From: John.Metcalf@p18.f94.chaos.camelot.co.uk (John Metcalf) Subject: Darwin (again) Date: 1998/10/01 Message-ID: #1/1 A long, long time ago, well about six and a half weeks, I wrote: > A few may be interested to know I have found a reference > to the Darwin instruction set, and I've got the journal > (from 1972) on order from the British Library. After that, > I'm sure it will be a trivial matter to implement it in > ANSI C. (Despite the fact I'd rather use various kinds of > assembly language.) And I'm still waiting for it! Cheers, John From: Erwin Achermann Subject: Re: HLL for CoreWars? Date: 1998/10/01 Message-ID: <36132AB6.7F8F08BA@inf.ethz.ch>#1/1 I did try to design some kind of HLL for redcode a long time ago, and i failed. My idea was to have a collection of high level 'building blocks' like (imp-launcher, vamp-pit, silk-engine, etc) And then have a Genetic algorithm play with different compositions of those. Bjoern Guenzel points out the problem: redcode is so compact, that you can write a good warrior in 10 lines of redcode. So you will need a highly sophisticated HLL, or a very verbose one and then you'll need a very well optimizing compiler thereof to achieve such powerful redcode-programs.... Nevertheless go ahead! People, i am convinced, that once we have a way to generate halfway usable warriors automagically, this will boost the whole story. Erwin Jeff Zeitlin wrote: > > As we all know, the current language for writing warriors is > REDCODE, an assembler-like language. Has anyone ever written a > "compiler" for a high-level language that gets translated to > REDCODE? If so, where could I find it? If not, would it be of > interest (even if only academic interest)? > -- > Jeff Zeitlin > jeff.zeitlin@mail.execnet.com -- Erwin Achermann Tel: ++41 1 632 74 40 Institut fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen Fax: ++41 1 632 13 74 ETH Zentrum, IFW C29.2 mailto:acherman@inf.ethz.ch ICQ:4625051 CH-8092 Zuerich http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/acherman/ > Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, < > but when there is no longer anything to take away. < > -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery < From: Robert Macrae Subject: Re: updates to ICWS94' Date: 1998/10/01 Message-ID: <3613F713.7D3B@dial.pipex.com>#1/1 John K. Lewis wrote: > Cartgirl88@my-dejanews.com wrote: > : does anyone know of any updates to ICWS1994 standard for redcode???? > > Well, that's hard to say, as the 1994 Standard doesn't exist. However the > draft of that standard does exist. We have been extending this draft > for quite some time. > > Maybe it's time for a vote. Let's ratify the 94 draft. All I need is > a second and we can start voting. Whats the hurry? Worried the millenium bug will strike? -- Regards, Robert Macrae From: phil@pknight.demon.co.uk (Phil Knight) Subject: Re: HLL for CoreWars? Date: 1998/10/01 Message-ID: <907272191.14897.0.nnrp-07.9e987dc5@news.demon.co.uk>#1/1 guenzel.p1@blinker.net (Bjoern Guenzel) wrote: >On Wed, 30 Sep 1998 15:47:20 GMT, jeff.zeitlin@mail.execnet.com (Jeff >Zeitlin) wrote: >>Has anyone ever written a >>"compiler" for a high-level language that gets translated to >>REDCODE? If so, where could I find it? If not, would it be of >>interest (even if only academic interest)? >I won't exclude the possibility that it could be of interest (ie >genetic algorithms as a possible application spring to mind) I've recently been thinking about developing some form of HLL or macro language for redcode for exactly this reason. Intuitively, I have felt for some while that having a warrior's genotype represented directly in redcode (I've not come across any other technique?) makes the evolving process somewhat brittle and is possibly why warriors appear to stop evolving at a certain level. An extra layer of processing between the genotype and the phenotype, i.e. between gene representation and executing redcode, may allow the process to generate much more complicated structures, while hopefully allowing for a genetic representation more amenable to genetic operations (mutation, crossover, etc.) >but given that most warriors are around 10 Redcode instructions long, it >is hard to imagine a compiler that could be useful for playing the >game. Except perhaps some macros for standards like launching imp As I starting point, I was thinking of identifying such standards, i.e. search out the components common to each different class of warrior and look at ways of encapsulating these components into language commands. A high-level (perhaps way too high-level) pseudo-code representation of a trivial paper warrior might then be: begin paper bomb with dat every -4 from start copy paper every 100 from end end paper Don't get me wrong, such a language compiler couldn't touch hand-coded warriors and I'm only interested in this from the perspective of evolving warriors. It may be that such a tool may be of some use to beginners though... Any comments/suggestions as to the language itself or whether this is a good/bad/fatally flawed idea are very welcome. If you want to email me directly rather than clutter up the ng, I'll post a summary of any responses. -- Phil Knight From: "John K. Lewis" Subject: Re: updates to ICWS94' Date: 1998/10/01 Message-ID: #1/1 Cartgirl88@my-dejanews.com wrote: : does anyone know of any updates to ICWS1994 standard for redcode???? Well, that's hard to say, as the 1994 Standard doesn't exist. However the draft of that standard does exist. We have been extending this draft for quite some time. Maybe it's time for a vote. Let's ratify the 94 draft. All I need is a second and we can start voting. John K. Lewis From: Cartgirl88@my-dejanews.com Subject: updates to ICWS94' Date: 1998/10/01 Message-ID: <6uv8ug$jl5$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 does anyone know of any updates to ICWS1994 standard for redcode???? -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own From: guenzel.p1@blinker.net (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: Re: HLL for CoreWars? Date: 1998/10/01 Message-ID: <3612c4e2.3191919@news.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 On Wed, 30 Sep 1998 15:47:20 GMT, jeff.zeitlin@mail.execnet.com (Jeff Zeitlin) wrote: >As we all know, the current language for writing warriors is >REDCODE, an assembler-like language. Has anyone ever written a >"compiler" for a high-level language that gets translated to >REDCODE? If so, where could I find it? If not, would it be of >interest (even if only academic interest)? I won't exclude the possibility that it could be of interest (ie genetic algorithms as a possible application spring to mind), but given that most warriors are around 10 Redcode instructions long, it is hard to imagine a compiler that could be useful for playing the game. Except perhaps some macros for standards like launching imp spirals. >-- >Jeff Zeitlin >jeff.zeitlin@mail.execnet.com Bjoern From: John.Metcalf@p18.f94.chaos.camelot.co.uk (John Metcalf) Subject: Annoying test results Date: 1998/10/02 Message-ID: #1/1 I've been tweaking and testing against the 94 hill, and finally decided to submit the warrior. The difference between the test results and actual results is annoyingly high :-( I was expecting it to perhaps be one or two places either way, not 15. Good job I didn't settle for the version which achieved 12th place in testing, it probably wouldn't have even got onto the hill. 9 39.4/ 44.5/ 16.1 H.N.P. Test (end-e) John Metcalf 134.3 1 24 36.2/ 46.4/ 17.4 Have No Pity John Metcalf 126.1 1 From: iltzu@sci.fi (Ilmari Karonen) Subject: Re: updates to ICWS94' Date: 1998/10/02 Message-ID: <6v357j$qu8$1@tron.sci.fi>#1/1 John K. Lewis (jklewis@umich.edu) wrote: : Robert Macrae wrote: : : John K. Lewis wrote: : :> Maybe it's time for a vote. Let's ratify the 94 draft. All I need is : :> a second and we can start voting. : : Whats the hurry? Worried the millenium bug will strike? : Okay! I've been seconded. ;-) We can commence with the voting. I'm not sure if that really counted. But I do support ratifying the status quo (read: pmars0.8) as the Redcode'94 Standard - I hate having to write "ICWS'94 draft with pmars 0.8 extensions" where simply "the '94 standard" would suffice. :-) But someone really should formalize the current practice. Now that my exams are over I might volunteer, though don't count on it. Anyway, the changes to the '94 Draft shouldn't be too complicated, except for P-space. -- Ilmari Karonen (iltzu@sci.fi) http://www.sci.fi/~iltzu/ From: "John K. Lewis" Subject: Re: updates to ICWS94' Date: 1998/10/02 Message-ID: #1/1 Robert Macrae wrote: : John K. Lewis wrote: : :> Cartgirl88@my-dejanews.com wrote: :> : does anyone know of any updates to ICWS1994 standard for redcode???? :> :> Well, that's hard to say, as the 1994 Standard doesn't exist. However the :> draft of that standard does exist. We have been extending this draft :> for quite some time. :> :> Maybe it's time for a vote. Let's ratify the 94 draft. All I need is :> a second and we can start voting. : Whats the hurry? Worried the millenium bug will strike? Okay! I've been seconded. ;-) We can commence with the voting. Those in favor of using the 94 Draft as the new standard vote yes. Those not in favor... write a new draft. John Lewis < john k. lewis > < jklewis@umich.edu > < web services > < 734.615.0584 > From: Paul-V Khuong Subject: Re: HLL for CoreWars? Date: 1998/10/02 Message-ID: <19981001225906.11334.rocketmail@send102.yahoomail.com>#1/1 Philip Kendall wrote: > > In article <3614c7c9.267960596@news1.slurp.net>, Jeff Zeitlin lin@mail.execnet.com> wrote > >As we all know, the current language for writing warriors is > >REDCODE, an assembler-like language. Has anyone ever written a > >"compiler" for a high-level language that gets translated to > >REDCODE? > > I doubt it -- it would have to be a pretty useless language to be able > to be translated into Redcode, as Redcode has not facilities for > accessing anything that is outside core. Therefore you can't get any > user input/read any files/do anything useful :-) Some didn't tought it was. The one who did MacroRed: You could use macros. Then, an author of some NewsLetter said like: Think about it; if you could just write this: Stone mod 4 Paper Clear ... Dunno if it would be good. Anyway, it'd be just like a real compiler: Not optimized 8( == Vive le Qu�bec libre... d� souverainistes!!! _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From: David Matthew Moore Subject: Re: ldp in decoy makers Date: 1998/10/03 Message-ID: <6v4tfj$44r$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu>#1/1 M Joonas Pihlaja wrote: : You can use ldp to get some variation in your decoy. That's very nice :) If you can collect lots of those little gems, then you can compile them into one really cool program. That's how some of my favorite warriors were born. David. From: Robert Macrae Subject: Re: Whoop Whoop Whoop! Date: 1998/10/03 Message-ID: <3615E5BB.748F@dial.pipex.com>#1/1 Philip Kendall wrote: > Hooray! Now submit :-= 0.1 another 9 times, and the hill may become > reasonable again :-) I wasn't too optimistic, so I also submitted 1.0 to 1.4... so there are now 4 clears on the hill. Just don't anyone knock off "Failure" unless you can handle the other 5 defensive warriors! The trick is to run a Q^2 which scans for Failure and does a binary search for the first word. If I catch it within 42 cycles I can use some DAT bombs and a precision fang to vamp it into a pit which looks like: self spl #-500, -500 ; may as well point away? pit clr spl #-500, >-20 ; I should end up with more mov @3, >gate ; processes than Failure... mov @2, >gate ; so he suicides first. mov @1, >gate djn.b -3, {wipe1 where the body is a 0.75c version of the SSD clear from Pink. Once my vampire has run, it jumps to self, so that the clear code is executed by both warriors, at a total of 1.5c. This is enough to kill any imp -- first the imp is stunned and then the whole of core is over-written with SPLs before the imp moves again, erasing all the MOV instructions. The reason for the different entry points is to make Failure suicide first when the DAT clear over-writes the pit. :-= has more processes so Failure dies first. -- Regards, Robert Macrae From: Philip Kendall Subject: Re: Whoop Whoop Whoop! Date: 1998/10/03 Message-ID: <5cN$jFA94WF2Ewu7@kendalls.demon.co.uk>#1/1 In article <36155EB6.3646@dial.pipex.com>, Robert Macrae wrote >... >> Program ":-= 0.1" (length 98) by "Robert Macrae" >> ;strategy Bite Failure, then bury everything else. >> Number of wins with zero, one, two, .., 10 other winners and losses >> 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 329 161 Hooray! Now submit :-= 0.1 another 9 times, and the hill may become reasonable again :-) Phil -- / Philip Kendall (pak21@cam.ac.uk pak21@kendalls.demon.co.uk) \ | http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/5427/spectrum.htm | | New? Read the FAQ: http://www.kendalls.demon.co.uk/cssfaq/ | \ Looking for something?: http://www.void.demon.nl/archive.html / From: Robert Macrae Subject: Whoop Whoop Whoop! Date: 1998/10/03 Message-ID: <36155EB6.3646@dial.pipex.com>#1/1 ... > Program ":-= 0.1" (length 98) by "Robert Macrae" > (contact address "ff95@dial.pipex.com"): > ;strategy Bite Failure, then bury everything else. > Number of wins with zero, one, two, .., 10 other winners and losses > 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 329 161 > Total score: 1 > > Your overall score: 1 > > Fleas 2 has been pushed off the MultiWarrior ICWS '94 Draft hill. > The current MultiWarrior ICWS '94 Draft hill: > Last battle concluded at : Fri Oct 2 18:54:59 EDT 1998 > > # Name Author Score Age > 1 :-= 0.1 Robert Macrae 1 1 > 2 Failure John Metcalf 0 10 > 3 mTest P. Kline 0 11 > 4 Aulder Man Ian Oversby 0 50 > 5 U-lat v3.8 Zul Nadzri 0 28 > 6 paper test Ken Espiritu 0 2 > 7 CyberBunny Compudemon 0 15 > 8 aTest 4 P. Kline 0 5 > 9 Time to send in the imps Robert Hale 0 21 > 10 aTest 4 P. Kline 0 6 > > 11 Fleas 2 Mike M. 0 3 -- Regards, Robert Macrae From: Robert Macrae Subject: Re: Questions.. Date: 1998/10/04 Message-ID: <36179CC5.462B@dial.pipex.com>#1/1 CrazyLinux wrote: > 1 - How do you copy code away from your beginning location (except > paper, I was thinking copying decoys to fool scanners) Best place to look is Planar's website, http://pauillac.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/ with 1000+ warriors. Most P-spacers and Stone/Imps launch their components and leave an anti-scanner decoy behind. Hescan and Harmony (?) use a decoy-launcher instead -- the code stays in place and a distant decoy is created at 3c. > 2 - How to make a warrior switch from one strategy to another? (i.e a > vamp that starts a clear when something falls into it's pit). I know about > SLT/SEQ, but that wastes time in a bomber routine if I were to use that. Check CIA for a neat method. Most bombers just bomb a pattern and just switch after a fixed number of bombs have been thrown, eg Torch or Tornado. Some vampires switch when something falls into the pit (sorry, I forget names). Some scanners and scanner/bombers switch to clear after a certain number of scans... can't remember these names either. -- Regards, Robert Macrae From: David Matthew Moore Subject: Re: Questions.. Date: 1998/10/04 Message-ID: <6v923r$mjl$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu>#1/1 CrazyLinux wrote: : : 1 - How do you copy code away from your beginning location MOV 0, 1 : 2 - How to make a warrior switch from one strategy to another? Have you tried reverse psychology? : 3 - Does some kind of "cannonade-resistant gate" exist? Seriously, since Cannonade imps are obsolete in 94 standard, I assume that you mean to gate them in 88 code. In that case, there is a trick from my own PacMan and Leapfrog. Copy this instruction: DAT <2663, <2663 4 spaces after the gate. Here's how it works in ten easy steps: 1. the MOV 0,2668 imp spiral reaches gate 2. your gate code decrements the imp to a MOV 0,2667 instruction 3. the imp copies itself to gate+2667, leaving the MOV 0,2667 code there. 