From: cyric@mainz.netsurf.de Subject: [Win 95] I guess you already all know that...but still... Date: 1999/05/01 Message-ID: <372b7362.34334477@news.wiesbaden.netsurf.de>#1/1 I recently discovered NoteTab for Windows and I strongly encourage you all who don�t have it already to d/l it asap!!! You will see what I mean after you installed it. And no, I don�t get payed from them btw NoteTab light is freeware! From: jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Re: [Win 95] I guess you already all know that...but still... Date: 1999/05/02 Message-ID: <0f3112613190259FE4@mail4.austin.rr.com>#1/1 >I recently discovered NoteTab for Windows and I strongly encourage you >all who don�t have it already to d/l it asap!!! >You will see what I mean after you installed it. And no, I don�t get >payed from them btw NoteTab light is freeware! if you're going to spam an ad for something, at least tell people WHERE to get the thing yer spamming. geez. From: cyric@mainz.netsurf.de Subject: Re: [Win 95] I guess you already all know that...but still... Date: 1999/05/03 Message-ID: <372e17ec.310314@news.wiesbaden.netsurf.de>#1/1 On 2 May 1999 18:50:18 -0400, jwilkinson@mail.utexas.edu wrote: >if you're going to spam an ad for something, at least tell people >WHERE to get the thing yer spamming. geez. www.notetab.com Please forgive me ;) I was so excited :P From: Richard Rognlie Subject: C++Robots Standings -- 1999/05/03 Date: 1999/05/03 Message-ID: <372DEA7B.FE3467F2@gamerz.net>#1/1 Program Name Score W / L / T Age Author ================ ===== =========== === ===================================== 1 wilma 708 236/ 14/ 0 36 hamilton@parlous.mlnet.com (Michael H 2 thebully 684 228/ 22/ 0 6 therooster@bigfoot.com (TheRooster) 3 tommy 669 223/ 27/ 0 25 zcewj@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Elliot W. Jac 4 xtraper 626 207/ 38/ 5 37 3r5k1n3@rivnet.net (Michael John Ersk 5 ttr3 594 198/ 52/ 0 5 traber@ngi.de (Thomas Traber) 6 crbot2 588 196/ 54/ 0 27 rosevear.craig.ca@bhp.com.au (Rosevea 7 polarbear 576 192/ 58/ 0 4 flandar@yahoo.com (Aaron Judd) 8 simpletest 564 188/ 62/ 0 34 niklas.wendel@swipnet.se (Niklas Wend 9 breve 540 180/ 70/ 0 20 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 10 trex 504 168/ 82/ 0 301 jerome.dumonteil@capway.com (Jerome D 11 pacarobot 486 162/ 88/ 0 203 proberts@stnc.com (Paul Roberts) 12 hiderv13 474 155/ 86/ 9 44 malcolm@citr.com.au (Malcolm Jones) 13 h21 471 157/ 93/ 0 154 cgl@infowest.com (Curtis Larsen) 14 minim 460 153/ 96/ 1 19 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 15 angus2 460 150/ 90/ 10 288 andy_grant@adc.com (Andy Grant) 16 mariner 456 152/ 98/ 0 563 zcpjm@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Paul J. Melko 16 quaver 456 152/ 98/ 0 271 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 16 crbot 456 152/ 98/ 0 31 rosevear.craig.ca@bhp.com.au (Rosevea 19 z 449 149/ 99/ 2 49 zcmet@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Mark E. Tyber 20 ssm4 442 147/102/ 1 500 enpch@bath.ac.uk (C Harrison) 21 bedtime 441 147/103/ 0 295 btb@micron.net (TheRooster) 22 radar 433 144/105/ 1 11 radu@rasd.ro (Radu DUMITRU) 23 orbiter 433 143/103/ 4 109 davidma@premier1.net (davidma@premier 24 chaos 420 140/110/ 0 468 agondare@hotmail.com (alex gondarenko 25 shooter 417 139/111/ 0 532 itdcjr@mail1.hants.gov.uk (Justin Row 25 kiilbot1 417 139/111/ 0 471 bob2@goplay.com (bob2) 27 bigtarget8 415 135/105/ 10 1 mevail@bigfoot.com (Mason Vail) 28 crotchet 408 136/114/ 0 214 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 29 prio.2 390 130/120/ 0 428 oliver@jowett.manawatu.planet.co.nz ( 30 dragon 388 129/120/ 1 32 proberts@stnc.com (Paul Roberts) 31 knownaim00 372 124/126/ 0 385 c.d.wright@solipsys.compulink.co.uk ( 32 krom 342 114/136/ 0 168 tdavis@gate.net (Thomas E. Davis) 33 raystonn 316 100/134/ 16 407 svincent@a.crl.com (Samuel Vincent) 34 imp 300 100/150/ 0 250 petrey@cumbig.bioc.columbia.edu (Dona 35 kludge 241 79/167/ 4 205 dfelton@stnc.com (Don Felton) 36 jp-test 226 74/172/ 4 24 linux-guru@gcfl.net (John Price) 37 tracker 218 71/174/ 5 249 rrognlie@gamerz.net (Richard Rognlie) 38 ziggy 216 72/178/ 0 248 rrognlie@gamerz.net (Richard Rognlie) 38 dumdum 216 72/178/ 0 33 togr@im.se (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Gr=F6vnes_ 40 durrow 214 70/176/ 4 134 dencox@cisco.com (Dennis J Cox) 41 seko001 208 67/176/ 7 71 rs@euromove.sk (Rastislav Senderak) 42 ezkil 203 67/181/ 2 199 jos.smit@src.nl (jos.smit@src.nl) 43 mortein 190 63/186/ 1 130 mortein@zip.com.au (mortein@zip.com.a 44 micro 180 60/190/ 0 72 3r5k1n3@rivnet.net (Michael John Ersk 45 hereicome 171 57/193/ 0 120 jbreed@veribest.com (Jim) 46 bigtarget6 169 56/193/ 1 128 mevail@bigfoot.com (Mason Vail) 47 wobble 138 43/198/ 9 22 itcstr@hantsnet.hants.gov.uk (ITCSTR) 48 sandman 132 44/206/ 0 63 sinjed@grin.net (R. Saotome) 49 roboty 111 37/213/ 0 149 lee.harding@autodesk.com (lee.harding 50 borkface 67 20/223/ 7 7 form1@aol.com (Form1@aol.com) For more information, 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 / Sendmail Consultant / Sendmail, Inc. \__/ \ | URL: http://www.gamerz.net/rrognlie/ / \__/ | Give a man a fish, and he'll be hungry tomorrow. Teach a \__/ | man to fish, and he'll be at the river all day drinking beer. From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 05/03/99 Date: 1999/05/03 Message-ID: <199905030400.AAA00539@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/03/99 -=- 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 Apr 29 17:16:15 EDT 1999 # Name Author Score Age 1 Cinderella Ben Ford 50 9 2 Her Majesty P.Kline 43 1 3 QuiVa John Metcalf 41 75 4 Sharkrage Christian Schmidt 41 49 5 QueensGuard P.Kline 40 2 6 QueensGuard P.Kline 38 3 7 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 37 50 8 QueensGuard P.Kline 33 4 9 Nuke it! Silvio Sampietro 30 7 10 Diamonds and more Rust Christian Schmidt 30 48 11 DieNow P.Kline 0 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 05/03/99 Date: 1999/05/03 Message-ID: <199905030400.AAA00535@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/03/99 -=- 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 Apr 11 10:16:17 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 20/ 40 Freight Train David Moore 160 44 2 36/ 24/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 149 1 3 35/ 22/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 148 43 4 40/ 37/ 23 PacMan David Moore 144 73 5 42/ 39/ 19 Stasis David Moore 144 151 6 42/ 43/ 15 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 142 81 7 32/ 22/ 46 The Marlboro Man 1.13 M Joonas Pihlaja 141 19 8 42/ 44/ 14 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 141 369 9 29/ 17/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 140 57 10 38/ 35/ 27 Leapfrog David Moore 140 72 11 40/ 40/ 20 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 140 319 12 39/ 37/ 24 Kitchen Sink Robert Macrae 140 42 13 43/ 45/ 12 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 140 38 14 39/ 39/ 22 Tangle Trap David Moore 138 117 15 41/ 44/ 15 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 138 40 16 28/ 20/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 137 100 17 27/ 19/ 54 Nightfall 2.1cc David Moore 135 7 18 41/ 47/ 13 Skewer Ben Ford 134 5 19 28/ 22/ 51 Evoltmp 88 John K W 134 94 20 26/ 24/ 49 TESTE Leonardo Humberto 129 2 21 0/ 88/ 12 Sahara Pedro 12 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 05/03/99 Date: 1999/05/03 Message-ID: <199905030400.AAA00549@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/03/99 -=- 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 May 2 20:47:54 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 35/ 30/ 35 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 140 159 2 40/ 41/ 18 Zooom... John Metcalf 140 24 3 34/ 30/ 37 Blacken Ian Oversby 137 135 4 40/ 41/ 18 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 139 150 5 34/ 30/ 36 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 138 206 6 33/ 29/ 38 Vain Ian Oversby 136 225 7 41/ 47/ 12 Win! David Moore 136 123 8 25/ 13/ 62 _romanian_killah_ Costin Bontas rulez 136 117 9 34/ 33/ 33 Spooky Wench John Metcalf 136 12 10 33/ 30/ 37 Recovery Ian Oversby 136 148 11 31/ 26/ 43 Brigadeer M Joonas Pihlaja 135 144 12 36/ 37/ 27 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 135 57 13 43/ 52/ 5 Neon Spring John Metcalf 134 7 14 37/ 42/ 21 Nuke it! Silvio Sampietro 133 2 15 23/ 13/ 64 The Fugitive David Moore 133 227 16 35/ 37/ 28 Liquid Fire Christian Schmidt 133 121 17 33/ 34/ 33 Fixed Ken Espiritu 132 208 18 33/ 34/ 33 Puddleglum John Metcalf 131 11 19 30/ 30/ 40 Quickest Zeta Leonardo Humberto 129 1 20 39/ 51/ 9 Shattered Glass v0.3 John Metcalf 127 6 21 30/ 38/ 31 Stasis David Moore 123 3 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 05/03/99 Date: 1999/05/03 Message-ID: <199905030400.AAA00543@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/03/99 -=- 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 : Mon Apr 12 15:41:58 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 55/ 31/ 14 Black Moods Ian Oversby 180 3 2 54/ 29/ 17 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 178 7 3 40/ 16/ 44 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 165 29 4 34/ 5/ 60 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 163 76 5 31/ 2/ 66 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 161 24 6 34/ 19/ 47 Rosebud Beppe 148 55 7 40/ 37/ 23 Dr. Gate X Franz 142 47 8 38/ 39/ 23 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 138 62 9 37/ 36/ 27 BigBoy Robert Macrae 138 101 10 41/ 47/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 136 77 11 40/ 46/ 13 BiShot Christian Schmidt 135 15 12 26/ 18/ 55 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 134 18 13 38/ 42/ 19 Pagan John K W 134 61 14 39/ 43/ 18 Tsunami v0.3 X Ian Oversby 134 1 15 27/ 22/ 51 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 132 28 16 36/ 42/ 22 13 Christian Schmidt 130 14 17 33/ 36/ 31 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 130 67 18 37/ 45/ 18 Memories Beppe Bezzi 129 83 19 35/ 40/ 26 Dr. Recover Franz 129 46 20 40/ 53/ 8 HSA Copy 55440 Robert Macrae 126 44 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 1999/05/04 Message-ID: Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-Modified: February 25, 1999 Version: 4.1 URL: http://www.paradise.net.nz/~anton/corewar-faq.html Copyright: (c) 1999 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. A plain text version of this document is poste= d every two weeks. The latest hypertext version is available at http://www.