From: pk Subject: Re: Tounament Idea Date: 2000/03/01 Message-ID: <38BDA5FD.E6406AB0@videotron.ca>#1/1 John K. Lewis wrote: > > I was thinking about a tournament idea and I'd like add to my > previous concept. Before I had said that it would be cool to have a tournament > where you increased the max size from 2-10 for a total of eight rounds. > > To make things more interesting, what if you had to keep the instructions > from previous rounds. You could move those instructions in any order, but > the instructions themselves would have to remain intact. > > This would require some forthought on the part of programmers, and would > certainly making for interesting strategies. > > Should you make a good 6 line warrior and take it apart for the earlier > rounds... making due with minor loses early, or should you build up > a more robust modular system that builds over time? > > The interesting part is that players could wait to see what the lead guy > has to work with before building their unit, perhaps skipping rounds in > order to work up a decent counter to prevailing warriors. > > What do you think? Cool... On IRC, there was talk about calculating Pi in corewar... Yes, it's doable. Lukasz talked about using Monte Carlo, and Joonas about dropping pins... i think that they were talking about the same thing: draw a square of width 2*r, and put a circle with a half-diameter(how do you say that in english??) of r inside the circle; Let pins drop on the sqare(vertically). Count the number of pins that drop inside the circle; The ratio of pins in the circle will more or less equal the ration area of circle/area of square. Since the area of the circle is pi*r^2, and that the area of the square is (2*r)^2=4r^2, you just isolate pi. (that leaves you with (pi*r^2)/(4r^2) = pi/4, so you only hasve to multiply the ratio of in circle pin/total number of pins by 4) Are there any errors in that?? You could do that with only multiply, addition and divide(and conditional branching)... that'd be interesting, but not in a tournament, i think Emulating a RISC machine in corewar would also be interesting, but, again, not in atournament, i think... -- Vive le Qu�bec libre!! Des souverainistes AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: "Robert Macrae" Subject: Re: Tounament Idea Date: 2000/03/01 Message-ID: <89k8oo$cum$1@lure.pipex.net>#1/1 > > The basic idea is great, but it would be dull after the first 3-4 > > rounds because you would know too much about the opposing > > would suggest either using 5 rounds of 2,3,4,6,10 instructions, or > > else players submitting rounds 5-6 at the same time, ditto 7-10. > > would preserve more uncertainty and hence interest. > > I think you WOULDN'T know much about opposing warriors, because they > be different in next round. That's how I understand this idea. There are a limited number of 5 word warriors that can be written by appending 1 new word to four known words. For example, if you try to write a bomber I will probably know your step sizes, and I will also know whether or not you can create a Silk. Knowing 5/6 of the instructions present in every enemy is, I guess, too much information, but by putting together rounds 5 and 6 or dropping round 5 we would only know 4/6 words. Of course it is at present just a guess what will give rise to the most interesting contest. My guess is that knowing 3/4 or 4/6 is more interesting than knowing 5/6 but if other people like the idea, perhaps they could make other suggestions? The weight of each round in the final score need not be equal... Robert Macrae From: "John K. Lewis" Subject: Re: Tounament Idea Date: 2000/03/01 Message-ID: #1/1 Robert Macrae wrote: >> previous concept. Before I had said that it would be cool to have a > tournament >> where you increased the max size from 2-10 for a total of eight > rounds. > The basic idea is great, but it would be dull after the first 3-4 > rounds because you would know too much about the opposing warriors. I > would suggest either using 5 rounds of 2,3,4,6,10 instructions, or > else players submitting rounds 5-6 at the same time, ditto 7-10. This > would preserve more uncertainty and hence interest. Excellant observation. I was concerned about this as well, but didn't have a solution at hand. This seems like a great way to make it work. I've come up with a name for the tournament: The Backwards Compatability Competition. I think the I think that perhaps a odd progresion might work best. Due to the nature of the tourney, I think we should keep the total number of round rather low. Perhaps even four rounds. More ideas? From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: Tounament Idea Date: 2000/03/01 Message-ID: #1/1 On Mon, 28 Feb 2000, Robert Macrae wrote: > > > previous concept. Before I had said that it would be cool to have a > tournament > > where you increased the max size from 2-10 for a total of eight > rounds. > > The basic idea is great, but it would be dull after the first 3-4 > rounds because you would know too much about the opposing warriors. I > would suggest either using 5 rounds of 2,3,4,6,10 instructions, or > else players submitting rounds 5-6 at the same time, ditto 7-10. This > would preserve more uncertainty and hence interest. > > Robert Macrae > I think you WOULDN'T know much about opposing warriors, because they will be different in next round. That's how I understand this idea. Lukasz Adamowski From: Frederick.C.Strathmeyer@Dartmouth.EDU (Frederick C. Strathmeyer) Subject: Re: How can tell if this CAM is working? 