4. other parts of the spiral copy their code to gate+1, gate+2, gate+3. The process that went throught the gate is able to execute at all of those locations. 5. since the modified imp spiral cannot copy to location gate+4, the former imp process is forced to execute the DAT <2663, <2663. That causes the MOV 0,2667 code (which was left by step #3) to be decremented twice. 6. a second imp spiral reaches the gate; this time, it's MOV 0, 2667 7. your gate code decrements the imp to a MOV 0,2666 instruction 8. the modified imp is unable to copy to its companion process at gate+2667 9. the companion process which is located at gate+2667 discovers a MOV 0,2665 instruction which is left by step #5. Since it cannot pass the proper imp instruction to the other processes in the spiral, the modified spiral eventually dies. 10. You are thankful for having the DAT <2663, <2663 code which caused the imp to run MOV 0,2665 and not MOV 0,2667 in step 9. The reasons for step #4 and #5 are not obvious -- those are left as an exercise for the reader. David. From: jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Re: Questions.. Date: 1998/10/04 Message-ID: <199810041246.IAA29341@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 >hey all, >I've tried making corewars warriors for a while, and I've read the >tutorials I found.. However there's some questions I don't find answered >in there, mainly: > >1 - How do you copy code away from your beginning location (except >paper, I was > thinking copying decoys to fool scanners) See "Harmony", found on Planar's archive, linked from www.koth.org. >2 - How to make a warrior switch from one strategy to another? (i.e a >vamp that > starts a clear when something falls into it's pit). I know about >SLT/SEQ, but > that wastes time in a bomber routine if I were to use that. See "C.I.A.", found on Planar's archive, linked from www.koth.org. >3 - Does some kind of "cannonade-resistant gate" exist? See "D-Clear", found on Planar's archive, linked from www.koth.org. From: CrazyLinux Subject: Questions.. Date: 1998/10/04 Message-ID: <6v7hi7$ef6$1@news1.c2i.net>#1/1 hey all, I've tried making corewars warriors for a while, and I've read the tutorials I found.. However there's some questions I don't find answered in there, mainly: 1 - How do you copy code away from your beginning location (except paper, I was thinking copying decoys to fool scanners) 2 - How to make a warrior switch from one strategy to another? (i.e a vamp that starts a clear when something falls into it's pit). I know about SLT/SEQ, but that wastes time in a bomber routine if I were to use that. 3 - Does some kind of "cannonade-resistant gate" exist? -km- From: CrazyLinux <"pmunster$spammity$"@mail.c2i.net> Subject: imps (was Re: ldp in decoy makers) Date: 1998/10/05 Message-ID: <36190FCD.8F14CCF@mail.c2i.net>#1/1 David Matthew Moore wrote: > > CrazyLinux <"pmunster$spammity$"@mail.c2i.net> wrote: > : > : ...this one behaves like some kind of imp: > > Nope. You can't have imps without MOV. > > LDP doesn't change the opcode of the target (the 3 letter mnemonic, > like "ADD"). It affects only the a-field or b-field value. > > Imps are characterized by their ability to run processes > in every core location, until they are stomped > by some bigger, nastier program. > Then it probably just looks like it in pmarsv (lots of green blocks). If it's not an imp after all, I would guess what happens is that sooner or later ldp changes the jmp, and it starts jumping all around in the core unless it can't support it's jumps. If there's an instruction to change opcodes (except mov), you could make an imp without mov. Would spl 0 spl <-1 classify as some kind of slow, backwards imp? I guess not, but then what about spl 0 mov -1,<-2 ; yep, there's a mov in here spl <-2 it's slow, but it will run processes everywhere in core if it gets time to do it. If that's no imp either, is a backwards imp really possible? (what would program #1 be called if it's not an imp? splitter? inefficient paper?) Anyways, to keep on topic: by changing the ldp.ab to }ptr+1,}ptr+4 you get a coreclear. It's not that good, but it may confuse scanners (HSA doesn't have a problem with it though). If you put an "real imp" on the end of the previously posted warrior, it should become an imp after whatever it does. From: David Matthew Moore Subject: Re: ldp in decoy makers Date: 1998/10/05 Message-ID: <6varq2$b62$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu>#1/1 CrazyLinux <"pmunster$spammity$"@mail.c2i.net> wrote: : : ...this one behaves like some kind of imp: Nope. You can't have imps without MOV. LDP doesn't change the opcode of the target (the 3 letter mnemonic, like "ADD"). It affects only the a-field or b-field value. Imps are characterized by their ability to run processes in every core location, until they are stomped by some bigger, nastier program. ----- : ;redcode-94 : ;name ldpgun : ;author k.m : ;assert 1 : ;strategy implike? : ptr dat start-10, start-10 : ok spl 0 : start nop }ptr+3,}ptr+2 : ldp.ab }ptr+1,{ptr+4 ; or } or < or >, makes different effects. : ldp.a >ptr+5,{ptr+7 : jmp start,<-10 : end ok From: CrazyLinux <"pmunster$spammity$"@mail.c2i.net> Subject: Re: ldp in decoy makers Date: 1998/10/05 Message-ID: <3618C828.A119C6E1@mail.c2i.net>#1/1 M Joonas Pihlaja wrote: > > You can use ldp to get some variation in your decoy. > [snip] You can use ldp to make a different kind of warrior too, this one behaves like some kind of imp: ;redcode-94 ;name ldpgun ;author k.m ;assert 1 ;strategy implike? ptr dat start-10, start-10 ok spl 0 start nop }ptr+3,}ptr+2 ldp.ab }ptr+1,{ptr+4 ; or } or < or >, makes different effects. ldp.a >ptr+5,{ptr+7 jmp start,<-10 end ok changing to } makes it a core clear(an inefficient one, increments a operands of enemy code), haven't tried the other operands yet. From: Richard Rognlie Subject: C++Robots Standings 1998/10/05 Date: 1998/10/05 Message-ID: <3618B181.1310026F@gamerz.net>#1/1 Program Name Score W / L / T Age Author ================ ===== =========== === ===================================== 1 katty 273 91/ 9/ 0 27 cfrim@ac.tuiasi.ro (catalin ifrim) 2 ttr3 258 86/ 14/ 0 26 traber@cosinet.de (Thomas Traber) 3 tommy 246 82/ 18/ 0 51 zcewj@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Elliot W. Jac 4 trex 189 63/ 37/ 0 10 jerome.dumonteil@capway.com (Jerome D 5 ssm4 180 60/ 40/ 0 209 enpch@bath.ac.uk (C Harrison) 6 mariner 171 57/ 43/ 0 272 zcpjm@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Paul J. Melko 6 bedtime 171 57/ 43/ 0 4 btb@micron.net (TheRooster) 8 kiilbot1 166 55/ 44/ 1 180 bob2@goplay.com (bob2) 9 shooter 165 55/ 45/ 0 241 itdcjr@mail1.hants.gov.uk (Justin Row 10 chaos 156 52/ 48/ 0 177 agondare@hotmail.com (alex gondarenko 11 knownaim00 147 49/ 51/ 0 94 c.d.wright@solipsys.compulink.co.uk ( 12 krom 138 46/ 54/ 0 149 tdavis@gate.net (Thomas E. Davis) 13 prio.2 135 45/ 55/ 0 137 oliver@jowett.manawatu.planet.co.nz ( 14 doubleshooter 116 36/ 56/ 8 161 mario.deweerd@ibm.net (Mario De Weerd 15 imrobot1 109 36/ 63/ 1 1 jthorpe@pfs.com (jthorpe@pfs.com) 16 fodder0 108 36/ 64/ 0 71 christopher.meehan@reuters.com (C_MEE 17 raystonn 106 33/ 60/ 7 116 svincent@a.crl.com (Samuel Vincent) 18 rumbler 102 34/ 66/ 0 32 smith.paul.pn@bhp.com.au (Smith, Paul 19 rosie 99 33/ 67/ 0 3 andyg54321@aol.com (AndyG54321@aol.co 20 sniper6 95 30/ 65/ 5 9 therooster@bigfoot.com (TheRooster) For further information on C++Robots, visit http://www.gamerz.net/c++robots or send a message to c++robots@gamerz.net with 'help' (sans quotes) as the SUBJECT -- / \__ | Richard Rognlie / Webmaster Pro Tem Ad Nauseum \__/ \ | E-Mail: rrognlie@gamerz.net | Erols Internet / \__/ | URL: http://www.gamerz.net/rrognlie/ | an RCN company \__/ | Join the fight against SPAM! http://www.cauce.org From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 10/05/98 Date: 1998/10/05 Message-ID: <199810050400.AAA22946@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/05/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sat Sep 12 08:58:30 EDT 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 43/ 12/ 45 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 174 16 2 34/ 5/ 61 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 164 63 3 30/ 2/ 67 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 158 11 4 35/ 14/ 51 Rosebud Beppe 156 42 5 41/ 35/ 24 Dr. Gate X Franz 148 34 6 37/ 34/ 29 BigBoy Robert Macrae 141 88 7 26/ 14/ 59 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 139 5 8 29/ 19/ 53 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 139 15 9 38/ 37/ 25 13 Christian Schmidt 139 1 10 42/ 46/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 138 64 11 37/ 40/ 23 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 135 49 12 33/ 33/ 34 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 134 54 13 38/ 43/ 20 Tsunami v0.1 Ian Oversby 132 41 14 35/ 37/ 29 Dr. Recover Franz 132 33 15 39/ 46/ 15 BiShot Christian Schmidt 131 2 16 37/ 43/ 20 Pagan John K W 131 48 17 37/ 44/ 19 Memories Beppe Bezzi 131 70 18 31/ 31/ 38 Falcon v0.3 X Ian Oversby 130 36 19 36/ 43/ 22 Bob the ImpStoneer Sean McDonald 129 9 20 40/ 53/ 8 HSA Copy 55440 Robert Macrae 127 31 21 7/ 87/ 6 Stupidity V1 K.M 28 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 10/05/98 Date: 1998/10/05 Message-ID: <199810050400.AAA22935@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/05/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sun Oct 4 20:01:05 EDT 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 39/ 20/ 41 Freight Train David Moore 159 17 2 34/ 21/ 44 Guardian Ian Oversby 147 16 3 42/ 43/ 16 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 141 13 4 40/ 44/ 16 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 137 54 5 37/ 36/ 27 Leapfrog David Moore 137 45 6 37/ 38/ 25 PacMan David Moore 136 46 7 37/ 38/ 25 Kitchen Sink Robert Macrae 136 15 8 37/ 39/ 24 Tangle Trap David Moore 135 90 9 38/ 42/ 20 Stasis David Moore 135 124 10 22/ 10/ 68 Trident^2 '88 John K W 134 40 11 26/ 18/ 56 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 134 30 12 40/ 45/ 15 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 134 342 13 28/ 23/ 49 Evoltmp 88 John K W 133 67 14 27/ 21/ 53 Test I Ian Oversby 133 73 15 37/ 43/ 20 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 132 292 16 28/ 25/ 46 CAPS KEY IS STUCK AGAIN Steven Morrell 131 214 17 27/ 25/ 47 Simple '88 Ian Oversby 130 103 18 38/ 48/ 13 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 128 11 19 30/ 35/ 36 two pass demo dm 124 1 20 35/ 46/ 19 Gisela 8623 Andrzej Maciejczak 123 10 21 35/ 55/ 10 CMP Scan Vladimir Bychkovskiy 116 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 10/05/98 Date: 1998/10/05 Message-ID: <199810050400.AAA22957@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/05/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG 94 No Pspace CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Fri Oct 2 17:33:51 EDT 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 50/ 34/ 16 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 166 7 2 47/ 36/ 17 The Machine Anton Marsden 159 71 3 46/ 41/ 13 Red Carpet David Moore 152 23 4 41/ 34/ 24 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 148 4 5 36/ 27/ 37 Recovery Ian Oversby 145 5 6 43/ 42/ 15 Blurstone M. J. Pihlaja 143 27 7 35/ 29/ 36 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 141 16 8 35/ 30/ 36 Fixed Ken Espiritu 140 65 9 25/ 12/ 64 The Fugitive David Moore 138 84 10 32/ 29/ 39 Vain Ian Oversby 136 82 11 33/ 30/ 37 Head or Tail Christian Schmidt 135 53 12 31/ 27/ 42 Pulp v0.4 Ian Oversby 135 81 13 29/ 25/ 46 Brigadeer M Joonas Pihlaja 134 1 14 37/ 41/ 22 Floody River P.Kline 134 31 15 31/ 28/ 40 Testier Ian Oversby 134 12 16 30/ 27/ 43 Gemini Dream John K Wilkinson 133 88 17 32/ 31/ 37 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 133 63 18 37/ 42/ 21 clrB dm 132 3 19 36/ 42/ 22 clrC dm 130 2 20 32/ 37/ 30 Digital Dragon Christian Schmidt 128 13 21 5/ 83/ 12 [Special Relativity]0.3> K.M 27 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 10/05/98 Date: 1998/10/05 Message-ID: <199810050400.AAA22941@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/05/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Fri Oct 2 19:24:00 EDT 1998 # Name Author Score Age 1 :-= 1.0 Robert Macrae 3 4 2 :-= 0.1 Robert Macrae 2 5 3 :-= 1.3 Robert Macrae 2 2 4 :-= 1.4 Robert Macrae 2 1 5 :-= 1.2 Robert Macrae 1 3 6 mTest P. Kline 0 15 7 Failure John Metcalf 0 14 8 Aulder Man Ian Oversby 0 54 9 U-lat v3.8 Zul Nadzri 0 32 10 paper test Ken Espiritu 0 6 11 CyberBunny Compudemon 0 19 From: John.Metcalf@p18.f94.chaos.camelot.co.uk (John Metcalf) Subject: Pizza? Date: 1998/10/06 Message-ID: #1/1 Greetings... ASM> Is it just me, or is Pizza acting strange? It's sending ASM> me the "Error in your mail" message twice every time I ASM> submit a program. (And yes, the first line is ";redcode-94", ASM> and it runs fine on pmars on my end...) It's the fact that ASM> it sends the error msg twice that strikes me as odd.. Thats right, and I thought it was just me ;-) John From: dweezil@earth.execpc.com (Andrew S Mehlos) Subject: Pizza? Date: 1998/10/06 Message-ID: <6vdd6i$lmu@newsops.execpc.com>#1/1 Is it just me, or is Pizza acting strange? It's sending me the "Error in your mail" message twice every time I submit a program. (And yes, the first line is ";redcode-94", and it runs fine on pmars on my end...) It's the fact that it sends the error msg twice that strikes me as odd.. -- - - - - - - - - - - Andrew S. Mehlos dweezil@execpc.com From: "John K. Lewis" Subject: Re: Newbie: Where to from here ? Date: 1998/10/06 Message-ID: #1/1 Leon Wabeke wrote: : Hi All Hello Leon. : I am a Newbie, who hasn't posted any warriors to the hills but I have : written I few of the standard warriors (IMP, DWARF, SCANNER ). (Many : thanks to the descriptions at KoTH of redcode and the rules of Corewar. : I haven't yet downloaded the tutorials, maybe that will answer my : questions.)My problem is where do I go from here? My suggestion would be o download some warriors from: http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/ and try to beat them. It sounds like you have the basics down. : Is all warriors just combinations of these warriors ? : Can anyone help with ideas on how to go about implementing new warriors, : that I can call my own ? I feel embaressed to call an : ANTI-IMP/DWARF-combination, my own creation. : Everyone must have thought off that by now. Not all warriors are variations or combinations of previous warriors. Currently it very hard to come up with a revolutionary idea for CoreWars because it's been a long time since the basic frame work has changed. Most ideas have been tried. This shouldn't discourage you, however, and you should jump right in! Once you get an idea of what already exist perhaps you