction equ 1 : start : mov.AB #goto_next_instruction ,poke_to : poke_to jmp.B @is_not_changing ,@this_is_changing : dat.F is_not_relevant ,start : ------------------------------------------------------------- mov.A #1,1 jmp @this number now changes dat this number is important now. The addressing mode AB moves the content of the A field to the target B field. The addressing mode A moves the content of the A field to the target A field. : It just doesn't work anymore :-(. : Chris John K. Lewis :-) It works, just need to define the modes and modifiers with care til in becomes second nature. From: jdk@subzero.us.itd.umich.edu (John Kintz) Subject: test Date: 1996/07/17 Message-ID: <4sippa$h5j@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Just a test for a user. -- [ john kintz ][ umce support ][ jr. news admin ][ jdk@umich.edu ] From: chrissalo@aol.com (Chrissalo) Subject: Indirect Jumps! Date: 1996/07/17 Message-ID: <4shscl$9nm@newsbf02.news.aol.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Hi! New to Core 94 standard! Years ago I programed some Core-Warriors. Standard '86 or '88 can't remember. I used inderect jumps to 'catch' the other program. I 'poked' into the other program something like: jmp @3 jmp @2 jmp @1 dat -3128 the 'DAT' pointed to some pit of mine. A direct jump was not possible back that days, since you couldn't mix the A and B fields, so calculating the right jump address was sort of tricky. OK my problem now. I downloaded PMARS (MSDOS) version 0.8. When I compile my old version the above sequence doesn't work the way it used to work. The jump instructions 'JUMP' to the DAT instruction rather then to the address it is pointing to. Why is that? I checked the papers (instruction) I downloaded as well and in my opinion the above SHOULD work allright. I just did some other testing, a program like ------------------------------------------------------------- mov #1,1 jmp @this_is_changing dat -2 ------------------------------------------------------------- would have been an infinite loop. '94 it probably would have to be written like: ------------------------------------------------------------- goto_next_instruction equ 1 start mov.AB #goto_next_instruction ,poke_to poke_to jmp.B @is_not_changing ,@this_is_changing dat.F is_not_relevant ,start ------------------------------------------------------------- It just doesn't work anymore :-(. Any clue why it doesn't work anymore? Chris From: sd@ecst.csuchico.edu (Lord Kymbote) Subject: Pizza Hills closed again Date: 1996/07/18 Message-ID: <4sm8sd$pjo@charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar The pizza hills will be closed this weekend from friday july 19th at 12:00 noon PDT until sometime around sunday july 21st at 18:00 PDT. All relevant machines will be down, including the web server and mail server. We are sorry for the inconvenience, but you should notice improved performance after sunday night. Thank you for your patience. Thos -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\/~~\ /~~~\/\ / \ \ / /~\ /~~~~~YY~~~\\ /~~ Thomas "Thos" Davies V \/\ /\ V / V |\/\/| V\ / sd@ecst.csuchico.edu V \ / | / | V Internet Pizza Server \/ | /\ | Member C.W.M. Corewar King of the Hill information |/oo\| CAVE ON Since 1987 http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth/ |/\| From: howard@aimla.com (Howard Soroka) Subject: History of Multi-Player Gaming Date: 1996/07/18 Message-ID: #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc (Forgive me if you've seen an earlier version of this message, I think my first attempt failed but I'm not sure...) Netizens: I am trying to establish some facts about the origins of multi-player games on computers. I need to know the names of specific games which meet a simple set of criteria (below), and which existed prior to the early 1980's. The earlier, the better, but anything up to 1984 might be appropriate. The games need not be commercial products, though they can be. Anything created at a research facility (educational or otherwise) or anywhere else (on planet Earth), is fine. The criteria are: The game must have the capability of involving at least two players (though it's fine if it has a single-user version as well). Each player must have his/her own form of input device(s), such as keyboard, joystick, mouse, or buttons. Each player must have his/her own form of video display. For purposes of the discussion, a true graphics display (bitmapped or vector) is preferable to an alphanumeric terminal, but even games using old-fashioned dumb ASCII terminals are acceptable, especially if the terminal is used to simulate graphic imagery (no matter how simplistic) using plain characters. If possible, I would like to know: Who created it, where, and when (actual names, if possible). What computing environment it ran on (hardware, software). How to get in touch with the creator(s). Any other pertinent information you might know would be very much appreciated! If you can respond to this request, feel free to post it to Usenet, but please send your responses directly to me as well by return email. I work for a game publishing company, and we need this information for an important current project. If someone out there comes up with some good solid information about early multi-player gaming, I'll bet I could pry loose a few copies of good current product to send out as rewards ;-). Many thanks, Howard Soroka From: guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: d-clear '2', only for the archive... Date: 1996/07/18 Message-ID: <4sjr8f$o5q@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar This is only for Planars archive, the principle is exactly the same as d-clear. It only has a better shape against bombers (at least I think so). THerefore it should score a bit better in the benchmarks, and that's the only reason I post it... Hm, perhaps it could do a decrement-protection? I wonder if it would be better to have no '>' in the spl? Perhaps I should do some more tests... Bjoern ;redcode-94 ;name d-clear II ;author bjoern guenzel ;strategy d-clear ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;release 30.5.96 ;kill d-clear shift equ -3000 ptr dat 0,#-shift+1003 dat 0,0 dat 0,0 spl #0,>ptr loop mov.i bomb,>ptr djn.f loop,>ptr dat 0,0 dat 0,0 bomb dat >1,>bomb-ptr+2 bsource dat 0,-3 boot mov.i }ptr,>booptr mov.i }ptr,>booptr for 6 mov.i {bsource,{booptr rof booptr spl bsource+shift,ptr+shift mov.f #0,-1 dat >2000,>2500 z for (MAXLENGTH-CURLINE)/2 spl #z*100,#z*101 stp.a >0,#1 rof end boot From: guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: justice 2 Date: 1996/07/18 Message-ID: <4sjr8d$o5q@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Here is justice 2, probably my best bomber so far. It is defenseless against paper and probably some other things, though, and doesn't make the hill on it's own these days :-( It is derived from the self-justice engine, the differences are a mod 4 bombing pattern instead of mod 5, a torch-style djn-stream protection instead of a djn-stream, a d-clear, and also the switch to the clear is more stable than in self-justice. Bjoern ;redcode-94 ;name justice 2 ;author bjoern guenzel ;strategy bomber ;strategy v2: test new clear ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;kill justice jstep equ 3364 jshift equ -1234 jcptr dat >jstart,#jbomb+2 jcb dat <-2668,#jbomb+2-jcptr dat 0,0 jstart spl #0,>jcptr-2 jptr mov.i jbomb,*(jhit+3*jstep) mov.i jbomb,@jptr ;this bomb hits jhit add.ab #2*jstep,jptr jmz.b jptr,#0 mov.i jcb,>jcptr djn.f -1,>jcptr jbsource dat 0,0 jsplit spl #0,<0 for 3 stp.ab >0,#0 rof jbomb mov.i jstep,1 jboot mov.i jsplit,@jbooptr ;move spl to jhit+jstep mov.i jbomb,*jbbooptr for 10 mov.i {jbsource,{jbooptr rof jbooptr spl *jbsource+jshift,jhit+jstep+jshift mov.f 0,jbooptr jbbooptr div.f #jbomb+jshift,#0 dat 0,0 z for (MAXLENGTH-CURLINE)/2 spl #z*102,#z*101 stp >0,#1 rof end jboot From: guenzel@extern.lrz-muenchen.de (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: Re: Core Warrior 36 Date: 1996/07/19 Message-ID: <4so003$don@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 references: <4rc6rb$nd6@mozo.cc.purdue.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >The Mirage/Blur Scanner Series >by Anton Marsden >Mirage 1.5 was my first successful warrior. It was a 33% scanner with >continuous 33% carpet in the scanning loop. It did quite well against >imp-type warriors and papers but was thrashed by bombers. I wrote several >similar warriors similar to Mirage 1.5 and didn't want to publish them >immediately - I was still experimenting. But now I'm quite happy with my >latest version and have decided to release them all now, including the Hill >version. I haven't included the booting code and decoy but they're nothing >special. If there's enough demand for the full versions I'll post them in the >newsgroup at a later date. Hello! Yes, I would appreciate the versions with boot and decoy! Bjoern From: vlouie@acs.ryerson.ca (Vincent Louie - AERE/F92) Subject: Re: History of Multi-Player Gaming Date: 1996/07/19 Message-ID: <4soamv$ghr@ns2.ryerson.ca>#1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc Howard Soroka (howard@aimla.com) wrote: : If you can respond to this request, feel free to post it to Usenet, but : please send your responses directly to me as well by return email. Okay...you click on the Net Search icon in Netscape, and in the little box that says search topic, you enter (without the quotes) "history netrek", "history mud", "history bolo", "history xtrek", "history moo", "history empire internet" etc. Magellan seems to suck, but Infoseek works well. Netrek: -- http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~netrek/history/History.html gives a pretty good description. It doesn't go into how Steve Sheldon is such a supergenius for figuring out that RSA keys were not randomly generated, but otherwise, it's pretty informative. MUD: -- http://www.iscs.nus.sg/~limyeech/interest/mudorigin.html and -- http://www.iscs.nus.sg/~limyeech/interest/mudhist.html look pretty informative too. No pictures either, so it's superfast (wheee) --- Vincent Louie From: "Andrew D. Janssen" Subject: Re: Sony PlayStation **#1** 1.25 million Units sold, Sega Saturn distant #2 with only .75 million units sold Date: 1996/07/20 Message-ID: <31F1C91F.192F@primenet.com>#1/1 references: <4spd29$nge@news.snfc21.pacbell.net> newsgroups: rec.games.computer.quake.playing,rec.games.computer.quake.servers,rec.games.computer.stars,rec.games.computer.ultima-dragons,rec.games.computer.xpilot,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.diplomacy,rec.games.empire This is completely irrelevant to the subject of this group. Read the d*mn FAQ! Rick Jonathan Merin wrote: > > Sony PlayStation **#1** 1.25 million Units sold, Sega Saturn distant #2 > with only .75 million units sold > > Contrary to the beliefs of the mis-informed, Sega will have to postpone > its plans for "World Domination" for some time. Read the following > information taken from the San Jose Mercury Newspaper: > > *************************************************************************> > Source: San Jose Mercury News, Business Section, Tuesday July 16th 1996 > > "Sega of America Inc. in Redwood City, after failing to entice its > adolescent audience into buying the Sega Saturn game system, is getting a > new management team that includes a boss from the company's headquarters > in Japan." > > "The 32-bit Sega Saturn has fallen far behind Sony's playstation. For the > fiscal year ended in March, Sega reported a loss of $170 million..." > > "The Company (Sega) recently formed a separate subsidiary in Redwood City > called Sega Entertainment to focus on expanding its franchise into > personal computer games." > > Lee Isgur, a video game industry analyst with investment firm Jeffries & > Co., estimates that Sony has sold about 1.25 million PlayStations in the > United States since their introduction last year, compared with Sega's > sales of about 750,000 Saturns. > > "Sega is a very poor No. 2 relative to Sony and they have to be worried > that Nintendo will relegate them to No. 3", Lee Isgur. > > *************************************************************************> > My commentary: > > Tom Kalinske, Sega of America's president, is leaving. To join the > convicted felon Michael Milken, who ripped off people in a junk bond scam > that landed his but in jail on a felony conviction, to form Education > Technologies. > > Good riddence Mr. Kalinske, SEGA's way better off without him!!! Have fun > selling investments, with the other old men on Wall Street. > > You have to wonder, if SEGA gets hooked creating games for the PC, what's > gonna happen to the Saturn. While PC's are all upwardly compatible and > have been around for decades, why should SEGA continue to support a single > use, and probably disposable, machine like the Sega Saturn? > > Could this be the death knell for the Saturn? > > My most sincere reccomendation is that SEGA not spread its resources thin > across several platforms. But rather put all its resources into > supporting the hard working people who buy their latest systems (at a > premium), with top-quality hardware and top-quality games. > > As a whole Sony is many times larger than SEGA, pouring billions into the > video game industry is just a drop in the bucket for SONY. > > SEGA's could let a lot of people down if they are not totally committed > supporting their own systems. > > Sincerely > Rick Merin From: rscott@kalypso.cybercom.net (Ralph Scott) Subject: Rars Races results for 7-14 Date: 1996/07/20 Message-ID: <4srtq3$20l@kalypso.cybercom.net> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar,comp.ai.games,comp.programming.contests,rec.games.programmer,sci.engr.mech,sci.engr.control,sci.engr,rec.autos.simulators,comp.robotics.misc,comp.programming,comp.ai.neural-nets,comp.ai.fuzzy,comp.ai.genetic RARS Bi-weekly Race Report & News About Upcoming Races July 14, 1996 RARS is the Robot Auto Racing Simulation, a competition for programmers and an on-going challenge for practicioners of Artificial Intelligence and real-time adaptive optimal control. It consists of a simulation of the physics of cars racing on a track, a graphic display of the race, and a separate control program (robot "driver") for each car. All RARS software and activities are free and open to the public. It runs on DOS, Windows, OS/2, UNIX, Linux, and several other platforms. For more information e-mail to mindwarp@cftnet.com or rscott@cybercom.net. Contents Submissions Todays Races Preliminary lap times Race Report Authors Point Standings Upcoming Races Comments -------------------------------------------------------------------- Submissions Please! Any people who want to submit for the first time please give yourselves more than a day or two (I made that mistake when I started). Submissions are to be SOURCE CODE only (unless in the unlikely event you use Borland C++ for OS/2). Buenos.trk---------------------------------------------------------- 33 3570.00 2200.00 75.00 1000 1800.80 1500.00 2625.00 1968.50 1220.00 1969.00 750.00 2000.00 1400.00 0.10 0 2049.5 -105.234302 0.986111028 -176.307379 1.59861463 0 304.819000 -181.437050 0.70859900 0 673.903000 163.555156 2.81361366 0 582.170000 265.479092 1.53588974 -331.137753 0.56449274 0 250.853000 -225.425725 3.14367766 0 1338.12900 -504.936235 1.37863500 0 594.241000 -106.134760 3.18518665 0 222.310000 274.153801 0.523598776 -170.685215 0.604048776 0 158.708000 181.735976 1.459300 0 262.231000 181.431653 2.13478965 0 986.653000 118.578162 2.07454966 0 94.788000 -59.4199639 1.68704066 0 203.728000 -229.070094 0.61407200 0 932 -153.081285 2.82249965 0 480.922000 491.464079 0.468051 Buenos Aries by RScott@cybercom.net -------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is a repeat of the announcement about todays races: July 14th, S2 and Stef2 Midget Division Races, 30 laps Alternate: Silverstone One of the top two races will be 'rained out' and will be replaced by Silverstone (which is being run that day). I will flip a coin that day to figure out which race is to be 'rained out'. No. of races Depends on number drivers (minimum 6) 2 preliminary (half lap count) 2 novice(bottom half of preliminarys) 2 expert(top half of preliminarys) Laps: 30 each race(15 for preliminary) Software version: 0.64 Surface Type: 1 no practice, random starting order. This is a modified .64 where all cars must cross the finish line once before the race is over. The drivers will be uploaded to ftp.ijs.com to a file called driv0714.zip in 1-3 days. All drivers will be there. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Preliminary lap times SilverStone Car Laps Avg MPH Damage Fuel Notes ------------------------------------------------------------- RS 80.32 OG 76.47 S2 Car Laps Avg MPH Damage Fuel Notes ------------------------------------------------------------- RS 7 62.14 OG 59.77 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Race Reports mv0714r1.zip 2 cars for 30 laps. The track was silver2.trk. The drivers were: OG, and RS. The initial RVG seed was 42028. results of race 1: starting positions: RS, and OG. 1 RS avg spd 80.51 30 laps 2293 damage 12 fuel 10 pts accum 2 OG avg spd 76.25 29 laps 2793 damage 145 fuel 6 pts accum mv0714r2.zip 2 cars for 30 laps. The track was s2.trk. The drivers were: OG, and RS. The initial RVG seed was 62886. results of race 1: starting positions: OG, and RS. 1 RS avg spd 62.27 30 laps 438 damage 52 fuel 10 pts accum 2 OG avg spd 59.89 29 laps 755 damage 41 fuel 6 pts accum ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Points for Day Pr eli mi na ry Todays Seasons Driver Race 1, 2 Total Novice Expert Total Total(Nov, Exp) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OG 6, 6 12 na na 10N 10,0 Ra 10,10 20 na na 10E 0,10 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the point standings for the Midget Division. (last 5 outings) Randy Saint 0,10 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 (U.S.A) Oscar Gustafsson 10, 0 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 (U.S.A) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the RARS address book. Randy & Marianne Saint Oscar Gustafsson Upcoming RARS Race Meets RACING SCHEDULE (all races track surface 1) July 28th, R.A. and Adelaid2 Unlimited Division Races, 80 laps Alternate: Hockenheim Aug 11th, S2 and Stef2 Midget Division Races, 30 laps No. of races Depends on number drivers (minimum 6) 2 preliminary (half lap count) 2 novice(bottom half of preliminarys) 2 expert(top half of preliminarys) Alternate: Hungary One of the top two races will be 'rained out' and will be replaced by Silverstone (which is being run that day). I will flip a coin that day to figure out which race is to be 'rained out'. TENTATIVE RACING SCHEDULE (all races track surface 1) Aug 25th, R.A. and Adelaid2 Unlimited Division Races, 80 laps Alternate: Spa Alternates: Spt 8 Monza-76 Spt 22 Estoril Oct 13 Suzuka -------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments from Ralph Small turnout. Probably my fault. You MUST resubmit your car for the season. After that I'll resubmit it myself. I will give this division ample time to build up. Enclosed is my rendition of Buenos Ares. Get used to it. It will replace Adelaid2 within a month or so. Someone please post a new copy to the list with the instruments properly placed. ***TENTATIVE*** I will be restarting the Unlimited division soon. You will have to send me a letter or a car stating your intentions on continuing to race. In addition, you must state the division you wish to compete in, novice or expert. I will no longer promote cars automatically. If you want to stay in novice, fine. If you think you're ready for expert, fine. Once you declare your status as an expert, you cannot go back to novice. In addition, EXPERT cars will be made public after they've aged 2 races. Please read the cars header as to whether you can use the authors ideas. Hopefully, there will be some prestige to being expert as there are plenty of negatives to go with it. Comments? Anybody NOT like it? ***TENTATIVE*** Good luck and see you in two weeks. From: rscott@kalypso.cybercom.net (Ralph Scott) Subject: Rars Race results for 7-14 Date: 1996/07/20 Message-ID: <4srtjp$1rh@kalypso.cybercom.net> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar RARS Bi-weekly Race Report & News About Upcoming Races July 14, 1996 RARS is the Robot Auto Racing Simulation, a competition for programmers and an on-going challenge for practicioners of Artificial Intelligence and real-time adaptive optimal control. It consists of a simulation of the physics of cars racing on a track, a graphic display of the race, and a separate control program (robot "driver") for each car. All RARS software and activities are free and open to the public. It runs on DOS, Windows, OS/2, UNIX, Linux, and several other platforms. For more information e-mail to mindwarp@cftnet.com or rscott@cybercom.net. Contents Submissions Todays Races Preliminary lap times Race Report Authors Point Standings Upcoming Races Comments -------------------------------------------------------------------- Submissions Please! Any people who want to submit for the first time please give yourselves more than a day or two (I made that mistake when I started). Submissions are to be SOURCE CODE only (unless in the unlikely event you use Borland C++ for OS/2). Buenos.trk---------------------------------------------------------- 33 3570.00 2200.00 75.00 1000 1800.80 1500.00 2625.00 1968.50 1220.00 1969.00 750.00 2000.00 1400.00 0.10 0 2049.5 -105.234302 0.986111028 -176.307379 1.59861463 0 304.819000 -181.437050 0.70859900 0 673.903000 163.555156 2.81361366 0 582.170000 265.479092 1.53588974 -331.137753 0.56449274 0 250.853000 -225.425725 3.14367766 0 1338.12900 -504.936235 1.37863500 0 594.241000 -106.134760 3.18518665 0 222.310000 274.153801 0.523598776 -170.685215 0.604048776 0 158.708000 181.735976 1.459300 0 262.231000 181.431653 2.13478965 0 986.653000 118.578162 2.07454966 0 94.788000 -59.4199639 1.68704066 0 203.728000 -229.070094 0.61407200 0 932 -153.081285 2.82249965 0 480.922000 491.464079 0.468051 Buenos Aries by RScott@cybercom.net -------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is a repeat of the announcement about todays races: July 14th, S2 and Stef2 Midget Division Races, 30 laps Alternate: Silverstone One of the top two races will be 'rained out' and will be replaced by Silverstone (which is being run that day). I will flip a coin that day to figure out which race is to be 'rained out'. No. of races Depends on number drivers (minimum 6) 2 preliminary (half lap count) 2 novice(bottom half of preliminarys) 2 expert(top half of preliminarys) Laps: 30 each race(15 for preliminary) Software version: 0.64 Surface Type: 1 no practice, random starting order. This is a modified .64 where all cars must cross the finish line once before the race is over. The drivers will be uploaded to ftp.ijs.com to a file called driv0714.zip in 1-3 days. All drivers will be there. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Preliminary lap times SilverStone Car Laps Avg MPH Damage Fuel Notes ------------------------------------------------------------- RS 80.32 OG 76.47 S2 Car Laps Avg MPH Damage Fuel Notes ------------------------------------------------------------- RS 7 62.14 OG 59.77 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Race Reports mv0714r1.zip 2 cars for 30 laps. The track was silver2.trk. The drivers were: OG, and RS. The initial RVG seed was 42028. results of race 1: starting positions: RS, and OG. 1 RS avg spd 80.51 30 laps 2293 damage 12 fuel 10 pts accum 2 OG avg spd 76.25 29 laps 2793 damage 145 fuel 6 pts accum mv0714r2.zip 2 cars for 30 laps. The track was s2.trk. The drivers were: OG, and RS. The initial RVG seed was 62886. results of race 1: starting positions: OG, and RS. 1 RS avg spd 62.27 30 laps 438 damage 52 fuel 10 pts accum 2 OG avg spd 59.89 29 laps 755 damage 41 fuel 6 pts accum ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Points for Day Pr eli mi na ry Todays Seasons Driver Race 1, 2 Total Novice Expert Total Total(Nov, Exp) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OG 6, 6 12 na na 10N 10,0 Ra 10,10 20 na na 10E 0,10 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the point standings for the Midget Division. (last 5 outings) Randy Saint 0,10 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 (U.S.A) Oscar Gustafsson 10, 0 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 (U.S.A) -------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the RARS address book. Randy & Marianne Saint Oscar Gustafsson Upcoming RARS Race Meets RACING SCHEDULE (all races track surface 1) July 28th, R.A. and Adelaid2 Unlimited Division Races, 80 laps Alternate: Hockenheim Aug 11th, S2 and Stef2 Midget Division Races, 30 laps No. of races Depends on number drivers (minimum 6) 2 preliminary (half lap count) 2 novice(bottom half of preliminarys) 2 expert(top half of preliminarys) Alternate: Hungary One of the top two races will be 'rained out' and will be replaced by Silverstone (which is being run that day). I will flip a coin that day to figure out which race is to be 'rained out'. TENTATIVE RACING SCHEDULE (all races track surface 1) Aug 25th, R.A. and Adelaid2 Unlimited Division Races, 80 laps Alternate: Spa Alternates: Spt 8 Monza-76 Spt 22 Estoril Oct 13 Suzuka -------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments from Ralph Small turnout. Probably my fault. You MUST resubmit your car for the season. After that I'll resubmit it myself. I will give this division ample time to build up. Enclosed is my rendition of Buenos Ares. Get used to it. It will replace Adelaid2 within a month or so. Someone please post a new copy to the list with the instruments properly placed. ***TENTATIVE*** I will be restarting the Unlimited division soon. You will have to send me a letter or a car stating your intentions on continuing to race. In addition, you must state the division you wish to compete in, novice or expert. I will no longer promote cars automatically. If you want to stay in novice, fine. If you think you're ready for expert, fine. Once you declare your status as an expert, you cannot go back to novice. In addition, EXPERT cars will be made public after they've aged 2 races. Please read the cars header as to whether you can use the authors ideas. Hopefully, there will be some prestige to being expert as there are plenty of negatives to go with it. Comments? Anybody NOT like it? ***TENTATIVE*** Good luck and see you in two weeks. From: Rick Jonathan Merin Subject: Sony PlayStation **#1** 1.25 million Units sold, Sega Saturn distant #2 with only .75 million units sold Date: 1996/07/20 Message-ID: <4spd29$nge@news.snfc21.pacbell.net>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.computer.quake.playing,rec.games.computer.quake.servers,rec.games.computer.stars,rec.games.computer.ultima-dragons,rec.games.computer.xpilot,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.diplomacy,rec.games.empire Sony PlayStation **#1** 1.25 million Units sold, Sega Saturn distant #2 with only .75 million units sold Contrary to the beliefs of the mis-informed, Sega will have to postpone its plans for "World Domination" for some time. Read the following information taken from the San Jose Mercury Newspaper: ************************************************************************* Source: San Jose Mercury News, Business Section, Tuesday July 16th 1996 "Sega of America Inc. in Redwood City, after failing to entice its adolescent audience into buying the Sega Saturn game system, is getting a new management team that includes a boss from the company's headquarters in Japan." "The 32-bit Sega Saturn has fallen far behind Sony's playstation. For the fiscal year ended in March, Sega reported a loss of $170 million..." "The Company (Sega) recently formed a separate subsidiary in Redwood City called Sega Entertainment to focus on expanding its franchise into personal computer games." Lee Isgur, a video game industry analyst with investment firm Jeffries & Co., estimates that Sony has sold about 1.25 million PlayStations in the United States since their introduction last year, compared with Sega's sales of about 750,000 Saturns. "Sega is a very poor No. 2 relative to Sony and they have to be worried that Nintendo will relegate them to No. 3", Lee Isgur. ************************************************************************* My commentary: Tom Kalinske, Sega of America's president, is leaving. To join the convicted felon Michael Milken, who ripped off people in a junk bond scam that landed his but in jail on a felony conviction, to form Education Technologies. Good riddence Mr. Kalinske, SEGA's way better off without him!!! Have fun selling investments, with the other old men on Wall Street. You have to wonder, if SEGA gets hooked creating games for the PC, what's gonna happen to the Saturn. While PC's are all upwardly compatible and have been around for decades, why should SEGA continue to support a single use, and probably disposable, machine like the Sega Saturn? Could this be the death knell for the Saturn? My most sincere reccomendation is that SEGA not spread its resources thin across several platforms. But rather put all its resources into supporting the hard working people who buy their latest systems (at a premium), with top-quality hardware and top-quality games. As a whole Sony is many times larger than SEGA, pouring billions into the video game industry is just a drop in the bucket for SONY. SEGA's could let a lot of people down if they are not totally committed supporting their own systems. Sincerely Rick Merin From: jamesl@netcom.com (James Logajan) Subject: Re: History of Multi-Player Gaming Date: 1996/07/20 Message-ID: #1/1 references: <4soamv$ghr@ns2.ryerson.ca> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc Vincent Louie - AERE/F92 (vlouie@acs.ryerson.ca) wrote: : Howard Soroka (howard@aimla.com) wrote: : : If you can respond to this request, feel free to post it to Usenet, but : : please send your responses directly to me as well by return email. : Okay...you click on the Net Search icon in Netscape, and in the little box : that says search topic, you enter (without the quotes) "history netrek", : "history mud", "history bolo", "history xtrek", "history moo", "history : empire internet" etc. This assumes, of course, that all the history worth covering has already been compiled and is on the Internet somewhere. An assumption that, it turns out, is simply wrong. From: David Forthoffer Subject: Re: History of Multi-Player Gaming Date: 1996/07/21 Message-ID: <31F2AA74.37D0@adobe.com>#1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc Howard Soroka wrote: > > I need to know the names of specific games which meet a simple set of > criteria (below), and which existed prior to the early 1980's. I remember two such games. One was a Star Trek game written in the late 70's by a co-worker at Control Data Corporation in Sunnyvale, California. I forget his name. He did work in Customer Support; it might be "Ron". It ran on a text-based monitor, and redrew the screen every move to "graphically" display the current quadrant. You could play against other players. It ran on the CDC SCOPE 3.4 operating system, on the CDC 6000 series computers. It was written FORTRAN, and used a shared permanent file system for inter-player communications. It was very popular, and was eventually banned during normal business hours. The other was a game called "Empire", also written in the late 70's. I don't know who wrote it; I think it was a Control Data employee in Arden Hills, Minnesota. It ran on the Control Data PLATO network. The terminals were the latest graphics terminals -- large bitmapped amber plasma displays, with a Z-80 CPU inside. I don't know what the server was; it was probably a CDC 6000. Each player operated a simple space ship that could fire a dumb rocket, drop bombs on a planet, or land soldiers/settlers. The universe had dozens of planets. A game started with a planet belonging to each of four teams. A player had to choose a team when logging on. The goal was for one team to conquer the universe. A game typically lasted between a half day and three days. The game involved considerable skill due to the discrete nature of time; this lead to the ships effectively jumping from one spot to another without travelling between them. Rockets did the same. The skill involved the right combination of knowledge of game mechanics, skill in maneuvering, and anticipating opponents' actions. We often had over a hundred people on at one time. -- David Forthoffer cc: Both From: pjii@ix.netcom.com (Peter Jamison II) Subject: AFFORD ALL THE GAMES YOU EVER WANT! Date: 1996/07/21 Message-ID: <4ssca0$53a@dfw-ixnews6.ix.netcom.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar ATTENTION EVERYONE: Take the time to read this and you will be on your way to the easiest way to make money since winning the state lottery This detailed, yet simple program will allow you to make a small fortune in under 2 months with starting costs of 5 dollars! I am talking about money around $10,000-20,000 depending on how much time you put in to it. Print this article out now! JUST TRY THIS--ALL YOU HAVE TO LOSE IS ABOUT $8!!!!! All you have to do is give this a try and judge for yourself. You will definitely be satisfied with the conclusion you will reach. Here's the program. 1. Mail $1 to each of the five names you see on the list at the end of the letter. 2. Send a note on a piece of paper saying "Please add me to your list" Remember to wrap the paper around the bill, so postal workers won't steal it. Also mention what slot or number the person was in when you mailed them $1. For example, if John Doe was in slot #1, you would write, "John, you were in slot #1". 3. Move the names on the list up one increment. This means the number #1 person will no longer be on the list and everyone will move "up" one number. PLACE YOUR NAME IN SLOT #5 RIGHT NOW!! 4. Take this letter with your name added to the list and post it in as many newsgroups and BBS as you can. Re-post the letter after a week has passed to as many newsgroups as you can. Re-post as many times as you like in the initial three weeks. THE MORE THE BETTER. The more newsgroups you post this to means the more money you will make. You want to expose this to as many people as possible. 5. Post a catchy subject line in each newsgroup to attract people to reading your letter. 6. Just sit back and relax. If you have followed the instructions and posted to enough groups, you are going to have a new car or whatever else you want to buy in less than two months. There will be money coming in slowly until the third week when you will get a FLOOD of letters with $1 in them! If you're like me, you'll have a stack of one's over ten feet high. You'll be laughing all the way to the bank with your newly acquired 10,000 one dollar bills. 7. The last thing to remember is to save the pieces of paper you received from people with the $1 in it to be legal and avoid hassles with the IRS. 8. This business is totally legal under title 18, Section 1302 and 1341 of the U.S. Postal Lottery Laws. 9. Make sure to remain honest at all times and to keep the integrity of the list intact. We are all working for each other! HERE IS THE LIST OF NAMES: #1. Kenneth Jay 17 Pappagallo Point Aliso Viejo, CA 92656 *USA* #2. Dynamic Computers P.O. Box 317 West Springfield, MA 01090 *USA* #3. Scott Gagnon 217 Morgan Street South Hadley, MA 01075 *USA* #4. Shawn Neil 901-1424 Nelson St. Vancouver, BC V6G 1L9 *Canada* *** I HAVE MADE $2856.00 LAST WEEK ALONE!!!! *** #5 Peter Jamison II 18955 Ridgeview Circle Villa Park, Ca 92861 *USA* -- SLTG From: Derek Sorensen Subject: Re: Sony PlayStation **#1** 1.25 million Units sold, Sega Saturn distant #2 with only .75 million units sold Date: 1996/07/21 Message-ID: <837940669snz@bumblbee.demon.co.uk>#1/1 references: <4spd29$nge@news.snfc21.pacbell.net> <31F1C91F.192F@primenet.com> newsgroups: rec.games.computer.quake.playing,rec.games.computer.quake.servers,rec.games.computer.stars,rec.games.computer.ultima-dragons,rec.games.computer.xpilot,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.diplomacy,rec.games.empire In article <31F1C91F.192F@primenet.com> bil@primenet.com "Andrew D. Janssen" writes: > > This is completely irrelevant to the subject of this group. Read the d*mn > FAQ! > But you then went on to quote the whole of the off-topic article. Hmm ... I suggest you subscribe to news.newusers for a while. Derek Sorensen -- WARNING-> If you are someone running their business by sending junk email, be advised, any unsolicited junk mail received in response to my usenet posts will be forwarded to your postmaster <-WARNING NOTE-> I used to have a friendly .sig! From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - Multiwarrior Experimental 94 07/22/96 Date: 1996/07/22 Message-ID: <199607220400.AAA06209@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/22/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries MultiWarrior Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Fri Jul 12 18:24:04 EDT 1996 # Name Author Score Age 1 TimeScapeX (0.1) J. Pohjalainen 5729 60 2 This is Test1 Kurt Franke 5729 25 3 Test2 George Eadon 5729 20 4 Paper8 G. Eadon 5729 26 5 jaded M R Bremer 5707 31 6 Fork v0.2-9p/51b Christoph C. Birk 5707 2 7 Paperone Beppe Bezzi 5680 45 8 Shwing! T. H. Davies 5563 56 9 Gluttony J E Long 5490 18 10 Wait A Lot v0.1 Justin Kao 5397 5 11 Saat V2.01 S. Schroeder 5225 14 12 life Nandor Sieben 5203 61 13 Anthill 5 Planar 5130 22 14 Leviathan2 harleyQ2 4983 12 15 Pommes-Ketchup V1.35 S. Schroeder 4929 9 16 lifedwarf Nandor Sieben 4802 37 17 Hidden M.C.Diskett Bullfrog 4703 30 18 Variation M-1 Jay Han 4661 7 19 Leviathan harleyQ2 4421 13 20 Bigring Jonathan Stott 4030 1 21 Piggy 3 Bob Uhl 4022 33 From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 07/22/96 Date: 1996/07/22 Message-ID: <199607220400.AAA06214@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/22/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Fri Jul 19 09:45:45 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 35/ 4/ 61 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 167 28 2 38/ 11/ 51 Rosebud Beppe 164 7 3 47/ 35/ 18 Illusion-94/55 Randy Graham 160 10 4 41/ 26/ 33 Falcon v0.3 X Ian Oversby 155 1 5 47/ 40/ 13 Tsunami v0.1 Ian Oversby 154 6 6 42/ 30/ 28 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 154 19 7 42/ 33/ 25 BigBoy Robert Macrae 151 53 8 46/ 41/ 13 Memories Beppe Bezzi 150 35 9 44/ 39/ 17 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 150 14 10 44/ 39/ 17 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 148 58 11 40/ 37/ 23 Derision M R Bremer 143 45 12 33/ 24/ 43 Variation M-1 Jay Han 142 8 13 43/ 44/ 14 Pagan John K W 142 13 14 44/ 47/ 9 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 140 29 15 36/ 35/ 29 Tornado 2.0 x Beppe Bezzi 137 52 16 31/ 25/ 44 Aleph 1 Jay Han 137 18 17 38/ 43/ 19 Fire Master Xv1 JS Pulido 133 50 18 27/ 28/ 45 Hector 2 Kurt Franke 126 48 19 35/ 48/ 16 Watcher-h Kurt Franke 122 47 20 35/ 48/ 18 Watcher Kurt Franke 122 51 21 2/ 98/ 0 Just Looking Anonymous 7 0 From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - MultiWarrior 94 07/22/96 Date: 1996/07/22 Message-ID: <199607220400.AAA06204@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/22/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Tue Jul 16 14:13:10 EDT 1996 # Name Author Score Age 1 60% Cotton Wilkinson 5071 24 2 Evol Cap -- John Wilkinson 5071 7 3 TJ Maurizio Vittuari 5071 17 4 Super Evol Cap John Wilkinson 5071 5 5 90% Cotton v5c Wilkinson 5071 23 6 TESTI Maurizio Vittuari 5059 16 7 Die Hard P.Kline 5059 28 8 Son of Imp Steven Morrell 5058 41 9 sisyphus Kafka 4999 6 10 Nematode v1.4e Jonathan Stott 4987 1 11 Fork 4/13 Christoph C. Birk 4830 0 From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - Standard 07/22/96 Date: 1996/07/22 Message-ID: <199607220400.AAA06196@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/22/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/ *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sun Jul 21 21:27:50 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 35/ 20 PacMan v5 David Moore 154 6 2 37/ 25/ 37 Yop La Boum v2.1 P.E.M & E.C. 150 38 3 42/ 38/ 20 Stasis David Moore 146 14 4 29/ 14/ 57 ttti nandor sieben 145 88 5 32/ 20/ 48 CAPS KEY IS STUCK AGAIN Steven Morrell 144 104 6 42/ 44/ 14 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 140 232 7 40/ 40/ 20 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 139 182 8 29/ 20/ 51 Hydra Stephen Linhart 139 212 9 27/ 16/ 56 Cannonade P.Kline 137 138 10 29/ 20/ 51 Blue Funk 88 Steven Morrell 137 102 11 28/ 19/ 53 K-test P.E.M 137 10 12 38/ 41/ 21 Gisela 3G6 Andrzej Maciejczak 136 1 13 24/ 12/ 64 Imperfic II John Wilkinson 135 24 14 29/ 24/ 47 Test Wayne Sheppard 135 127 15 26/ 19/ 54 Peace Mr. Jones 133 112 16 35/ 38/ 27 Keystone t21 P.Kline 132 125 17 35/ 38/ 27 Giskard v0.5 Ken Mitton 132 76 18 30/ 30/ 40 Big Bang Theory Zul Nadzri 130 2 19 34/ 38/ 29 Christopher Stephen Morrell 130 103 20 36/ 42/ 22 Tuctest Elmer J. Fudd 129 32 21 2/ 98/ 0 test Anonymous 7 0 From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - ICWS Tournament 07/22/96 Date: 1996/07/22 Message-ID: <199607220400.AAA06200@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/22/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Annual ICWS Tournament CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Mon Jul 15 21:31:04 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 43/ 11/ 45 Cannonade Paul Kline 175 92 2 49/ 34/ 16 Miss Carefree Derek Ross 164 24 3 47/ 34/ 19 Giskard v0.5 Ken Mitton 159 65 4 48/ 44/ 8 Agony T Stefan Strack 152 93 5 37/ 29/ 33 Pommes-Ketchup V1.35 S. Schroeder 146 5 6 31/ 16/ 53 Nothing Special G. Eadon 145 7 7 32/ 19/ 49 Turkey Beppe Bezzi 145 8 8 43/ 42/ 15 test88 P.Kline 145 11 9 40/ 41/ 19 Old Tire Swing Randy Graham 139 49 10 41/ 45/ 15 Traper3_t Waldemar Bartolik 137 2 11 37/ 38/ 25 Yop La Boum v2.1 P.E.M & E.C. 136 22 12 39/ 44/ 17 Miss Carry Derek Ross 134 56 13 28/ 25/ 47 One Fat Lady Robert Macrae 131 9 14 38/ 47/ 15 Slaver v1.1i Christoph C. Birk 129 53 15 40/ 53/ 7 xtc stefan roettger 126 97 16 35/ 46/ 18 Illusion Randy Graham 124 51 17 36/ 49/ 15 DoubleStone v0.7 Christoph C. Birk 123 35 18 29/ 36/ 34 Chris Steven Morrell 123 14 19 28/ 36/ 36 Big Bang Theory Zul Nadzri 121 1 20 35/ 50/ 14 Traper3 Waldemar Bartolik 120 4 21 35/ 50/ 14 Traper3 Waldemar Bartolik 120 3 From: howards@netcom.com (Howard Soroka) Subject: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/22 Message-ID: #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc Netizens: Many of you have responded to my earlier post asking about early multi-player games. Most of the information points to the PLATO system, but some others are also mentioned. All of this information is very helpful, and I thank you all for your willingness to share information. Having digested the results, I would now like to ask the question again, with a slight modification of the criteria. Specifically, I would like to know about EARLY multi-player games in which the individual users' stations have some local processing power (memory and CPU), beyond mere terminal capabilities. Presumably, the game(s) would make some use of this local capability. In all likelihood, this implies some form of microcomputer for each user (perhaps TRS-80. Apple II, or other), as opposed to a simple terminal (graphics or ASCII). However, a game played between two or more users, each using a larger machine (such as a minicomputer), somehow connected by network or phone lines would also qualify. If you know of any such beast, please respond via return email, and thank you very much! Howard Soroka =========================================== The text of my original post appears below... =========================================== Netizens: I am trying to establish some facts about the origins of multi-player games on computers. I need to know the names of specific games which meet a simple set of criteria (below), and which existed prior to the early 1980's. The earlier, the better, but anything up to 1984 might be appropriate. The games need not be commercial products, though they can be. Anything created at a research facility (educational or otherwise) or anywhere else (on planet Earth), is fine. The criteria are: The game must have the capability of involving at least two players (though it's fine if it has a single-user version as well). Each player must have his/her own form of input device(s), such as keyboard, joystick, mouse, or buttons. Each player must have his/her own form of video display. For purposes of the discussion, a true graphics display (bitmapped or vector) is preferable to an alphanumeric terminal, but even games using old-fashioned dumb ASCII terminals are acceptable, especially if the terminal is used to simulate graphic imagery (no matter how simplistic) using plain characters. If possible, I would like to know: Who created it, where, and when (actual names, if possible). What computing environment it ran on (hardware, software). How to get in touch with the creator(s). Any other pertinent information you might know would be very much appreciated! If you can respond to this request, feel free to post it to Usenet, but please send your responses directly to me as well by return email. I work for a game publishing company, and we need this information for an important current project. If someone out there comes up with some good solid information about early multi-player gaming, I'll bet I could pry loose a few copies of good current product to send out as rewards ;-). Many thanks, Howard Soroka From: acc4636@tam2000.tamu.edu (Anthony C.) Subject: Re: History of Multi-Player Gaming Date: 1996/07/22 Message-ID: <4t0qbm$6jn@news.tamu.edu>#1/1 references: <31F2AA74.37D0@adobe.com> <4t09n1$mv4@onramp.arc.nasa.gov> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc In article <4t09n1$mv4@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>, Dave Darling wrote: :"father" of the PLATO system... Began with a B. Last I heard (about :10 years ago) he was working for the U of Del. Don Bitzer :). :--DD -- Anthony C. From: Magnus Paulsson Subject: airBag Technology Date: 1996/07/22 Message-ID: <199607220918.LAA20914@watt.ifm.liu.se>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Since airBag is soon going to drop of the hill I might as well publish it :-( airBag is a renewed atempt to make a bomber that can get a hit in the engine and then go into coreclear (or as in airBag a imps/d-clear). (airBag lessens the impact) The whole idea is to use clever timing and decrement/increment to enable the bombing engine to know when it has ben hit by some bomb. In airBag I use two processes running in different loops giving a 1/2 c bombing performance in 6 bytes. start spl two one add.f step,ptr ptr mov.i hit,@hit+step jmz.f one,check jmp cclear ... dat.f 10,32 check dat.f 0,1 ;first changed by process in one to dat.f 0,0 (predec), ;then by two to dat.f 0,1 (postinc). If by some reason ;the timing is changed the jmz.f will fall through into cclear dat.f 10,32 The code for the complete airBag is below (I've added a d-clear and two continous imp launchers). Now I continued on the same line, the above code is more or less a Tornado engine divided up in two parts, making it 3 lines longer and 1/2 c instead of 3/5c. Wouldn't it be perfect if I could have both the speed and size of Tornado and the airBag feature. There is some ways to make this. First attempt was something like: start spl #0,0 spl 3 next add.f step,ptr mov.i check which is worthless because of the timing doesn't fit and a lot of time is wasted on bombing the same spot twice and scipping spots... Second attempt was a vector launched tornado bomber! :-) Launch it like: add ;5 mov ;4,9 mov ;3,8 mov.i >check,@ptr ;2,7 jmz.f next,cptr djn.f -1,>cptr dat.f 0,0 dat.f 0,0 ;h for 14 dat.f 0,0 rof start spl two ;h one add.f st,ptr ;first part ptr mov.i hit,*hit+step jmz.f one,>check jmp imps1 dat.f 0,0 ;h for 18 dat.f 0,0 rof dat.f 1,2 hit check dat.f 0,0 ;airBag check! bmb dat.f step,1 for 14 dat.f 0,0 rof two mov.i bmb,@ptr ;second part mov.i bmb,*ptr jmz.f two, newsgroups: rec.games.corewar,rec.answers,news.answers Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-Modified: 95/10/12 Version: 3.6 These are the Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) from the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.corewar. A plain text version of this document is posted every two weeks. The hypertext version is available as _________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents 1. What is Core War 2. Is it Core War or Core Wars? 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? 4. Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? 5. What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? 6. What is the ICWS? 7. What is TCWN? 8. How do I join? 9. What is the EBS? 10. Where are the Core War archives? 11. Where can I find a Core War system for ...? 12. I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? 13. I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? 14. Are there any Core War related WWW sites? 15. When is the next tournament? 16. What is KotH? How do I enter? 17. Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? 18. How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? 19. What is the difference between in-register and in-memory evaluation? 20. What does (expression or term of your choice) mean? 21. Other questions? _________________________________________________________________ What is Core War? 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 processes of the opposing program 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. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Is it "Core War" or "Core Wars"? 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. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Where can I find more information about Core War? 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 two anthologies: 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 Author: Dewdney, A. K. Title: The Magic Machine: A Handbook of Computer Sorcery Published: New York: W. H. Freeman (c) 1990 ISBN: 0-7167-2125-2 (Hardcover), 0-7167-2144-9 (Paperback) Library of Congress Call Number: QA76.6 .D5173 1990 A.K. Dewdney's articles are still the most readable introduction to Core War, even though the Redcode dialect described in there is no longer current. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? A draft of the official standard (ICWS'88) is available as . This document is formatted awkwardly and contains ambiguous statements. For a more approachable intro to Redcode, take a look at Mark Durham's tutorial, and . Steven Morrell (morrell@math.utah.edu) is preparing a more practically oriented Redcode tutorial that discusses different warrior classes with lots of example code. Mail him for a preliminary version. Michael Constant (mconst@csua.berkeley.edu) is reportedly working on a beginner's introduction. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? 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. You can try out the new standard by submitting warriors to the '94 hills of the KotH servers. Two corewar systems currently support ICWS'94, pMARS (many platforms) and Redcoder (Mac), both available at ftp.csua.berkeley.edu. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is the ICWS? 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). [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is TCWN? 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 files. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ How do I join? 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. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is the EBS? 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. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Where are the Core War archives? 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 (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@csua.berkeley.edu) is the archive administrator. When uploading to /pub/corewar/incoming, ask Jon to move your upload to the appropriate directory and announce it on the net. 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. The plain text version of this FAQ is automatically archived by news.answers. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Where can I find a Core War system for . . . ? Core War systems are available via anonymous ftp from ftp.csua.berkeley.edu in the /pub/corewar/systems directory. Currently, there are UNIX, IBM PC-compatible, Macintosh, and Amiga Core War systems available there. It is a good idea to check for program updates first. 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 ftp.csua.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 ftp.csua.berkeley.edu: MADgic41.lzh - corewar for the Amiga, v4.1 MAD4041.lzh - older version? MAD50B.lha - corewar for the Amiga, beta version 5.0 Redcoder-21.hqx - corewar for the Mac, supports ICWS'88 and '94 (without extensions) 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 ran the former 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 (broken 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) pmars08s.zip - portable system, ICWS'88 and '94, runs on UNIX, PC, Mac, Amiga. C source archive pmars08s.tar.Z - same as above pmars08.zip - PC executables with graphics display, req 386+ macpmars02.sit.hqx - pMARS executable for Mac (port of version 0.2) buggy, no display MacpMARS1.99a.cpt.hqx - port of v0.8 for the Mac, with display and debugger MacpMARS1.0s.cpt.hqx - C source (MPW, ThinkC) for Mac frontend ApMARS03.lha - pMARS executable for Amiga (port of version 0.3.1) wincor11.zip - MS-Windows system, shareware ($15) [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? 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. If you don't have access to the net at all, send me a 3.5 '' diskette in a self-addressed disk mailer with postage and I will mail it back with an image of the Core War archives in PC format. My address is at the end of this post. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? To receive rec.games.corewar articles by email, join the COREWAR-L list run on the Stormking.Com list processor. To join, send the message 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. Responsible for the listserver is Scott J. Ellentuch (tuc@stormking.com). Another server that allows you to post (but not receive) articles is available. Email your post to rec-games-corewar@cs.utexas.edu and it will be automatically posted for you. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Are there any Core War related WWW sites? You bet. Each of the two KotH sites sport a world-wide web server. Stormking's Core War page is ; pizza's is . A third WWW site is in Koeln, Germany: . Last but not least, Stephen Beitzel's "Unofficial Core War Page" is . All site are in varying stages of construction, so it would be futile to list here what they have to offer. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ When is the next tournament? 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. Informal double-elimination and other types of tournaments are held frequently among readers of the newsgroup; watch there for announcements or contact me. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is KotH? How do I enter? King Of The Hill (KotH) is an ongoing Core War tournament available to anyone with email. You enter by submitting via email a Redcode program (warrior) with special comment lines. You will receive a reply indicating how well your program did against the current top programs "on the hill". There are two styles of KotH tournaments, "classical" and "multi-warrior". The "classical" KotH is a one-on-one tournament, that is your warrior 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. In "multi-warrior" KotH, all warriors on the hill fight each other at the same time. Score calculation is a bit more complex than for the one-on-one tournament. Briefly, points are awarded based on how many warriors survive until the end of a round. A warrior that survives by itself gets more points than a warrior that survives together with other warriors. Points are calculated from the formula (W*W-1)/S, where W is the total number of warriors and S the number of surviving warriors. The pMARS documentation has more information on multi-warrior scoring. The idea for an email-based Core War server came from David Lee. The original KotH was developed and run by William Shubert at Intel starting in 1991, and discontinued after almost three years of service. Currently, KotHs based on Bill's UNIX scripts but offering a wider variety of hills are are running at two sites: "koth@stormking.com" is maintained by Scott J. Ellentuch (tuc@stormking.com) and "pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu" by Thomas H. Davies (sd@ecst.csuchico.edu). Up until May '95, the two sites provided overlapping services, i.e. the some of the hill types were offered by both "pizza" and "stormking". To conserve resources, the different hill types are now divided up among the sites. The way you submit warriors to both KotHs is pretty much the same. Therefore, the entry rules described below apply to both "pizza" and "stormking" unless otherwise noted. 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 a line starting with ";redcode" (or ";redcode-94, etc., see below) 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. There are currently seven separate hills you can select by starting your program with ;redcode-b, ;redcode-94, ;redcode-94x, ;redcode, ;redcode-icws, ;redcode-94m or ;redcode-94xm. The former three run at "pizza", the latter four at "stormking". More information on these hills is listed below. 3) Mail this file to koth@stormking.com or pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu. "Pizza" requires a subject of "koth" (use the -s flag on most mailers). 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 (or 10) programs. If no news arrives during that time, 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. The server kills programs by assigning an impossibly low score; it may therefore take another successful challenge before a killed program is actually removed from the hill. 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. Here are the Specs for the various hills: ICWS'88 Standard Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode", available at "stormking") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 instruction set: ICWS '88 ICWS Annual Tournament Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-icws", available at "stormking") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 8192 instructions max. processes: 8000 per program duration: After 100,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 300 minimum distance: 300 instruction set: ICWS '88 ICWS'94 Draft Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-94", available at "pizza") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 instruction set: extended ICWS '94 Draft ICWS'94 Beginner's Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-b", available at "pizza") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 instruction set: extended ICWS '94 Draft max. age: after 100 successful challenges, warriors are retired. ICWS'94 Experimental (Big) Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-94x", available at "pizza") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 55440 max. processes: 10000 duration: after 500,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 200 minimum distance: 200 instruction set: extended ICWS '94 Draft ICWS'94 Draft Multi-Warrior Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-94m", available at "stormking") hillsize: 10 warriors rounds: 200 coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 instruction set: extended ICWS '94 Draft ICWS'94 Experimental (Big) Multi-Warrior Hill Specs: (Accessed with ";redcode-94xm", available at "stormking") hillsize: 20 warriors rounds: 100 coresize: 55440 max. processes: 10000 duration: after 500,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 200 minimum distance: 200 instruction set: extended ICWS '94 Draft If you just want to get a status report without actually challenging the hills, send email with ";status" as the message body (and don't forget "Subject: koth" for "pizza"). If you send mail to "pizza" with "Subject: koth help" you will receive instructions that may be more up to date than those contained in this document. At stormking, a message body with ";help" will return brief instructions. If you submit code containing a ";test" line, your warrior will be assembled but not actually pitted against the warriors on the hill. All hills run portable MARS (pMARS) version 0.8, a platform-independent corewar system available at ftp.csua.berkeley.edu. The '94 and '94x hills allow three experimental opcodes and addressing modes currently not covered in the ICWS'94 draft document: SEQ - Skip if EQual (synonym for CMP) SNE - Skip if Not Equal NOP - (No OPeration) * - indirect using A-field as pointer { - predecrement indirect using A-field } - postincrement indirect using A-field [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? Core is initialized to DAT 0, 0. This is an "illegal" instruction under ICWS'88 rules and strictly compliant assemblers (such as KotH or pmars -8) 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. Note that under ICWS'94, DAT 0, 0 is a legal instruction. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? 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. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ What is the difference between in-register and in-memory evaluation? These terms refer to the way instruction operands are evaluated. The '88 Redcode standard ICWS'88 is unclear about whether a simulator should "buffer" the result of A-operand evaluation before the B-operand is evaluated. Simulators that do buffer are said to use in-register evaluation, those that don't, in-memory evaluation. ICWS'94 clears this confusion by mandating in-register evaluation. Instructions that execute differently under these two forms of evaluation are MOV, ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV and MOD where the effective address of the A-operand is modified by evaluation of the B-operand. This is best illustrated by an example: L1 mov L2, mov.i #0,impsize 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. Gate-busting (also gate-crashing) technique to "interweave" a decrement-resistant imp-spiral (e.g. MOV 0, 2668) with a standard one to overrun imp-gates. Hybrids warriors that combine two or more of the basic strategies, either in sequence (e.g. stone->paper) or in parallel (e.g. imp/stone). 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, mov.i #0,impsize Mirror see reflection. On-axis/off-axis On-axis scanners compare two locations M/2 apart, where M is the memory size. Off-axis scanners use some other separation. Optimal Constants (also optima-type constants) Bomb or scan increments chosen to cover core most effectively, i.e. leaving gaps of uniform size. Programs to calculate optimal constants and lists of optimal numbers are available at ftp.csua.berkeley.edu. Paper A Paper-like program. One which replicates itself many times. Part of the Scissors (beats) Paper (beats) Stone (beats Scissors) analogy. Pit-Trapper (also Slaver, Vampire). A program which enslaves another. Usually accomplished by bombing with JMPs to a SPL 0 pit with an optional core-clear routine. Quick Scan 2c scan of a set group of core locations with bombing if anything is found. Both of the following codes snips scan 16 locations and check for a find. If anything is found, it is attacked, otherwise 16 more locations are scanned. Example: start s1 for 8 ;'88 scan cmp start+100*s1, start+100*s1+4000 ;check two locations mov #start+100*s1-found, found ;they differ so set pointer rof jmn attack, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 8 cmp start+100*(s2+6), start+100*(s2+6)+4000 mov #start+100*(s2+6)-found, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing attack cmp @found, start-1 ;does found points to empty space? add #4000, found ;no, so point to correct location mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 In ICWS'94, the quick scan code is more compact because of the SNE opcode: start ;'94 scan s1 for 4 sne start+400*s1, start+400*s1+100 ;check two locations seq start+400*s1+200, start+400*s1+300 ;check two locations mov #start+400*s1-found, found ;they differ so set pointer rof jmn which, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 4 sne start+400*(s2+4), start+400*(s2+4)+100 seq start+400*(s2+4)+200, start+400*(s2+4)+300 mov #start+400*(s2+4)-found-100, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing add #100, -1 ;increment pointer till we get the which jmn -1, @found ;right place mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 Reflection Copy of a program or program part, positioned to make the active program invisible to a CMP-scanner. Replicator Generic for Paper. A program which makes many copies of itself, each copy also making copies. Self-Splitting Strategy of amplifying the number of processes executing a piece of code. example SPL 0 loop ADD #10, example MOV example, @example JMP loop Scanner A program which searches through core for an opponent rather than bombing blindly. Scissors A program designed to beat replicators, usually a (B-field scanning) vampire. Part of the Paper-Scissors-Stone analogy. Self-Repair Ability of a program to fix it's own code after attack. Silk A replicator which splits off a process to each new copy before actually copying the code. This allows it to replicate extremely quickly. This technique is only possible under the '94 draft, because it requires post-increment indirect addressing. Example: spl 1 mov.i -1, 0 spl 1 ;generate 6 consecutive processes silk spl 3620, #0 ;split to new copy mov.i >-1, }-1 ;copy self to new location mov.i bomb, >2000 ;linear bombing mov.i bomb, }2042 ;A-indirect bombing for anti-vamp jmp silk, {silk ;reset source pointer, make new copy bomb dat.f >2667, >5334 ;anti-imp bomb Slaver see Pit-Trapper. Stealth Property of programs, or program parts, which are invisible to scanners, accomplished by using zero B-fields and reflections. Stone A Stone-like program designed to be a small bomber. Part of the Paper-Scissors-Stone analogy. Stun A type of bomb which makes the opponent multiply useless processes, thus slowing it down. Example is referred to as a spl-jmp bomb. example spl 0 jmp -1 Two-Pass Core-Clear (also spl/dat Core-Clear) core clear that fills core first with SPL instructions, then with DATs. This is very effective in killing paper and certain imp-spiral variations. Vampire see Pit-Trapper. Vector Launch one of several means to start an imp-spiral running. As fast as Binary Launch, but requiring much less code. See also JMP/ADD Launch and Binary Launch. This example is one form of a Vector Launch: impsize equ 2667 example spl 1 ; extend by adding more spl 1's spl 1 djn.a @imp,#0 ; jmp @ a series of pointers dat #0,imp+(3*impsize) dat #0,imp+(2*impsize) dat #0,imp+(1*impsize) dat #0,imp+(0*impsize) imp mov.i #0,impsize [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Other questions? Just ask in the rec.games.corewar newsgroup or contact me (address below). If you are shy, check out the Core War archives first to see if your question has been answered before. [ToC] _________________________________________________________________ Credits Additions, corrections, etc. to this document are solicited. Thanks in particular to the following people who have contributed major portions of this document: Paul Kline, Randy Graham. Mark Durham wrote the first version of the FAQ. The rec.games.corewar FAQ is Copyright 1995 and maintained by: Stefan Strack, PhD stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu Dept. Molecular Physiol. and Biophysics stst@idnsun.gpct.vanderbilt.edu Rm. 762, MRB-1 stracks@vuctrvax.bitnet Vanderbilt Univ. Medical Center Voice: +615-322-4389 Nashville, TN 37232-6600, USA FAX: +615-322-7236 _________________________________________________________________ $Id: corewar-faq.html,v 3.6 1995/10/12 22:44:37 stst Exp stst $ From: Philip Kendall Subject: Syzygy 1.0 Date: 1996/07/22 Message-ID: #1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Here is Syzygy 1.0, my first successful warrior, a one-shot scanner followed by a core-clear, which died of old age after a successful run on the b-hill - this is the version posted to the hill. Any comments, etc always welcome. Phil ;redcode-b verbose ;name Syzygy 1.0 ;author Philip Kendall ;strategy Scan / spl carpet -> spl/dat coreclear ;strategy Based on Core Warrior 2 ;assert CORESIZE==8000 SCAN1 equ 104 SEP equ 5 STEP equ 15 BOMBLEN equ 10 STREAM equ -305 CSTART equ last+5 ; where to start the coreclear GAPLEN equ 70 loop add.f sbomb,scan ; a one-pass scan scan sne.i SCAN1,SCAN1+SEP djn.f loop,<(STREAM-loop) mov.ab #BOMBLEN,count bloop mov.i sbomb,}scan count djn.b bloop,#0 sub.a #BOMBLEN,scan cmp.a loop,sbomb ; loop will be bombed djn.f loop,<(STREAM-loop) jmp.a csplit,<(STREAM-loop)+1 sbomb spl.a #STEP,#STEP space for GAPLEN ; \ dat.f 0,0 ; > space to help against scanners rof ; / ptr dat.f cbomb1,CSTART cbomb0 dat.f #cbomb0-ptr,CSTART-ptr cbomb1 spl.a #cbomb0-ptr,CSTART-ptr csplit spl.a #0,<(STREAM-loop)+1 clear mov.i *ptr,>ptr ; repeated spl/dat coreclear mov.i *ptr,>ptr mov.i *ptr,>ptr last djn.f clear,<(STREAM-loop) end scan -- Philip Kendall (pak21@cam.ac.uk pak21@kendalls.demon.co.uk) From: Dave Darling Subject: Re: History of Multi-Player Gaming Date: 1996/07/22 Message-ID: <4t09n1$mv4@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>#1/1 references: <31F2AA74.37D0@adobe.com> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc In article <31F2AA74.37D0@adobe.com> David Forthoffer, dforthof@adobe.com writes: >The other was a game called "Empire", [snip] > It ran on the Control Data PLATO network. >The terminals were the latest graphics terminals -- large bitmapped >amber plasma displays, with a Z-80 CPU inside. I don't know what the >server was; it was probably a CDC 6000. Holy cats! Someone else who remembers "empire" on PLATO. PLATO was a large multiuser time-shared system that ran on a network of CDC "CYBER" systems (three big boxes in that early tour I took). I don't know exactly what they were, but they said "CYBER" on the front... Anyway, PLATO was developed at the University of Illinois back in the 70's, and I *think* (not sure) that empire was written by a team of programmers at the U of I. There was a different version runnin on the U of Delaware PLATO system that was loosely based on "Battlestar Galactica" but was otherwise fairly similar to "empire". Other early multiplayer computer games on PLATO included "avathar" and "oubliette", which were the first of the first-person- viewpoint dungeon games I remember. I saw Wizardry when it came out and thought, "Gee, like Avathar, but no other people!" Now if I could just remember the name of the guy who was the "father" of the PLATO system... Began with a B. Last I heard (about 10 years ago) he was working for the U of Del. --DD Dave Darling darling@simlab.arc.nasa.gov From: dnelson@netcom.com (Nelson ) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/23 Message-ID: #1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc There was an old article in Byte on how to build your own. It ran between any Apple ][ or coco or atari (I think). Also, the old Bolo was multiplayer on Apple II's or Atari's or BBN micros. Forgive my ancient memory... From: bremermr@cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu (Myer R. Bremer) Subject: Core Warrior 39 Date: 1996/07/23 Message-ID: <4t3g2f$2sj@mozo.cc.purdue.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar .xX$$x. .x$$$$$$$x. d$$$$$$$$$$$ ,$$$$$$$P' `P' , . $$$$$$P' ' .d b $$$$$P b ,$$x ,$$x ,$$x ,$$b $$. Y$$$$' `$. $$$$$$. $$$$$$ $$P~d$. d$$$b d d$$$ `$$$$ ,$$ $$$$$$$b $$$P `$ $$$b.$$b `Y$$$d$d$$$' . . a . a a .aa . a `$$$ ,$$$,$$' `$$$ $$$' ' $$P$XX$' `$$$$$$$$$ .dP' `$'$ `$'$ , $''$ `$'$ `Y$b ,d$$$P `$b,d$P' `$$. `$$. , `$$P $$$' Y $. $ $ $ Y..P $ `$$$$$$$' $$$P' `$$b `$$$P `P `$' `Y'k. $. $. $. $$' $. Issue 39 July 22, 1996 ______________________________________________________________________________ Core Warrior is a weekly newsletter promoting the game of corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills--currently the '94 draft hill and the beginner hill. Coverage will follow where ever the action is. If you have no clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star internet locals for more information: FAQs are available by anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z FTP site is: ftp.csua.berkeley.edu /pub/corewar Web pages are at: (Please note new Stormking's address) http://www.koth.org/ ;Stormking http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza http://pauillac.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/ ;Planar Newbies should check the stormking page for the FAQ, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! If ftp.csua.berkeley.edu is unreachable, you can download pMARS at: Terry's web page--http://www.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ Planar ftp site--ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars Fechter ftp site--ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar ______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings. The '94 draft hill is quiet this week, as Pizza was (is?) down. My mail is currently bouncing off the server. Hopefully the problems will be fixed soon and service restored. All the Stormking hills are open and with noticeably faster response times. You can satisfy your corewar craving there. Enjoy. --M R Bremer ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server ICWS '94 Draft Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 39.6/ 25.6/ 34.8 Simple v0.4b Ian Oversby 153.7 12 2 29.3/ 13.1/ 57.6 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 145.4 49 3 41.2/ 37.8/ 21.0 Probe Anton Marsden 144.7 61 4 33.2/ 23.7/ 43.1 Armory II John K W 142.8 200 5 43.4/ 45.8/ 10.8 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 141.1 111 6 39.4/ 38.7/ 21.9 Yogi Bear P.Kline 140.1 265 7 41.4/ 42.8/ 15.8 Goldfinch P.Kline 140.1 2 8 41.5/ 43.2/ 15.4 Mist P.Kline 139.8 1 9 41.6/ 43.6/ 14.8 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 139.7 60 10 33.1/ 28.1/ 38.8 Pulp v0.2 Ian Oversby 138.2 156 11 40.7/ 43.6/ 15.7 myVamp5.4 Paulsson 137.7 109 12 40.1/ 43.4/ 16.5 Earthquake v0.2 Bjoern & Ian 136.8 18 13 30.6/ 24.4/ 45.0 Rosebud Beppe 136.7 734 14 37.8/ 39.4/ 22.8 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 136.2 779 15 26.4/ 17.0/ 56.6 ompega Steven Morrell 135.8 176 16 37.1/ 39.3/ 23.6 Dura v0.1 Ian Oversby 135.0 90 17 29.9/ 26.9/ 43.2 blue flame c1/10 bjoern guenzel 133.0 45 18 31.5/ 30.8/ 37.7 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 132.1 418 19 36.2/ 40.7/ 23.2 Paper, Scissors and Stone David van Dam 131.6 189 20 36.8/ 43.3/ 19.9 Twister Beppe Bezzi 130.3 515 21 35.4/ 40.9/ 23.7 airBag Paulsson 129.9 102 22 31.7/ 33.4/ 34.9 the historian bjoern guenzel 129.9 534 23 35.2/ 40.7/ 24.1 Scimitar 2 P.Kline 129.7 127 24 36.9/ 46.2/ 16.9 Harmony P.Kline 127.5 26 25 37.3/ 49.4/ 13.3 test mef2 Beppe Bezzi 125.2 9 Weekly age: 31 ( 84 last week, 90 the week before ) New warriors: 6 Turnover/age rate 19% Average age: 191 ( 184 last week, 158 the week before ) Average score: 137 ( 141 last week, 141 the week before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by 11 authors: Kline with 5; Bezzi, and Oversby with 4; Guenzel with 3; JKW, Marsden, and Paulsson with 2. King Report: The top 3 warriors have all been vying for the top slot, but Ian's new Simple version 0.4b is slightly more effective than the previous version giving Oversby a commanding 8 point lead over second place. Other warriors seen on the top of the hill include Mist (quite a few times) and Q^2 Miro and Blur 2 (once each). Most of the veterans are in the middle of the pack. Twister and the historian have not recovered and are in danger of being pushed off. Armory gets a nice boost since last week moving up to the 4th position. Question of the day: Is Macrae going to put a Q^2 scan on Thermite and take up space on the hill for months to come? Or has someone already beat him to it? ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 6 42.1/ 42.3/ 15.6 Goldfinch P.Kline 141.9 1 8 41.5/ 43.2/ 15.4 Mist P.Kline 139.8 1 1 36.4/ 26.0/ 37.5 Simple v0.4b Ian Oversby 146.8 1 18 38.9/ 44.1/ 16.9 Harmony P.Kline 133.7 1 25 38.0/ 49.9/ 12.1 test mef2 Beppe Bezzi 126.1 1 13 41.4/ 42.2/ 16.4 Earthquake v0.2 Bjoern & Ian 140.6 1 Goldfinch was hanging around in the middle of the pack until Paul decided to replace it. The new warrior is holding its place well in the top ten. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 26 1.8/ 2.1/ 0.0 Goldfinch P.Kline 5.5 206 26 1.3/ 1.5/ 1.2 Harmony P.Kline 5.1 8 26 1.6/ 1.7/ 0.7 Mist P.Kline 5.4 30 26 1.2/ 1.3/ 1.6 Simple v0.4 Ian Oversby 5.1 146 26 24.0/ 23.7/ 52.3 Ties, Ties, Ties! (+3) Ross Morgan-Linial 124.4 2 26 33.5/ 42.4/ 24.1 Goliath David van Dam 124.7 181 Kline revamps three of his warriors while Oversby updates sometime-king Simple. The only real loss is van Dam's Goliath. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 14 37.8/ 39.4/ 22.8 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 136.2 779 13 30.6/ 24.4/ 45.0 Rosebud Beppe 136.7 734 22 31.7/ 33.4/ 34.9 the historian bjoern guenzel 129.9 534 20 36.8/ 43.3/ 19.9 Twister Beppe Bezzi 130.3 515 18 31.5/ 30.8/ 37.7 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 132.1 418 No new entries. No losses. ______________________________________________________________________________ HALL OF FAME * means the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Thermite II Robert Macrae 2262 Qscan -> bomber 2 Impfinity v4g1 Planar 1993 Stone/ imp 3 Jack in the box Beppe Bezzi 1620 P-warrior 4 Tornado 3.0 Beppe Bezzi 1567 Bomber 5 Torch t18 P.Kline 1539 Bomber 6 Chameleon Myer R Bremer 1437 P-warrior 7 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 1420 One shot scanner 8 Evol Cap 6.6 John Wilkinson 1299 Imp / stone 9 quiz Schitzo 1262 Scanner/ bomber 10 T.N.T. Maurizio Vittuari 1204 Bomber 11 Grilled Octopus v0.5 David Boeren 1154 P-warrior 12 Hazy Shade II John Wilkinson 1102 P-warrior 13 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 1049 Qscan -> Vampire 14 Iron Gate 1.5 Wayne Sheppard 926 CMP scanner 15 Agony II Stefan Strack 912 CMP scanner 16 Barrage Anton Marsden 876 Qscan -> replicator 17 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 869 Stone/ imp 18 Flurry Anton Marsden 835 Qscan -> pwarrior 19 Thermite 1.0 Robert Macrae 802 Qscan -> bomber 20 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 779 * Bomber 21 Blue Funk 3 Steven Morrell 766 Stone/ imp 22 Night Train Karl Lewin 755 Replicator 23 Mirage 1.5 Anton Marsden 736 Scanner/ bomber 24 Rosebud Beppe 734 * Stone/ imp 25 Blizzard Anton Marsden 713 Qscan -> replicator T.N.T. pro moves up two spots while Rosebud climbs to 24th position. ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server Beginner's Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 maximum age: At age 100, warriors are retired. rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 58.3/ 20.9/ 20.8 Yet 4b Justin Kao 195.8 48 2 45.5/ 16.5/ 38.0 (-: :-) Ross 174.6 71 3 49.6/ 29.0/ 21.5 Velveeta Shift-F shar 170.1 46 4 45.4/ 23.2/ 31.4 Versatility 1.5 Ross Morgan-Linial 167.6 38 5 46.1/ 26.2/ 27.7 Saboteur v0.4k shar 165.9 79 6 40.3/ 27.8/ 31.9 Inferno 1.0 Philip Kendall 152.8 61 7 29.5/ 11.0/ 59.5 Microsoft v1.0 Justin Kao 148.0 4 8 22.7/ 10.7/ 66.7 Ties, Ties, Ties! (+2) Ross 134.6 73 9 26.2/ 23.2/ 50.6 Utility Knife Robert J. Street 129.2 81 10 19.8/ 13.8/ 66.4 HAL 204 Justin Kao 125.7 1 11 14.0/ 8.5/ 77.6 Wasps 1.3 Ross 119.5 72 12 15.0/ 10.8/ 74.2 more testing Anonymous 119.2 32 13 11.9/ 6.9/ 81.2 Nematode v1.4e Jonathan Stott 116.8 12 14 13.2/ 9.6/ 77.3 Ties and Wasps Ross 116.7 25 15 11.5/ 7.0/ 81.4 Nematode v1.4b Jonathan Stott 116.0 45 16 16.0/ 16.9/ 67.1 Fork 4/13 Christoph C. Birk 115.1 65 17 11.6/ 27.7/ 60.8 Handy Man Robert J. Street 95.5 39 18 2.5/ 16.9/ 80.5 Mama's Boy Robert J. Street 88.2 26 19 11.3/ 35.2/ 53.6 silken stomp harleyQ2 87.4 21 20 3.5/ 19.8/ 76.6 silkbombQ2 harleyQ2 87.3 44 21 3.3/ 21.4/ 75.2 Snail Edgar 85.2 10 22 10.1/ 36.8/ 53.1 silken train harleyQ2 83.4 14 23 6.4/ 38.6/ 55.0 b3 harleyQ2 74.1 13 24 3.8/ 33.8/ 62.4 b harleyQ2 73.7 20 25 3.2/ 33.8/ 63.0 abc.i harleyQ2 72.6 2 I see a lot of familiar names on the beginner's hill. Is Kao implying the Microsoft programs are really just big viruses with his warrior Microsoft v1.0 or is he predicting Gates and Co. will dominate KotH as the do the desktop? (-: :-), very cute. ______________________________________________________________________________ The Hint In a weak attempt to gain a foothold on the hill, I thought I would develop a new type of p-brain (pea-brain as it turns out). I usually use the basic switch on loss or tie p-logic like Chameleon's. res ldp.ab _RES, #0 str ldp.a _STR, str1 ;load strategy in use seq.ab #1, res ;check result lost add.a #1, str1 ;lost change mod.a #2, str1 ;secure result win stp.ab str1, _STR str1 jmp @0, strat1 dat 0, strat2 The p-logic is quick and doesn't self destruct when brainwashed. Quickness is especially important now with the new Q^2 quickscans flooding the hill. The downside is no matter what _effective_ strategy you are using, a spurious loss will switch you to a less effective one. It may take even another loss to return to the optimal strategy if you are switching more than one component. To combat this phenomena, I developed a switch on two consecutive tie/loss combinations. Strategies will only change on a loss loss, tie loss, loss tie, or tie tie. A loss or tie will advance the table pointer contained in _STRAT. If the _STRAT pointer is 0 or 2, that strategy will get its 'second chance'. If the index is 1 or 3, strategies will switch. A win should reset the pointer to either 0 or 3 depending on what strategy is currently in use. I do this by taking the index modulo 2 and subtracting the result from the current index. _RES EQU #0 _STRAT EQU #1 result ldp.ab _RES, wlt strat ldp.a _STRAT, choice wlt sne.ab #1, #0 jmp win ; win has occured add.a #1, choice ; loss or tie has occured mod.a #4, choice stp.a choice, _STRAT choice jmp @0, strat1 ; _STRAT = 0, choose strat1 nop 0, strat1 ; _STRAT = 1, choose strat1 nop 0, strat2 ; _STRAT = 2, choose strat2 nop 0, strat2 ; _STRAT = 3, choose strat2 win mov.ab choice, #0 ; reset index becuase of win mod.ab #2, win sub.ba win, choice jmp choice-1 strat1 jmp 0 strat2 jmp 0 All in all, the brain is much bigger (8 vs. 15) and a bit slower. But I thought it had the smarts necessary to defeat non-pspace programs quite handily. However this wasn't the case. When switching the components in Chameleon (mod 5 bomber and .66c scanner), the new logic performed similarly or worse! The optimal strategy would win for awhile, but the occasional loss tie combination would cause it to switch. The secondary strategy (being a somewhat general purpose strategy) would not switch out as fast due to the new switching rules. This seemed to balance the extra wins gained. I believe the p-logic would be much more effective if the secondary strategy is very specialized against one type of program and losses quickly against everything else. But don't take my word for it. Use your nifty cut and paste and try a few components. ______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra by Beppe Bezzi Here is Jack in the box II, there is nothing really innovative in it. The bomber is in practice the same published in Twister, there is a little variation in the bomb pattern, but nothing worth mention. The replicator is a part of that in the old Jack, just booted away to have a faster reaction time against qscanners, even if not fast enough against Q^2 (It would need a lighter paper) The switcher is exacltly the same of old Jack, no need to change it being safe and brainwash resistant. Overall I don't expect it to live much longer than old version, even if nobody knows :-) ;redcode-94 ;name Jack in the box II ;author Beppe Bezzi ;kill Jack ;strategy Same old strategy, improved components ;strategy p-switching Tornado and silk ;assert CORESIZE == 8000 org think ;v 2.03 PIN 3371 _RES equ #0 _STR equ #1 ;more or less 500 :-) step equ -45 DIST away equ 4000 ;more or less 3900 :-) gate1 equ (gate-4) A0 equ 3488 A1 equ 1860 A2 equ 3740 marcia spl 1, <300 ;\ spl 1, <400 ;-\ generate 15 spl 1, <500 ;-/ parallel processes mov -1, 0 ;/ mov -1 ;copy mov.i bomb1, >123 ;bombing silk2 spl @0, }A1 ;split mov.i }-1, >-1 ;copy mov.i bomb1, >1001 ;bombing mov.i bomb , }2042 ;A-indirect bombing mov.i {silk2, A2 ;jmp new copy bomb dat.f >2667, >5334 ;anti-imp bomb bomb1 dat >1, }1 ;anti clear bomb for 12 dat 0,0 rof think res ldp.ab _RES, #0 str ldp.a _STR, str1 ;load strategy in use sne.ab #0, res ;check result lost add.a #1, str1 ;lost change mod.a #2, str1 ;secure result win stp.ab str1, _STR str1 jmp @0, tornado dat 0, marcia for 12 dat 0,0 rof tornado mov gate, }pt2 mov gate, *pt2 mov last, gate1 mov @djmp, >gate1 djmp djn.b clr, {bombs incr dat >-3*step,>-3*step last bombm dat <1, {1 end ______________________________________________________________________________ Questions? Concerns? Comments? Complaints? Mail them to people who care. authors: Beppe Bezzi or Myer Bremer or Anton Marsden From: mattack@eskimo.com (Matt Ackeret) Subject: Re: History of Multi-Player Gaming Date: 1996/07/23 Message-ID: #1/1 references: <31F2AA74.37D0@adobe.com> <4t09n1$mv4@onramp.arc.nasa.gov> <4t0qbm$6jn@news.tamu.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc Can anyone give me any information on a game called Conquest? I played it around '85 on a system in San Jose, CA called MindLink.. it wasn't around too long, the place ended up being torched for the insurance money. Anyhow, Conquest is one of the most fun games I've ever played, and I really hope I'm not *completely* looking through rose colored glasses. It is a multi-player space game that's realtime and ASCII-based.. You choose to be a member of some group (Federation, Klingons, etc.. remember this was pre-TNG).. and then you basically go out and try to conquer planets, by attacking the planets and beaming your passengers down to planets.. You also fight other ships "real time".. I mean, you shoot, and *s come out of your ship in the direction you're aiming, etc.. It sure seemed playable even at 1200 bps. I am under the *impression* that this ran on VMS, but I could be wrong... Is source for this game available, and/or has it ever been ported to UNIX systems (or at least using TCP) to run on the Internet, a la NetTrek? (I'm under the impression that NetTrek is somehow related to Conquest but they don't seem the same from the little I've seen of NetTrek). Thanks for any information... -- unknown@apple.com Apple II Forever These opinions are mine, not Apple's. From: Anders Ivner Subject: program for evaluating steps Date: 1996/07/23 Message-ID: <9607231912.AA19035@su2-6.ida.liu.se> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Here's a program I've written to calculate caracteristics for steps. I used to use Paul Kline's num8000 file, but it does not list find numbers for all interesting mods, and also it's awkward to use sort and join to get the relevant lines from it. I'm not sure exactly how the find numbers were calculated, but I believe that the concept I use here is equivalent. Any comments will be greatly appreciated. /Anders -------- Modfinder c code begins here ---------- /* Modfinder - a program for finding good steps for corewar warriors. by Anders Ivner, July 1996. Modfinder creates a 'profile' for a given step by calculating how many steps it will take for it to hit position p, -n < p < n, i.e. solving the diofantine equation step*i = p + coresize*j. A step is concidered to approximate (be) a mod-p number if it hits position p (or -p) before hitting any of the positions -p+1,...,-1,0,1,...,p-1. flags: -c [CORESIZE] : should always be specified -s [STEP] : test single step -r [MIN] [MAX] : test range of steps, ]MIN, MAX] -p [LENGTH] : output profiles of length [LENGTH] -m [MOD] : filter for steps that approximate [MOD] -l : output lengths of specified mods -h : print this text If neither -s nor -r is specified steps are read from stdin. Input can be given as a single step (-s), a range of steps (-r) or on stdin as numbers separated by newline (default). Steps can be filtered by specifying which mods it should approximate (-m). Multiple -m flags can be given to specify more than one mod. Output can be given as profiles (-p), lengths of the specified mods (-l) or as steps only (default). Example of profile output: > modfinder -c 8000 -s 17 -p 10 step 17 2353 : 17 is mod-1 and hits 1 or -1 in 2353 steps 0 : 17 does not approximate mod-2 941 : 17 is mod-3 and hits 3 or -3 in 941 steps 0 : 17 does not approximate mod-4 0 : 17 does not approximate mod-5 0 : 17 does not approximate mod-6 471 : 17 is mod-7 and hits 7 or -7 in 471 steps 0 : 17 does not approximate mod-7 0 : 17 does not approximate mod-8 470 : 17 is mod-9 and hits 9 or -9 in 740 steps Example of mod filter and mod length output: > modfinder -c 8000 -r 0 100 -m 7 -m 1 -l 7, 1, 1143 : step 7 is mod-7 and mod-1 and hits 7 or -7 in 17, 471, 2353 : 1 step and 1 or -1 in 1143 steps 47, 681, 2383 : The steps between 1 and 100 which approximate 51, 157, 3451 : mod-7 and mod-1 are 7, 17, 47, 51 and 61 61, 787, 3541 Modfinder currently does not perform any error checking. It's boring to write and does not sereve any purpose since I know how to use it anyway. Modfinder was written to be easy to modify. You can add your own filters and input and output formats. Note to programmers: the profile array starts at 1, i.e. pf[0] contains the mod-1 length, pf[1] contains the mod-2 length and so on. */ #include typedef struct pair { int first; int second; } pair; pair solve( int step, int size, int pos ) { pair result; pair res; int newsize,newstep,newpos,y,z; if ( pos == 0 ) { result.first = 0; result.second = 0; return result; } else { if ( step == 0 ) { printf("ERROR \n"); result.first = 0; result.second = 0; return result; } newsize = step; newstep = size % newsize; if ( pos > 0 ) { newpos = -(pos%newsize); z = pos / newsize; } else { newpos = (-pos) % newsize; z = ((-pos)/newsize) * -1; } y = size/newsize; res = solve( newstep, newsize, newpos ); result.first = res.second + res.first*y + z; result.second = res.first; return result; } } /* stolen from corestep */ unsigned int gcd (unsigned int a, unsigned int b) { unsigned int r, c; if (a maxmod) maxmod = mods[modcnt]; modcnt++; filter = f_mod; break; case 'r': sscanf( argv[i++], "%u", &in_range_cnt ); sscanf( argv[i++], "%u", &in_range_max ); instream = in_range; break; case 'l': outstream = out_modlen; break; case 'h': help(); exit(0); } } } if (maxmod > range) range = maxmod; engine( size, range, instream, filter, outstream); } From: dark@xs4all.nl (Richard Braakman) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/23 Message-ID: <4t3i1u$r4u@news.xs4all.nl>#1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc In howards@netcom.com (Howard Soroka) writes: >Having digested the results, I would now like to ask the question again, >with a slight modification of the criteria. [... modified criteria snipped ...] You know, this _does_ look like a search for prior art. If it is, then this guy want to get a patent on some blindingly obvious aspect of multiplayer games, and needs to know about these early games (the "prior art") so that he can write his patent just carefully enough to get around them. I suggest you don't reply to him until he explains why he needs the information. -- Richard Braakman Boredom may be the ultimate expression of intelligence. From: bob@raf.atd.ucar.edu (Bob Campbell) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/23 Message-ID: <4t3adp$gdd@ncar.ucar.edu>#1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc In article , howards@netcom.com (Howard Soroka) writes: > >Specifically, I would like to know about EARLY multi-player games in which >the individual users' stations have some local processing power (memory >and CPU), beyond mere terminal capabilities. Presumably, the game(s) would >make some use of this local capability. In all likelihood, this implies >some form of microcomputer for each user (perhaps TRS-80. Apple II, or >other), as opposed to a simple terminal (graphics or ASCII). However, a >game played between two or more users, each using a larger machine (such >as a minicomputer), somehow connected by network or phone lines would also >qualify. Well, now that you've narrowed it down, this really does smack of an attempt to patent "multi-player games where at least some of the game code is actually executed on the local node". And as such, frankly, I hope it is NOT awarded to anyone. The fact of the matter is, though, that before the mid 80's, if you weren't sitting at a terminal on a large central system, you were sitting on a lone micro. Not really enough demand to make multiplayer, independant-node games. -- Bob Campbell From: ptsbill@crl.com (William Rapp) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/23 Message-ID: <4t20lu$no@crl13.crl.com>#1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc Howard Soroka (howards@netcom.com) wrote: : Netizens: : Many of you have responded to my earlier post asking about early : multi-player games. Most of the information points to the PLATO system, : but some others are also mentioned. : All of this information is very helpful, and I thank you all for your : willingness to share information. : Having digested the results, I would now like to ask the question again, : with a slight modification of the criteria. : Specifically, I would like to know about EARLY multi-player games in which : the individual users' stations have some local processing power (memory : and CPU), beyond mere terminal capabilities. Presumably, the game(s) would : make some use of this local capability. In all likelihood, this implies : some form of microcomputer for each user (perhaps TRS-80. Apple II, or : other), as opposed to a simple terminal (graphics or ASCII). However, a : game played between two or more users, each using a larger machine (such : as a minicomputer), somehow connected by network or phone lines would also : qualify. : If you know of any such beast, please respond via return email, and thank : you very much! : Howard Soroka A while ago when the mainframe company I worked for was switching to Unix + RISC systems I saw a game that must've been around for a while (prob written at some university): Spy (or something like it) played on terminals hooked to unix character based graphics 2d map maze 2+ players keyboard input. Have you found the original MUD (multi user dungeon), Im not sure how far back they go (prob started on a Unix platform. -AS From: shadowz0@ix.netcom.com Subject: Shadow Date: 1996/07/23 Message-ID: <199607230317.UAA00447@dfw-ix5.ix.netcom.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Are you a Role-Player? Do you want to know more about Role Playing? Do you want more out of your role playing community? If you can answer~YES~ to any one question..then S.H.A.D.O.W. is for you!! THE S.H.A.D.O.W. DIFFERENCE: S.H.A.D.O.W. is an Internet/Web Gaming Informational service which provides on-line and published current game/role-playing insights and information. Included are bi-weekly and monthly updates on the hottest games on and off the Internet, and instructional ideas, as well as strategies for playing the newest game software over the net and web against multiple players, plus a price index for various software and other Role-Playing games. No one else provides such a variety of Role-Playing assistance and information, which is why S.H.A.D.O.W. has become required reading from the East Coast to the West Coast and beyond.... See us at: http://www.xshadowx.com THE S.H.A.D.O.W. COST SAVINGS: S.H.A.D.O.W. has the best writers, designers, and artists in the world, helping you to identify and create ideas for characters and Role-Playing scenarios, which will make it possible for you to save time and money. Included in the yearly subscription to S.H.A.D.O.W. is a monthly newsletter, via our numerous web sights, access to information through the World Wide Web, membership into the S.H.A.D.O.W. Gaming Club which includes a personal Character Coat-Of-Arms and a Certificate of Character Membership. THE S.H.A.D.O.W. TIME SAVINGS S.H.A.D.O.W. offers significant time savings by eliminating the need to search and read various magazines, forums, and other web sights, allowing members to become experts in a shorter period of time which will enable you to become a better Gamer. In addition, S.H.A.D.O.W. members can take advantage on merchandise savings which include popular gaming software, Role-Playing books and accessories, Renn. Faires and hotel discounts, and of course, a vast array of one-of-a-kind S.H.A.D.O.W. merchandise! THE S.H.A.D.O.W. SOLUTION: Membership into the S.H.A.D.O.W. Gaming Club provides all of the above mentioned savings, as well as the ultimate Role-Playing connection: The Mind - The Soul - The Inspiration of You...The Player!! S.H.A.D.O.W. is the Alpha and Omega of all things in RPGs, if you are looking for a window into the Realms of Role-Playing, if you need to know about the present and future of RPGs, if you want to become a S.H.A.D.O.W. GAMER, then the solution is simple...just say "Yes!" For more info and an application, hit "Reply", and type in "Yes!" If you wish to be deleted from this E-mail, just type in "Remove" We appologize for any inconvienence this may have caused, all we ever intended to do is bring some fun to you, if Fantasy is your cup of tea... :) ((Check us out on AOL too! Nightly from 9pm-3am est.. Member Room "Shadow Keep" in Town Square)) From: jstott@poly.phys.cwru.edu (Jonathan Stott) Subject: nematode13e.red Date: 1996/07/24 Message-ID: <4t5q2u$6e8@madeline.INS.CWRU.Edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar This is my first program to make it onto the beginner's hill and stay there and now I figured I'll send it out into the world. It is a highly defensive pair of papers that replicate and then fall into either impring or self-bombing code. It has very little chance of killing a self-splitting opponent, but is extremely difficult to kill in turn. Pspacing with a more aggressive module though makes this into (in my novice eye) a reasonably good warrior. As usually, comments/improvements are always welcome. -JS ;----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ;redcode ;name Nematode v1.3e+ ;author Jonathan Stott ;strategy A paper/stone blend with defensive imp rings to help it along ;strategy Really needs to be pspaced with a fast bomber to be effective. ;strategy [07/24/96 release] ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ; Paper constants ASTEP equ 100 ; No, this is not a good constant to use. BSTEP equ 225 ; Nor is this. ; Ring constants D3 equ 2667 ; distance between the 3 points D7 equ 1143 ; distance between the 7 points SKIP7 equ (jtbl+200) ; where to drop the 7-pt ring ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- org start ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- start spl imp7, <0770 ; random decrements of core spl.a 1, <1640 spl.a 1, <2410 spl.a 1, <3180 spl.a silk2, <3950 ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- silk spl.a @0, {ASTEP ;split forward, dec't because I can mov.i }silk, >silk ;copy (main) cel2 spl.a @cel2, {BSTEP ;split forward, dec't because I can cel2a mov.i }cel2, >cel2 ;copy (secondary) ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- mov.i bomb, {bomb ;clear (self) mov.i bomb, {silk ;clear (behind self) mov.i bomb, >bomb ;clear (matched paper) bomb dat #cel2+1+1, #(cel4-bomb) ; suicide ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- j1 for 16 dat 0, 0 ; spacer rof ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- imp7 spl.a 1, <4720 ; split 7 processes + 1 suicide spl.a 1, <5490 ; more random decrements spl.a 1, <6260 vec jmp.a *jtbl, }0 ; vector launch a 7-pt impring imp mov.i 0, D7 ; the actual code imp1 mov.i imp, *jtbl+1 ; start it, then suicide on dat's jtbl dat imp1, 0 ; vector table for all 7 points dat SKIP7+0*D7, 0 dat SKIP7+1*D7, 0 dat SKIP7+2*D7, 0 dat SKIP7+3*D7, 0 dat SKIP7+4*D7, 0 dat SKIP7+5*D7, 0 dat SKIP7+6*D7, 0 ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- k for (MAXLENGTH-CURLINE-24) dat 1, 1 ; decoy code rof ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- j2 for 16 dat 0, 0 ; spacer rof ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- silk2 spl.a @0, {ASTEP ;split forward, dec't because I can mov.i }silk2, >silk2 ;copy (main) cel3 spl.a @cel3, {BSTEP ;split forward, dec't because I can cel3a mov.i }cel3, >cel3 ;copy (secondary) ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- rlnch2 spl.a c2, >c2+8 ;standard 3-pt ring. spl.a rimp2+1*D3, >c2+12 ; decrement a few bytes of core rimp2 mov.i rimp2, D3 c2 jmp.a rimp2+2*D3, >c2+16 ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Jonathan Stott O- jjs17@po.cwru.edu CWRU Dept. of Physics jstott@poly.phys.cwru.edu School of Graduate Studies http://poly.phys.cwru.edu:8080/~jstott/ From: jamesl@netcom.com (James Logajan) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/24 Message-ID: #1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc Howard Soroka (howards@netcom.com) wrote: [elided] : Specifically, I would like to know about EARLY multi-player games in which : the individual users' stations have some local processing power (memory : and CPU), beyond mere terminal capabilities. [elided] *SIGH* As someone who has always believed in the basic integrity of his fellow humans, I did not even consider the possibility that the Mr. Soroka was doing anything other than what he claimed: putting together a history of multiplayer games. I scoffed when someone posted otherwise. But the line of questioning pursued by Mr. Soroka is not one that a historian would pursue; in my humble opinion, he is a liar. His intent is a search for prior art for the sole purpose of filing a patent and I suggest that people not cooperate. For those who have not paid attention, the U.S. Patent Office has issued an enormous number of undeserved patents since it started issuing software patents. It looks like Mr. Soroka's firm is about to add to that list. I only regret that I actually e-mailed Mr. Soroka some helpful information. May the Internet have mercy on my soul..... From: Jlundell@JLphoto.com (Treker L) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/24 Message-ID: <4t5hiq$lcl@news-old.tiac.net>#1/1 references: <4t3adp$gdd@ncar.ucar.