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html and the latest plain text version is available at http://www.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.txt. This document is currently being maintained by Anton Marsden (anton@paradise.net.nz). Last modified: Thu Feb 25 20:08:13 NZDT 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To Do * Add the new No-PSpace '94 hill location * Add online location of Dewdney's articles * Make question 17 easier to understand. Add a state diagram? * 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 * Vector-launching code was fixed thanks to Ting Hsu. * 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) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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.Z. 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.Z and ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/tutorial.2.Z. 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/info/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") Note: 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: sz EQU 2667 spl 1 spl 1 jmp @vt, }0 vt dat #0, imp+0*sz ; start of vector table dat #0, imp+1*sz dat #0, imp+2*sz dat #0, imp+3*sz ; end of vector table imp mov.i #0, sz [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 1999 and maintained by Anton Marsden (anton@paradise.net.nz). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: The Borg Subject: Re: THE END OF MY ROPE 527 Date: 1999/05/05 Message-ID: <3730A08F.59D4@cableinet.co.uk>#1/1 The Borg wrote: > > Does anyone else think this is a scam ? > > He has posted this in almost ALL of the newsgroups asking for money. > > Could it be a scam ?, I think it is. P.S. Besides just posting to the rec.games.* newsgroups he has also posted to nearly ALL of the alt.* newsgroups asking for ��� From: The Borg Subject: Re: THE END OF MY ROPE 527 Date: 1999/05/05 Message-ID: <3730A030.234B@cableinet.co.uk>#1/1 Does anyone else think this is a scam ? He has posted this in almost ALL of the newsgroups asking for money. Could it be a scam ?, I think it is. From: stephan911@hotmail.com Subject: A fun site 228 Date: 1999/05/05 Message-ID: <7gqiq6$dl3$1@news.netvision.net.il>#1/1 Ive found an intersting fun site (travel, humor, meeting, etc.) its http://dofun.com . fwjsoyvkmnoblpxofjmjpdxlkwfzsyxjnewygogszlgpspcksrdykvbhlvvjvgltmryxdtyhcylzstetxe From: pixel@shore.net.death.to.spam Subject: Re: THE END OF MY ROPE 527 Date: 1999/05/05 Message-ID: <7F2Y2.744$9L5.264987@news.shore.net>#1/1 While prying the lemmings from hir ankles, wrote: >> > Does anyone else think this is a scam ? I never saw the original--good ISP filters. >Let's see. According to my Netscape, there were only 4 minutes between his >and your post. You sure replied quite fast. Means absolutely nothing--I've replied to posts that fast before. > And from where do you know >that he's sent those messages all over the place if you haven't sent them >yourself? Never heard of looking at the headers, eh? Look at that Newsgroups: line. -- pixelATshoreDOTnet - http://www.shore.net/~pixel An it harm none, do as thou wilt. Mind your mind or it will surely spoil Free Kevin! MSN-IE4-AFM SBN2 From: dont.send.me.spam@armed.force9.co.uk (James Moody) Subject: Re: THE END OF MY ROPE 527 Date: 1999/05/05 Message-ID: <3730acc3.2361013@usenet.force9.net>#1/1 On Wed, 05 May 1999 20:46:56 +0100, The Borg wrote: >Does anyone else think this is a scam ? I don't see the original post. Looks like my ISP is filtering spam quite effectively :-) James Moody (Major Denis Bloodnok) -- http://www.armed.force9.co.uk ICQ: 7000473 "People who design things to be completely foolproof often underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - The Hitch hikers Guide to the Galaxy From: "Jukka M." Subject: Re: THE END OF MY ROPE 527 Date: 1999/05/05 Message-ID: <3730A420.DC59F723@gnwmail.com>#1/1 The Borg wrote: > The Borg wrote: > > > > Does anyone else think this is a scam ? > > > > He has posted this in almost ALL of the newsgroups asking for money. > > > > Could it be a scam ?, I think it is. > > P.S. Besides just posting to the rec.games.* newsgroups he has also > posted to nearly ALL of the alt.* newsgroups asking for ��� I think so too. However, I think that you are a scum yourself. Let's see. According to my Netscape, there were only 4 minutes between his and your post. You sure replied quite fast. And from where do you know that he's sent those messages all over the place if you haven't sent them yourself? [rec.games.computer.stars]: And what is that game post, are you trying to fool some newbies who don't know your reputation? -- jukka_m@gnwmail.com From: TTSG Subject: This time I mean it...REALLY Date: 1999/05/06 Message-ID: <199905060046.UAA00890@heimdall.ttsg.com>#1/1 Hi, Over the weekend, KOTH.ORG and the KOTH Hills will have some outtages. The system is being moved, REALLY, to a new machine with more disk space and a higher powered processor. Please let me know if you have any problems. Tuc/TTSG From: "James C. Ellis" Subject: Re: THE END OF MY ROPE 527 Date: 1999/05/06 Message-ID: <3731A837.7248@cadvision.com>#1/1 [Follow-ups set appropriately.] Ransom Smith wrote: > > > I don't see the original post. Looks like my ISP is filtering spam > > quite effectively :-) > > I don't see the original either. The tricky part is, I'm not filtering > spam. > > ?? There is a large number of people/bots out there issuing third-party cancellations for Usenet spam. Without them, you would be seeing a _lot_ more MMF and other crap. Try a www search on the Breibart Index and cancelbots if interested. Biff -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- "Me? Lady, I'm your worst nightmare - a pumpkin with a gun. [...] Euminides this! " - Mervyn, the Sandman #66 ------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Ransom Smith" Subject: Re: THE END OF MY ROPE 527 Date: 1999/05/06 Message-ID: #1/1 ... > I don't see the original post. Looks like my ISP is filtering spam > quite effectively :-) ... I don't see the original either. The tricky part is, I'm not filtering spam. ?? From: badanoj@bright.net (Jonadab the Unsightly One) Subject: Re: THE END OF MY ROPE 527 Date: 1999/05/07 Message-ID: <37320fbf.18809055@news.bright.net>#1/1 dont.send.me.spam@armed.force9.co.uk (James Moody) wrote: > I don't see the original post. Looks like my ISP is filtering spam > quite effectively :-) The AI to do it is incredibly simple. Just check every post to see if it's an exact replica of a post with a very similar timestamp in a different ng. If it is, kill them both. This kills all multi-posts (but if you do it right leaves crossposts alone), which accounts for something like well more than half of all usenet spam, right there. It's also nice to filter out crossposts with more than about 4 newsgroups. -- jonadab Username in email address is dyslexic; correct to jonadab From: badanoj@bright.net (Jonadab the Unsightly One) Subject: Re: THE END OF MY ROPE 527 Date: 1999/05/07 Message-ID: <373284e7.2580119@news.bright.net>#1/1 "Ransom Smith" wrote: > ... > > I don't see the original post. Looks like my ISP is filtering spam > > quite effectively :-) > ... > > I don't see the original either. The tricky part is, I'm not filtering spam. usenet propagation is such that if anything between the source and the destination fails to propagate it, then it doesn't arrive there. I think. Basically. There are undoubtedly some servers that get their stuff from multiple places and therefore get almost everything. But if your ISP gets its usenet from a server that filters... count yourself blessed. -- jonadab Username in email address is dyslexic; correct to jonadab From: "Deathlok the Demolisher" Subject: Genetic Algorithms Date: 1999/05/08 Message-ID: <7h29ra$cck@hermes.acs.unt.edu>#1/1 Well, I finally got a chance to work on the genetic portion of my emulator...(if anyone cares)... so far it runs too slow to be very useful, but has had some very good (in my opinion) results... taking a "standard" dwarf type program against (in this case) the 'irongate.red' program, initially the wins were 1:4 in irongate's favor, but now with a few hours of running time, the genetic dwarf version is holding on average better than 1:1 and is inching its way up...in fact about a quarter of the mutations are running as high as 2:1 in favor of the genetic version... I know this isn't particularly useful, since it will evolve a warrior designed _only_ to fight a single enemy, but when I speed up the emulation a bit, I'll also add in the ability to match the genetic versions against a multitude of enemies in order to create a more generic genetic warrior that is well suited to fighting an unknown enemy... Well, if anyone cares, let me know. :) Deathy aka Ben Lazo From: stephan121@email.com Subject: fun from games to travel and humor Date: 1999/05/09 Message-ID: <7h4peu$k1d$1@news.netvision.net.il>#1/1 I think http://dofun.com is worth a visit. From: Robert Macrae Subject: Re: Genetic Algorithms Date: 1999/05/09 Message-ID: <37359564.5308@dial.pipex.com>#1/1 Deathlok the Demolisher wrote: > Well, I finally got a chance to work on the genetic > portion of my emulator...