could have an inspiration that produces the next revolutionary warrior. : Or is that the nature of Corewar ? Implementing the same warriors in a : slightly different format and because they are being send off by humans : (resulting in a random sequence of arrivals and results ?) (Thus that : mean that there will never be a perfect warrior ? Each warrior is only : the best at the type of warrior currently in the hill ?) When and if a change occures in the standard, new ideas and strategies will naturally follow. While it's possible that a new player might create something new, it's more probable that they would simply modify an existing program in an interesting way. There are no perfect warriors. The hill constantly changes. : I probably earned a flaming thru this post, but try to keep it to a : minimum, seeing as I am a newbie and still dumb. r.g.c. is normally quite Flame Free (tm). With few exceptions we are friendly and helpful, especially with new players. Good luck. : Leon Wabeke : s9717nospam148@student.up.ac.za < john k. lewis > < jklewis@umich.edu > < web services > < 734.615.0584 > From: Leon Wabeke Subject: Newbie: Where to from here ? Date: 1998/10/06 Message-ID: <361A6F61.137CA9E6@student.up.ac.za>#1/1 Hi All I am a Newbie, who hasn't posted any warriors to the hills but I have written I few of the standard warriors (IMP, DWARF, SCANNER ). (Many thanks to the descriptions at KoTH of redcode and the rules of Corewar. I haven't yet downloaded the tutorials, maybe that will answer my questions.)My problem is where do I go from here? Is all warriors just combinations of these warriors ? Can anyone help with ideas on how to go about implementing new warriors, that I can call my own ? I feel embaressed to call an ANTI-IMP/DWARF-combination, my own creation. Everyone must have thought off that by now. Or is that the nature of Corewar ? Implementing the same warriors in a slightly different format and because they are being send off by humans (resulting in a random sequence of arrivals and results ?) (Thus that mean that there will never be a perfect warrior ? Each warrior is only the best at the type of warrior currently in the hill ?) I probably earned a flaming thru this post, but try to keep it to a minimum, seeing as I am a newbie and still dumb. Leon Wabeke s9717nospam148@student.up.ac.za From: David Matthew Moore Subject: Re: imps (was Re: ldp in decoy makers) Date: 1998/10/06 Message-ID: <6vcm0u$sr4$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu>#1/1 CrazyLinux <"pmunster$spammity$"@mail.c2i.net> wrote: : : Then it probably just looks like it in pmarsv (lots of green blocks). Have you tried: pmars -e myimp.red and then 'h' at the command prompt? Maybe it would help to play more analytically. : ... Would : spl 0 : spl <-1 : classify as some kind of slow, backwards imp? Normally, I would just refer to the definition in the FAQ: Imp Program which only uses the MOV instruction. However, nobody would consider MOV 0,0 to be an imp. Why not? Consider what happens when the MARS computer grabs a process from your program's queue. That process is nothing more than a program counter. Let us suppose that it points to a MOV instruction. One effect of MOV is to return a process back to your queue which has the original program counter + 1. Since most redcode instructions work that way, we say that the flow of execution is "sequential." Now suppose that some of the core is filled with DAT's. DAT's return nothing to your process queue. That can cause a problem if your program is made entirely of MOV instructions, like an imp. Since the flow of execution is entirely sequential, your processes will eventually move into the DAT areas. The solution is for the MOV instruction to copy executable code over the DAT areas; then your process queue won't be drained when your processes move over them. That's the difference between MOV 0, 0 and MOV 0, 1. Now do you see why imps must be able to execute in every core location? : Anyways, to keep on topic: by changing the ldp.ab to }ptr+1,}ptr+4 you : get a coreclear. It's not that good, but it may confuse scanners (HSA : doesn't have a problem with it though). : If you put an "real imp" on the end of the previously posted warrior, it : should become an imp after whatever it does. What was the last math class that you had in school? I wonder why the CW tutorials didn't help you. Are they really that bad? From: iltzu@sci.fi (Ilmari Karonen) Subject: Re: imps (was Re: ldp in decoy makers) Date: 1998/10/07 Message-ID: <6vf22a$hqp$1@tron.sci.fi>#1/1 CrazyLinux ("pmunster$spammity$"@mail.c2i.net) wrote: : spl 0 : spl <-1 [snip] : (what would program #1 be called if it's not an imp? splitter? : inefficient paper?) A program that splits processes off into the core without copying its code is called a body-stealer IIRC. The reason for the name being so little known is that the strategy is highly ineffective, achieving no wins and much fewer ties than one might expect. -- Ilmari Karonen (iltzu@sci.fi) http://www.sci.fi/~iltzu/ From: jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Re: Newbie: Where to from here ? Date: 1998/10/07 Message-ID: <199810062139.RAA33151@valhalla.stormking.com>#1/1 >Or is that the nature of Corewar ? Implementing the same warriors in a >slightly different format and because they are being send off by humans >(resulting in a random sequence of arrivals and results ?) (Thus that >mean that there will never be a perfect warrior ? Each warrior is only >the best at the type of warrior currently in the hill ?) You understand the idea of the Hill perfectly. Warrior types can be somewhat generalized, but the methods of their creation are always changing. A lot of the warriors on the Hill can be viewed on Planar's archive. Look into them... From: David Matthew Moore Subject: Re: Newbie: Where to from here ? Date: 1998/10/07 Message-ID: <6verro$8ia$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu>#1/1 Leon Wabeke wrote: : Hi All : My problem is where do I go from here? : Is all warriors just combinations of these warriors ? : ... is that the nature of Corewar ? No, people play Core War for a lot of different reasons. Why should you play? Why does the chess grand-master maneuver pieces into a harmonious network of mutual protection and focused pressure points, then pounce on his enemy's inferior fortifications with one final sweep of his mighty queen, pausing only to glance at the frustrated look on his desperate opponent's face? In a word: competition. To be king of the hill. Member of the privileged elite. To become a legend and to witness the bright young stars who cherish your legacy. Observe our cosmic hero Robert "freedom" Macrae, pioneer of the multi-warrior MARS-scape, as he surveys the barren terrain of that alien world. He stands amidst the timeless foes of evolution, the ten terrible tyrants of conformity. Undaunted, he journeys past the skeletal remains of previous explorers. With fiery red eyes and lightning leaping from his fingertips, Robert demands retribution for the abominable barons of boredom. However, the cold-hearted villains are not intimidated. Robert launches blades of ice and arcs of flame but still they persist. Weeks of struggle continue without rest. Finally, our hero finds himself encircled and trapped into a final showdown. In retrospect, nobody really knows how Robert broke his containment and vanquished his foes. Some mythologies claim that he built a great lever which could roll devastating boulders. Others suggest that he built a slingshot from his snappy tiger-print thong. In any case, we are grateful for his efforts to restore truth, light, and competitive sport to the multi-warrior hill. Are you man enough to handle Core War? From: Paul-V Khuong Subject: Re: Pizza? Date: 1998/10/08 Message-ID: <19981008215623.27816.rocketmail@send102.yahoomail.com>#1/1 Andrew S Mehlos wrote: > > Is it just me, or is Pizza acting strange? It's sending me the > "Error in your mail" message twice every time I submit a program. > (And yes, the first line is ";redcode-94", and it runs fine on > pmars on my end...) It's the fact that it sends the error msg > twice that strikes me as odd.. Do you have a signature? If yes, don't forget to add the END pseudo-op at the end of your warrior! == Vive le Qu�bec libre... d� souverainistes!!! _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From: Paul-V Khuong Subject: Re: Newbie: Where to from here ? Date: 1998/10/08 Message-ID: <19981008215921.28767.rocketmail@send1e.yahoomail.com>#1/1 David Matthew Moore created this: [snip] > Observe our cosmic hero Robert "freedom" Macrae, > pioneer of the multi-warrior MARS-scape, > as he surveys the barren terrain of that alien world. > He stands amidst the timeless foes of evolution, > the ten terrible tyrants of conformity. Undaunted, he journeys past > the skeletal remains of previous explorers. > > With fiery red eyes and lightning leaping from his fingertips, > Robert demands retribution for the abominable barons of boredom. > However, the cold-hearted villains are not intimidated. > Robert launches blades of ice and arcs of flame but still they persist. > Weeks of struggle continue without rest. Finally, > our hero finds himself encircled and trapped into a final showdown. > > In retrospect, nobody really knows how Robert broke his containment > and vanquished his foes. Some mythologies claim that he built > a great lever which could roll devastating boulders. > Others suggest that he built a slingshot from his > snappy tiger-print thong. In any case, we are grateful > for his efforts to restore truth, light, and competitive sport > to the multi-warrior hill. > > Are you man enough to handle Core War? Woooh! How poetic! What'd you think of putting it on KotH or Pizza?? == Vive le Qu�bec libre... d� souverainistes!!! _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From: jkapleau@openix.com (Jonathan Kapleau) Subject: Re: Problem with pMars RPMs Date: 1998/10/08 Message-ID: <6vj8sn$lhn@enews2.newsguy.com>#1/1 Planar writes: >}From: jkapleau@openix.com (Jonathan Kapleau) >} >}Has anybody tried to use the pMars RPMs to install? I can't seem to get >}them to work. I'm using Redhat 5.0 if that makes any difference. >On what architecture ? Which RPM are you trying to install ? >-- >Planar Remove ".gov" from my address. On the Intel i386. -- Jonathan Kapleau jkapleau@landslide.openix.com From: jkapleau@openix.com (Jonathan Kapleau) Subject: Re: RPM's Date: 1998/10/08 Message-ID: <6vj91i$lkf@enews2.newsguy.com>#1/1 dweezil@earth.execpc.com (Andrew S Mehlos) writes: >They worked fine for me... You might need to make sure that >/usr/games (where they get installed) is in your path, >though. Actually, I tried to verify that the package was installed, but all it said was 'Missing' for each file. -- Jonathan Kapleau jkapleau@landslide.openix.com From: dweezil@earth.execpc.com (Andrew S Mehlos) Subject: RPM's Date: 1998/10/08 Message-ID: <6visnd$rg1@newsops.execpc.com>#1/1 They worked fine for me... You might need to make sure that /usr/games (where they get installed) is in your path, though. -- - - - - - - - - - - Andrew S. Mehlos dweezil@execpc.com From: Planar Subject: Re: Problem with pMars RPMs Date: 1998/10/08 Message-ID: <6viqju$fou@news-rocq.inria.fr>#1/1 }From: jkapleau@openix.com (Jonathan Kapleau) } }Has anybody tried to use the pMars RPMs to install? I can't seem to get }them to work. I'm using Redhat 5.0 if that makes any difference. On what architecture ? Which RPM are you trying to install ? -- Planar Remove ".gov" from my address. From: jkapleau@openix.com (Jonathan Kapleau) Subject: Problem with pMars RPMs Date: 1998/10/08 Message-ID: <6vibeh$5km@enews2.newsguy.com>#1/1 Has anybody tried to use the pMars RPMs to install? I can't seem to get them to work. I'm using Redhat 5.0 if that makes any difference. -- Jonathan Kapleau jkapleau@landslide.openix.com From: jkapleau@openix.com (Jonathan Kapleau) Subject: Re: Problem with pMars RPMs Date: 1998/10/09 Message-ID: <6vkve5$c30@enews4.newsguy.com>#1/1 Planar writes: >>From: jkapleau@openix.com (Jonathan Kapleau) >>>}them to work. I'm using Redhat 5.0 if that makes any difference. >> >>On the Intel i386. >So, are you sure you used pMars-0.8-1.rh5.i386.rpm and not >pMars-0.8-2.rh4.i386.rpm ? Yes, I'm sure. -- Jonathan Kapleau jkapleau@landslide.openix.com From: Planar Subject: Re: Problem with pMars RPMs Date: 1998/10/09 Message-ID: <6vktgh$ea6@news-rocq.inria.fr>#1/1 >From: jkapleau@openix.com (Jonathan Kapleau) >>}them to work. I'm using Redhat 5.0 if that makes any difference. > >On the Intel i386. So, are you sure you used pMars-0.8-1.rh5.i386.rpm and not pMars-0.8-2.rh4.i386.rpm ? -- Planar Remove ".gov" from my address. From: David Matthew Moore Subject: Re: Newbie: Where to from here ? Date: 1998/10/09 Message-ID: <6vksgf$dm8$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu>#1/1 Paul-V Khuong wrote: : Woooh! How poetic! What'd you think of putting it on KotH or Pizza?? Wups, can I have a second chance at that one? I had no idea that it would be on Koth's home page already. If I had thought of that, then I would've written a real ending; everything after "barons of boredom" is just past-bedtime filler. Also, some parts of it aren't properly optimized -- the chess master stuff comes to mind. Anyway, I'm glad you like it, but it needs a few improvements before it's really home page worthy. David. From: Leon Wabeke Subject: Re: Newbie: Where to from here ? Date: 1998/10/09 Message-ID: <361E3998.3B279119@student.up.ac.za>#1/1 Hi If you can weave Redcode as well as you can weave words you must have some extremely good warriors. Thanks for the comment. Thanks for the other ideas and links I will look into them. Leon Wabeke s9717nospam148@student.up.ac.za From: John.Metcalf@p18.f94.chaos.camelot.co.uk (John Metcalf) Subject: Thoughts on Core Warrior Date: 1998/10/10 Message-ID: #1/1 Greetings... As someone suggested a short while back, how about dropping the Old Hall of Fame from Core Warrior, and using the space to give coverage to the 94nop hill, perhaps the same amount of coverage as the b-hill, a record of the hill and a short comment. John. From: John.Metcalf@p18.f94.chaos.camelot.co.uk (John Metcalf) Subject: 94x hill Date: 1998/10/12 Message-ID: #1/1 Pizza wrote: > The current ICWS '94 Experimental hill: > # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age > 1 55.1/ 31.8/ 13.0 betatest M Joonas Pihlaja 178.4 1 > 2 41.1/ 26.6/ 32.3 Killer Bees David Moore 155.5 15 > 3 45.5/ 37.9/ 16.7 Putty David Moore 153.0 14 > 4 46.4/ 39.8/ 13.8 BiShot Christian Schmidt 152.9 5 > 5 47.1/ 44.9/ 8.1 Gun+Gun 2 Zul Nadzri 149.3 23 Some interesting results there Joonas... From: "John K. Lewis" Subject: Re: Thoughts on Core Warrior Date: 1998/10/12 Message-ID: #1/1 John Metcalf wrote: : As someone suggested a short while back, how about dropping : the Old Hall of Fame from Core Warrior, and using the space : to give coverage to the 94nop hill, perhaps the same amount : of coverage as the b-hill, a record of the hill and a short : comment. Agreed. < john k. lewis > < jklewis@umich.edu > < web services > < 734.615.0584 > From: Planar Subject: Re: Thoughts on Core Warrior Date: 1998/10/12 Message-ID: <6vspgi$6je@news-rocq.inria.fr>#1/1 }From: John.Metcalf@p18.f94.chaos.camelot.co.uk (John Metcalf) } }As someone suggested a short while back, how about dropping }the Old Hall of Fame from Core Warrior, and using the space }to give