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc bob@raf.atd.ucar.edu (Bob Campbell) wrote: >In article , howards@netcom.com (Howard Soroka) writes: >The fact of the matter is, though, that before the mid 80's, >if you weren't sitting at a terminal on a large central system, >you were sitting on a lone micro. Not really enough demand to >make multiplayer, independant-node games. Of Coarse there are lots of games like this out there NOW and being put out either as freeware or from a varity of diferent companys, We have monopoly, Meridian, Netreks a bit like that isn't it? and we have a mess of java based multi-player games they have most of the code entirly on the user's end. And of coarse we have Microsoft and the Gaming Zone. I don't think anyone would get a patent on multiplayer games...but with the patent office today you never know. Treker L =/\= From: Justin Kao <102741.2022@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: Core Warrior 39 Date: 1996/07/24 Message-ID: <960724045915_102741.2022_GHT46-4@CompuServe.COM>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >Is Kao implying the >Microsoft programs are really just big viruses with his warrior Microsoft >v1.0 or is he predicting Gates and Co. will dominate KotH as the do the >desktop? I'm hoping for the latter... though Microsoft _is_ a descendant of HAL xxxx :-> Justin Kao From: bryan@sgl.ists.ca (Bryan Feir) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/24 Message-ID: #1/1 references: <4t3adp$gdd@ncar.ucar.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc bob@raf.atd.ucar.edu (Bob Campbell) writes: >In article , howards@netcom.com (Howard Soroka) writes: >> >>Specifically, I would like to know about EARLY multi-player games in which >>the individual users' stations have some local processing power (memory >>and CPU), beyond mere terminal capabilities. Presumably, the game(s) would >The fact of the matter is, though, that before the mid 80's, >if you weren't sitting at a terminal on a large central system, >you were sitting on a lone micro. Not really enough demand to >make multiplayer, independant-node games. Hmmm... I have a vague recollection of multiplayer games before that. There were a few games, including at least one Battleship-like game, that ran on the TRS-80 model I back more to the late 70's. They connected two computers together via the cassette ports on each: the audio out to cassette on one machine was connected to the audio in on the other, and the games would send data to each other via the usual 'PRINT #-1,...' for cassettes. If anyone has access to copies of 80 Micro they should be able to verify that. Heck, I'm reasonably sure that a program to do this was published in the magazine as a BASIC listing. Was certainly nothing fancy, but it would fit the qualifications as given. Unfortunately it was a friend of mine that had the 80 Micro subscription, so I don't have copies of the magazines. ---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------- Bryan Feir VE7GBF|"A wrangle is the disinclination of two boarders to bryan@sgl.ists.ca | each other that meet together but are not in the | same line." -- Stephen Leacock ---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------- From: Paul Anderson Subject: Corewar for linux? Date: 1996/07/24 Message-ID: <31F6EB3D.31DBCF0E@ebtech.net>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar I was wondering if Corewar has been ported to Linux? TTYL! -- ----------------------------------- Hal 9000 - "Put down those Windows disks Dave.... Dave? DAVE!!" The plagarized quote brought to you by: LINUX!!! ----------------------------------- From: skang@rohan.sdsu.edu (SK) Subject: Re: A New " America Online"......$19.96\month Unlimited access!!! Date: 1996/07/25 Message-ID: <4t8tdm$2st@hole.sdsu.edu>#1/1 references: <4t8q0t$2cr@ns1.autonet.net> newsgroups: rec.games.computer.xpilot,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.diplomacy ?????????? From: Jlundell@JLphoto.com (Treker L) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/25 Message-ID: <4t8eeh$cki@news-old.tiac.net>#1/1 references: <4t3i1u$r4u@news.xs4all.nl> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc dark@xs4all.nl (Richard Braakman) wrote: >In howards@netcom.com (Howard Soroka) writes: >>Having digested the results, I would now like to ask the question again, >>with a slight modification of the criteria. >[... modified criteria snipped ...] >You know, this _does_ look like a search for prior art. Yup. And he's useing us so he doesn't have to hire a lawyer. Treker L =/\= From: logon@my.bbs (Cyber Millionair) Subject: A New " America Online"......$19.96\month Unlimited access!!! Date: 1996/07/25 Message-ID: <4t8q0t$2cr@ns1.autonet.net>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.computer.xpilot,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.diplomacy Access our network NOW!!! FREE Windows Software!! Complete Easy System.!! Automatic Update!! Full UNLIMITED Internet Access for $19.96 ,Chat, Forums, Classified ,Usenet Business forums , Family forums,Online games!! and more!! BETTER THAN Prodigy , ComuServe and America Online!! For more Info: Log on my BBS (312)247-9051 and download the file "pwr1.txt" BUT HURRY UP before it is too late!!! ( If the line is busy, try again later ) From: juggler@aschamhs.demon.co.uk (John Wright) Subject: Re: A New " America Online"......$19.96\month Unlimited access!!! Date: 1996/07/26 Message-ID: <19960726.190221.70@aschamhs.demon.co.uk>#1/1 references: <4t8q0t$2cr@ns1.autonet.net> newsgroups: rec.games.computer.xpilot,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.diplomacy We've all heard/read the stories about America Online. ;) -- jug.gler \'j*g-(*-)l*r\ n [ME jogelour, fr. OE geogelere, fr. OF jogleour, fr. L joc]ulator, fr. joculatus, pp. of joculari 1a: one who performs tricks or acts of magic ... From: "Scott J. Ellentuch" Subject: Re: Corewar for linux? Date: 1996/07/26 Message-ID: <31F96D28.E16AC84@koth.org>#1/1 references: <31F6EB3D.31DBCF0E@ebtech.net> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Paul Anderson wrote: > > I was wondering if Corewar has been ported to Linux? TTYL! > Actually, the KOTH.ORG (Stormking) hills are running on a Pentium 133, Linux 1.2.13 and pMARS 0.8 (http://www.koth.org/pmars.html Tuc From: Lockeed@msn.com (Andrew Cybularz) Subject: Re: A New " America Online"......$19.96\month Unlimited access!!! Date: 1996/07/27 Message-ID: <00001f35+00000866@msn.com>#1/1 references: <4t8q0t$2cr@ns1.autonet.net> <19960726.190221.70@aschamhs.demon.co.uk> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Hey is this True please E-mail me if so!!!!!!!!!!! please Address lockeed@msn.com From: dick@buckosoft.com (Dick Balaska) Subject: Re: A New " America Online"......$19.96\month Unlimited access!!! Date: 1996/07/27 Message-ID: <4tc3u2$k@client2.news.psi.net>#1/1 references: <4t8q0t$2cr@ns1.autonet.net> <19960726.190221.70@aschamhs.demon.co.uk> newsgroups: rec.games.computer.xpilot,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.diplomacy juggler@aschamhs.demon.co.uk (John Wright) wrote: >We've all heard/read the stories about America Online. ;) Tell me the one about trademark infringement again daddy? From: Keith Lucas Subject: Re: A New " America Online"......$19.96\month Unlimited access!!! Date: 1996/07/28 Message-ID: #1/1 references: <4t8q0t$2cr@ns1.autonet.net> <19960726.190221.70@aschamhs.demon.co.uk> <4tc3u2$k@client2.news.psi.net> newsgroups: rec.games.computer.xpilot,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.diplomacy In article <4tc3u2$k@client2.news.psi.net>, Dick Balaska wrote: >juggler@aschamhs.demon.co.uk (John Wright) wrote: > >>We've all heard/read the stories about America Online. ;) Not only heard, we've seen them in action.. "Call **FREE** 1-800...." as if everyone on the planet lives in the US. No-one would mind if they posted the stuff if they set the distribution to US only, but such acts are a lost art on Usenet these days. No doubt "Lost Dog" postings from teeny.tiny.town.in.wisconsin will get sent globally. >Tell me the one about trademark infringement again daddy? It runs like this "Once there was a great dream of a world communications system that would liberate and make all men equal. It was destroyed by America Online and their rampant spammers." Tell me the one about a government attempting pass legislation to govern what citizens of other countries can do in their own jurisdictions when it got revoked by their own court !!! --------------------------------------------+--------------------------------- "It's not a personality.. it's a bulldozer." | My pet goldfish knows more Keith Lucas -- sillywiz@wardrobe.demon.co.uk.| science than Andre Bormanis ! --------------------------------------------+--------------------------------- From: wtnewton@nc5.infi.net (Terry) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/28 Message-ID: <4tg2il$6vs@nw101.infi.net>#1/1 references: <4t3i1u$r4u@news.xs4all.nl> <4t8eeh$cki@news-old.tiac.net> <31FB273E.649F@ugcs.caltech.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc The Fugitive wrote: >Treker L wrote: >> >> dark@xs4all.nl (Richard Braakman) wrote: >> >> >In howards@netcom.com (Howard Soroka) writes: >> >>Having digested the results, I would now like to ask the question again, >> >>with a slight modification of the criteria. >> >[... modified criteria snipped ...] >> >> >You know, this _does_ look like a search for prior art. >> >> Yup. And he's useing us so he doesn't have to hire a lawyer. >> >> Treker L =/\= >Stop fucking posting >Nobody but you gives a fuck about what you have to say in 90% of your >posts [masses of offensive stuff deleted] >-Jitesh What's the problem? Treker L's comment seems valid enough. Seeing how this is a spam post to begin with, consider all the people who don't care for what you have to say either. There is no need for such profanity. From: The Fugitive Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/28 Message-ID: <31FC568A.205A@ugcs.caltech.edu>#1/1 references: <4t3i1u$r4u@news.xs4all.nl> <4t8eeh$cki@news-old.tiac.net> <31FB273E.649F@ugcs.caltech.edu> <4tg2il$6vs@nw101.infi.net> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc Terry wrote: > > The Fugitive wrote: > > >Treker L wrote: > >> > >> dark@xs4all.nl (Richard Braakman) wrote: > >> > >> >In howards@netcom.com (Howard Soroka) writes: > >> >>Having digested the results, I would now like to ask the question again, > >> >>with a slight modification of the criteria. > >> >[... modified criteria snipped ...] > >> > >> >You know, this _does_ look like a search for prior art. > >> > >> Yup. And he's useing us so he doesn't have to hire a lawyer. > >> > >> Treker L =/\= > >Stop fucking posting > >Nobody but you gives a fuck about what you have to say in 90% of your > >posts [masses of offensive stuff deleted] > >-Jitesh > > What's the problem? Treker L's comment seems valid enough. Seeing how > this is a spam post to begin with, consider all the people who don't care > for what you have to say either. There is no need for such profanity. 2 Words FUCK YOU -Jitesh PS: I have no idea why this thread is attached to so many news groups ; my comments are relevant to rec.games.netrek only. From: myrddin@iosys.net (Myrddin Emrys) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/28 Message-ID: <31fbd9a0.44758873@news.inc.net>#1/1 references: <4t3i1u$r4u@news.xs4all.nl> <4t8eeh$cki@news-old.tiac.net> <31FB273E.649F@ugcs.caltech.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc We intercepted this transmission from The Fugitive on Sun, 28 Jul 1996 01:39:26 -0700: :Treker L wrote: :> :> dark@xs4all.nl (Richard Braakman) wrote: :> :> >In howards@netcom.com (Howard Soroka) writes: :> >>Having digested the results, I would now like to ask the question again, :> >>with a slight modification of the criteria. :> >[... modified criteria snipped ...] :> :> >You know, this _does_ look like a search for prior art. :> :> Yup. And he's useing us so he doesn't have to hire a lawyer. :> :> Treker L =/\= :Stop fucking posting :-Jitesh Jitesh, this ain't r.g.n. Go spew somewhere else. Take it to r.g.n where people seem to listen to that stuff. If you don't like how someone flies a DD, send a message to God or the All board... somehow, I doubt the majority of this group cares. Myrddin Emrys From: The Fugitive Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/28 Message-ID: <31FB273E.649F@ugcs.caltech.edu>#1/1 references: <4t3i1u$r4u@news.xs4all.nl> <4t8eeh$cki@news-old.tiac.net> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc Treker L wrote: > > dark@xs4all.nl (Richard Braakman) wrote: > > >In howards@netcom.com (Howard Soroka) writes: > >>Having digested the results, I would now like to ask the question again, > >>with a slight modification of the criteria. > >[... modified criteria snipped ...] > > >You know, this _does_ look like a search for prior art. > > Yup. And he's useing us so he doesn't have to hire a lawyer. > > Treker L =/\= Stop fucking posting Nobody but you gives a fuck about what you have to say in 90% of your posts I don't fucking read this news group to read your bland one line fucking messages. What kind of name is "Treker L" ? Why the fuck don't you lern to play the game if your so interested in it ? You fly thast fucking DD of shit and all you do i blow up on people at best 50 % of the time the other 50% your staring at the MOTD wondering why you keep dying to people that simply phaser you 4X at 50 point range. Your not fucking funny, deal with it. Man I got that fucking pea-brain zerkle to stop posting about his clue god status ; I hope I flame this fucker enuff so that he will stop replying to every fucking thread in rgn. I admit I am a computer illiterate moron who uses Netscape to read r.g.n , but I don't fucking send you one line posts that have ZERO content. Fuck even sheldon could at least phaser and get kills every so often you fucking moron. Go post on some cooking newsgroup, or alt.fans.usenet.morons That all I wanted to fuckign say about this moron -Jitesh From: jeffsj@execpc.com (Jeffery S. Jones) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/29 Message-ID: <2166.6784T935T666@execpc.com>#1/1 references: newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc On 24-Jul-96 05:06:35, James Logajan wrote: >Howard Soroka (howards@netcom.com) wrote: >[elided] >: Specifically, I would like to know about EARLY multi-player games in which >: the individual users' stations have some local processing power (memory >: and CPU), beyond mere terminal capabilities. >[elided] >*SIGH* As someone who has always believed in the basic integrity of his >fellow humans, I did not even consider the possibility that the Mr. Soroka >was doing anything other than what he claimed: putting together a history >of multiplayer games. I scoffed when someone posted otherwise. >But the line of questioning pursued by Mr. Soroka is not one that a historian >would pursue; in my humble opinion, he is a liar. His intent is a search for >prior art for the sole purpose of filing a patent and I suggest that people >not cooperate. For those who have not paid attention, the U.S. Patent Office >has issued an enormous number of undeserved patents since it started issuing >software patents. It looks like Mr. Soroka's firm is about to add to that >list. >I only regret that I actually e-mailed Mr. Soroka some helpful information. >May the Internet have mercy on my soul..... Distributed processing games predate micros, and development on them took off nicely once micros hit the scene. Finding history on this will take some work, but it is out there. I sincerely doubt that anyone can claim to own this "technology", and proof will be hard to dig up for conclusive claims. As soon as smart terminal graphics processing became possible, people figured out games for them. At a guess, I'd think that the spacewar (netrek-like) games were first, and the smart graphics processors were memory and CPU designs, even fairly early on, though nothing like current computer technology. That most of these didn't get mass-market attention is understandable, but where do you think video games came from? -- *-__________________________ | *Starfire* | _________________________-* Jeff Jones email:jeffsj@execpc.com *//* Amiga Lives! |Born Again 1996 *TFG* *Starfire* Design Studio \\//http://www.task-force-games.com -- From: Jlundell@JLphoto.com (Treker L) Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/29 Message-ID: <4tiliv$geq@news-old.tiac.net>#1/1 references: <4t3i1u$r4u@news.xs4all.nl> <4t8eeh$cki@news-old.tiac.net> <31FB273E.649F@ugcs.caltech.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc The Fugitive wrote: >Nobody but you gives a fuck about what you have to say in 90% of your >posts Of coarse since you posted this to 6 irrelivant newsgroups you shouldn't talk. >I don't fucking read this news group to read your bland one line fucking >messages. Then don't. >Why the fuck don't you lern to play >the game if your so interested in it ? Hmm...Participateing in a news group completly dedicated to it seems a good place to start. >You fly thast fucking DD of shit >and all you do i blow up on people at best 50 % of the time the other >50% your staring at the MOTD wondering why you keep dying to people that >simply phaser you 4X at 50 point range. If you wanted to critise my style of play why didn't just say so. Yes I know I've got to fly less DD and more CA I'm wokring on that. But 90% of the time I know exactly why I died. Usualy I either made a real dumb move or was trying to use a DD to play defence. Bad habits are hard to break. Treker L =/\= From: Ross Morgan-Linial Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/29 Message-ID: #1/1 references: <4t3i1u$r4u@news.xs4all.nl> <4t8eeh$cki@news-old.tiac.net> <31FB273E.649F@ugcs.caltech.