(if anyone cares)... > so far it runs too slow to be very useful, but has > had some very good (in my opinion) results... > taking a "standard" dwarf type program against > (in this case) the 'irongate.red' program, initially > the wins were 1:4 in irongate's favor, but now with > a few hours of running time, the genetic dwarf > version is holding on average better than 1:1 > and is inching its way up...in fact about a > quarter of the mutations are running as high > as 2:1 in favor of the genetic version... > > I know this isn't particularly useful, since it will > evolve a warrior designed _only_ to fight a single > enemy, but when I speed up the emulation a bit, Good approach. It is always best to tackle some easy problems first because the nature of the solution helps explain the things you hit on more complex cases. What kind of strategies are teh dwarves using? Why are the 2:1 winners better than your starters? > I'll also add in the ability to match the genetic versions > against a multitude of enemies in order to create a > more generic genetic warrior that is well suited to > fighting an unknown enemy... Bjoern Guenzel investigated the results of doing this. (Hi Bjoern?) -- Regards, Robert Macrae From: Matt Bruce Subject: CoreWar Date: 1999/05/10 Message-ID: <37375EE2.123A8820@cableinet.co.uk>#1/1 Hope nobody minds me doing this, but where can I get a copy of the game? Is it free/shareware? Sorry to not bother with the FAQ if there is one, but I'm not intending to stop here long :-) Can you please reply via my E-Mail, as I won't be checking back here much. Sorry about that, I know it's not very polite, but thanks in advance. -- ------------------------------ Matt Bruce matt.bruce@cableinet.co.uk ------------------------------ "On the other hand, the early worm gets eaten" -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 G!>J/L d- s:++ a--- C+ !U 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+ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ -----BEGIN FF CODE BLOCK----- Version: 1.0 [G](B)7(#)1,2,3,4,5,6,7b,M,T(C)Cd,Dl,Ae(V)Se(O)+(D)?(R)- [P](A)+(H)=(W)+(G)M(E)gBr(T)dBr(L)=(P)swUK(R)Dl(C)Mg ------END FF CODE BLOCK------ From: stephan121@email.com Subject: Year 2000 Date: 1999/05/10 Message-ID: <7h7kqb$o6d$1@news.netvision.net.il>#1/1 Ive found intersting info. regarding Year 2000 and traveling at http://dofun.com. From: Richard Rognlie Subject: C++Robots Standings -- 1999/05/10 Date: 1999/05/10 Message-ID: <3736F260.ABAD53A1@gamerz.net>#1/1 Program Name Score W / L / T Age Author ================ ===== =========== === ===================================== 1 wilma 693 231/ 19/ 0 72 hamilton@parlous.mlnet.com (Michael H 2 thebully 675 225/ 25/ 0 5 therooster@bigfoot.com (TheRooster) 3 tommy 648 216/ 34/ 0 61 zcewj@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Elliot W. Jac 4 xtraper 617 204/ 41/ 5 73 3r5k1n3@rivnet.net (Michael John Ersk 5 bigtarget8 603 201/ 49/ 0 9 mevail@bigfoot.com (Mason Vail) 6 crbot2 585 195/ 55/ 0 63 rosevear.craig.ca@bhp.com.au (Rosevea 7 polarbear 576 192/ 58/ 0 40 flandar@yahoo.com (Aaron Judd) 8 ttr3 573 191/ 59/ 0 41 traber@ngi.de (Thomas Traber) 9 simpletest 570 190/ 60/ 0 70 niklas.wendel@swipnet.se (Niklas Wend 10 breve 528 176/ 74/ 0 56 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 11 trex 495 165/ 85/ 0 337 jerome.dumonteil@capway.com (Jerome D 12 pacarobot 480 160/ 90/ 0 239 proberts@stnc.com (Paul Roberts) 13 angus2 464 153/ 92/ 5 324 andy_grant@adc.com (Andy Grant) 14 mariner 459 153/ 97/ 0 599 zcpjm@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Paul J. Melko 14 h21 459 153/ 97/ 0 190 cgl@infowest.com (Curtis Larsen) 16 z 457 152/ 97/ 1 85 zcmet@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Mark E. Tyber 17 quaver 456 152/ 98/ 0 307 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 17 crbot 456 152/ 98/ 0 67 rosevear.craig.ca@bhp.com.au (Rosevea 19 hiderv13 451 148/ 95/ 7 80 malcolm@citr.com.au (Malcolm Jones) 20 minim 439 146/103/ 1 55 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 21 bedtime 438 146/104/ 0 331 btb@micron.net (TheRooster) 22 ssm4 436 145/104/ 1 536 enpch@bath.ac.uk (C Harrison) 22 radar 436 145/104/ 1 47 radu@rasd.ro (Radu DUMITRU) 24 orbiter 434 144/104/ 2 145 davidma@premier1.net (davidma@premier 25 chaos 426 142/108/ 0 504 agondare@hotmail.com (alex gondarenko 26 kiilbot1 414 138/112/ 0 507 bob2@goplay.com (bob2) 27 crotchet 411 137/113/ 0 250 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 28 shooter 408 136/114/ 0 568 itdcjr@mail1.hants.gov.uk (Justin Row 29 prio.2 387 129/121/ 0 464 oliver@jowett.manawatu.planet.co.nz ( 30 dragon 382 127/122/ 1 68 proberts@stnc.com (Paul Roberts) 31 knownaim00 363 121/129/ 0 421 c.d.wright@solipsys.compulink.co.uk ( 32 krom 342 114/136/ 0 204 tdavis@gate.net (Thomas E. Davis) 33 raystonn 312 100/138/ 12 443 svincent@a.crl.com (Samuel Vincent) 34 imp 294 98/152/ 0 286 petrey@cumbig.bioc.columbia.edu (Dona 35 wobble 270 90/160/ 0 1 itcstr@hantsnet.hants.gov.uk (ITCSTR) 36 kludge 229 75/171/ 4 241 dfelton@stnc.com (Don Felton) 37 dumdum 222 74/176/ 0 69 togr@im.se (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Gr=F6vnes_ 37 sidney 222 74/176/ 0 20 icematrix@aol.com (Icematrix@aol.com) 39 ziggy 204 68/182/ 0 284 rrognlie@gamerz.net (Richard Rognlie) 40 jp-test 202 66/180/ 4 60 linux-guru@gcfl.net (John Price) 41 ezkil 199 66/183/ 1 235 jos.smit@src.nl (jos.smit@src.nl) 42 durrow 199 65/181/ 4 170 dencox@cisco.com (Dennis J Cox) 43 tracker 194 63/182/ 5 285 rrognlie@gamerz.net (Richard Rognlie) 44 seko001 193 62/181/ 7 107 rs@euromove.sk (Rastislav Senderak) 45 mortein 177 59/191/ 0 166 mortein@zip.com.au (mortein@zip.com.a 45 hereicome 177 59/191/ 0 156 jbreed@veribest.com (Jim) 45 micro 177 59/191/ 0 108 3r5k1n3@rivnet.net (Michael John Ersk 48 bigtarget6 174 58/192/ 0 21 mevail@bigfoot.com (Mason Vail) 49 boomphile 51 17/233/ 0 2 compudemon2@yahoo.com (Brett Greenfie 50 victim2 24 8/242/ 0 4 mihind24@aol.com (MiHind24@aol.com) For more information, visit http://www.gamerz.net/c++robots/ or send a message to c++robots@gamerz.net with 'help' (sans quotes) as the SUBJECT line. -- / \__ | Richard Rognlie / Sendmail Consultant / Sendmail, Inc. \__/ \ | URL: http://www.gamerz.net/rrognlie/ / \__/ | Give a man a fish, and he'll be hungry tomorrow. Teach a \__/ | man to fish, and he'll be at the river all day drinking beer. From: "Deathlok the Demolisher" Subject: Re: Genetic Algorithms Date: 1999/05/10 Message-ID: <7h6bd1$aao@hermes.acs.unt.edu>#1/1 Robert Macrae wrote in message news:37359564.5308@dial.pipex.com... > Deathlok the Demolisher wrote: > > > I know this isn't particularly useful, since it will > > evolve a warrior designed _only_ to fight a single > > enemy, but when I speed up the emulation a bit, > > Good approach. It is always best to tackle some easy > problems first because the nature of the solution helps > explain the things you hit on more complex cases. > What kind of strategies are teh dwarves using? Why are > the 2:1 winners better than your starters? Just as an example, here is the initial dwarf program. I matched this against the Cannonade program by Paul Kline, for about 3 hours, now (the program is still running) the current "best" program the genetic manipulations have been able to come up with is seen below. While _far_ from perfect, it has been able to increase its record from an almost "perfect" streak of losses to a few wins and more draws than losses... While not good enough to be considered a success, the longer the program is allowed to run, the better (in theory) redcode warriors should be generated. However, at the moment I'm being a bit limited by the slowness of my emulator...so I'm unable to run the large populations needed in order to create genetic diversity...currently I'm running with only 10 genetic warriors in the population...and even that few is quite slow.... :\ pmars output from 1000 rounds: Dwarf by Anonymous scores 1 Cannonade by P.Kline, Paul Kline, pk6811s@acad.drake.edu scores 2998 Results: 0 999 1 ;redcode ;name Dwarf JMP START bomb DAT -1 START MOV -1,-1 SUB #1,-1 JMP START END pmars output from 1000 rounds: Genetic by Anonymous scores 596 Cannonade by P.Kline, Paul Kline, pk6811s@acad.drake.edu scores 1835 Results: 9 422 569 ;redcode ;name Genetic SLT < -2632, < -66 MUL @ -1405, > 746 CMP @ -855, < -3284 DAT < 410, > -3684 SPL @ -2853, $ -3128 SLT $ -1843, $ -1341 ADD # -3251, < 722 MOV $ 3276, $ 141 ADD @ -1753, < 3971 SPL @ -2853, $ -3128 SLT $ -1843, $ -1341 ADD # -3251, < 726 MOV $ 3276, $ 141 SPL # -3307, < 1493 ADD < -1134, < -1330 ADD < -766, < -1330 DIV # 1386, < 3042 SUB # 37, $ -1 JMP $ -2, $ -1746 (before anyone says anything, I know that the program is basically generating random garbage....but it'll be interesting to see if it can come up with a version of the dwarf program that can at least match cannonade...well...maybe I'm the only one who is interested... :P ) (And just as a note....the random garbage _has_ been getting progressively better scores against cannonade as time goes on... so it must be doing something right) Deathy From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 05/10/99 Date: 1999/05/10 Message-ID: <199905100400.AAA17172@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/10/99 -=- 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 : Mon Apr 12 15:41:58 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 55/ 31/ 14 Black Moods Ian Oversby 180 3 2 54/ 29/ 17 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 178 7 3 40/ 16/ 44 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 165 29 4 34/ 5/ 60 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 163 76 5 31/ 2/ 66 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 161 24 6 34/ 19/ 