coverage to the 94nop hill, perhaps the same amount }of coverage as the b-hill, a record of the hill and a short }comment. Seconded. -- Planar Remove ".gov" from my address. From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 10/12/98 Date: 1998/10/12 Message-ID: <199810120400.AAA20344@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/12/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sun Oct 11 15:16:02 EDT 1998 # Name Author Score Age 1 Aulder Man Ian Oversby 42 72 2 Clearer v0.2 Ian Oversby 17 15 3 Myth Ian Oversby 17 7 4 Phantasm 50m Robert Macrae 10 2 5 DumDum 1.? Robert Macrae 10 1 6 otest2 mjp 9 8 7 Fangs v0.3 Ian Oversby 6 10 8 Fangs v0.2a Ian Oversby 6 17 9 CStest M1 Christian Schmidt 6 3 10 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 5 4 11 Swoon Ian 5 6 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 10/12/98 Date: 1998/10/12 Message-ID: <199810120400.AAA20356@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/12/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG 94 No Pspace CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sun Oct 11 04:53:42 EDT 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 46/ 38/ 16 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 154 10 2 39/ 26/ 35 Recovery Ian Oversby 152 8 3 30/ 9/ 62 The Fugitive David Moore 150 87 4 38/ 29/ 33 Fixed Ken Espiritu 147 68 5 36/ 27/ 37 Vain Ian Oversby 146 85 6 36/ 29/ 34 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 144 19 7 42/ 41/ 16 The Machine Anton Marsden 143 74 8 37/ 30/ 33 Head or Tail Christian Schmidt 143 56 9 33/ 23/ 44 Brigadeer M Joonas Pihlaja 142 4 10 35/ 30/ 35 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 141 66 11 33/ 25/ 42 Newt v0.2 Ian Oversby 140 2 12 34/ 27/ 39 Pulp v0.4 Ian Oversby 140 84 13 32/ 24/ 43 Gemini Dream John K Wilkinson 140 91 14 39/ 39/ 21 Floody River P.Kline 139 34 15 37/ 37/ 25 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 137 7 16 42/ 47/ 11 Red Carpet David Moore 137 26 17 41/ 45/ 15 Blurstone M. J. Pihlaja 136 30 18 34/ 36/ 30 Digital Dragon Christian Schmidt 133 16 19 36/ 52/ 12 Recycled Bits David Moore 120 1 20 36/ 53/ 11 CMP Scan Vladimir Bychkovskiy 119 3 21 11/ 81/ 8 B-Scan Vladimir Bychkovskiy 42 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 10/12/98 Date: 1998/10/12 Message-ID: <199810120400.AAA20338@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/12/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sun Oct 11 04:56:28 EDT 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 19/ 41 Freight Train David Moore 160 17 2 36/ 21/ 44 Guardian Ian Oversby 150 16 3 43/ 41/ 16 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 144 13 4 42/ 42/ 16 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 141 54 5 38/ 35/ 27 Leapfrog David Moore 140 45 6 38/ 38/ 24 PacMan David Moore 138 46 7 38/ 38/ 24 Tangle Trap David Moore 138 90 8 39/ 41/ 20 Stasis David Moore 138 124 9 30/ 22/ 49 Evoltmp 88 John K W 138 67 10 41/ 44/ 15 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 137 342 11 37/ 38/ 25 Kitchen Sink Robert Macrae 137 15 12 27/ 17/ 56 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 137 30 13 28/ 20/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 137 73 14 23/ 9/ 68 Trident^2 '88 John K W 136 40 15 39/ 42/ 20 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 136 292 16 29/ 25/ 46 CAPS KEY IS STUCK AGAIN Steven Morrell 134 214 17 29/ 24/ 47 Simple '88 Ian Oversby 133 103 18 40/ 47/ 13 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 132 11 19 36/ 44/ 19 Gisela 8623 Andrzej Maciejczak 128 10 20 30/ 34/ 36 two pass demo dm 127 1 21 15/ 76/ 9 B-Scan Vladimir Bychkovskiy 55 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 10/12/98 Date: 1998/10/12 Message-ID: <199810120400.AAA20349@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/12/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sat Sep 12 08:58:30 EDT 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 43/ 12/ 45 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 174 16 2 34/ 5/ 61 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 164 63 3 30/ 2/ 67 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 158 11 4 35/ 14/ 51 Rosebud Beppe 156 42 5 41/ 35/ 24 Dr. Gate X Franz 148 34 6 37/ 34/ 29 BigBoy Robert Macrae 141 88 7 26/ 14/ 59 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 139 5 8 29/ 19/ 53 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 139 15 9 38/ 37/ 25 13 Christian Schmidt 139 1 10 42/ 46/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 138 64 11 37/ 40/ 23 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 135 49 12 33/ 33/ 34 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 134 54 13 38/ 43/ 20 Tsunami v0.1 Ian Oversby 132 41 14 35/ 37/ 29 Dr. Recover Franz 132 33 15 39/ 46/ 15 BiShot Christian Schmidt 131 2 16 37/ 43/ 20 Pagan John K W 131 48 17 37/ 44/ 19 Memories Beppe Bezzi 131 70 18 31/ 31/ 38 Falcon v0.3 X Ian Oversby 130 36 19 36/ 43/ 22 Bob the ImpStoneer Sean McDonald 129 9 20 40/ 53/ 8 HSA Copy 55440 Robert Macrae 127 31 21 7/ 87/ 6 Stupidity V1 K.M 28 0 From: guenzel.p1@blinker.net (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: Corewar Date: 1998/10/13 Message-ID: <3623c863.15356201@news.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 Damn, I miss playing Corewar. Just why do I never get round to it?-( I'll make a mark in my schedule for it... What has happened on the Multiwarrior Hill? Hope to see you all on the hill soon! Bjoern Guenzel -- At times I felt I had to make up for a sad lack of experiences by wild imagination. (Urs Widmer, insufficiently translated by me) From: guenzel.p1@blinker.net (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: Re: Thoughts on Core Warrior Date: 1998/10/13 Message-ID: <3623c7e2.15227215@news.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 On 12 Oct 1998 11:34:42 GMT, Planar wrote: >}From: John.Metcalf@p18.f94.chaos.camelot.co.uk (John Metcalf) >} >}As someone suggested a short while back, how about dropping >}the Old Hall of Fame from Core Warrior, and using the space >}to give coverage to the 94nop hill, perhaps the same amount >}of coverage as the b-hill, a record of the hill and a short >}comment. > >Seconded. Why not, however, perhaps there should be at least a mentioning of the old HoF together with a link to a webpage where it is displayed, otherwise the newbies will miss all the history :-) > >-- >Planar Remove ".gov" from my address. Bjoern Guenzel -- At times I felt I had to make up for a sad lack of experiences by wild imagination. (Urs Widmer, insufficiently translated by me) From: Csaba Biro Subject: Re: Thoughts on Core Warrior Date: 1998/10/13 Message-ID: #1/1 On Sat, 10 Oct 1998, John Metcalf wrote: > As someone suggested a short while back, how about dropping > the Old Hall of Fame from Core Warrior, and using the space > to give coverage to the 94nop hill, perhaps the same amount > of coverage as the b-hill, a record of the hill and a short > comment. Good idea! Csaba From: "Marc Bach" Subject: Does exist a german newsgroup about corewar Date: 1998/10/14 Message-ID: <01bdf7bf$1742a620$3db1f683@rotes52.wohnheim.uni-kl.de>#1/1 Sorry but it it is hard to exchange knowhow in a foreign language even when the wordfield is far far away from school-english. From: amarsden@mcs.vuw.ac.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 1998/10/14 Message-ID: Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-Modified: August 5, 1998 =20 Version: 4.0 URL: http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~amarsden/corewars/corewar-faq.html Copyright: (c) 1998 Anton Marsden Maintainer: Anton Marsden Posting-Frequency: once every 2 weeks Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) These are the Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) from the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.corewar. The latest hypertext version is available at http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~amarsden/corewars/corewar-faq.html and the latest plain text version is available at=20 http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~amarsden/corewars/corewar-faq.txt. This document was last modified on August 5, 1998. It is currently being maintained by Anton Marsden (amarsden@mcs.vuw.ac.nz). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To Do * Make question 17 easier to understand. Add a state diagram? * Upgrade to HTML 4.0, make FAQ easier to maintain in future (hopefully) * Add info about infinite hills, related games (C-Robots, Tierra?, ...) * New question: How do I know if my warrior is any good? Refer to beginners' benchmarks, etc. * Add a Who's Who list? * Would very much like someone to compile a collection of the "revolutionary" warriors so that beginners can see how the game has developed over the years. Mail me if interested. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ What's New * Changed the location of Ryan Coleman's paper (LaunchPad -> Launchpad) * Changed pauillac.inria.fr to para.inria.fr * Made some changes/additions/fixes based on a good FAQ review by Joonas Pihlaja. Not all of the suggestions have been dealt with yet, but the FAQ is now less ambiguous in some areas. Thanks Joonas! * Added stuff about pMARS under Win95 (question 9), and the location of = a HTML version of the ICWS'94 draft (question 5). * New definition: decrement resistant * Modified the answer to question 1 * Changed error in P-space question (location 0 can be written to). * Added links to genetic algorithm resources. * Added a link to Kendall's page. * Added new Q&A (code formatting). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 o= f the current instruction set? 5. What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? 6. What is the ICWS? 7. What is Core Warrior? 8. Where are the Core War archives? 9. Where can I find a Core War system for ...? 10. Where can I find warrior code? 11. I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? 12. I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? 13. Are there any Core War related WWW sites? 14. What is KotH? How do I enter? 15. Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? 16. How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? 17. What is the difference between in-register and in-memory evaluation? 18. What is P-space? 19. What does "Missing ;assert .." in my message from KotH mean? 20. How should I format my code? 21. Are there any other Core War related resources I should know about? 22. What does (expression or term of your choice) mean? 23. Other questions? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. 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 virtua= l computer called MARS (for Memory Array Redcode Simulator). The object of th= e game is to cause all processes of the opposing program to terminate, leavin= g your program in sole posession of the machine. There are Core War systems available for most computer platforms. Redcode has been standardised by the ICWS, and is therefore transportable between all standard Core War systems. The system in which the programs run is quite simple. The core (the memory of the simulated computer) is a continuous array of instructions, empty except for the competing programs. The core wraps around, so that after the last instruction comes the first one again. There are no absolute addresses in Core War. That is, the address 0 doesn't mean the first instruction in the memory, but the instruction that contains the address 0. The next instruction is 1, and the previous one obviously -1= =2E However, all numbers are treated as positive, and are in the range 0 to (CORESIZE-1) where CORESIZE is the amount of memory locations in the core - this means that -1 would be treated as (CORESIZE-1) in any arithmetic operations, eg. 3218 + 7856 =3D (3218 + 7856) mod CORESIZE. Many people get confused by this, and it is particularly important when using the SLT instruction. Note that the source code of a program can still contain negative numbers, but if you start using instructions like DIV #-2, #5 it i= s important to know what effect they will have when executed. The basic unit of memory in Core War is one instruction. Each Redcode instruction contains three parts: * the opcode * the source address (a.k.a. the A-field) * the destination address (a.k.a. the B-field) The execution of the programs is equally simple. The MARS executes one instruction at a time, and then proceeds to the next one in the memory, unless the instruction explicitly tells it to jump to another address. If there is more than one program running, (as is usual) the programs execute alternately, one instruction at a time. The execution of each instruction takes the same time, one cycle, whether it is MOV, DIV or even DAT (which kills the process). Each program may have several processes running. These processes are stored in a task queue. When it is the program's turn to execute an instruction it dequeues a process and executes the corresponding instruction. Processes that are not killed during the execution of the instruction are put back into the task queue. Processes created by a SPL instruction are added to th= e task queue after the creating process is put back into the task queue. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. 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] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? Core War was first described in the Core War Guidelines of March, 1984 by D= =2E 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: Library of Author Title Published ISBN Congress Call Number The Armchair Dewdney, Universe: An New York: W. QA76.6 .D517 A. K. Exploration of H. Freeman =A90-7167-1939-8 1988 Computer Worlds 1988 The Magic 0-7167-2125-2 Dewdney, Machine: A New York: W.(Hardcover), QA76.6 A. K. Handbook of H. Freeman =A90-7167-2144-9 .D5173 199= 0 Computer Sorcery 1990 (Paperback) 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. For those who are interested, Dewdney has a home page at http://www.csd.uwo.ca/faculty/akd/. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. 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 ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/standards/redcode-icws-88. This document is formatted awkwardly and contains ambiguous statements. For a more approachable intro to Redcode, take a look at Mark Durham's tutorials, ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/tutorial.1 and ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/tutorial.2. Steven Morrell has prepared a more practically oriented Redcode tutorial that discusses different warrior classes with lots of example code. This an= d various other tutorials can be found at http://www.koth.org/papers.html. Even though ICWS'88 is still the "official" standard, you will find that most people are playing by ICWS'94 draft rules and extensions. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. 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 new addressing modes 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'9= 4 draft at ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/icws94.0202.Z for more information. There is a HTML version of this document available at http://www.koth.org/icws94.html. 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://www.koth.org/corewar. Note that Redcoder onl= y supports a subset of ICWS'94. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. What is the ICWS? About one year after Core War first appeared in Scientific American, 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). The ICWS is no longer active. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. What is Core Warrior? Following in the tradition of the Core War News Letter, Push Off, and The 9= 4 Warrior, Core Warrior is a newsletter about strategies and current standing= s in Core War. Started in October 1995, back issues of Core Warrior (and the other newsletters) are available at http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/. There is also a Core Warrior index page at http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/5427/warrior.htm which has a summary of the contents of each issue of Core Warrior. Many of the earlier issues contain useful information for beginners. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8. 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 ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar. 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. This site is mirrored at: * http://www.koth.org/corewar/ * ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/ * ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/mirror The plain text version of this FAQ is automatically archived by news.answer= s (but this version is probably out-of-date). [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9. Where can I find a Core War system for . . . ? Core War systems are available via anonymous FTP from www.koth.org in the 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 ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/incoming 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 www.koth.org. Generally, the older the program - the less likely it will be ICWS compatible. If you are looking for an ICWS'94 simulator, get pMARS, which is available for many platforms and can be downloaded from: * ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar (original site) * ftp://www.koth.org/corewar (Stormking mirror) * ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/mirror (Planar mirror) * http://www.nc5.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ (Terry Newton) * ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar (Fechter) Notes: * If you have trouble running pMARS with a graphical display under Win95 then check out http://www.koth.org/pmars.html which should have a pointer to the latest compilation of pMARS for this environment. * RPMs for the Alpha, PowerPC, Sparc and i386 can be found at ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars-rpm/ 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 www.koth.org: 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 pvms08.zip pMARS v0.8 for VMS build files/help (req. pmars08s.zip) ApMARS03.lha pMARS executable for Amiga (port of version 0.3.1) wincor11.zip MS-Windows system, shareware ($15) [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10. Where can I find warrior code? To learn the game, it is a good idea to study previously posted warrior code. The FTP archives have code in the ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/redcode directory. A clearly organized on-line warrior collection is available at the Core War web sites (see below). [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11. I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? There is an FTP email server at bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu. This address may no longer exist. I haven't tested it yet. Send email with a subject and bod= y text of "help" (without the quotes) for more information on its usage. Note that many FTP email gateways are shutting down due to abuse. To get a current list of FTP email servers, look at the Accessing the Internet by E-mail FAQ posted to news.answers. If you don't have access to Usenet, you can retrieve this FAQ one of the following ways: * Send mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the body containing "send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email". * Send mail to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk with the body containing "send lis-iis e-access-inet.txt". [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12. 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@ttsg.com). Servers that allow you to post (but not receive) articles are available. Refer to the Accessing the Internet by E-Mail FAQ for more information. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 13. 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 http://www.koth.org; pizza's is http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth . Damien Doligez (a.k.a. Planar) has a web page that features convenient access to regular newsletters (Push Off, The '94 Warrior, Core Warrior) and a well organized library of warriors: http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/. Convenient for U.S. users= , this site is also mirrored at Stormking. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14. 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 point= s 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 ha= s 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, KotH= s based on Bill's UNIX scripts but offering a wider variety of hills are are running at two sites: koth@koth.org is maintained by Scott J. Ellentuch (tuc@ttsg.com) and pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu by Thomas H. Davies (sd@ecst.csuchico.edu). Up until May '95, the two sites provided overlappin= g 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 divide= d up among the sites. The way you submit warriors to both KotHs is pretty muc= h 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 * Write a corewar program. KotH is fully ICWS '88 compatible, EXCEPT tha= t a comma (",") is required between two arguments. * 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. 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. Using ";name" is mandatory on the Pizza hills. 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-94, ;redcode-b, ;redcode-lp, ;redcode-x, ;redcode, ;redcode-94x or ;redcode-94m. The former four run at "pizza"= , the latter three at "stormking". More information on these hills is listed below. * Mail this file to koth@koth.org or pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu. "Pizza" requires a subject of "koth" (use the -s flag on most mailers). * 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. * 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 25 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 25 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. Duration Max. Hill Name Hill Core Max. Before Entry Min. Rounds I= nstr. Size Size Processes Distance Fought = Set Tie Length Pizza's ICWS '94 Draft Hill Ex= tended (Accessed with 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 IC= WS '94 ";redcode-94") Dr= aft Pizza's Beginner's Hill Ex= tended (Accessed with 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 IC= WS '94 ";redcode-b") Dr= aft Pizza's Experimental Ex= tended (Small) Hill 25 800 800 8000 20 20 200 IC= WS '94 (Accessed with Dr= aft ";redcode-x") Pizza's Limited Process (LP) Ex= tended Hill (Accessed 25 8000 8 80000 200 200 200 IC= WS '94 with Dr= aft ";redcode-lp") Stormking's ICWS '88 Standard Hill 20 8000 8000 80000 100 100 250 IC= WS '88 (Accessed with ";redcode") Stormking's ICWS '94 Experimental Ex= tended (Big) Hill 20 55440 55440 500000 200 200 250 IC= WS '94 (Accessed with Dr= aft ";redcode-94x") Stormking's ICWS '94 Draft Multi-Warrior Ex= tended Hill (Accessed 10 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 IC= WS '94 with Dr= aft ";redcode-94m") Notes: * Warriors on the beginner's hill are retired at age 100 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 assemble= d but not actually pitted against the warriors on the hill. At "pizza", you can use ";redcode[-??] test" to do a test challenge of the Hill without affecting the status of the Hill. These challenges can be used to see how well your warrior does against the current Hill warriors. All hills run portable MARS (pMARS) version 0.8, a platform-independent Cor= e War system available at www.koth.org. The '94 and '94x hills allow five experimental opcodes and three experimental addressing modes currently not covered in the ICWS'94 draft document: * LDP - Load P-Space * STP - Store P-Space * 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] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15. 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 (in source code) under ICWS'88 rules and strictly compliant assemblers (such as KotH o= r pmars -8) will not let you have a DAT 0, 0 instruction in your source code = - 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, fo= r comparison. Note that under ICWS'94, DAT 0, 0 is a legal instruction. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 16. 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 (core 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 tha= n zero. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17. 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 Colour 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. Decrement Resistant Property of warriors making them functional (or at least partially functional) when overrun by a DJN-stream. 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 memor= y 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 www.koth.org. Paper A Paper-like program is one which replicates itself many times. Part o= f the Scissors (beats) Paper (beats) Stone (beats Scissors) analogy. P-Warrior A warrior which uses the results of previous round(s) in order to determine which strategy it will use. 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. Q^2 Scan A modern version of the Quick Scan where anything found is attacked almost immediately. 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 p= ointer 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 nothin= g 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 locatio= ns seq start+400*s1+200, start+400*s1+300 ;check two locatio= ns 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 nothin= g 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 -1, 0 spl 1 ;generate 6 consecutive processes silk spl 3620, #0 ;split to new copy mov >-1, }-1 ;copy self to new location mov bomb, >2000 ;linear bombing mov bomb, }2042 ;A-indirect bombing for anti-vamp jmp silk, {silk ;reset source pointer, make new cop= y bomb dat >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= =2E 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] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 23. Other questions? Just ask in the rec.games.corewar newsgroup or contact me. 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: * Mark Durham (wrote the original version of the FAQ) * Paul Kline * Randy Graham * Stefan Strack (maintained a recent version of the FAQ) The rec.games.corewar FAQ is Copyright =A9 1998 and maintained by Anton Marsden (amarsden@mcs.vuw.ac.nz). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Philip Kendall Subject: Re: Corewar Date: 1998/10/14 Message-ID: #1/1 guenzel.p1@blinker.net (Bjoern Guenzel) writes: > What has happened on the Multiwarrior Hill? It's been changed to using -= 'S==1' (ie you get points iff you kill everybody else). Eventually, Robert Macrae managed to get a couple of warriors on which killed everything else, and it's now actually looking sensible for the first time. Phil -- / Philip Kendall (pak21@cam.ac.uk pak21@kendalls.demon.co.uk) \ \ http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/5427/corewar.htm / From: Philip Kendall Subject: Re: wazzup with Pizza? Date: 1998/10/14 Message-ID: #1/1 zebu@DxN (Zebulon) writes: > What's up with Pizza? Is it dead? The waiting queue is very long... No, just resting -- Go and play on Stormking for a while :-) Phil -- / Philip Kendall (pak21@cam.ac.uk pak21@kendalls.demon.co.uk) \ \ http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/5427/corewar.htm / From: zebu@DxN (Zebulon) Subject: wazzup with Pizza? Date: 1998/10/14 Message-ID: #1/1 What's up with Pizza? Is it dead? The waiting queue is very long... -- !G d--- s:- a- C+++@ UL++++>$ 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? From: guenzel.p1@blinker.net (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: Re: Corewar Date: 1998/10/15 Message-ID: <36251b1d.17502527@news.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 On 14 Oct 1998 13:38:05 +0100, Philip Kendall wrote: >guenzel.p1@blinker.net (Bjoern Guenzel) writes: > >> What has happened on the Multiwarrior Hill? > >It's been changed to using -= 'S==1' (ie you get points iff you kill >everybody else). Eventually, Robert Macrae managed to get a couple of >warriors on which killed everything else, and it's now actually >looking sensible for the first time. Thanks - I followed the change, I was just wondering how Robert did it?-) > >Phil > >-- > / Philip Kendall (pak21@cam.ac.uk pak21@kendalls.demon.co.uk) \ > \ http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/5427/corewar.htm / Bjoern Guenzel -- At times I felt I had to make up for a sad lack of experiences by wild imagination. (Urs Widmer, insufficiently translated by me) From: Philip Kendall Subject: Re: Does exist a german newsgroup about corewar Date: 1998/10/15 Message-ID: #1/1 "Marc Bach" writes: [German newsgroup for Core War?] > Sorry but it it is hard to exchange knowhow in a foreign language even when > the wordfield is far far away from school-english. No, but there's no rule saying you've got to post in English on r.g.cw :-) Phil -- / Philip Kendall (pak21@cam.ac.uk pak21@kendalls.demon.co.uk) \ \ http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/5427/corewar.htm / From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Re: 94x hill Date: 1998/10/15 Message-ID: #1/1 On Mon, 12 Oct 1998, John Metcalf wrote: > Pizza wrote: > > > Some interesting results there Joonas... Yes aren't they. ;-P But what really gets me is that I wrung my brains out to get a small switching mechanism for the tiny hill and what happens? A stupid stupid warrior licks the cream off the hill [1]. :-/ Argh.. such is life. It's not just Pizza's 94x that is getting licked: > Current Hill Results > > Last battle concluded at : Wed Oct 14 08:50:12 EDT 1998 > > # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age > 1 55/ 28/ 18 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 182 1 > 2 43/ 12/ 45 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 173 23 > 3 35/ 5/ 61 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 165 70 > 4 31/ 2/ 67 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 159 18 Go Go Go Ian! The other hills are extremely refreshing in between constant tactical meetings of Operation -94. ;) Joonas [1] That is no pspace. The metaphor's a bit mixed up... but sure sounds good. From: "Ian Oversby" Subject: Tournament Announcement Date: 1998/10/16 Message-ID: <19981016145901.15715.qmail@hotmail.com>#1/1 I am running a tournament. The rules are very similar to those of the recent Redcode Maniacs tournament and are detailed below. The prize for the winner of the tournament will be the source code for the current draft '94 KOTH, Recovery (with different Q^2 order and boot distances of course). The rules for each round will be published in the newgroup a suitable period before the round deadline. Please could everyone who is