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Hmmm... I'm suprised this guy isn't from AOL. On Sun, 28 Jul 1996, The Fugitive wrote: // Treker L wrote: // > // > dark@xs4all.nl (Richard Braakman) wrote: // > // > >In howards@netcom.com (Howard Soroka) writes: // > >>Having digested the results, I would now like to ask the question again, // > >>with a slight modification of the criteria. // > >[... modified criteria snipped ...] // > // > >You know, this _does_ look like a search for prior art. // > // > Yup. And he's useing us so he doesn't have to hire a lawyer. // > // > Treker L =/\= // Stop fucking posting // Nobody but you gives a fuck about what you have to say in 90% of your // posts // I don't fucking read this news group to read your bland one line fucking // messages. // What kind of name is "Treker L" ? Why the fuck don't you lern to play // the game if your so interested in it ? You fly thast fucking DD of shit // and all you do i blow up on people at best 50 % of the time the other // 50% your staring at the MOTD wondering why you keep dying to people that // simply phaser you 4X at 50 point range. // Your not fucking funny, deal with it. // Man I got that fucking pea-brain zerkle to stop posting about his clue // god status ; I hope I flame this fucker enuff so that he will stop // replying to every fucking thread in rgn. // I admit I am a computer illiterate moron who uses Netscape to read r.g.n // , but I don't fucking send you one line posts that have ZERO content. // Fuck even sheldon could at least phaser and get kills every so often you // fucking moron. Go post on some cooking newsgroup, or // alt.fans.usenet.morons // That all I wanted to fuckign say about this moron // -Jitesh // // ******************** *Ross Morgan-Linial* *rmorganl@fhcrc.org* ******************** Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when _you_ walk into an open sewer and die. -- Mel Brooks From: kafka Subject: ;test option Date: 1996/07/29 Message-ID: <31FD03F6.41C67EA6@rice.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar hey, could anybody tell me if the new ;test option on pizza is working yet? If so, how do I use it? You have probably noticed that I have been doing some extensive testing on the hill, and I am probably starting to annoy people with my "testing warriors". Thanks. kafka From: Anton Marsden Subject: Core Warrior 40 Date: 1996/07/29 Message-ID: newsgroups: rec.games.corewar .xX$$x. .x$$$$$$$x. d$$$$$$$$$$$ ,$$$$$$$P' `P' , . $$$$$$P' ' .d b $$$$$P b ,$$x ,$$x ,$$x ,$$b $$. Y$$$$' `$. $$$$$$. $$$$$$ $$P~d$. d$$$b d d$$$ `$$$$ ,$$ $$$$$$$b $$$P `$ $$$b.$$b `Y$$$d$d$$$' . . a . a a .aa . a `$$$ ,$$$,$$' `$$$ $$$' ' $$P$XX$' `$$$$$$$$$ .dP' `$'$ `$'$ , $''$ `$'$ `Y$b ,d$$$P `$b,d$P' `$$. `$$. , `$$P $$$' Y $. $ $ $ Y..P $ `$$$$$$$' $$$P' `$$b `$$$P `P `$' `Y'k. $. $. $. $$' $. Issue 40 July 29, 1996 ______________________________________________________________________________ Core Warrior is a weekly newsletter promoting the game of corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills--currently the '94 draft hill and the beginner hill. Coverage will follow where ever the action is. If you have no clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star internet locals for more information: FAQs are available by anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z FTP site is: ftp.csua.berkeley.edu /pub/corewar Web pages are at: (Please note new Stormking's address) http://www.koth.org/ ;Stormking http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza http://pauillac.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/ ;Planar Newbies should check the stormking page for the FAQ, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! If ftp.csua.berkeley.edu is unreachable, you can download pMARS at: Terry's web page--http://www.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ Planar ftp site--ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars Fechter ftp site--ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar ______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings. Not much action this week - only 7 challenges (there were actually more but the Hill was reset for some reason). There were quite a few challenges in the weekend though so not everyone's asleep. This issue contains a hint list and Probe. --Anton Marsden ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server ICWS '94 Draft Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 38.4/ 24.0/ 37.6 Simple v0.4b Ian Oversby 152.8 19 2 45.6/ 39.4/ 15.0 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 151.7 67 3 46.3/ 43.0/ 10.7 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 149.5 118 4 42.3/ 36.4/ 21.3 Probe Anton Marsden 148.3 68 5 43.9/ 40.0/ 16.1 Goldfinch P.Kline 147.9 9 6 44.2/ 41.9/ 14.0 Mist P.Kline 146.5 8 7 28.7/ 12.0/ 59.3 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 145.5 56 8 42.7/ 42.4/ 15.0 myVamp5.4 Paulsson 143.0 116 9 33.0/ 23.2/ 43.9 Armory II John K W 142.8 207 10 33.8/ 25.7/ 40.5 Pulp v0.2 Ian Oversby 141.9 163 11 41.8/ 42.2/ 16.1 Earthquake v0.2 Bjoern & Ian 141.3 25 12 39.5/ 37.7/ 22.9 Yogi Bear P.Kline 141.3 272 13 41.4/ 42.0/ 16.7 Harmony P.Kline 140.7 33 14 38.9/ 37.5/ 23.6 Dura v0.1 Ian Oversby 140.4 97 15 38.6/ 38.0/ 23.4 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 139.3 786 16 30.9/ 23.1/ 46.0 blue flame c1/10 bjoern guenzel 138.7 52 17 30.2/ 22.1/ 47.7 Rosebud Beppe 138.3 741 18 32.9/ 27.6/ 39.6 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 138.2 425 19 38.2/ 39.2/ 22.6 Paper, Scissors and Stone David van Dam 137.3 196 20 25.9/ 15.3/ 58.8 ompega Steven Morrell 136.4 183 21 30.8/ 25.5/ 43.6 Forked Lightning 2.0 Philip Kendall 136.2 1 22 36.4/ 38.4/ 25.2 airBag Paulsson 134.4 109 23 37.5/ 42.0/ 20.6 Twister Beppe Bezzi 133.0 522 24 36.1/ 39.5/ 24.4 Scimitar 2 P.Kline 132.8 134 25 29.1/ 29.4/ 41.5 unrequited love kafka 128.9 2 Weekly age: 7 ( 31 last week, 84 the week before ) New warriors: 2 Turnover/age rate 29% Average age: 176 ( 191 last week, 184 the week before ) Average score: 141 ( 137 last week, 141 the week before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by 13 authors: Kline with 5; Oversby with 4; Bezzi with 3; Guenzel, JKW, Marsden, and Paulsson with 2. King Report: Simple v0.4b and Blur 2 were both on top this week. Kendall makes an appearance on the '94 Hill and kafka's warrior will soon disappear. The only significant loss was the historian. What more can I say? This week wasn't very exciting. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 25 27.4/ 30.3/ 42.3 unrequited love kafka 124.5 1 16 29.9/ 26.2/ 43.9 Forked Lightning 2.0 Philip Kendall 133.7 1 ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 26 37.6/ 49.8/ 12.5 test mef2 Beppe Bezzi 125.4 10 26 1.6/ 1.6/ 0.8 Nephrite John K W 5.6 2 26 1.8/ 2.1/ 0.0 Nephrite John K W 5.5 2 26 29.4/ 35.7/ 34.9 the historian bjoern guenzel 123.1 538 26 36.1/ 53.8/ 10.1 dodger component M R Bremer 118.5 2 26 0.4/ 0.5/ 3.1 unrequited love kafka 4.2 2 26 36.9/ 50.8/ 12.4 pavement lb0.1+400 bjoern guenzel 123.0 5 the historian departs. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 15 38.6/ 38.0/ 23.4 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 139.3 786 17 30.2/ 22.1/ 47.7 Rosebud Beppe 138.3 741 23 37.5/ 42.0/ 20.6 Twister Beppe Bezzi 133.0 522 18 32.9/ 27.6/ 39.6 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 138.2 425 No new entries, one loss. ______________________________________________________________________________ HALL OF FAME * means the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Thermite II Robert Macrae 2262 Qscan -> bomber 2 Impfinity v4g1 Planar 1993 Stone/ imp 3 Jack in the box Beppe Bezzi 1620 P-warrior 4 Tornado 3.0 Beppe Bezzi 1567 Bomber 5 Torch t18 P.Kline 1539 Bomber 6 Chameleon Myer R Bremer 1437 P-warrior 7 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 1420 One shot scanner 8 Evol Cap 6.6 John Wilkinson 1299 Imp / stone 9 quiz Schitzo 1262 Scanner/ bomber 10 T.N.T. Maurizio Vittuari 1204 Bomber 11 Grilled Octopus v0.5 David Boeren 1154 P-warrior 12 Hazy Shade II John Wilkinson 1102 P-warrior 13 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 1049 Qscan -> Vampire 14 Iron Gate 1.5 Wayne Sheppard 926 CMP scanner 15 Agony II Stefan Strack 912 CMP scanner 16 Barrage Anton Marsden 876 Qscan -> replicator 17 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 869 Stone/ imp 18 Flurry Anton Marsden 835 Qscan -> pwarrior 19 Thermite 1.0 Robert Macrae 802 Qscan -> bomber 20 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 786 * Bomber 21 Blue Funk 3 Steven Morrell 766 Stone/ imp 22 Night Train Karl Lewin 755 Replicator 23 Rosebud Beppe 741 * Stone/ imp 24 Mirage 1.5 Anton Marsden 736 Scanner/ bomber 25 Blizzard Anton Marsden 713 Qscan -> replicator Rosebud moves up a slot. ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server Beginner's Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 maximum age: At age 100, warriors are retired. rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 59.4/ 23.3/ 17.3 Yet 4b Justin Kao 195.6 54 2 51.4/ 26.4/ 22.2 Ick v1.5 Justin Kao 176.4 3 3 51.2/ 26.6/ 22.2 Ick v1.5 Justin Kao 175.8 4 4 51.6/ 28.2/ 20.3 Velveeta Shift-F shar 175.0 52 5 45.9/ 20.7/ 33.4 (-: :-) Ross 171.2 77 6 47.3/ 28.6/ 24.1 Saboteur v0.4k shar 166.0 85 7 45.4/ 24.9/ 29.7 Versatility 1.5 Ross Morgan-Linial 165.8 44 8 42.4/ 28.0/ 29.6 Inferno 1.0 Philip Kendall 156.7 67 9 31.9/ 14.0/ 54.2 Microsoft v1.0 Justin Kao 149.8 10 10 25.8/ 14.2/ 60.0 Ties, Ties, Ties! (+2) Ross 137.4 79 11 22.0/ 11.5/ 66.5 Ties and Wasps -s Ross Morgan-Linial 132.6 1 12 23.2/ 14.2/ 62.6 Ties and Wasps Ross 132.2 2 13 20.2/ 10.2/ 69.7 Wasps 1.3 Ross 130.2 78 14 26.5/ 28.1/ 45.4 Utility Knife Robert J. Street 124.9 87 15 16.8/ 10.7/ 72.5 Nematode v1.4b Jonathan Stott 122.9 51 16 16.5/ 10.6/ 72.9 Nematode v1.4e Jonathan Stott 122.3 18 17 18.7/ 15.7/ 65.7 more testing Anonymous 121.7 38 18 18.1/ 19.9/ 62.0 Fork 4/13 Christoph C. Birk 116.2 71 19 15.3/ 38.2/ 46.4 silken stomp harleyQ2 92.5 27 20 6.5/ 22.6/ 70.8 Mama's Boy Robert J. Street 90.4 32 21 12.3/ 34.5/ 53.3 Handy Man Robert J. Street 90.1 45 22 7.8/ 25.8/ 66.4 silkbombQ2 harleyQ2 89.7 50 23 5.9/ 28.5/ 65.5 Snail Edgar 83.4 16 24 10.6/ 38.3/ 51.1 b3 harleyQ2 82.9 19 25 11.5/ 40.4/ 48.1 silken train harleyQ2 82.5 20 Top 25 Averages: 27.4/ 23.4/ 49.3 131.4 41 An average of 49% draws on this Hill indicates there are a lot of papers/imps on it which explains why Yet 4b (qscan -> core clear) is doing so well. A one shot scanner could also obtain a good ranking. ______________________________________________________________________________ The Hint List (001-040) This list was created so that people could easily find what they wanted (and more) without reading every issue of CW. It may be incomplete in parts but does contain most hints/warriors/articles. 001. Replicators (part 1): basic silk [Paperone by Beppe Bezzi] 002. Improving beginner warriors: code compression [Mutagen by Scott Manley] 003. Replicators (part 2): timescape silk, optimising constants (cdb) [paper01o by Beppe Bezzi] 004. Mutagen improved again (improved scanner) Scanners: JMZ, CMP [Iron Gate by Wayne Sheppard] [Agony II by Stefan Strack] Continuously launching imp spirals 005. PSpace basics, brainwashing [juliet and paper by Myer Bremer/Beppe Bezzi] [Thermite 1.0 by Robert Macrae] [Phq by Maurizio Vittuari] 006. Bombers [Blue Funk 3 by Steven Morrell] [juliet storm by Myer Bremer] Mutagen improved yet again (pspaced with small bomber) Continuously launching imp spirals 007. Bombers: bomb types [Ike v.21 by Paul Kilroy] Continuously launching imp spirals [Impfinity v3i by Planar] QScans: where to scan, what order to scan, how to attack, area to attack 008. Imp steps Vampires [myVamp v3.7 by Magnus Paulsson] 009. Improving beginner warriors [Provascan by Beppe Bezzi] [La Bomba by Beppe Bezzi] [A5 by John Wilkinson] CDB tutorial (part 1) 010. Improving beginner warriors: (no) boot, anti-imp clears CDB tutorial (part 2) 011. Bombing/scanning steps [Impfinity v4g1 by Planar] 012. Scanning [Taking Names by Paul Kline] [seventyfive by Anders Ivner] [Porch Swing by Randy Graham] CDB tutorial (part 3) 013. Anti-imp clears 014. Old warriors vs. current warriors CDB tutorial (part 4) 015. Self bombing -> clear 016. Defence: self splitting, adding imps, boot and decoy, active decoys, PSpace, DJN defence. 017. Spiral clears, 100% C DJN stream CDB tutorial (part 5) 018. Bomb effectiveness: SPL, SSJ, S..S, SPL -1, SPL/MOV, etc. 019. Scanners [Memories by Beppe Bezzi] 020. Handshaking 021. How to live longer: score distribution, boot, bombs, brainwashing, imp protection, QScans [Jack in the box by Beppe Bezzi] 022. JMZ scans: A/B/I 023. Wilkinson's beginner's benchmark (warrior review) 024. [Thermite II by Robert Macrae] 025. [Tornado 3.0 by Beppe Bezzi] [Stepping Stone by Kurt Franke] 026. Switching techniques and brainwash recovery [Grilled Octopus v0.5 by David Boeren] 027. Multi boot routines [Grilled Octopus v0.7 by David Boeren] Advanced benchmark scores 028. Bomber killers 029. Imps (launching) [Scanny Boy by David van Dam] 030. Imp killing -F numbers 031. [Rosebud by Beppe Bezzi] [Flurry by Anton Marsden] 032. [P-clear by Paul Kline] mopt tutorial 033. Decoy makers [stoninc by Maurizio Vittuari] 034. 035. A new p-switcher [Twister by Beppe Bezzi] 036. Mirage/Blur scanner series 037. QScans: fast response [Q^2 by Anders Ivner] Mirrored imps 038. Bomb dodgers [Manfred v0.3 by Ian Oversby] [myVamp 5.4 by Magnus Paulsson] 039. A new p-brain [Jack in the Box II by Beppe Bezzi] 040. THIS HINT LIST [Probe by Anton Marsden] ______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra Probe by Anton Marsden Probe is a fast response QScan similar to Q^2 followed by the Tornado bomber. It took me a while to put the QScan together but then I just grabbed Tornado from Twister, made a few modifications, named it, and it was complete. ;redcode-94 ;name Probe ;author Anton Marsden ;strategy QScan -> Tornado ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;kill Probe ORG start QB EQU (start+400) QS EQU 200 QD EQU 100 COUNT EQU 6 GAP EQU 15 REP EQU 6 dat 10*QS, 2*QS ; can get 21 values from this table table: dat 4*QS, 1*QS ; and can also use the initial value dat 23*QS, 3*QS ; of fnd qbomb: jmp -200,GAP qinc: dat GAP,-GAP tab: add.a table,table slow: add.ab @tab,fnd fast: add.b *tab,@slow which: sne.i datz,@fnd add.ab #QD,fnd mov.i qbomb,@fnd fnd: mov.i -GAP/2,@QB add.ba fnd,fnd mov.i qbomb,*fnd add.f qinc,fnd mov.i qbomb,@fnd djn.b -3,#REP jmp boot,}-300 start: seq.i QB+QS*0,QB+QS*0+QD jmp which,}QS*13 ; qinc+GAP seq.i QB+QS*1,QB+QS*1+QD jmp fast,}QB+QS*1+QD/2 seq.i QB+QS*2,QB+QS*2+QD jmp fast,{tab seq.i QB+QS*3,QB+QS*3+QD jmp fast,}tab seq.i QB+QS*13,QB+QS*13+QD jmp fast,{fast seq.i QB+QS*4,QB+QS*4+QD jmp >fast,}QB+QS*4+QD/2 seq.i QB+QS*5,QB+QS*5+QD jmp slow,}QB+QS*5+QD/2 seq.i QB+QS*6,QB+QS*6+QD jmp slow,{tab seq.i QB+QS*7,QB+QS*7+QD jmp slow,}tab seq.i QB+QS*10,QB+QS*10+QD jmp >fast,fast,>tab seq.i QB+QS*24,QB+QS*24+QD jmp slow,>tab seq.i QB+QS*17,QB+QS*17+QD jmp slow,{fast seq.i QB+QS*8,QB+QS*8+QD jmp tab seq.i QB+QS*28,QB+QS*28+QD jmp tab,>tab seq.i QB+QS*30,QB+QS*30+QD jmp tab,}tab ; TORNADO BOMBER step equ -45 away equ 4000 ; not really gate1 equ (gate-4) boot mov gate, }pt2 mov gate, *pt2 pt1 mov last, gate1 mov @djmp, >gate1 djmp djn.b clr, {bombs incr dat >-3*step,>-3*step last bombm dat <1, {1 dat 0,0 datz: dat 0,0 FOR 5 dat 0,0 ROF END ______________________________________________________________________________ Questions? Concerns? Comments? Complaints? Mail them to people who care. authors: Beppe Bezzi or Myer Bremer or Anton Marsden From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - Multiwarrior Experimental 94 07/29/96 Date: 1996/07/29 Message-ID: <199607290400.AAA18437@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/29/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries MultiWarrior Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Wed Jul 24 03:11:22 EDT 1996 # Name Author Score Age 1 TimeScapeX (0.1) J. Pohjalainen 5677 61 2 This is Test1 Kurt Franke 5677 26 3 jaded M R Bremer 5677 32 4 Fork v0.2-9p/51b Christoph C. Birk 5677 3 5 Evolve X John Wilkinson 5677 1 6 Test2 George Eadon 5654 21 7 Paper8 G. Eadon 5653 27 8 Paperone Beppe Bezzi 5652 46 9 Gluttony J E Long 5630 19 10 Wait A Lot v0.1 Justin Kao 5485 6 11 Saat V2.01 S. Schroeder 5340 15 12 Shwing! T. H. Davies 5329 57 13 Anthill 5 Planar 5143 23 14 life Nandor Sieben 5072 62 15 Pommes-Ketchup V1.35 S. Schroeder 4926 10 16 lifedwarf Nandor Sieben 4920 38 17 Leviathan2 harleyQ2 4768 13 18 Hidden M.C.Diskett Bullfrog 4444 31 19 Variation M-1 Jay Han 4431 8 20 Leviathan harleyQ2 4105 14 21 Bigring Jonathan Stott 3560 2 From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 07/29/96 Date: 1996/07/29 Message-ID: <199607290400.AAA18443@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/29/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Thu Jul 25 11:26:51 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 33/ 5/ 63 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 161 29 2 34/ 14/ 52 Rosebud Beppe 155 8 3 39/ 27/ 33 Falcon v0.3 X Ian Oversby 151 2 4 44/ 38/ 18 Illusion-94/55 Randy Graham 151 11 5 46/ 41/ 13 Tsunami v0.1 Ian Oversby 151 7 6 45/ 42/ 13 Memories Beppe Bezzi 148 36 7 41/ 35/ 25 BigBoy Robert Macrae 146 54 8 43/ 40/ 17 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 145 59 9 38/ 34/ 28 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 143 20 10 41/ 42/ 17 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 141 15 11 39/ 38/ 24 Derision M R Bremer 139 46 12 41/ 45/ 14 Pagan John K W 137 14 13 42/ 49/ 9 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 136 30 14 30/ 26/ 44 Variation M-1 Jay Han 135 9 15 29/ 27/ 45 Aleph 1 Jay Han 131 19 16 36/ 45/ 19 Fire Master Xv1 JS Pulido 127 51 17 33/ 38/ 29 Tornado 2.0 x Beppe Bezzi 127 53 18 26/ 28/ 46 Hector 2 Kurt Franke 123 49 19 38/ 56/ 6 dodger component M R Bremer 119 1 20 33/ 50/ 16 Watcher-h Kurt Franke 116 48 21 33/ 50/ 18 Watcher Kurt Franke 116 52 From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - ICWS Tournament 07/29/96 Date: 1996/07/29 Message-ID: <199607290400.AAA18428@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/29/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Annual ICWS Tournament CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Mon Jul 15 21:31:04 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 43/ 11/ 45 Cannonade Paul Kline 175 92 2 49/ 34/ 16 Miss Carefree Derek Ross 164 24 3 47/ 34/ 19 Giskard v0.5 Ken Mitton 159 65 4 48/ 44/ 8 Agony T Stefan Strack 152 93 5 37/ 29/ 33 Pommes-Ketchup V1.35 S. Schroeder 146 5 6 31/ 16/ 53 Nothing Special G. Eadon 145 7 7 32/ 19/ 49 Turkey Beppe Bezzi 145 8 8 43/ 42/ 15 test88 P.Kline 145 11 9 40/ 41/ 19 Old Tire Swing Randy Graham 139 49 10 41/ 45/ 15 Traper3_t Waldemar Bartolik 137 2 11 37/ 38/ 25 Yop La Boum v2.1 P.E.M & E.C. 136 22 12 39/ 44/ 17 Miss Carry Derek Ross 134 56 13 28/ 25/ 47 One Fat Lady Robert Macrae 131 9 14 38/ 47/ 15 Slaver v1.1i Christoph C. Birk 129 53 15 40/ 53/ 7 xtc stefan roettger 126 97 16 35/ 46/ 18 Illusion Randy Graham 124 51 17 36/ 49/ 15 DoubleStone v0.7 Christoph C. Birk 123 35 18 29/ 36/ 34 Chris Steven Morrell 123 14 19 28/ 36/ 36 Big Bang Theory Zul Nadzri 121 1 20 35/ 50/ 14 Traper3 Waldemar Bartolik 120 4 21 35/ 50/ 14 Traper3 Waldemar Bartolik 120 3 From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - MultiWarrior 94 07/29/96 Date: 1996/07/29 Message-ID: <199607290400.AAA18432@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/29/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/~koth *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/~koth/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Thu Jul 25 21:05:12 EDT 1996 # Name Author Score Age 1 Son of Imp Steven Morrell 5512 41 2 sisyphus Kafka 5486 6 3 Die Hard P.Kline 5481 28 4 Evol Cap -- John Wilkinson 5459 7 5 TJ Maurizio Vittuari 5430 17 6 Super Evol Cap John Wilkinson 5408 5 7 TESTI Maurizio Vittuari 5345 16 8 60% Cotton Wilkinson 5294 24 9 90% Cotton v5c Wilkinson 5261 23 10 Nematode v1.4e Jonathan Stott 5204 1 11 Yet 3mw Justin Kao 3328 0 From: SKI Koth Server Subject: SKI-ICWS: Status - Standard 07/29/96 Date: 1996/07/29 Message-ID: <199607290400.AAA18424@odin.stormking.com>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Weekly Status on 07/29/96 ****** NOTICE ****** We have changed our name to koth.org ****** NOTICE ****** See up to the second scores and the latest Core War information at : http://www.koth.org/ *FAQ* http://www.koth.