47 Rosebud Beppe 148 55 7 40/ 37/ 23 Dr. Gate X Franz 142 47 8 38/ 39/ 23 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 138 62 9 37/ 36/ 27 BigBoy Robert Macrae 138 101 10 41/ 47/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 136 77 11 40/ 46/ 13 BiShot Christian Schmidt 135 15 12 26/ 18/ 55 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 134 18 13 38/ 42/ 19 Pagan John K W 134 61 14 39/ 43/ 18 Tsunami v0.3 X Ian Oversby 134 1 15 27/ 22/ 51 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 132 28 16 36/ 42/ 22 13 Christian Schmidt 130 14 17 33/ 36/ 31 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 130 67 18 37/ 45/ 18 Memories Beppe Bezzi 129 83 19 35/ 40/ 26 Dr. Recover Franz 129 46 20 40/ 53/ 8 HSA Copy 55440 Robert Macrae 126 44 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 05/10/99 Date: 1999/05/10 Message-ID: <199905100400.AAA17179@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/10/99 -=- 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 May 9 16:01:08 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 41/ 19 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 139 154 2 31/ 26/ 42 Vain Ian Oversby 137 229 3 32/ 29/ 39 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 136 163 4 36/ 35/ 29 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 136 61 5 32/ 30/ 38 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 134 210 6 23/ 12/ 64 _romanian_killah_ Costin Bontas rulez 134 121 7 41/ 48/ 12 Win! David Moore 134 127 8 31/ 30/ 39 Blacken Ian Oversby 133 139 9 38/ 44/ 18 Zooom... John Metcalf 132 28 10 33/ 33/ 34 Fixed Ken Espiritu 132 212 11 33/ 34/ 34 t1 John Metcalf 132 4 12 33/ 34/ 33 t2 John Metcalf 132 3 13 33/ 34/ 34 t4 John Metcalf 132 1 14 22/ 12/ 66 The Fugitive David Moore 131 231 15 30/ 28/ 42 Quickest Zeta Leonardo Humberto 131 5 16 30/ 28/ 42 Recovery Ian Oversby 131 152 17 32/ 33/ 36 Spooky Wench John Metcalf 131 16 18 42/ 54/ 4 Neon Spring John Metcalf 131 11 19 28/ 27/ 45 Brigadeer M Joonas Pihlaja 130 148 20 33/ 37/ 30 Liquid Fire Christian Schmidt 128 125 21 2/ 2/ 1 t3 John Metcalf 6 2 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 05/10/99 Date: 1999/05/10 Message-ID: <199905100400.AAA12053@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/10/99 -=- 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 Apr 11 10:16:17 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 20/ 40 Freight Train David Moore 160 44 2 36/ 24/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 149 1 3 35/ 22/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 148 43 4 40/ 37/ 23 PacMan David Moore 144 73 5 42/ 39/ 19 Stasis David Moore 144 151 6 42/ 43/ 15 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 142 81 7 32/ 22/ 46 The Marlboro Man 1.13 M Joonas Pihlaja 141 19 8 42/ 44/ 14 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 141 369 9 29/ 17/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 140 57 10 38/ 35/ 27 Leapfrog David Moore 140 72 11 40/ 40/ 20 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 140 319 12 39/ 37/ 24 Kitchen Sink Robert Macrae 140 42 13 43/ 45/ 12 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 140 38 14 39/ 39/ 22 Tangle Trap David Moore 138 117 15 41/ 44/ 15 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 138 40 16 28/ 20/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 137 100 17 27/ 19/ 54 Nightfall 2.1cc David Moore 135 7 18 41/ 47/ 13 Skewer Ben Ford 134 5 19 28/ 22/ 51 Evoltmp 88 John K W 134 94 20 26/ 24/ 49 TESTE Leonardo Humberto 129 2 21 0/ 88/ 12 Sahara Pedro 12 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 05/10/99 Date: 1999/05/10 Message-ID: <199905100400.AAA17168@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/10/99 -=- 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 May 7 20:24:34 EDT 1999 # Name Author Score Age 1 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 46 50 2 QuiVa John Metcalf 42 75 3 Nuke it! Silvio Sampietro 34 7 4 Her Majesty P.Kline 31 1 5 QueensGuard P.Kline 30 3 6 QueensGuard P.Kline 28 4 7 Sharkrage Christian Schmidt 27 49 8 Cinderella Ben Ford 25 9 9 Diamonds and more Rust Christian Schmidt 24 48 10 QueensGuard P.Kline 22 2 11 sTest8 (mod-5) John Metcalf 7 0 From: Leon Wabeke Subject: BUG-Intel Warrior Comp Date: 1999/05/10 Message-ID: <373703D9.BAAA1965@student.up.ac.za>#1/1 Hello All I have seen no respons to my original posting. Maybe it got lost ? Here is my orginal message again : I am very interrested in the Intelligent Warrior Tournament and will try to write a competitor even though I have never really written any "normal" warriors. I was looking at the code of the REDOS that will be used in the tournament (to make sure I understand it and try to relearn redcode). I found what looks like a bug in the program. Where it is must determin if it must start a core clear : > ;----------error handling---------- > > error ldp #1,#0 ; load previous error count > add #1,error > stp.b -2,#1 ; store error codes > slt.b #10,error > jmp wait > Shouldn't the instruction slt.b #10, error ; instruction with bug be : slt.ab #10, error ; instruction with possible bug fix Otherwise the program will never start a core clear! Could someone please confirm ! Will the version used in the competition be updated ? Leon Wabeke s9717nospam148@student.up.ac.za From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 05/17/99 Date: 1999/05/17 Message-ID: <199905170400.AAA19069@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/17/99 -=- 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 : Tue May 11 03:12:01 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 27/ 33 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 154 167 2 42/ 33/ 25 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 151 65 3 37/ 28/ 35 Vain Ian Oversby 146 233 4 37/ 30/ 33 Blacken Ian Oversby 144 143 5 39/ 34/ 27 Liquid Fire Christian Schmidt 143 129 6 36/ 30/ 34 Recovery Ian Oversby 143 156 7 44/ 46/ 11 Win! David Moore 142 131 8 36/ 30/ 35 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 142 214 9 40/ 42/ 18 Zooom... John Metcalf 139 32 10 40/ 43/ 17 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 137 158 11 35/ 34/ 31 Spooky Wench John Metcalf 136 20 12 34/ 32/ 34 Fixed Ken Espiritu 136 216 13 32/ 29/ 39 Brigadeer M Joonas Pihlaja 135 152 14 25/ 18/ 57 _romanian_killah_ Costin Bontas rulez 133 125 15 43/ 53/ 4 Neon Spring John Metcalf 132 15 16 24/ 17/ 58 The Fugitive David Moore 131 235 17 29/ 30/ 41 Quickest Zeta Leonardo Humberto 129 9 18 40/ 52/ 9 t5 John Metcalf 128 3 19 39/ 52/ 9 t8 John Metcalf 126 1 20 37/ 50/ 14 t7 John Metcalf 124 4 21 31/ 52/ 17 t6 John Metcalf 109 2 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 05/17/99 Date: 1999/05/17 Message-ID: <199905170400.AAA19059@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/17/99 -=- 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 May 13 22:46:44 EDT 1999 # Name Author Score Age 1 Cinderella Ben Ford 50 9 2 Her Majesty P.Kline 49 1 3 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 42 50 4 QuiVa John Metcalf 41 75 5 Nuke it! Silvio Sampietro 35 7 6 QueensGuard P.Kline 33 4 7 QueensGuard P.Kline 31 2 8 QueensGuard P.Kline 31 3 9 Sharkrage Christian Schmidt 30 49 10 Diamonds and more Rust Christian Schmidt 25 48 11 Smoking Squirt Gun Ransom L. Smith 2 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 05/17/99 Date: 1999/05/17 Message-ID: <199905170400.AAA22101@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/17/99 -=- 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 May 7 20:24:34 EDT 1999 # Name Author Score Age 1 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 46 50 2 QuiVa John Metcalf 42 75 3 Nuke it! Silvio Sampietro 34 7 4 Her Majesty P.Kline 31 1 5 QueensGuard P.Kline 30 3 6 QueensGuard P.Kline 28 4 7 Sharkrage Christian Schmidt 27 49 8 Cinderella Ben Ford 25 9 9 Diamonds and more Rust Christian Schmidt 24 48 10 QueensGuard P.Kline 22 2 11 sTest8 (mod-5) John Metcalf 7 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 05/17/99 Date: 1999/05/17 Message-ID: <199905170400.AAA22097@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/17/99 -=- 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 Apr 11 10:16:17 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 20/ 40 Freight Train David Moore 160 44 2 36/ 24/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 149 1 3 35/ 22/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 148 43 4 40/ 37/ 23 PacMan David Moore 144 73 5 42/ 39/ 19 Stasis David Moore 144 151 6 42/ 43/ 15 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 142 81 7 32/ 22/ 46 The Marlboro Man 1.13 M Joonas Pihlaja 141 19 8 42/ 44/ 14 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 141 369 9 29/ 17/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 140 57 10 38/ 35/ 27 Leapfrog David Moore 140 72 11 40/ 40/ 20 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 140 319 12 39/ 37/ 24 Kitchen Sink Robert Macrae 140 42 13 43/ 45/ 12 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 140 38 14 39/ 39/ 22 Tangle Trap David Moore 138 117 15 41/ 44/ 15 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 138 40 16 28/ 20/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 137 100 17 27/ 19/ 54 Nightfall 2.1cc David Moore 135 7 18 41/ 47/ 13 Skewer Ben Ford 134 5 19 28/ 22/ 51 Evoltmp 88 John K W 134 94 20 26/ 24/ 49 TESTE Leonardo Humberto 129 2 21 0/ 88/ 12 Sahara Pedro 12 0 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 05/17/99 Date: 1999/05/17 Message-ID: <199905170400.AAA22111@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/17/99 -=- 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 May 9 16:01:08 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 41/ 19 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 139 154 2 31/ 26/ 42 Vain Ian Oversby 137 229 3 32/ 29/ 39 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 136 163 4 36/ 35/ 29 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 136 61 5 32/ 30/ 38 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 134 210 6 23/ 12/ 64 _romanian_killah_ Costin Bontas rulez 134 121 7 41/ 48/ 12 Win! David Moore 134 127 8 31/ 30/ 39 Blacken Ian Oversby 133 139 9 38/ 44/ 18 Zooom... John Metcalf 132 28 10 33/ 33/ 34 Fixed Ken Espiritu 132 212 11 33/ 34/ 34 t1 John Metcalf 132 4 12 33/ 34/ 33 t2 John Metcalf 132 3 13 33/ 34/ 34 t4 John Metcalf 132 1 14 22/ 12/ 66 The Fugitive David Moore 131 231 15 30/ 28/ 42 Quickest Zeta Leonardo Humberto 131 5 16 30/ 28/ 42 Recovery Ian Oversby 131 152 17 32/ 33/ 36 Spooky Wench John Metcalf 131 16 18 42/ 54/ 4 Neon Spring John Metcalf 131 11 19 28/ 27/ 45 Brigadeer M Joonas Pihlaja 130 148 20 33/ 37/ 30 Liquid Fire Christian Schmidt 128 125 21 2/ 2/ 1 t3 John Metcalf 6 2 From: KOTH Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 05/17/99 Date: 1999/05/17 Message-ID: <199905170400.AAA22105@midgaard.