intending to participate let me know as soon as possible. Thank you. Mail your submissions to me at ian@i-next.co.uk The parameters for round 1 are the same as the '94 draft hill. The scoring is also the same - 3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie and 200 rounds fought. Each warrior will fight each other warrior in a round-robin style. The deadline for entries is Friday 6th November 1998 00:00:00 GMT (midnight). Round 1 rules Instruction Set Extended '94 Draft Core Size -s 8000 Cycles to Completion -c 80000 Max Processes -p 8000 Max Warrior Length -l 100 Min Distance Between Warriors -d 100 PMARS command pmars warrior1 warrior2 The Oversby Autumn 1998 Corewar Tournament rules * All battles will be run using pMARS v0.8 * All warriors submitted will be published at the conclusion of the tournament (name, author and ;strategy lines will be published after each round). * If a competitior does not enter a warrior for one round, their entry for the previous round will be used again unless the rounds rules disallow the warrior. In this case the competitor will score 0 for this round. * Only one entry per person per round is allowed unless the rules for the round state otherwise. * The decision of the organiser is final. * The score each player receives from each round will be determined by giving the highest scoring player 100 points. The scores for other players will be allocated in proportion to this (eg if the winner scores 2302, and you score 1783, you will receive (1783/2302)*100=77.5 points). Details for this tournament are also on the web, URL: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Realm/2443/ All of which brings me to a different point - publicity. In my opinion Core War needs more players to bring some sparkle and vigour into the game. Does anyone have any ideas how we can bring this superb game to the attention of the masses whilst observing netiquette? Maybe we need to publish more warriors. To that end, I intend to publish all of my decent warriors over the next few weeks (apart from Recovery as the tournament prize of course). I know which other warriors I would like to see. Ian ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From: "John K. Lewis" Subject: Re: Newbie Question Date: 1998/10/16 Message-ID: #1/1 WildWolfSW@aol.com wrote: : I just finished my first warrior that I thought would take care of imps and : dwarfs, but it seems to just tie (if I'm reading the pmars correctly). : It bombs backwards and forwards in memory as the attack mode. It has a gate : to stop imps that are moving forward. I am going to attempt to code a : backwards gate, but that's not done yet. : I haven't finished all the tutorials yet, but I'm anxious. I ran accross this : game 10 years ago, but no one I knew was interested... : I am sure that this technique has been tried before, but I'm not sure why it : is not killing the imp??????It appears to work in the debugger... : ;Multi-Gate Bombing run : ;author Kurt Kirkham : ;assert 1 : launch SPL bombfwd ; Start bombing run forward : JMP bombbkwd ; Start bombing run backwards : ; << Code above here gets over-written >> : bomb1 DAT #0,#0 ; Gate for imps : bombbkwd MOV.I bomb1,<-1 ; Bomb backwards pre-increment b-field : JMP bombbkwd ; loop : ; : bombfwd MOV.I bomb2, >2 ; Bomb forwards : JMP bombfwd ; loop : bomb2 DAT #0, #1 ; Gate for imps : END launch : Thanks, : Kurt... Try this. (Imp Gates require some distance from your code and they also require being decremented with some frequency. I moved the gate back a bit and used the JMP's as added protection on the gate.) ;Multi-Gate Bombing run ;author Kurt Kirkham ;assert 1 launch SPL bombfwd ; Start bombing run forward JMP bombbkwd ; Start bombing run backwards ; << Code above here gets over-written >> gate DAT #0,#0 ; Gate for imps bomb1 DAT #0,#0 bombbkwd MOV.I bomb1,<-1 ; Bomb backwards pre-increment b-field JMP bombbkwd,2 ; Bomb forwards JMP bombfwd, < jklewis@umich.edu > < web services > < 734.615.0584 > From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Re: Newbie Question Date: 1998/10/16 Message-ID: #1/1 Hi Kurt, On 16 Oct 1998 WildWolfSW@aol.com wrote: > I just finished my first warrior that I thought would take care of imps and > dwarfs, but it seems to just tie (if I'm reading the pmars correctly). > > It bombs backwards and forwards in memory as the attack mode. It has a gate > to stop imps that are moving forward. I am going to attempt to code a > backwards gate, but that's not done yet. There are no backwards moving imps, though there have been some attempts at them. What happens in your program is that your gate at bomb1 is only a partial gate, so it won't stop most imps. It is also too close to running code, so that imps which are gated will simply fall into your bombing loop. > > ;Multi-Gate Bombing run > ;author Kurt Kirkham > ;assert 1 > > launch SPL bombfwd ; Start bombing run forward > JMP bombbkwd ; Start bombing run backwards > ; << Code above here gets over-written >> If we just concentrate on this bit, and ignore the rest, the we can see why a simple imp will pass your gate. > bomb1 DAT #0,#0 ; Gate for imps > bombbkwd MOV.I bomb1,<-1 ; Bomb backwards pre-increment b-field > JMP bombbkwd ; loop Suppose we have a simple mov 0,1 imp coming at you from below: ... mov 0,1 mov 0,1 ; one enemy process here. bomb1 dat #0,#-3848 ; you've been clearing for a bit bombbkwd mov.i bomb1,<-1 jmp bombbkwd Assume it's the imps turn to execute - the imp copies itself onto bomb1: ... bomb1 mov 0,1 bombbkwd mov.i bomb1,<-1 jmp bombbkwd Now it's your turn. If your process is at the jmp, then you won't change bomb1, your gate location, so nothing happens. Next the imp would overwrite bombbkwd with mov 0,1, and you would execute it overwriting the jmp. OTOH, if your process is at bombbkwd1, then something more interesting can happen - since the b-field of bomb1 has just been turned into 1, the mov at bombbkwd will overwrite bomb1 with it self, so nothing happens, and next turn the imp will overwrite bombbkwd, with pretty much the same result as last time. (so it wasn't interesting after all) The situation is similar with imps with more points. The key bit is thought that once an imp will get a process to bomb1, then it will fall off into your clear loop even if it is dead otherwise. Also, the gate isn't changed often enough... only 50% of the time (or actually 25%, since you split to two independent loops). The answer to these problems are simple, move your gate back, and change the gate even when jumping back to the loop (with a {,}, or <, say). Also, you should note that half of your processes are doing the clear forward using a different clear pointer. If you change this pointer to be the a-field of the gate, and similarly change the jmp in the second loop, then you should have an imp resistant clear. You've probably heard this already, but here's a plug for (real) know-how from Finland: Ilmari Karonen's "Beginner's Guide to Corewar", linked to from http://www.KOTH.org/papers.html In case you don't have web access, mail me and I'll send you a fresh copy. Joonas From: WildWolfSW@aol.com Subject: Newbie Question Date: 1998/10/16 Message-ID: #1/1 I just finished my first warrior that I thought would take care of imps and dwarfs, but it seems to just tie (if I'm reading the pmars correctly). It bombs backwards and forwards in memory as the attack mode. It has a gate to stop imps that are moving forward. I am going to attempt to code a backwards gate, but that's not done yet. I haven't finished all the tutorials yet, but I'm anxious. I ran accross this game 10 years ago, but no one I knew was interested... I am sure that this technique has been tried before, but I'm not sure why it is not killing the imp??????It appears to work in the debugger... ;Multi-Gate Bombing run ;author Kurt Kirkham ;assert 1 launch SPL bombfwd ; Start bombing run forward JMP bombbkwd ; Start bombing run backwards ; << Code above here gets over-written >> bomb1 DAT #0,#0 ; Gate for imps bombbkwd MOV.I bomb1,<-1 ; Bomb backwards pre-increment b-field JMP bombbkwd ; loop ; bombfwd MOV.I bomb2, >2 ; Bomb forwards JMP bombfwd ; loop bomb2 DAT #0, #1 ; Gate for imps END launch Thanks, Kurt... From: Paul Kline Subject: Re: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 10/12/98 Date: 1998/10/17 Message-ID: <3629020D.2CB8@acad.drake.edu>#1/1 > Last battle concluded at : Sun Oct 11 15:16:02 EDT 1998 > > # Name Author Score Age > 1 Aulder Man Ian Oversby 42 72 > 2 Clearer v0.2 Ian Oversby 17 15 > 3 Myth Ian Oversby 17 7 > 4 Phantasm 50m Robert Macrae 10 2 > 5 DumDum 1.? Robert Macrae 10 1 > 6 otest2 mjp 9 8 > 7 Fangs v0.3 Ian Oversby 6 10 > 8 Fangs v0.2a Ian Oversby 6 17 > 9 CStest M1 Christian Schmidt 6 3 > 10 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 5 4 > > 11 Swoon Ian 5 6 Things have changed a little now :-) The multiwarrior hill is ripe for 'team' assaults, just like the Tour de France. Wish I'd thought of that likeness two days ago, "Team Root Beer" might now be occupying this hill ;-) Paul Kline pk6811s@acad.drake.edu From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Re: Tournament Announcement Date: 1998/10/17 Message-ID: #1/1 On 16 Oct 1998, Ian Oversby wrote: > Each warrior will fight each other warrior in a round-robin style. No self fights? Joonas From: Robert Macrae Subject: Re: Corewar Date: 1998/10/17 Message-ID: <36285AFA.6C89@dial.pipex.com>#1/1 Bjoern Guenzel wrote: > > On 14 Oct 1998 13:38:05 +0100, Philip Kendall wrote: > > >guenzel.p1@blinker.net (Bjoern Guenzel) writes: > > > >> What has happened on the Multiwarrior Hill? > > > >It's been changed to using -= 'S==1' (ie you get points iff you kill > >everybody else). Eventually, Robert Macrae managed to get a couple of > >warriors on which killed everything else, and it's now actually > >looking sensible for the first time. > > Thanks - I followed the change, I was just wondering how Robert did > it?-) I made up for a sad lack of experience by wild imagination ;-) -- Regards, Robert Macrae From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 10/19/98 Date: 1998/10/19 Message-ID: <199810190400.AAA21525@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/19/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sun Oct 18 00:37:30 EDT 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 20/ 41 Freight Train David Moore 160 19 2 35/ 17/ 48 The Marlboro Man M Joonas Pihlaja 154 1 3 35/ 21/ 44 Guardian Ian Oversby 149 18 4 44/ 40/ 16 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 147 15 5 38/ 34/ 28 Leapfrog David Moore 143 47 6 42/ 42/ 16 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 143 56 7 41/ 40/ 20 Stasis David Moore 141 126 8 38/ 36/ 26 Kitchen Sink Robert Macrae 141 17 9 39/ 37/ 24 Tangle Trap David Moore 140 92 10 38/ 37/ 24 PacMan David Moore 139 48 11 41/ 44/ 15 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 139 344 12 40/ 41/ 20 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 139 294 13 27/ 18/ 55 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 136 32 14 28/ 22/ 50 Evoltmp 88 John K W 135 69 15 23/ 10/ 67 Trident^2 '88 John K W 135 42 16 40/ 46/ 14 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 135 13 17 27/ 20/ 53 Test I Ian Oversby 134 75 18 29/ 26/ 46 CAPS KEY IS STUCK AGAIN Steven Morrell 132 216 19 28/ 24/ 48 Simple '88 Ian Oversby 131 105 20 37/ 43/ 20 Gisela 8623 Andrzej Maciejczak 130 12 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 10/19/98 Date: 1998/10/19 Message-ID: <199810190400.AAA21545@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/19/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG 94 No Pspace CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sun Oct 18 03:31:52 EDT 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 47/ 36/ 17 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 157 17 2 45/ 37/ 19 The Machine Anton Marsden 153 81 3 36/ 27/ 37 Recovery Ian Oversby 145 15 4 26/ 9/ 64 The Fugitive David Moore 143 94 5 36/ 29/ 35 Blacken Ian Oversby 143 2 6 35/ 27/ 39 Vain Ian Oversby 142 92 7 36/ 30/ 34 Fixed Ken Espiritu 142 75 8 32/ 23/ 45 Brigadeer M Joonas Pihlaja 142 11 9 39/ 36/ 25 STest Vladimir Bychkovskiy 142 6 10 43/ 45/ 12 Red Carpet David Moore 140 33 11 34/ 29/ 37 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 140 26 12 39/ 39/ 22 Floody River P.Kline 139 41 13 34/ 29/ 37 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 139 73 14 34/ 31/ 34 Head or Tail Christian Schmidt 137 63 15 31/ 25/ 44 Gemini Dream John K Wilkinson 137 98 16 41/ 44/ 15 Blurstone M. J. Pihlaja 137 37 17 31/ 27/ 41 Pulp v0.4 Ian Oversby 135 91 18 36/ 38/ 26 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 134 14 19 35/ 36/ 30 Digital Dragon Christian Schmidt 133 23 20 29/ 27/ 44 The Marlboro Man M Joonas Pihlaja 131 1 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 10/19/98 Date: 1998/10/19 Message-ID: <199810190400.AAA21536@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/19/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Wed Oct 14 08:50:12 EDT 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 55/ 28/ 18 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 182 1 2 43/ 12/ 45 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 173 23 3 35/ 5/ 61 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 165 70 4 31/ 2/ 67 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 159 18 5 33/ 17/ 50 Rosebud Beppe 150 49 6 41/ 35/ 24 Dr. Gate X Franz 147 41 7 37/ 34/ 29 BigBoy Robert Macrae 141 95 8 26/ 15/ 58 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 137 12 9 38/ 39/ 23 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 137 56 10 41/ 47/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 135 71 11 38/ 42/ 19 Pagan John K W 135 55 12 37/ 39/ 24 13 Christian Schmidt 134 8 13 26/ 19/ 54 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 133 22 14 39/ 46/ 15 BiShot Christian Schmidt 133 9 15 33/ 35/ 32 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 131 61 16 35/ 38/ 27 Dr. Recover Franz 131 40 17 41/ 52/ 8 HSA Copy 55440 Robert Macrae 130 38 18 37/ 44/ 19 Tsunami v0.1 Ian Oversby 129 48 19 37/ 45/ 18 Memories Beppe Bezzi 129 77 20 29/ 33/ 38 Falcon v0.3 X Ian Oversby 125 43 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: "Ian Oversby" Subject: Tournament update Date: 1998/10/19 Message-ID: <19981019101130.15819.qmail@hotmail.com>#1/1 Oops, a few errors and omissions on my tournament announcement: Round 1 rules: * There will be no self-fights this round * PMARS command: pmars -r 200 warrior1 warrior2 Tournament rules: * For each player, their best n-1 scores from the n rounds will count. This will avoid penalising players who miss a round. Ian ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From: guenzel.p1@blinker.net (Bjoern Guenzel) Subject: Re: Corewar Date: 1998/10/19 Message-ID: <362b9db1.12727320@news.lrz-muenchen.de>#1/1 On Sat, 17 Oct 1998 09:53:14 +0100, Robert Macrae wrote: >Bjoern Guenzel wrote: >> >> On 14 Oct 1998 13:38:05 +0100, Philip Kendall wrote: >> >> >guenzel.p1@blinker.net (Bjoern Guenzel) writes: >> > >> >> What has happened on the Multiwarrior Hill? >> > >> >It's been changed to using -= 'S==1' (ie you get points iff you kill >> >everybody else). Eventually, Robert Macrae managed to get a couple of >> >warriors on which killed everything else, and it's now actually >> >looking sensible for the first time. >> >> Thanks - I followed the change, I was just wondering how Robert did >> it?