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the StormKing Industries Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Fri Jul 26 08:53:18 EDT 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 34/ 23/ 43 Yop La Boum v2.1 P.E.M & E.C. 145 45 2 40/ 35/ 24 PacMan v5 David Moore 145 13 3 38/ 40/ 22 Stasis David Moore 137 21 4 27/ 19/ 53 CAPS KEY IS STUCK AGAIN Steven Morrell 135 111 5 25/ 14/ 61 ttti nandor sieben 135 95 6 39/ 44/ 17 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 133 239 7 18/ 5/ 77 Evolve '88 John K Wilkinson 132 1 8 23/ 15/ 63 Cannonade P.Kline 130 145 9 36/ 42/ 22 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 130 189 10 25/ 20/ 55 Hydra Stephen Linhart 129 219 11 23/ 18/ 59 K-test P.E.M 129 17 12 24/ 19/ 57 Blue Funk 88 Steven Morrell 128 109 13 19/ 12/ 69 Imperfic II John Wilkinson 127 31 14 22/ 17/ 60 Peace Mr. Jones 126 119 15 25/ 24/ 51 Test Wayne Sheppard 126 134 16 34/ 43/ 23 Gisela 3G6 Andrzej Maciejczak 124 8 17 26/ 30/ 44 Big Bang Theory Zul Nadzri 122 9 18 30/ 39/ 31 Keystone t21 P.Kline 121 132 19 30/ 39/ 31 Giskard v0.5 Ken Mitton 121 83 20 29/ 40/ 31 Christopher Stephen Morrell 119 110 21 18/ 48/ 34 Beauty 2000 Pedro 89 0 From: akemi@netcom.com (David Boeren) Subject: Re: P-space problems Date: 1996/07/30 Message-ID: #1/1 references: <30199659.Amiga@r2d2.sci.fi> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Ilmari Karonen (iltzu@sci.fi) wrote: : Does anyone know exactly how the LDP instruction is supposed to behave? : As far as I can see the following instruction, when executed on the : first round, should chnge like this: : ldp.f #10, #0 : should become : ldp.f #0, #-1 : However this is not the case. The instruction instead becomes : ldp.f #10, #-1 : It's as if the instruction was LDP.B instead of LDP.F! Is this a bug in : pmars or have I once again misunderstood some feature in '94 code?? P-space only stores a single number, not a pair as you are thinking. You can load it in A or B, but I think anything except "A" will load it into B. Actaully, I think it would be nice if .F loaded it into BOTH fields, but it's not a big deal... From: Robert Macrae Subject: Re: nematode13e.red Date: 1996/07/30 Message-ID: <4tlbfb$id3@soap.news.pipex.net>#1/1 references: <4t5q2u$6e8@madeline.INS.CWRU.Edu> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar jstott@poly.phys.cwru.edu (Jonathan Stott) wrote: > >This is my first program to make it onto the beginner's hill and stay >there and now I figured I'll send it out into the world. It is a >highly defensive pair of papers that replicate and then fall into >either impring or self-bombing code. .. > >imp7 spl.a 1, <4720 ; split 7 processes + 1 suicide > spl.a 1, <5490 ; more random decrements > spl.a 1, <6260 > >vec jmp.a *jtbl, }0 ; vector launch a 7-pt impring > >imp mov.i 0, D7 ; the actual code > >imp1 mov.i imp, *jtbl+1 ; start it, then suicide on dat's > >jtbl dat imp1, 0 ; vector table for all 7 points > dat SKIP7+0*D7, 0 > dat SKIP7+1*D7, 0 > dat SKIP7+2*D7, 0 > dat SKIP7+3*D7, 0 > dat SKIP7+4*D7, 0 > dat SKIP7+5*D7, 0 > dat SKIP7+6*D7, 0 Why only 7 processes? As it stands, the ring is rather easy to kill for most coreclears, but a 14+ process spiral would be very hard. You could use the .b field of jtbl to store the second set of locations, so the extra length would be small. This is a very defensive warrior; given the combination of imps and replicators, you will be hard to kill AFTER the launches are complete -- but this takes a rather long time. Is it worth launching the imp before the papers? At least that way you are likely to start one component before anything gets bombed... From: dick@buckosoft.com (Dick Balaska) Subject: Re: A New " America Online"......$19.96\month Unlimited access!!! Date: 1996/07/30 Message-ID: <4tk7su$gg0@client2.news.psi.net>#1/1 references: <4t8q0t$2cr@ns1.autonet.net> <19960726.190221.70@aschamhs.demon.co.uk> <4tc3u2$k@client2.news.psi.net> newsgroups: rec.games.computer.xpilot,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.diplomacy Keith Lucas wrote: >In article <4tc3u2$k@client2.news.psi.net>, >Dick Balaska wrote: >>juggler@aschamhs.demon.co.uk (John Wright) wrote: >> >>>We've all heard/read the stories about America Online. ;) >Not only heard, we've seen them in action.. "Call **FREE** 1-800...." >as if everyone on the planet lives in the US. Worse. As a Yank working in London last winter/spring, I had desparate need of sagely advise from the IRS. However, all lines to the states are 1-800-TAX-100%. The London embassy was as big a joke as any bureaucracy programming an automated phone system could be. >No-one would mind if >they posted the stuff if they set the distribution to US only, but >such acts are a lost art on Usenet these days. No doubt "Lost Dog" >postings from teeny.tiny.town.in.wisconsin will get sent globally. Don't you be pickin' on Wisconsin. >>Tell me the one about trademark infringement again daddy? >It runs like this "Once there was a great dream of a world >communications system that would liberate and make all men equal. It >was destroyed by America Online and their rampant spammers." Nah. This guy is a 2 bit hacker. Amazing he even spelled America Online correctly. I guess Comuserve is for Eastern European access. He probably has a 386 and one modem "If the +1.312... number is busy, call again." (must be 14.4K) He is also advertising access to people who already have access. *duh* I'll even wager it's his mother's phone number. >Tell me the one about a government attempting pass legislation to >govern what citizens of other countries can do in their own >jurisdictions when it got revoked by their own court !!! Never stopped us before. There's a distinct advantage to controlling the largest military complex known to exist. dik From: gryphon@IAEhv.nl Subject: Re: Further question about Multi-Player History Date: 1996/07/30 Message-ID: <4tkelm$fgt@iaehv.IAEhv.nl>#1/1 references: <4t3i1u$r4u@news.xs4all.nl> <4t8eeh$cki@news-old.tiac.net> <31FB273E.649F@ugcs.caltech.edu> newsgroups: rec.games.netrek,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.mud.admin,rec.games.mud.moo,rec.games.trivia,rec.games.video.misc In article <31FB273E.649F@ugcs.caltech.edu>, The Fugitive wrote: [All lines containing excessive expletives snipped] And this guy complains about zero content? At least he's doing it in more than one line, though if you remove all the expletives from his post there isn't much left but a single line of random words. From: iltzu@sci.fi (Ilmari Karonen) Subject: P-space problems Date: 1996/07/30 Message-ID: <30199659.Amiga@r2d2.sci.fi>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Does anyone know exactly how the LDP instruction is supposed to behave? As far as I can see the following instruction, when executed on the first round, should chnge like this: ldp.f #10, #0 should become ldp.f #0, #-1 However this is not the case. The instruction instead becomes ldp.f #10, #-1 It's as if the instruction was LDP.B instead of LDP.F! Is this a bug in pmars or have I once again misunderstood some feature in '94 code?? -- Ilmari Karonen From: iltzu@sci.fi (Ilmari Karonen) Subject: Re: P-space problems Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: <01199626.Amiga@sci.fi>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >: It's as if the instruction was LDP.B instead of LDP.F! Is this a bug in >: pmars or have I once again misunderstood some feature in '94 code?? > >P-space only stores a single number, not a pair as you are thinking. >You can load it in A or B, but I think anything except "A" will load it >into B. Actaully, I think it would be nice if .F loaded it into BOTH >fields, but it's not a big deal... I know that P-space only stores a single number. However according to the general rules of the '94 draft, an instruction like LDP.F should AFAIK load the p-space field(s) referenced by the A-value into the instruction pointed to by the B-pointer. Like this: ;redcode-94theoretical ;name LDP.F ;author Ilmari Karonen ;strategy This is how LDP _should_ behave if it was a standard ;strategy '94 Draft instruction like MOV or ADD. _PS1 equ 10 _PS2 equ 20 org start dest dat.f #0, #0 ; should become "dat.f #7, #11" ptr dat.f #_PS1, #_PS2 start stp.ab #7, #_PS1 stp.ab #11, #_PS2 ldp.f ptr, dest ; doesn't really work! end This is *not* how LDP behaves in pmars 0.8, of course. Instead, it will only load 11 into the b-field but will leave the a-field 0. This actually seems pretty logical, since accessing p-space is supposed to be slow. A similar decision to allow only a single target was made for JMP and SPL. I just wish someone had bothered to document this 'feature'.. It would be fun to have it, though. Instructions like "LDP.X #_STR, @dest" would allow some really cryptic code.. =) -- Ilmari Karonen From: iltzu@sci.fi (Ilmari Karonen) Subject: Re: P-space problems Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: <01199641.Amiga@sci.fi>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Paul Anderson wrote: >>Does anyone know exactly how the LDP instruction is supposed to behave? > >It has been quite some time since I have been dealing with core wars. >Glad to see it is still alive. I've been reading this group for 5 days >now and while trying to re-wet my feet, have never seen this >instruction or coding convention. Would someone please direct me to or >mail to me the current instruction list, coding convention, and >executable? > >I got started with this shortly after the first article in SciAm and >wrote several red-code simulators/compilers on everything from >Atari's to IBM's in ASM to BAS. It was a nice hobby, then it seemed to >disappear. Later, it showed up again as an international competition, >they added an instruction, and life was good again, but unless you knew >someone, had no way to continue. > >I'd like to get back into this, and would really like to get the SOTA >of the current red-code spec, gaming rules, etc. (text reformatted) Well, if you don't know the '94 standard, you should certainly read the ICWS'94 Draft, found for example at http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth/icws94.html. It doesn't contain the nonstandard pMARS 0.8 extensions, which are included in the pMARS documentation, but otherwise completely describes the current redcode syntax. AFAIK, there are no other documents that explain all the basic features of the '94 standard. You should probably read the draft through, making sure you understand each and every line. The ICWS'94 syntax is extremely logical, simple, versatile, and unbelievably counter-intuitive. :( One of the most confusing things is that the operation of '#', although compatible and apparently similar to the previous standards, is actually *completely* different from them or any other assembly languages I've seen. -- Ilmari Karonen From: sd@ecst.csuchico.edu (Alfalfa Male) Subject: Pizza down again Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: <4toggk$2lr@charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu>#1/1 newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Pizza will be down again this weekend due to more upgrades to the fileserver. The web server will continue to function, but mail will be unavailable from 5pm PDT friday Aug 2 to 6pm PDT sunday Aug 4. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thos -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\/~~\ /~~~\/\ / \ \ / /~\ /~~~~~YY~~~\\ /~~ Thomas "Thos" Davies V \/\ /\ V / V |\/\/| V\ / sd@ecst.csuchico.edu V \ / | / | V Internet Pizza Server \/ | /\ | Member C.W.M. Corewar King of the Hill information |/oo\| CAVE ON Since 1987 http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth/ |/\| From: Keith Lucas Subject: Re: A New " America Online"......$19.96\month Unlimited access!!! Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: #1/1 references: <4t8q0t$2cr@ns1.autonet.net> <4tc3u2$k@client2.news.psi.net> <4tk7su$gg0@client2.news.psi.net> newsgroups: rec.games.computer.xpilot,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.diplomacy In article <4tk7su$gg0@client2.news.psi.net>, Dick Balaska wrote: >Keith Lucas wrote: >Don't you be pickin' on Wisconsin. Sorry -- it was the first state to spring to mind... >Never stopped us before. There's a distinct advantage to controlling >the largest military complex known to exist. You _control_ your military -- you mean all that stuff is _intended_ ?!?! --------------------------------------------+--------------------------------- "It's not a personality.. it's a bulldozer." | My pet goldfish knows more Keith Lucas -- sillywiz@wardrobe.demon.co.uk.| science than Andre Bormanis ! --------------------------------------------+--------------------------------- From: Richard Rognlie Subject: C++Robots is down (semi-permanently) 8^( Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: <32000DC1.2214679D@erols.com>#1/1 newsgroups: comp.programming.contests,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,rec.games.corewar Due to a variety of circumstances, Richard's C++Robots Server is off the air. I was forced to move the server from a Sun SPARC to my home machine recently, and unfortunately, C++Robots was dependent on the Sun SPARC architecture. It will remain down until I get a chance to do a complete rewrite. The remainder of the server *is* back on-line however. For info, see http://eiss.erols.com/~pbmserv/ I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused anyone. Richard -- /\/\/\ | Richard Rognlie / Internet Developer / Erols.COM / \ \ \ | E-Mail: rrognlie@erols.com \ / / / | Phone: (Home) (703) 361-4764 \/\/\/ | WWW: http://eiss.erols.com/~rrognlie/ From: RFC822@poly.phys.cwru.edu (Jonathan Stott) Subject: Re: nematode13e.red Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: <4to96n$h4r@madeline.INS.CWRU.Edu>#1/1 references: <4t5q2u$6e8@madeline.INS.CWRU.Edu> <4tlbfb$id3@soap.news.pipex.net> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar In article <4tlbfb$id3@soap.news.pipex.net>, Robert Macrae wrote: >jstott@poly.phys.cwru.edu (Jonathan Stott) wrote: > >Why only 7 processes? As it stands, the ring is rather easy to kill for >most coreclears, but a 14+ process spiral would be very hard. You could >use the .b field of jtbl to store the second set of locations, so the >extra length would be small. This impring (as opposed to the ones carried in the replicators) tends to get overwritten fairly quickly unless I'm facing a very fast/lucky scanner/bomber. I used 7 because it gave fairly quick boot more than the size (although size matters more now that I'm p-spacing it). It's been a while, but I don't remember gaining any Wilkies by going to a larger ring size. Didn't know about mirrored imps though... >This is a very defensive warrior; given the combination of imps and >replicators, you will be hard to kill AFTER the launches are complete -- >but this takes a rather long time. Is it worth launching the imp before >the papers? At least that way you are likely to start one component >before anything gets bombed... Hmm, good point... I'm going to have to think about this one.... -JS -- Jonathan Stott O- jjs17@po.cwru.edu CWRU Dept. of Physics jstott@poly.phys.cwru.edu School of Graduate Studies http://poly.phys.cwru.edu:8080/~jstott/ From: Bjoern Guenzel Subject: Re: P-space problems Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: <31FF6462.1B14@mmk.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de>#1/1 references: <30199659.Amiga@r2d2.sci.fi> <4tmbr8$h4l@unix.newnorth.net> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Paul Anderson wrote: > It has been quite some time since I have been dealing with core wars. Glad to see it > is still alive. I've been reading this group for 5 days now and while trying to > re-wet my feet, have never seen this instruction or coding convention. Would someone > please direct me to or mail to me the current instruction list, coding convention, > and executable? > > I got started with this shortly after the first article in SciAm and wrote several > red-code simulators/compilers on everything from Atari's to IBM's in ASM to BAS. It > was a nice hobby, then it seemed to disappear. Later, it showed up again as an > international competition, they added an instruction, and life was good again, but > unless you knew someone, had no way to continue. > > I'd like to get back into this, and would really like to get the SOTA of the current > red-code spec, gaming rules, etc. I am not sure, but I assume the most complete description is the pmars08 documentation, which is included in pmars08.zip. Otherwise I am afraid you'll have to gather the information from various sources, eg get the documents provided at pizza and see which one suits you best. Don't forget to check out the Core Warrior hints for many a good idea for successful warriors...:-) Bjoern From: myrddin@iosys.net (Myrddin Emrys) Subject: Re: A New " America Online"......$19.96\month Unlimited access!!! Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: <31ff0377.1274356@news.inc.net>#1/1 references: <4t8q0t$2cr@ns1.autonet.net> <19960726.190221.70@aschamhs.demon.co.uk> <4tc3u2$k@client2.news.psi.net> newsgroups: rec.games.computer.xpilot,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.design,rec.games.diplomacy We intercepted this transmission from Keith Lucas on Sun, 28 Jul 1996 03:57:35 GMT: :No doubt "Lost Dog" :postings from teeny.tiny.town.in.wisconsin will get sent globally. Hey, I happen to get my e-mail at teeny.tiny.town.in.winconsin.net! Don't you go badmouthin' my home! Myrddin Emrys; Fond du Lac, WI ;) From: Paul Anderson Subject: Re: P-space problems Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: <4tmbr8$h4l@unix.newnorth.net>#1/1 references: <30199659.Amiga@r2d2.sci.fi> newsgroups: rec.games.corewar >Does anyone know exactly how the LDP instruction is supposed to behave? >As far as I can see the following instruction, when executed on the >first round, should chnge like this: > > ldp.f #10, #0 > >should become > > ldp.f #0, #-1 > >However this is not the case. The instruction instead becomes > > ldp.f #10, #-1 > >It's as if the instruction was LDP.B instead of LDP.F! Is this a bug in >pmars or have I once again misunderstood some feature in '94 code?? It has been quite some time since I have been dealing with core wars. Glad to see it is still alive. I've been reading this group for 5 days now and while trying to re-wet my feet, have never seen this instruction or coding convention. Would someone please direct me to or mail to me the current instruction list, coding convention, and executable? I got started with this shortly after the first article in SciAm and wrote several red-code simulators/compilers on everything from Atari's to IBM's in ASM to BAS. It was a nice hobby, then it seemed to disappear. Later, it showed up again as an international competition, they added an instruction, and life was good again, but unless you knew someone, had no way to continue. I'd like to get back into this, and would really like to get the SOTA of the current red-code spec, gaming rules, etc.