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/17/99 -=- 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 : Mon Apr 12 15:41:58 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 55/ 31/ 14 Black Moods Ian Oversby 180 3 2 54/ 29/ 17 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 178 7 3 40/ 16/ 44 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 165 29 4 34/ 5/ 60 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 163 76 5 31/ 2/ 66 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 161 24 6 34/ 19/ 47 Rosebud Beppe 148 55 7 40/ 37/ 23 Dr. Gate X Franz 142 47 8 38/ 39/ 23 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 138 62 9 37/ 36/ 27 BigBoy Robert Macrae 138 101 10 41/ 47/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 136 77 11 40/ 46/ 13 BiShot Christian Schmidt 135 15 12 26/ 18/ 55 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 134 18 13 38/ 42/ 19 Pagan John K W 134 61 14 39/ 43/ 18 Tsunami v0.3 X Ian Oversby 134 1 15 27/ 22/ 51 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 132 28 16 36/ 42/ 22 13 Christian Schmidt 130 14 17 33/ 36/ 31 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 130 67 18 37/ 45/ 18 Memories Beppe Bezzi 129 83 19 35/ 40/ 26 Dr. Recover Franz 129 46 20 40/ 53/ 8 HSA Copy 55440 Robert Macrae 126 44 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: "Laffter" Subject: Re: The World Wide Expo 8660 Date: 1999/05/18 Message-ID: #1/1 Back at you, buddy - hjjwkhgtkhqtgyhkkwqef. So there. ocgdft@www.com wrote in message <7hsqim$rta$260@pampascat.middlebury.edu>... > >lkcvbwcmcwwjbntfip > From: "Laffter" Subject: Re: The World Wide Expo 8660 Date: 1999/05/18 Message-ID: <#IW7yPao#GA.140@cpmsnbbsa02>#1/1 Back at you, buddy - hjjwkhgtkhqtgyhkkwqef. So there. ocgdft@www.com wrote in message <7hsqim$rta$260@pampascat.middlebury.edu>... > >lkcvbwcmcwwjbntfip > From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 1999/05/19 Message-ID: Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-Modified: February 25, 1999 Version: 4.1 URL: http://www.paradise.net.nz/~anton/corewar-faq.html Copyright: (c) 1999 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. A plain text version of this document is poste= d every two weeks. The latest hypertext version is available at http://www.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html and the latest plain text version is available at http://www.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.txt. This document is currently being maintained by Anton Marsden (anton@paradise.net.nz). Last modified: Thu Feb 25 20:08:13 NZDT 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To Do * Add the new No-PSpace '94 hill location * Add online location of Dewdney's articles * Make question 17 easier to understand. Add a state diagram? * 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 * Vector-launching code was fixed thanks to Ting Hsu. * 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) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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.Z. 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.Z and ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/tutorial.2.Z. 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/info/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") Note: 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: sz EQU 2667 spl 1 spl 1 jmp @vt, }0 vt dat #0, imp+0*sz ; start of vector table dat #0, imp+1*sz dat #0, imp+2*sz dat #0, imp+3*sz ; end of vector table imp mov.i #0, sz [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 1999 and maintained by Anton Marsden (anton@paradise.net.nz). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: "John K. Lewis" Subject: ITW update. Date: 1999/05/21 Message-ID: #1/1 Update on the ITW. So far with one week left for entries I have 0 total entries. This is not surprising, as most programmers tend to delay until the last possible moment. I will warn you, however, that I am going to be very strict about the deadline. If you are done early, I suggest sending your entry in. I'm anticipating an very interesting series and hope to see many programmers entered in the tournament. For more information, check out this URL: http://www.concentric.net/~Liminal/IWT/ From: Richard Rognlie Subject: C++Robots Standings -- 1999.05.24 Date: 1999/05/24 Message-ID: <37494AE5.430D9D88@gamerz.net>#1/1 Program Name Score W / L / T Age Author ================ ===== =========== === ===================================== 1 wilma 681 227/ 23/ 0 110 hamilton@parlous.mlnet.com (Michael H 2 thebully 675 225/ 25/ 0 4 bartlow@scpglobal.com (Brian Bartlow) 3 polarbear 663 221/ 29/ 0 15 flandar@yahoo.com (Aaron Judd) 4 bigtarget8 645 215/ 35/ 0 5 mevail@science.nnc.edu (Mason E Vail) 5 tommy 639 213/ 37/ 0 99 zcewj@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Elliot W. Jac 6 xtraper 607 200/ 43/ 7 111 3r5k1n3@rivnet.net (Michael John Ersk 7 simpletest 576 192/ 58/ 0 22 niklas.wendel@swipnet.se (Niklas Wend 8 crbot 573 187/ 51/ 12 32 rosevear.craig.ca@bhp.com.au (Rosevea 9 crbot2 567 189/ 61/ 0 101 rosevear.craig.ca@bhp.com.au (Rosevea 10 ttr3 543 181/ 69/ 0 79 traber@ngi.de (Thomas Traber) 11 breve 513 171/ 79/ 0 94 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 12 trex 477 159/ 91/ 0 375 jerome.dumonteil@capway.com (Jerome D 13 pacarobot 468 156/ 94/ 0 277 proberts@stnc.com (Paul Roberts) 14 h21 459 153/ 97/ 0 228 cgl@infowest.com (Curtis Larsen) 15 z 451 150/ 99/ 1 123 zcmet@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Mark E. Tyber 16 angus2 443 146/ 99/ 5 362 andy_grant@adc.com (Andy Grant) 17 mariner 441 147/103/ 0 637 zcpjm@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Paul J. Melko 17 bedtime 441 147/103/ 0 369 btb@micron.net (TheRooster) 19 quaver 438 146/104/ 0 345 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 20 minim 428 142/106/ 2 93 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 21 hiderv13 428 140/102/ 8 118 malcolm@citr.com.au (Malcolm Jones) 22 radar 427 142/107/ 1 85 radu@rasd.ro (Radu DUMITRU) 23 orbiter 425 141/107/ 2 183 davidma@premier1.net (davidma@premier 24 ssm4 424 141/108/ 1 574 enpch@bath.ac.uk (C Harrison) 25 chaos 420 140/110/ 0 542 agondare@hotmail.com (alex gondarenko 26 shooter 411 137/113/ 0 606 itdcjr@mail1.hants.gov.uk (Justin Row 27 kiilbot1 408 136/114/ 0 545 bob2@goplay.com (bob2) 28 crotchet 381 127/123/ 0 288 steveg@ccis.adisys.com.au (steveg@cci 29 prio.2 375 125/125/ 0 502 oliver@jowett.manawatu.planet.co.nz ( 30 knownaim00 354 118/132/ 0 459 c.d.wright@solipsys.compulink.co.uk ( 31 dragon 352 117/132/ 1 106 proberts@stnc.com (Paul Roberts) 32 krom 333 111/139/ 0 242 tdavis@gate.net (Thomas E. Davis) 33 raystonn 308 98/138/ 14 481 svincent@a.crl.com (Samuel Vincent) 34 wobble 288 96/154/ 0 1 itcstr@hantsnet.hants.gov.uk (ITCSTR) 35 imp 285 95/155/ 0 324 petrey@cumbig.bioc.columbia.edu (Dona 36 kludge 226 74/172/ 4 279 dfelton@stnc.com (Don Felton) 37 sidney 214 71/178/ 1 58 icematrix@aol.com (Icematrix@aol.com) 38 dumdum 210 70/180/ 0 107 togr@im.se (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Gr=F6vnes_ 39 tracker 203 66/179/ 5 323 rrognlie@gamerz.net (Richard Rognlie) 40 ziggy 201 67/183/ 0 322 rrognlie@gamerz.net (Richard Rognlie) 41 ezkil 197 65/183/ 2 273 jos.smit@src.nl (jos.smit@src.nl) 42 superman 196 65/184/ 1 26 amcgowan@home.com (Aaron!) 