-) > >I made up for a sad lack of experience by wild imagination ;-) I am glad to see that this strategy can occasionally lead to good results :-) > >-- > >Regards, > >Robert Macrae > Bjoern Guenzel -- At times I felt I had to make up for a sad lack of experiences by wild imagination. (Urs Widmer, insufficiently translated by me) From: Richard Rognlie Subject: C++Robots Standings 1998/10/19 Date: 1998/10/19 Message-ID: <362B283E.1E1AB855@gamerz.net>#1/1 Program Name Score W / L / T Age Author ================ ===== =========== === ===================================== 1 katty 273 91/ 9/ 0 29 cfrim@ac.tuiasi.ro (catalin ifrim) 2 ttr3 255 85/ 15/ 0 28 traber@cosinet.de (Thomas Traber) 3 tommy 246 82/ 18/ 0 53 zcewj@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Elliot W. Jac 4 polarbear 183 61/ 39/ 0 1 flandar@yahoo.com (Aaron Judd) 5 ssm4 180 60/ 40/ 0 211 enpch@bath.ac.uk (C Harrison) 6 trex 177 59/ 41/ 0 12 jerome.dumonteil@capway.com (Jerome D 7 bedtime 171 57/ 43/ 0 6 btb@micron.net (TheRooster) 8 mariner 165 55/ 45/ 0 274 zcpjm@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Paul J. Melko 9 kiilbot1 162 54/ 46/ 0 182 bob2@goplay.com (bob2) 10 shooter 159 53/ 47/ 0 243 itdcjr@mail1.hants.gov.uk (Justin Row 11 chaos 147 49/ 51/ 0 179 agondare@hotmail.com (alex gondarenko 12 knownaim00 144 48/ 52/ 0 96 c.d.wright@solipsys.compulink.co.uk ( 13 prio.2 135 45/ 55/ 0 139 oliver@jowett.manawatu.planet.co.nz ( 14 krom 126 42/ 58/ 0 151 tdavis@gate.net (Thomas E. Davis) 15 doubleshooter 117 37/ 57/ 6 163 mario.deweerd@ibm.net (Mario De Weerd 16 raystonn 111 35/ 59/ 6 118 svincent@a.crl.com (Samuel Vincent) 17 imrobot1 103 34/ 65/ 1 3 jthorpe@pfs.com (jthorpe@pfs.com) 18 fodder0 99 33/ 67/ 0 73 christopher.meehan@reuters.com (C_MEE 19 rumbler 93 31/ 69/ 0 34 smith.paul.pn@bhp.com.au (Smith, Paul 20 rosie 90 30/ 70/ 0 5 andyg54321@aol.com (AndyG54321@aol.co -- / \__ | Richard Rognlie / Webmaster Pro Tem Ad Nauseum \__/ \ | E-Mail: rrognlie@gamerz.net | Erols Internet / \__/ | URL: http://www.gamerz.net/rrognlie/ | an RCN company \__/ | Join the fight against SPAM! http://www.cauce.org From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 10/19/98 Date: 1998/10/19 Message-ID: <199810190400.AAA21530@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/19/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sun Oct 18 08:09:28 EDT 1998 # Name Author Score Age 1 Her Majesty P.Kline 47 9 2 Aulder Man Ian Oversby 38 106 3 otest2 mjp 33 42 4 Clearer v0.2 Ian Oversby 23 49 5 Queens Guards I P.Kline 18 6 6 HopScotch Multi 1.1 Robert Macrae 18 1 7 Queens Guards VI P.Kline 14 3 8 . David Moore 13 2 9 Blur Copy Robert Macrae 12 28 10 Queens Guards II P.Kline 11 4 11 Fangs v0.3 Ian Oversby 9 44 From: John.Metcalf@p18.f94.chaos.camelot.co.uk (John Metcalf) Subject: Tournament update Date: 1998/10/21 Message-ID: #1/1 IO> Round 1 rules: * There will be no self-fights this round IO> * PMARS command: pmars -r 200 warrior1 warrior2 Sorry, this is the first info on the tournament I've seen. For some reason any previous message hasn't arrived here. Would you be able to repost please. Thanks From: qute@fido.dk (Anders Rosendal) Subject: Re: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 10/12/98 Date: 1998/10/21 Message-ID: #1/1 Ello there mate! Saturday October 17 1998 15:46, Paul Kline wrote to KOTH: >> # Name Author Score Age >> 1 Aulder Man Ian Oversby 42 72 >> 2 Clearer v0.2 Ian Oversby 17 15 >> 3 Myth Ian Oversby 17 7 PK> Things have changed a little now :-) Yes. A lot more fun now :-) PK> The multiwarrior hill is ripe for 'team' assaults, just like PK> the Tour de France. Wonder if Ian's taking EPO ;-)) Why is that? Can they "work" together?! Greetings from lovely Denmark Anders Rosendal. From: Philip Kendall Subject: Re: Tournament update Date: 1998/10/24 Message-ID: #1/1 John.Metcalf@p18.f94.chaos.camelot.co.uk (John Metcalf) writes: > Sorry, this is the first info on the tournament I've seen. For > some reason any previous message hasn't arrived here. > > Would you be able to repost please. Mailed to him. Phil -- / Philip Kendall (pak21@cam.ac.uk pak21@kendalls.demon.co.uk) \ \ http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/5427/corewar.htm / From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 10/26/98 Date: 1998/10/26 Message-ID: <199810260500.AAA12206@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/26/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Wed Oct 14 08:50:12 EDT 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 55/ 28/ 18 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 182 1 2 43/ 12/ 45 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 173 23 3 35/ 5/ 61 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 165 70 4 31/ 2/ 67 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 159 18 5 33/ 17/ 50 Rosebud Beppe 150 49 6 41/ 35/ 24 Dr. Gate X Franz 147 41 7 37/ 34/ 29 BigBoy Robert Macrae 141 95 8 26/ 15/ 58 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 137 12 9 38/ 39/ 23 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 137 56 10 41/ 47/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 135 71 11 38/ 42/ 19 Pagan John K W 135 55 12 37/ 39/ 24 13 Christian Schmidt 134 8 13 26/ 19/ 54 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 133 22 14 39/ 46/ 15 BiShot Christian Schmidt 133 9 15 33/ 35/ 32 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 131 61 16 35/ 38/ 27 Dr. Recover Franz 131 40 17 41/ 52/ 8 HSA Copy 55440 Robert Macrae 130 38 18 37/ 44/ 19 Tsunami v0.1 Ian Oversby 129 48 19 37/ 45/ 18 Memories Beppe Bezzi 129 77 20 29/ 33/ 38 Falcon v0.3 X Ian Oversby 125 43 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 10/26/98 Date: 1998/10/26 Message-ID: <199810260500.AAA12194@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/26/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Mon Oct 19 09:20:04 EDT 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 36/ 20/ 44 Freight Train David Moore 152 19 2 32/ 17/ 51 The Marlboro Man M Joonas Pihlaja 146 1 3 41/ 42/ 17 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 141 15 4 31/ 22/ 46 Guardian Ian Oversby 140 18 5 40/ 43/ 17 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 137 56 6 38/ 41/ 21 Stasis David Moore 134 126 7 34/ 35/ 31 Leapfrog David Moore 133 47 8 36/ 38/ 26 Tangle Trap David Moore 133 92 9 37/ 42/ 21 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 133 294 10 35/ 37/ 28 Kitchen Sink Robert Macrae 133 17 11 39/ 46/ 15 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 133 344 12 35/ 39/ 25 PacMan David Moore 132 48 13 36/ 44/ 20 Gisela 8623 Andrzej Maciejczak 129 12 14 23/ 18/ 58 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 128 32 15 38/ 48/ 14 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 127 13 16 24/ 22/ 54 Evoltmp 88 John K W 126 69 17 18/ 11/ 71 Trident^2 '88 John K W 126 42 18 23/ 21/ 56 Test I Ian Oversby 125 75 19 25/ 26/ 49 CAPS KEY IS STUCK AGAIN Steven Morrell 124 216 20 24/ 25/ 51 Simple '88 Ian Oversby 122 105 21 23/ 32/ 45 Recovery '88 Ian Oversby 114 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 10/26/98 Date: 1998/10/26 Message-ID: <199810260500.AAA12199@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/26/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Thu Oct 22 17:37:37 EDT 1998 # Name Author Score Age 1 Aulder Man Ian Oversby 18 139 2 Clearer v0.2 Ian Oversby 17 82 3 otest2 mjp 13 75 4 cstest M4 Christian Schmidt 13 33 5 Blur Copy Robert Macrae 12 61 6 Something Else David Moore 9 32 7 Her Majesty P.Kline 8 9 8 qTest P.Kline 7 1 9 Queens Guard II P.Kline 3 7 10 Queens Guard I P.Kline 2 8 11 qTest P.Kline 0 2 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 10/26/98 Date: 1998/10/26 Message-ID: <199810260500.AAA12214@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 10/26/98 -=- www.KOTH.org is now hosting a '94 No Pspace Hill. -=- View the stats of all the Hills at: www.KOTH.org/standings.html -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG 94 No Pspace CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sun Oct 25 17:36:56 EST 1998 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 38/ 18 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 152 17 2 43/ 38/ 20 The Machine Anton Marsden 148 81 3 32/ 27/ 41 Recovery Ian Oversby 137 15 4 41/ 46/ 13 Red Carpet David Moore 137 33 5 31/ 27/ 42 Vain Ian Oversby 136 92 6 29/ 23/ 48 Brigadeer M Joonas Pihlaja 136 11 7 37/ 38/ 26 STest Vladimir Bychkovskiy 136 6 8 33/ 30/ 38 Blacken Ian Oversby 135 2 9 22/ 9/ 69 The Fugitive David Moore 134 94 10 32/ 30/ 38 Fixed Ken Espiritu 134 75 11 36/ 40/ 23 Floody River P.Kline 133 41 12 30/ 29/ 41 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 132 26 13 38/ 45/ 16 Blurstone M. J. Pihlaja 132 37 14 30/ 29/ 40 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 131 73 15 28/ 25/ 47 Gemini Dream John K Wilkinson 131 98 16 31/ 32/ 37 Head or Tail Christian Schmidt 130 63 17 33/ 40/ 27 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 127 14 18 31/ 36/ 33 Digital Dragon Christian Schmidt 127 23 19 27/ 28/ 45 Pulp v0.4 Ian Oversby 127 91 20 26/ 27/ 47 The Marlboro Man M Joonas Pihlaja 124 1 21 12/ 34/ 54 Printer v0.2.5 1oct{1917} 91 0 From: amarsden@mcs.vuw.ac.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 1998/10/28 Message-ID: Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-Modified: August 5, 1998 =20 Version: 4.0 URL: http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~amarsden/corewars/corewar-faq.html Copyright: (c) 1998 Anton Marsden Maintainer: Anton Marsden Posting-Frequency: once every 2 weeks Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) These are the Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) from the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.corewar. The latest hypertext version is available at http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~amarsden/corewars/corewar-faq.html and the latest plain text version is available at=20 http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~amarsden/corewars/corewar-faq.txt. This document was last modified on August 5, 1998. It is currently being maintained by Anton Marsden (amarsden@mcs.vuw.ac.nz). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To Do * Make question 17 easier to understand. Add a state diagram? * Upgrade to HTML 4.0, make FAQ easier to maintain in future (hopefully) * Add info about infinite hills, related games (C-Robots, Tierra?, ...) * New question: How do I know if my warrior is any good? Refer to beginners' benchmarks, etc. * Add a Who's Who list? * Would very much like someone to compile a collection of the "revolutionary" warriors so that beginners can see how the game has developed over the years. Mail me if interested. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ What's New * Changed the location of Ryan Coleman's paper (LaunchPad -> Launchpad) * Changed pauillac.inria.fr to para.inria.fr * Made some changes/additions/fixes based on a good FAQ review by Joonas Pihlaja. Not all of the suggestions have been dealt with yet, but the FAQ is now less ambiguous in some areas. Thanks Joonas! * Added stuff about pMARS under Win95 (question 9), and the location of = a HTML version of the ICWS'94 draft (question 5). * New definition: decrement resistant * Modified the answer to question 1 * Changed error in P-space question (location 0 can be written to). * Added links to genetic algorithm resources. * Added a link to Kendall's page. * Added new Q&A (code formatting). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 o= f the current instruction set? 5. What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? 6. What is the ICWS? 7. What is Core Warrior? 8. Where are the Core War archives? 9. Where can I find a Core War system for ...? 10. Where can I find warrior code? 11. I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? 12. I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? 13. Are there any Core War related WWW sites? 14. What is KotH? How do I enter? 15. Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? 16. How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? 17. What is the difference between in-register and in-memory evaluation? 18. What is P-space? 19. What does "Missing ;assert .." in my message from KotH mean? 20. How should I format my code? 21. Are there any other Core War related resources I should know about? 22. What does (expression or term of your choice) mean? 23. Other questions? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. 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 virtua= l computer called MARS (for Memory Array Redcode Simulator). The object of th= e game is to cause all processes of the opposing program to terminate, leavin= g your program in sole posession of the machine. There are Core War systems available for most computer platforms. Redcode has been standardised by the ICWS, and is therefore transportable between all standard Core War systems. The system in which the programs run is quite simple. The core (the memory of the simulated computer) is a continuous array of instructions, empty except for the competing programs. The core wraps around, so that after the last instruction comes the first one again. There are no absolute addresses in Core War. That is, the address 0 doesn't mean the first instruction in the memory, but the instruction that contains the address 0. The next instruction is 1, and the previous one obviously -1= =2E However, all numbers are treated as positive, and are in the range 0 to (CORESIZE-1) where CORESIZE is the amount of memory locations in the core - this means that -1 would be treated as (CORESIZE-1) in any arithmetic operations, eg. 3218 + 7856 =3D (3218 + 7856) mod CORESIZE. Many people get confused by this, and it is particularly important when using the SLT instruction. Note that the source code of a program can still contain negative numbers, but if you start using instructions like DIV #-2, #5 it i= s important to know what effect they will have when executed. The basic unit of memory in Core War is one instruction. Each Redcode instruction contains three parts: * the opcode * the source address (a.k.a. the A-field) * the destination address (a.k.a. the B-field) The execution of the programs is equally simple. The MARS executes one instruction at a time, and then proceeds to the next one in the memory, unless the instruction explicitly tells it to jump to another address. If there is more than one program running, (as is usual) the programs execute alternately, one instruction at a time. The execution of each instruction takes the same time, one cycle, whether it is MOV, DIV or even DAT (which kills the process). Each program may have several processes running. These processes are stored in a task queue. When it is the program's turn to execute an instruction it dequeues a process and executes the corresponding instruction. Processes that are not killed during the execution of the instruction are put back into the task queue. Processes created by a SPL instruction are added to th= e task queue after the creating process is put back into the task queue. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. 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] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? Core War was first described in the Core War Guidelines of March, 1984 by D= =2E 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: Library of Author Title Published ISBN Congress Call Number The Armchair Dewdney, Universe: An New York: W. QA76.6 .D517 A. K. Exploration of H. Freeman =A90-7167-1939-8 1988 Computer Worlds 1988 The Magic 0-7167-2125-2 Dewdney, Machine: A New York: W.