43 jp-test 190 62/184/ 4 98 linux-guru@gcfl.net (John Price) 44 seko001 183 58/183/ 9 145 rs@euromove.sk (Rastislav Senderak) 45 durrow 181 59/187/ 4 208 dencox@cisco.com (Dennis J Cox) 46 micro 171 57/193/ 0 146 3r5k1n3@rivnet.net (Michael John Ersk 47 bigtarget6 168 56/194/ 0 59 mevail@bigfoot.com (Mason Vail) 48 mortein 165 55/195/ 0 204 mortein@zip.com.au (mortein@zip.com.a 49 hereicome 159 53/197/ 0 194 jbreed@veribest.com (Jim) 50 randy 54 18/232/ 0 14 middepet@mlch.ml.com (Peter Middelkam For details, visit http://www.gamerz.net/c++robots/ or send a message to c++robots@gamerz.net with 'help' as the subject. -- / \__ | Richard Rognlie / Sendmail Consultant / Sendmail, Inc. \__/ \ | URL: http://www.gamerz.net/rrognlie/ / \__/ | Give a man a fish, and he'll be hungry tomorrow. Teach a \__/ | man to fish, and he'll be at the river all day drinking beer. From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 05/24/99 Date: 1999/05/24 Message-ID: <199905240400.AAA14700@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/24/99 -=- 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 : Tue May 11 03:12:01 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 27/ 33 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 154 167 2 42/ 33/ 25 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 151 65 3 37/ 28/ 35 Vain Ian Oversby 146 233 4 37/ 30/ 33 Blacken Ian Oversby 144 143 5 39/ 34/ 27 Liquid Fire Christian Schmidt 143 129 6 36/ 30/ 34 Recovery Ian Oversby 143 156 7 44/ 46/ 11 Win! David Moore 142 131 8 36/ 30/ 35 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 142 214 9 40/ 42/ 18 Zooom... John Metcalf 139 32 10 40/ 43/ 17 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 137 158 11 35/ 34/ 31 Spooky Wench John Metcalf 136 20 12 34/ 32/ 34 Fixed Ken Espiritu 136 216 13 32/ 29/ 39 Brigadeer M Joonas Pihlaja 135 152 14 25/ 18/ 57 _romanian_killah_ Costin Bontas rulez 133 125 15 43/ 53/ 4 Neon Spring John Metcalf 132 15 16 24/ 17/ 58 The Fugitive David Moore 131 235 17 29/ 30/ 41 Quickest Zeta Leonardo Humberto 129 9 18 40/ 52/ 9 t5 John Metcalf 128 3 19 39/ 52/ 9 t8 John Metcalf 126 1 20 37/ 50/ 14 t7 John Metcalf 124 4 21 31/ 52/ 17 t6 John Metcalf 109 2 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 05/24/99 Date: 1999/05/24 Message-ID: <199905240400.AAA14694@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/24/99 -=- 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 : Sun May 23 01:39:48 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 55/ 31/ 14 Black Moods Ian Oversby 180 3 2 52/ 30/ 17 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 174 7 3 40/ 16/ 45 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 164 29 4 33/ 5/ 61 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 161 76 5 30/ 2/ 67 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 158 24 6 34/ 19/ 47 Rosebud Beppe 148 55 7 38/ 38/ 23 Dr. Gate X Franz 138 47 8 36/ 37/ 28 BigBoy Robert Macrae 134 101 9 26/ 18/ 56 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 134 18 10 41/ 48/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 133 77 11 38/ 43/ 19 Pagan John K W 133 61 12 27/ 22/ 51 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 131 28 13 36/ 41/ 23 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 131 62 14 37/ 45/ 18 Memories Beppe Bezzi 128 83 15 31/ 38/ 31 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 125 67 16 33/ 41/ 26 Dr. Recover Franz 125 46 17 35/ 46/ 18 Tsunami v0.3 X Ian Oversby 125 1 18 37/ 50/ 13 BiShot Christian Schmidt 124 15 19 39/ 54/ 8 HSA Copy 55440 Robert Macrae 124 44 20 32/ 46/ 22 13 Christian Schmidt 118 14 21 24/ 72/ 4 clear Hugues Salamin 77 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 05/24/99 Date: 1999/05/24 Message-ID: <199905240400.AAA14684@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/24/99 -=- 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 May 23 03:45:42 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 20/ 40 Freight Train David Moore 159 44 2 36/ 24/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 148 1 3 35/ 22/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 147 43 4 32/ 22/ 45 The Marlboro Man 1.13 M Joonas Pihlaja 142 19 5 29/ 17/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 141 57 6 41/ 40/ 19 Stasis David Moore 141 151 7 39/ 38/ 23 PacMan David Moore 141 73 8 42/ 44/ 14 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 139 369 9 38/ 38/ 24 Kitchen Sink Robert Macrae 138 42 10 39/ 41/ 20 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 138 319 11 37/ 37/ 26 Leapfrog David Moore 137 72 12 41/ 44/ 15 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 137 81 13 28/ 20/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 137 100 14 42/ 47/ 12 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 137 38 15 28/ 19/ 53 Nightfall 2.1cc David Moore 136 7 16 28/ 22/ 50 Evoltmp 88 John K W 135 94 17 40/ 45/ 15 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 134 40 18 28/ 24/ 48 TESTE Leonardo Humberto 132 2 19 37/ 41/ 22 Tangle Trap David Moore 132 117 20 39/ 48/ 13 Skewer Ben Ford 130 5 21 16/ 83/ 1 clear Hugues Salamin 50 0 From: John Metcalf Subject: Z-Shot Date: 1999/05/28 Message-ID: #1/1 ;redcode-94 ;name Z-Shot ;author John Metcalf ;strategy oneshot - performs well against ;strategy paper/stone warriors :-) ;assert CORESIZE==8000 gate equ bye-3 step equ 4961 ; 2365 time equ 2076 ; 1599 loop:add.a #step, bye star:jmz.f loop, *bye ; .5c scan mov.ab @star, gate jmp @star, gate mov @bmbp, >gate ; .67c clear bmbp:djn clr, {bye ; .33c djn end star From: John Metcalf Subject: Core Warrior 73 Date: 1999/05/28 Message-ID: .xX$$x. .x$$$$$$$x. d$$$$$$$$$$$ ,$$$$$$$P' `P' , . $$$$$$P' ' .d b $$$$$P b ,$$x ,$$x ,$$x ,$$b $$. Y$$$$' `$. $$$$$$. $$$$$$ $$P~d$. d$$$b d d$$$ `$$$$ ,$$ $$$$$$$b $$$P `$ $$$b.$$b `Y$$$d$d$$$' . . a . a a .aa . a `$$$ ,$$$,$$' `$$$ $$$' ' $$P$XX$' `$$$$$$$$$ .dP' `$'$ `$'$ , $''$ `$'$ `Y$b ,d$$$P `$b,d$P' `$$. `$$. , `$$P $$$' Y $. $ $ $ Y..P $ `$$$$$$$' $$$P' `$$b `$$$P `P `$' `Y'k. $. $. $. $$' $. Issue 73 27 May, 1999 _______________________________________________________________________________ Core Warrior is a newsletter promoting the game of corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills - currently the '94 draft hill, the beginner hill and the '94 no-pspace hill. Coverage will follow where ever the action is. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star internet locals for more information: FAQs are available from: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z http://www.koth.org/corewar-faq.html The ftp site and mirrors are at: ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/mirror ftp://www.koth.org/corewar pMARS itself is also available from: http://www.koth.org/pmars.html ;Stormking http://www.ncs.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar ;Terry's web page ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar ;Fechner ftp site Web pages are at: http://www.koth.org/ ;Stormking http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar ;Planar Newbies should check the Stormking page for the FAQ, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! A collection of Bezzi's hints in the first issues is available at: ftp://ftp.volftp.vol.it/pub/pc/msdos/games/solutions/bbhints.zip _______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings... Another quiet month for core war has passed, with little activity anywhere. J K Lewis has announced the Intelligent Warrior Tournament, with US$100 as first prize. The deadline is tommorrow, so if you haven't done so already, take a look at: http://www.concentric.net/~liminal/IWT/index.html This issue - the new Q^3 qscan and the code for Ian Oversby's aggressive paper/stone Recovery. -- John Metcalf _______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server ICWS '94 Draft Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 46.3/ 33.0/ 20.7 Recycled Bits David Moore 159.6 29 2 47.6/ 35.9/ 16.5 Pattel's Virus Ben Ford 159.3 29 3 46.5/ 37.4/ 16.1 Circle of Fire John Metcalf 155.6 0 4 42.8/ 32.1/ 25.1 Spooky Wench John Metcalf 153.5 16 5 42.2/ 31.1/ 26.7 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 153.4 29 6 40.8/ 31.7/ 27.4 Puddleglum John Metcalf 149.9 17 7 43.0/ 36.6/ 20.5 death by redcode Simon Wainwright 149.4 8 8 39.9/ 30.9/ 29.2 Shadow Christian Schmidt 148.8 26 9 40.0/ 33.0/ 27.0 Fixed Ken Espiritu 147.1 29 10 37.3/ 28.9/ 33.9 Freight Train v0.2 David Moore 145.7 29 11 41.0/ 36.9/ 22.1 BiShot Christian Schmidt 145.1 17 12 31.2/ 18.4/ 50.4 The Fugitive David Moore 143.9 29 13 41.4/ 41.1/ 17.5 Silver Talon 1.2 Edgar 141.6 30 14 34.8/ 28.8/ 36.4 chained to the system Simon Wainwright 140.8 15 15 44.9/ 49.3/ 5.7 Neon Spring John Metcalf 140.5 13 16 40.6/ 40.8/ 18.6 Galatea Ben Ford 140.4 29 17 37.3/ 34.4/ 28.3 Twin Christian Schmidt 140.3 29 18 44.5/ 48.8/ 6.7 fatal lure of pMars Simon Wainwright 140.1 4 19 34.1/ 28.5/ 37.4 Even Less Innocuous TeamQ3 139.7 18 20 41.0/ 42.5/ 16.4 Nuke it! (V 0.4) Silvio Sampietro 139.6 9 21 38.5/ 37.9/ 23.6 trefoil 23 226 Steve Gunnell 139.0 39 22 41.0/ 43.9/ 15.1 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 138.1 16 23 41.3/ 45.7/ 13.0 Zooom... John Metcalf 136.9 22 24 42.9/ 49.0/ 8.1 .sS$Ss.sS$Ss.sS$Ss.sS$Ss. Simon Wainwright 136.9 6 25 39.5/ 43.7/ 16.8 myBlur Simon Wainwright 135.4 2 Age since last issue: 16 ( 10 last issue, 69 the issue before ) Days since last issue: 44 ( 36 last issue, 32 the issue before ) Average age: 19 ( 8 last issue, 3 the issue before ) Average score: 145 ( 138 last issue, 143 the issue before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by just 11 independent authors: Metcalf and Wainwright with 5, Schmidt with 4, Moore with 3, Ford with 2 and the remaining authors with one lonely warrior each. ( 10 authors last issue, 9 the issue before ) The hill still lacks equilibrium and several key players have still not returned. P-spacers are occupying the top three ranks and the numerous scanners lurk at the lower end of the hill. _______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New (Sorted by rank and score) # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 3 44.1/ 39.2/ 16.8 Circle of Fire John Metcalf 149.0 0 4 41.3/ 37.9/ 20.8 death by redcode Simon Wainwright 144.7 0 6 44.5/ 48.3/ 7.2 Neon Spring John Metcalf 140.6 1 8 39.7/ 41.9/ 18.4 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 137.5 1 11 39.6/ 41.8/ 18.6 Nuke it! (V 0.4) Silvio Sampietro 137.3 1 12 42.6/ 48.2/ 9.2 .sS$Ss.sS$Ss.sS$Ss.sS$Ss. Simon Wainwright 136.9 1 13 42.4/ 49.4/ 8.2 fatal lure of pMars Simon Wainwright 135.5 1 15 41.5/ 49.6/ 9.0 Shattered Glass v0.3 John Metcalf 133.3 1 16 32.9/ 32.9/ 34.2 Three Queens and a King Christian Schmidt 133.0 1 16 30.3/ 29.9/ 39.8 Redemption John Metcalf 130.8 0 18 32.6/ 33.4/ 34.1 Quickest Zeta Leonardo Humberto 131.7 1 20 27.1/ 27.1/ 45.8 chained to the system Simon Wainwright 127.2 1 24 37.5/ 43.9/ 18.7 myBlur Simon Wainwright 131.0 1 25 34.7/ 41.8/ 23.5 Z-Shot John Metcalf 127.7 1 25 38.5/ 50.7/ 10.8 )X( John Metcalf 126.2 1 Players entering hill since last issue: 6 ( 7 last issue, 7 the issue before ) Average rank of new entries: 14 ( 14 last issue, 12 the issue before ) Wainwright uses Death by Redcode to demonstrate qscanning bombers are still an effective strategy. _______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More (Sorted by age) # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 26 33.4/ 41.1/ 25.5 Digital Dragon Christian Schmidt 125.7 20 26 31.7/ 43.8/ 24.5 trefoil 28 558 Steve Gunnell 119.6 17 26 26.7/ 27.4/ 45.9 Innocuous John Metcalf 126.0 16 26 31.3/ 33.7/ 35.0 Redemption John Metcalf 128.8 12 26 29.0/ 31.7/ 39.3 Less Innocuous Leonardo Humberto 126.2 12 26 36.7/ 46.1/ 17.2 redcode ragamuffin Simon Wainwright 127.4 10 26 26.2/ 31.7/ 42.1 Quicker Zeta Leonardo Humberto 120.7 10 26 39.9/ 50.9/ 9.3 Shattered Glass v0.3 John Metcalf 128.9 8 26 18.7/ 18.7/ 62.6 ;strategy stone/paper John Metcalf 118.6 8 26 31.2/ 32.7/ 36.1 Three Queens and a King Christian Schmidt 129.6 5 26 32.5/ 35.9/ 31.6 Quickest Zeta Leonardo Humberto 129.1 5 26 18.7/ 17.6/ 63.7 ( 2 x^2 + 3 x + 1 ) / 2 John Metcalf 119.8 5 26 1.7/ 1.5/ 0.9 Have No Pity John Metcalf 5.8 3 26 34.0/ 42.5/ 23.5 Z-Shot John Metcalf 125.5 2 26 37.8/ 51.6/ 10.6 )X( John Metcalf 123.9 2 Digital Dragon and Trefoil leave the hill, so now the number of warriors of the magic age is reduced to 8. _______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age Nothing yet - maybe next issue? _______________________________________________________________________________ The Extended New Hall of Fame: * indicates the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Probe Anton Marsden 403 Q^2 -> Bomber 2 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 396 Scanner 3 Damage Incorporated Anton Marsden 373 Q^2 -> Bomber 4 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 357 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 5 unrequited love kafka 346 Q^2 -> Paper 6 Impish v0.2 Ian Oversby 345 Stone/imp 7 Gigolo Core Warrior staff 332 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 8 Falcon v0.3 Ian Oversby 275 P-warrior 9 Nine Seven Six M R Bremer 232 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 10 Rosebud Beppe 218 Stone/imp 11 Newt Ian Oversby 216 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 12 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 214 Q^2 -> Scanner/bomber 13 Instant Wolf 3.4 Edgar 205 P-warrior 14 Goldfinch P.Kline 201 P-warrior 15 Simple v0.4b Ian Oversby 197 QScan -> Stone/imp 16 Trident^2 John K W 195 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 17 ompega Steven Morrell 189 Stone/imp 18 Frogz Franz 172 Q^2 -> Paper 19 The Machine Anton Marsden 164 Scanner 20 Memories Beppe 152 Scanner 21 Vain Ian Oversby 147 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 22 Head or Tail Christian Schmidt 142 Q^2 -> Paper 23 Electric Head Anton Marsden 140 P-warrior 24 Vigor Ken Espiritu 138 Q^2 -> Paper 25 Fixed Ken Espiritu 135 Q^2 -> Paper 26 Tiberius 3.1 Franz 130 Q^2 -> Paper 27 Ultraviolet-B Ken Espiritu 120 Q^2 -> Paper 28 obvious to those who k Robert Macrae 117 Q^2 -> Paper 29 Solomon v0.8 Ian Oversby 116 Stone and scanner 30 CC Paper 3.3 Franz 107 Q^2 -> Paper 31 mrb-test M R Bremer 106 *Unknown* 32= T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 105 Bomber 32= Pulp v0.5 Ian Oversby 105 Q^2 -> Paper 34 Fugitive David Moore 102 Q^2 -> Paper/imp 35 Vengeance Robert Hale 101 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 36= Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 100 P-warrior 36= Fire and Ice David Moore 100 P-warrior 38 Oblivion Ian Sutton 99 P-warrior 39 Silver Talon 1.2 Edgar 93 Scanner 40 Bodge 1 Robert Macrae 85 Q^2 -> Scanner 41 Inferno 2.4 Philip Kendall 84 Qscan -> Bomber 42= Test Anton Marsden 83 *Unknown* 42= NCC-1701-A Philip Kendall 83 P-warrior 44 RetroQ Paul Kline 82 Q^2 -> Paper 45 Tornado 4 Beppe Bezzi 78 Bomber 46 He Scans Again Paul Kline 76 Scanner 47 Digitalis 4 Christian Schmidt 73 Q^2 -> Clear/imp 48 Taking Names Paul Kline 68 Scanner 49 Red Baron Christian Schmidt 64 P-warrior 50 Blain Nimon 63 *Unknown* Now increased to 50 ranks, the New HoF should be much easier to enter. _______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server Beginner Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 maximum age: At age 100, warriors are retired. rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 54.7/ 28.9/ 16.4 Pattel's Virus Ben Ford 180.6 33 2 51.3/ 32.8/ 15.8 Nuke it! (V 0.4) Silvio Sampietro 169.8 5 3 48.7/ 37.5/ 13.8 redcode ragamuffin Simon Wainwright 159.8 19 4 45.6/ 32.2/ 22.2 death by redcode Simon Wainwright 159.1 4 5 46.4/ 34.5/ 19.0 Spat the dummy. Steve Gunnell (oh ye 158.4 91 6 46.1/ 38.1/ 15.8 Nuke it! (V 0.2) Silvio Sampietro 154.0 7 7 36.4/ 20.4/ 43.2 Quickest Zeta Leonardo Humberto 152.3 3 8 32.9/ 20.3/ 46.8 Quicker Zeta Leonardo Humberto 145.6 25 9 30.9/ 19.2/ 49.8 Redemption John Metcalf 142.6 67 10 42.4/ 43.5/ 14.1 fatal lure of pMars Simon Wainwright 141.2 35 11 36.2/ 33.4/ 30.5 Silken Half Life Dale Neal 139.0 11 12 35.2/ 32.9/ 31.9 Silken Half Life v4.0 Dale Neal 137.4 8 13 37.9/ 39.5/ 22.5 Fire Master P_.V_.K. 136.3 15 14 34.0/ 33.0/ 33.0 of mirth and merriment Simon Wainwright 134.9 37 15 33.8/ 32.9/ 33.2 Silken Half Life v3.0 Dale Neal 134.8 9 16 27.7/ 22.5/ 49.8 Quick Zeta Leonardo Humberto 132.8 30 17 35.4/ 39.6/ 25.0 No Time To Think A. S. Mehlos 131.2 92 18 30.9/ 31.0/ 38.1 A man with a Gun Ben Ford 130.7 76 19 27.3/ 23.9/ 48.7 HardCore v0.2b Simon Duff 130.7 31 20 31.2/ 33.5/ 35.3 Frusteration II A. S. Mehlos 128.9 95 21 35.0/ 44.9/ 20.1 Death kiss with a dash of Anders Rosendal 125.1 51 22 23.5/ 22.1/ 54.4 H-Bomb 9 Josh Yeager 124.8 89 23 32.1/ 40.4/ 27.5 Red Sand Ken Hubbard 123.7 14 24 33.3/ 44.9/ 21.8 Crossbow Ken Hubbard 121.7 13 25 26.8/ 33.4/ 39.9 quatrefoil 133 Steve Gunnell 120.2 1 ModerationRevisited, Fat Man, Arsonic C and Sticky Taped Together 1.2 all retired at age 100 in the 13 challenges which have passed since last issue. I noticed my jmp #0 warrior scored a large number of draws against some warriors, and even some wins... _______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the KOTH.ORG '94 No Pspace Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 250 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft, excluding ldp and stp # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 26/ 32 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 157 167 2 43/ 32/ 24 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 155 65 3 39/ 29/ 32 Blacken Ian Oversby 149 143 4 38/ 27/ 35 Vain Ian Oversby 149 233 5 41/ 33/ 26 Liquid Fire Christian Schmidt 149 129 6 46/ 44/ 11 Win! David Moore 148 131 7 38/ 28/ 34 Recovery Ian Oversby 147 156 8 38/ 29/ 34 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 147 214 9 43/ 40/ 17 Zooom... John Metcalf 146 32 10 43/ 41/ 16 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 145 158 11 37/ 32/ 30 Spooky Wench John Metcalf 142 20 12 35/ 27/ 38 Brigadeer M Joonas Pihlaja 142 152 13 36/ 31/ 32 Fixed Ken Espiritu 141 216 14 28/ 17/ 54 _romanian_killah_ Costin Bontas rulez 139 125 15 45/ 51/ 4 Neon Spring John Metcalf 139 15 16 27/ 17/ 56 The Fugitive David Moore 138 235 17 42/ 49/ 8 t5 John Metcalf 136 3 18 32/ 28/ 40 Quickest Zeta Leonardo Humberto 136 9 19 41/ 50/ 9 t8 John Metcalf 133 1 20 39/ 48/ 13 t7 John Metcalf 131 4 18 successful challenges push Stormbringer back up to king. Liquid Fire climbs up 12 places and The Fugitive drops down 11. _______________________________________________________________________________ The Hint - The Q^3 Qscan by Leonardo Humberto and John Metcalf On occasions in the redcode world, a group of players will come together to work co-operatively on a new warrior. One of these rare occasions has led to a new qscan both faster _and_ smaller than the commonly used Q^2, which we present here as Q^3. The concept of the Q^3 decoder is at the heart of these improvements. It uses a pair of multiplications to achieve 27 scans, compared to a trio of additions and possibly a number leaking table references which a Q^2 would use. There are also several smaller improvements concealed within the code :-) Puddleglum is a Paper/Stone using Q^3 which currently performs well on the '94 hill. As with most Paper/Stone warriors, his main weakness is against oneshots. As you probably guessed Puddleglum is named in honour of the famous Narnian marsh-wiggle! Hopeless tweakers may like to start by changing A to 14 and C to 19 and adjusting the appropriate scans - remember the scan order can make a huge difference to the resulting score too... ;redcode-94 ;name Puddleglum ;author John Metcalf ;strategy Q^3 -> Paper/Stone ;assert CORESIZE==8000 org qGo pStep1 equ 220 pStep2 equ 6172 pStep3 equ 3060 sBoot equ (pap1+6645) ; 'pocket' pGo: spl 1, {pap1+1190 mov {sGo, {sPos spl 1, {pap1+2735 mov {sGo, {sPos spl sBoot, {pap1+2955 sPos:spl sBoot+6, {pap1+4760 pap1:spl @0, {pStep1 ; harmless paper! (Innocuous) mov }pap1, >pap1 mov }pap1, >pap1 pap2:spl @0, {pStep2 mov }pap2, >pap2 mov {pap2, {pap3 pap3:jmp pStep3+1,>pStep3-3 dat }1, >1 sStep equ 3039 sTime equ 3357 sGo: spl #6, 0 spl #0, 0 ; aggressive stone (Spooky Wench?!) sLp: mov sBmb, @sP sSel:add #sStep, sP sP: djn.f sLp, {sSel-sStep*sTime sBmb:dat 2, >1 for 13 dat 0,0 rof qf equ qKil qs equ 100 qd equ 4000 qi equ 7 qr equ 11 dat 15, 10 ; A,D qTab:dat 7, 4 ; B,E dat 13, 11 ; C,F qBmb:dat {qi*qr-10, {1 ; -+)>] 0/1 cycles [(<+- qGo: seq qd+qf+qs, qf+qs ; 1 jmp qSki, {qd+qf+qs+qi seq qd+qf+7*qs, qf+7*qs ; B jmp qFas, {qd+qf+7*qs+qi seq qd+qf+6*qs, qf+6*qs ; B-1 jmp qFas, {qTab seq qd+qf+8*qs, qf+8*qs ; B+1 jmp qFas, }qTab seq qd+qf+13*qs, qf+13*qs ; C jmp qFas, }qFas seq qd+qf+14*qs, qf+14*qs ; A-1 djn.a qFas, {qFas seq qd+qf+15*qs, qf+15*qs ; A jmp qFas, {qFas ; -+>)] 2 cycles [(<+- seq qd+qf+4*qs, qf+4*qs ; E jmp >qFas, {qd+qf+4*qs+qi seq qd+qf+3*qs, qf+3*qs ; E-1 jmp >qFas, qFas, >qTab seq qd+qf+9*qs, qf+9*qs ; D-1 djn.b >qFas, {qSlo seq qd+qf+10*qs, qf+10*qs ; D jmp >qFas, {qSlo seq qd+qf+11*qs, qf+11*qs ; F jmp >qFas, }qSlo seq qd+qf+18*qs, qf+18*qs ; B*E+1-B-E djn.f qSlo, qTab seq qd+qf+21*qs, qf+21*qs ; B*E-B jmp qSlo, qTab seq qd+qf+39*qs, qf+39*qs ; C*E-C djn.b qSlo, }qFas seq qd+qf+52*qs, qf+52*qs ; C*E jmp qSlo, }qFas seq qd+qf+56*qs, qf+56*qs ; A*E-E djn.a qSlo, {qFas seq qd+qf+60*qs, qf+60*qs ; A*E jmp qSlo, {qFas seq qd+qf+63*qs, qf+63*qs ; B*D-B djn.b qSlo, {qSlo seq qd+qf+66*qs, qf+66*qs ; B*F-F djn.a qSlo, }qSlo seq qd+qf+70*qs, qf+70*qs ; B*D jmp qSlo, {qSlo seq qd+qf+77*qs, qf+77*qs ; B*F jmp qSlo, }qSlo sne qd+qf+28*qs, qf+28*qs ; B*E jmz pGo, qd+qf+28*qs-10 ; Free Scan :-) qSlo:mul.b qTab, qKil ; decode qFas:mul.ab qTab, @qSlo qSki:sne >3456, @qKil add #qd, qKil qLoo:mov qBmb, @qKil ; .5c negative bomber, scores better qKil:mov qBmb, *qs ; overall than a bi-directional sub #qi, qKil djn qLoo, #qr jmp pGo, >4567 end _______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra - Recovery by Ian Oversby Recovery appeared on the hill sometime around October last year and was rarely seen outside the top three ranks until every warrior was wiped from the hill in the February massacre. Joonas Pihlaja, who won the code for Recovery as 1st prize in Ian's tournament has kindly shared the code with us. An aggressive paper (Pulp 0.5) and a small quick stone with core-clear are combined in Recovery to create a warrior which scores much differently from the typical defensive paper/stone - as can be seen in the test results below. (As usual qscans removed) : Recovery : Puddleglum : Shadow : : %W %L %T Sca Pap : %W %L %T Sca Pap : %W %L %T Sca Pap : Z-Shot : 81 11 8 251 41 : 37 24 39 150 111 : 57 24 19 190 91 : 591 P-Swing : 58 30 12 186 102 : 49 26 25 172 103 : 46 36 18 156 126 : 514 Phantasm : 47 37 16 157 127 : 54 28 18 180 102 : 51 30 19 172 109 : 509 Sleep : 47 39 14 155 131 : 38 34 28 142 130 : 64 19 18 210 75 : 507 HAL 9000 : 44 32 24 156 120 : 37 23 40 151 109 : 54 16 30 192 78 : 499 Scan Man : 53 31 16 175 109 : 45 30 25 160 115 : 45 26 29 164 107 : 499 One Shot : 53 35 12 171 117 : 45 36 19 154 127 : 50 33 17 167 116 : 492 Sharkrage : 41 38 21 144 135 : 35 26 39 144 117 : 54 17 29 191 80 : 479 BiShot : 42 29 29 155 116 : 45 24 31 166 103 : 43 36 21 150 129 : 471 Harmony2 : 49 36 15 162 123 : 43 39 18 147 135 : 40 31 29 149 122 : 458 Win! : 50 46 4 154 142 : 40 50 10 130 160 : 49 36 15 162 123 : 446 myZizzor : 52 26 22 178 100 : 28 40 32 116 152 : 40 35 25 145 130 : 439 sTalon1.2 : 42 39 19 145 136 : 32 40 28 124 148 : 50 34 16 166 118 : 435 myVamp3.7 : 39 47 14 131 155 : 37 37 26 137 137 : 36 32 32 140 128 : 408 Blur 2 : 25 62 13 88 199 : 42 41 17 143 140 : 46 29 25 163 112 : 394 Torch t18 : 35 34 31 136 133 : 30 27 43 133 124 : 23 28 49 118 133 : 387 Mirage1.5 : 44 49 7 139 154 : 33 56 11 110 179 : 31 56 13 106 181 : 355 HSA : 42 54 4 130 166 : 46 46 8 146 146 : 18 72 10 64 226 : 340 Memories : 40 58 2 122 176 : 32 61 7 103 190 : 31 57 12 105 183 : 330 Benj'sRev : 16 21 63 111 126 : 7 3 90 111 99 : 2 2 96 102 102 : 324 Fixed : 4 8 88 100 112 : 2 4 94 100 106 : 0 2 98 98 104 : 298 Recovery demonstrates a clear advantage against paper - while all three paper/stone warriors are easily beaten by a oneshot. ;redcode-94 ;name Recovery ;author Ian Oversby ;strategy Q^2 -> Paper/Stone ;strategy v0.2 An alternative stone ;assert 1 QB EQU (start-350) QS EQU (QD*2) QD EQU -100 GAP EQU 12 REP EQU 8 REP2 EQU 2 pdist equ 2450 datz EQU (table-3) first equ (table-5) datone equ bomba half equ 2692 full equ (2*half) gate equ (inc-3200) init spl.b #0, #0 inc spl.b #0, 1, #half ; bmb dat.f #half, >1 for 15 dat.f $0, $0 rof dat 10*QS, 2*QS ; can get 21 values from this table table: dat 4*QS, 1*QS ; and can also use the initial value dat 23*QS, 3*QS ; of fnd qinc: spl #GAP,-GAP tab: add.a table,table slow: add.a @tab,fnd fast: add.ba *tab,@slow which: sne.i datz,*fnd add.a #QD,fnd mov.i datone,*fnd add.ab fnd,fnd fnd: mov.i QB,GAP/2 add.f qinc,fnd mov.i datone,*fnd djn.b fnd,#REP jmp boot,}QS*13 start: ; WHICH seq.i QB+QS*0,QB+QS*0+QD jmp which,}QB+QS*0+QD/2 ; FAST seq.i QB+QS*1,QB+QS*1+QD jmp fast,}QB+QS*1+QD/2 seq.i QB+QS*13,QB+QS*13+QD jmp fast,{fast seq.i QB+QS*2,QB+QS*2+QD jmp fast,{tab seq.i QB+QS*3,QB+QS*3+QD jmp fast,}tab ; SLOW seq.i QB+QS*4,QB+QS*4+QD jmp >fast,}QB+QS*4+QD/2 seq.i QB+QS*5,QB+QS*5+QD jmp slow,}QB+QS*5+QD/2 seq.i QB+QS*6,QB+QS*6+QD jmp slow,{tab seq.i QB+QS*7,QB+QS*7+QD jmp slow,}tab seq.i QB+QS*10,QB+QS*10+QD jmp >fast,fast,>tab seq.i QB+QS*24,QB+QS*24+QD jmp slow,>tab seq.i QB+QS*17,QB+QS*17+QD jmp slow,{fast ; TAB seq.i QB+QS*8,QB+QS*8+QD jmp -1 silk1 spl.b @0, <771 mov.i }-1, >-1 mov.i bomba, }3307 mov.i {silk1, , Anton Marsden , Philip Kendall and John Metcalf From: Jody Mccullough Subject: Re: I FOUND SOME KICKASS VIDEOS 6411 Date: 1999/05/31 Message-ID: <37537093.F5AE7EAD@nospam.sprintmail.com>#1/1 Hey fdhbnm! You any relation to rbnoou?? fdhbnm@sssdfdf.org wrote: > > uwpsbvyjgzpjydqgfunbudkghffyreuwdmgtceppgupcnfbzhuzdwzoknxpdc From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 05/31/99 Date: 1999/05/31 Message-ID: <199905310400.AAA24086@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/31/99 -=- 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 May 13 22:46:44 EDT 1999 # Name Author Score Age 1 Cinderella Ben Ford 50 9 2 Her Majesty P.Kline 49 1 3 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 42 50 4 QuiVa John Metcalf 41 75 5 Nuke it! Silvio Sampietro 35 7 6 QueensGuard P.Kline 33 4 7 QueensGuard P.Kline 31 2 8 QueensGuard P.Kline 31 3 9 Sharkrage Christian Schmidt 30 49 10 Diamonds and more Rust Christian Schmidt 25 48 11 Smoking Squirt Gun Ransom L. Smith 2 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 05/31/99 Date: 1999/05/31 Message-ID: <199905310400.AAA24082@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/31/99 -=- 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 May 23 03:45:42 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 20/ 40 Freight Train David Moore 159 44 2 36/ 24/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 148 1 3 35/ 22/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 147 43 4 32/ 22/ 45 The Marlboro Man 1.13 M Joonas Pihlaja 142 19 5 29/ 17/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 141 57 6 41/ 40/ 19 Stasis David Moore 141 151 7 39/ 38/ 23 PacMan David Moore 141 73 8 42/ 44/ 14 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 139 369 9 38/ 38/ 24 Kitchen Sink Robert Macrae 138 42 10 39/ 41/ 20 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 138 319 11 37/ 37/ 26 Leapfrog David Moore 137 72 12 41/ 44/ 15 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 137 81 13 28/ 20/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 137 100 14 42/ 47/ 12 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 137 38 15 28/ 19/ 53 Nightfall 2.1cc David Moore 136 7 16 28/ 22/ 50 Evoltmp 88 John K W 135 94 17 40/ 45/ 15 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 134 40 18 28/ 24/ 48 TESTE Leonardo Humberto 132 2 19 37/ 41/ 22 Tangle Trap David Moore 132 117 20 39/ 48/ 13 Skewer Ben Ford 130 5 21 16/ 83/ 1 clear Hugues Salamin 50 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 05/31/99 Date: 1999/05/31 Message-ID: <199905310400.AAA24097@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/31/99 -=- 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 : Thu May 27 06:46:40 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 26/ 32 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 157 167 2 43/ 32/ 24 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 155 65 3 39/ 29/ 32 Blacken Ian Oversby 149 143 4 38/ 27/ 35 Vain Ian Oversby 149 233 5 41/ 33/ 26 Liquid Fire Christian Schmidt 149 129 6 46/ 44/ 11 Win! David Moore 148 131 7 38/ 28/ 34 Recovery Ian Oversby 147 156 8 38/ 29/ 34 Baseline Plus Ken Espiritu 147 214 9 43/ 40/ 17 Zooom... John Metcalf 146 32 10 43/ 41/ 16 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 145 158 11 37/ 32/ 30 Spooky Wench John Metcalf 142 20 12 35/ 27/ 38 Brigadeer M Joonas Pihlaja 142 152 13 36/ 31/ 32 Fixed Ken Espiritu 141 216 14 28/ 17/ 54 _romanian_killah_ Costin Bontas rulez 139 125 15 45/ 51/ 4 Neon Spring John Metcalf 139 15 16 27/ 17/ 56 The Fugitive David Moore 138 235 17 42/ 49/ 8 t5 John Metcalf 136 3 18 32/ 28/ 40 Quickest Zeta Leonardo Humberto 136 9 19 41/ 50/ 9 t8 John Metcalf 133 1 20 39/ 48/ 13 t7 John Metcalf 131 4 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 05/31/99 Date: 1999/05/31 Message-ID: <199905310400.AAA24093@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 05/31/99 -=- 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 : Sun May 23 01:39:48 EDT 1999 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 55/ 31/ 14 Black Moods Ian Oversby 180 3 2 52/ 30/ 17 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 174 7 3 40/ 16/ 45 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 164 29 4 33/ 5/ 61 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 161 76 5 30/ 2/ 67 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 158 24 6 34/ 19/ 47 Rosebud Beppe 148 55 7 38/ 38/ 23 Dr. Gate X Franz 138 47 8 36/ 37/ 28 BigBoy Robert Macrae 134 101 9 26/ 18/ 56 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 134 18 10 41/ 48/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 133 77 11 38/ 43/ 19 Pagan John K W 133 61 12 27/ 22/ 51 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 131 28 13 36/ 41/ 23 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 131 62 14 37/ 45/ 18 Memories Beppe Bezzi 128 83 15 31/ 38/ 31 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 125 67 16 33/ 41/ 26 Dr. Recover Franz 125 46 17 35/ 46/ 18 Tsunami v0.3 X Ian Oversby 125 1 18 37/ 50/ 13 BiShot Christian Schmidt 124 15 19 39/ 54/ 8 HSA Copy 55440 Robert Macrae 124 44 20 32/ 46/ 22 13 Christian Schmidt 118 14 21 24/ 72/ 4 clear Hugues Salamin 77 0