(Hardcover), QA76.6 A. K. Handbook of H. Freeman =A90-7167-2144-9 .D5173 199= 0 Computer Sorcery 1990 (Paperback) 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. For those who are interested, Dewdney has a home page at http://www.csd.uwo.ca/faculty/akd/. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. 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 ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/standards/redcode-icws-88. This document is formatted awkwardly and contains ambiguous statements. For a more approachable intro to Redcode, take a look at Mark Durham's tutorials, ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/tutorial.1 and ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/tutorial.2. Steven Morrell has prepared a more practically oriented Redcode tutorial that discusses different warrior classes with lots of example code. This an= d various other tutorials can be found at http://www.koth.org/papers.html. Even though ICWS'88 is still the "official" standard, you will find that most people are playing by ICWS'94 draft rules and extensions. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. 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 new addressing modes 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'9= 4 draft at ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/icws94.0202.Z for more information. There is a HTML version of this document available at http://www.koth.org/icws94.html. 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://www.koth.org/corewar. Note that Redcoder onl= y supports a subset of ICWS'94. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. What is the ICWS? About one year after Core War first appeared in Scientific American, 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). The ICWS is no longer active. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. What is Core Warrior? Following in the tradition of the Core War News Letter, Push Off, and The 9= 4 Warrior, Core Warrior is a newsletter about strategies and current standing= s in Core War. Started in October 1995, back issues of Core Warrior (and the other newsletters) are available at http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/. There is also a Core Warrior index page at http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/5427/warrior.htm which has a summary of the contents of each issue of Core Warrior. Many of the earlier issues contain useful information for beginners. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8. 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 ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar. 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. This site is mirrored at: * http://www.koth.org/corewar/ * ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/ * ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/mirror The plain text version of this FAQ is automatically archived by news.answer= s (but this version is probably out-of-date). [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9. Where can I find a Core War system for . . . ? Core War systems are available via anonymous FTP from www.koth.org in the 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 ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/incoming 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 www.koth.org. Generally, the older the program - the less likely it will be ICWS compatible. If you are looking for an ICWS'94 simulator, get pMARS, which is available for many platforms and can be downloaded from: * ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar (original site) * ftp://www.koth.org/corewar (Stormking mirror) * ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/mirror (Planar mirror) * http://www.nc5.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ (Terry Newton) * ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar (Fechter) Notes: * If you have trouble running pMARS with a graphical display under Win95 then check out http://www.koth.org/pmars.html which should have a pointer to the latest compilation of pMARS for this environment. * RPMs for the Alpha, PowerPC, Sparc and i386 can be found at ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars-rpm/ 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 www.koth.org: 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 pvms08.zip pMARS v0.8 for VMS build files/help (req. pmars08s.zip) ApMARS03.lha pMARS executable for Amiga (port of version 0.3.1) wincor11.zip MS-Windows system, shareware ($15) [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10. Where can I find warrior code? To learn the game, it is a good idea to study previously posted warrior code. The FTP archives have code in the ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/redcode directory. A clearly organized on-line warrior collection is available at the Core War web sites (see below). [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11. I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? There is an FTP email server at bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu. This address may no longer exist. I haven't tested it yet. Send email with a subject and bod= y text of "help" (without the quotes) for more information on its usage. Note that many FTP email gateways are shutting down due to abuse. To get a current list of FTP email servers, look at the Accessing the Internet by E-mail FAQ posted to news.answers. If you don't have access to Usenet, you can retrieve this FAQ one of the following ways: * Send mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the body containing "send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email". * Send mail to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk with the body containing "send lis-iis e-access-inet.txt". [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12. 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@ttsg.com). Servers that allow you to post (but not receive) articles are available. Refer to the Accessing the Internet by E-Mail FAQ for more information. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 13. 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 http://www.koth.org; pizza's is http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth . Damien Doligez (a.k.a. Planar) has a web page that features convenient access to regular newsletters (Push Off, The '94 Warrior, Core Warrior) and a well organized library of warriors: http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/. Convenient for U.S. users= , this site is also mirrored at Stormking. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14. 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 point= s 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 ha= s 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, KotH= s based on Bill's UNIX scripts but offering a wider variety of hills are are running at two sites: koth@koth.org is maintained by Scott J. Ellentuch (tuc@ttsg.com) and pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu by Thomas H. Davies (sd@ecst.csuchico.edu). Up until May '95, the two sites provided overlappin= g 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 divide= d up among the sites. The way you submit warriors to both KotHs is pretty muc= h 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 * Write a corewar program. KotH is fully ICWS '88 compatible, EXCEPT tha= t a comma (",") is required between two arguments. * 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. 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. Using ";name" is mandatory on the Pizza hills. 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-94, ;redcode-b, ;redcode-lp, ;redcode-x, ;redcode, ;redcode-94x or ;redcode-94m. The former four run at "pizza"= , the latter three at "stormking". More information on these hills is listed below. * Mail this file to koth@koth.org or pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu. "Pizza" requires a subject of "koth" (use the -s flag on most mailers). * 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. * 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 25 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 25 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. Duration Max. Hill Name Hill Core Max. Before Entry Min. Rounds I= nstr. Size Size Processes Distance Fought = Set Tie Length Pizza's ICWS '94 Draft Hill Ex= tended (Accessed with 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 IC= WS '94 ";redcode-94") Dr= aft Pizza's Beginner's Hill Ex= tended (Accessed with 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 IC= WS '94 ";redcode-b") Dr= aft Pizza's Experimental Ex= tended (Small) Hill 25 800 800 8000 20 20 200 IC= WS '94 (Accessed with Dr= aft ";redcode-x") Pizza's Limited Process (LP) Ex= tended Hill (Accessed 25 8000 8 80000 200 200 200 IC= WS '94 with Dr= aft ";redcode-lp") Stormking's ICWS '88 Standard Hill 20 8000 8000 80000 100 100 250 IC= WS '88 (Accessed with ";redcode") Stormking's ICWS '94 Experimental Ex= tended (Big) Hill 20 55440 55440 500000 200 200 250 IC= WS '94 (Accessed with Dr= aft ";redcode-94x") Stormking's ICWS '94 Draft Multi-Warrior Ex= tended Hill (Accessed 10 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 IC= WS '94 with Dr= aft ";redcode-94m") Notes: * Warriors on the beginner's hill are retired at age 100 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 assemble= d but not actually pitted against the warriors on the hill. At "pizza", you can use ";redcode[-??] test" to do a test challenge of the Hill without affecting the status of the Hill. These challenges can be used to see how well your warrior does against the current Hill warriors. All hills run portable MARS (pMARS) version 0.8, a platform-independent Cor= e War system available at www.koth.org. The '94 and '94x hills allow five experimental opcodes and three experimental addressing modes currently not covered in the ICWS'94 draft document: * LDP - Load P-Space * STP - Store P-Space * 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] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15. 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 (in source code) under ICWS'88 rules and strictly compliant assemblers (such as KotH o= r pmars -8) will not let you have a DAT 0, 0 instruction in your source code = - 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, fo= r comparison. Note that under ICWS'94, DAT 0, 0 is a legal instruction. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 16. 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 (core 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 tha= n zero. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17. 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 Colour 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. Decrement Resistant Property of warriors making them functional (or at least partially functional) when overrun by a DJN-stream. 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 memor= y 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 www.koth.org. Paper A Paper-like program is one which replicates itself many times. Part o= f the Scissors (beats) Paper (beats) Stone (beats Scissors) analogy. P-Warrior A warrior which uses the results of previous round(s) in order to determine which strategy it will use. 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. Q^2 Scan A modern version of the Quick Scan where anything found is attacked almost immediately. 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 p= ointer 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 nothin= g 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 locatio= ns seq start+400*s1+200, start+400*s1+300 ;check two locatio= ns 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 nothin= g 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 -1, 0 spl 1 ;generate 6 consecutive processes silk spl 3620, #0 ;split to new copy mov >-1, }-1 ;copy self to new location mov bomb, >2000 ;linear bombing mov bomb, }2042 ;A-indirect bombing for anti-vamp jmp silk, {silk ;reset source pointer, make new cop= y bomb dat >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= =2E 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] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 23. Other questions? Just ask in the rec.games.corewar newsgroup or contact me. 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: * Mark Durham (wrote the original version of the FAQ) * Paul Kline * Randy Graham * Stefan Strack (maintained a recent version of the FAQ) The rec.games.corewar FAQ is Copyright =A9 1998 and maintained by Anton Marsden (amarsden@mcs.vuw.ac.nz). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: akahmits@worldnet.att.net (K.C) Subject: FS:Hot PC games(Need for speed 3,Caesars 3,Rainbow 6,Independence War,Starcraft,Final Fantasy 7 and etc from $15 each) Date: 1998/10/28 Message-ID: <363cc487.14009308@netnews.worldnet.att.net>#1/1 I have the following games for sale, all are in perfect condition. The prices range from $18 - $22 per title depending on which title and how many you buy. Final Fantasy 7 - $ 21 Deadlock 2 - $ 10 Legacy of time - $ 18 Urban Assault - $ 18 Unreal - $ 18 Uprising - $ 12 KKND extreme - $ 13 Tripleplay 99 - $ 13 Seven Kingdoms - $ 15 Rainbow Six - $ 20 Airwarrior 2 - $ 10 Caesars 3 - $ 19 Need for speed 3 - $ 19 Motocross Madness - $ 18 Independence War - $ 19 Warlords 3 - $ 18 Toca Championship racing - $18 The games below are all $18 each: Longbow II Starcraft Might and Magic 6 TombRaider 2 Burnout Championship Drag Racing Grand Theft Auto Mortal Kombat 4 F/A 18 Korea Curse of Monkey island From: David Matthew Moore Subject: stale pizza Date: 1998/10/29 Message-ID: <71ahk1$qq$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu>#1/1 I read the scores for Fire and Ice versus its five oldest opponents. The results haven't changed since I submitted it in March. Pizza should recompute the battles about once per month. The current setup hurts pwarriors, since they vary the most. New arrivals exploit that by resubmitting to improve their score. Oh, and remember Cheater 2.0? Don't forget to change the random seed. From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Re: stale pizza Date: 1998/10/30 Message-ID: #1/1 On 29 Oct 1998, David Matthew Moore wrote: > I read the scores for Fire and Ice versus its five oldest opponents. > The results haven't changed since I submitted it in March. > > Pizza should recompute the battles about once per month. Recomputation requires some 300+ battles each at 200 rounds, and I estimate it takes anywhere from 20 minutes upwards to complete 25 battles on the -94 and -b hills. Now that's some 4 hours to recompute the hill... and then there are the other hills to do too. Also, it might cause some problems for some teams of p-spacers that depend on landing on the hill in a certain order. > > The current setup hurts pwarriors, since they vary the most. > New arrivals exploit that by resubmitting to improve their score. P-warriors also have the most to gain on arrival by trying a few variations. It might shake a few q^2 warriors too, although not as much.