222 Date: 2000/03/03 Message-ID: <28349024@dasher.Dartmouth.EDU>#1/1 I say we all get on and tell "MaryAnn" to write a continuously launching imp spiral... --- You wrote: Mary@MaryAnnCam.com schrieb in Nachricht <3PLv4.50620$bz2.5738852@tw12.nn.bcandid.com>... >Hi Everyone, > >My name is Mary Ann and I'm learning how to use my new live CAM. I do need some help though; I'm not sure what to do in front of the camera. I'd like someone to tell me what to do and help me learn all the ins and outs of a live CAM. > >How about coming to my site and seeing me? I'd really like to learn all there is to know about a live CAM. If you have any suggestions, please e-mail me or visit me. > >Hope To See Ya, > > >-- >Mary Ann > >(800) 970-7866 >email: Mary@MaryAnnCam.com >URL: www.MaryAnnCam.com --- end of quote --- From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 2000/03/03 Message-ID: Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-Modified: September 4, 1999 Version: 4.2 URL: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/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 posted every two weeks. The latest hypertext version is available at http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html and the latest plain text version is available at http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.txt. This document is currently being maintained by Anton Marsden (anton@paradise.net.nz). Last modified: Sat Sep 4 00:22:22 NZST 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 * Changed primary location of FAQ (again!) * Changed Philip Kendall's home page address. * Updated list server information * Changed primary location of FAQ * 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Table of Contents 1. What is Core War 2. Is it "Core War" or "Core Wars"? 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? 4. Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? 5. What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? 6. What is the ICWS? 7. What is 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 virtual computer called MARS (for Memory Array Redcode Simulator). The object of the game is to cause all processes of the opposing program to terminate, leaving your program in sole posession of the machine. There are Core War systems available for most computer platforms. Redcode has been 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. 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 = (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 is 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 the 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. 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 �0-7167-1939-8 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 �0-7167-2144-9 .D5173 1990 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 and 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'94 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 only 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 94 Warrior, Core Warrior is a newsletter about strategies and current standings 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.kendalls.demon.co.uk/pak21/corewar/warrior.html 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.answers (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 (koth.org 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 body 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 Koth.Org list processor. To join, send the message SUB COREWAR-L FirstName LastName to listproc@koth.org. You can send mail to corewar-l@koth.org to post even if you are not a member of the list. Responsible for the listserver is Scott J. Ellentuch (ttsg@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 koth.org. [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 points than a warrior that survives together with other warriors. Points are calculated from the formula (W*W-1)/S, where W is the total number of warriors and S the number of surviving warriors. The pMARS documentation has more information on multi-warrior scoring. The idea for an email-based Core War server came from David Lee. The original KotH was developed and run by William Shubert at Intel starting in 1991, and discontinued after almost three years of service. Currently, KotHs based on Bill's UNIX scripts but offering a wider variety of hills are are running at two sites: koth@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 overlapping services, i.e. the some of the hill types were offered by both "pizza" and "stormking". To conserve resources, the different hill types are now divided up among the sites. The way you submit warriors to both KotHs is pretty much the same. Therefore, the entry rules described below apply to both "pizza" and "stormking" unless otherwise noted. Entry Rules for King of the Hill Corewar * Write a corewar program. KotH is fully ICWS '88 compatible, EXCEPT that 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 Instr. Size Size Processes Distance Fought Set Tie Length Pizza's ICWS '94 Draft Hill Extended (Accessed with 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 ";redcode-94") Draft Pizza's Beginner's Extended Hill (Accessed 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 with ";redcode-b") Draft Pizza's Experimental Extended (Small) Hill 25 800 800 8000 20 20 200 ICWS '94 (Accessed with Draft ";redcode-x") Pizza's Limited Process (LP) Hill Extended (Accessed with 25 8000 8 80000 200 200 200 ICWS '94 ";redcode-lp") Draft Stormking's ICWS '88 Standard Hill (Accessed with 20 8000 8000 80000 100 100 250 ICWS '88 ";redcode") Stormking's ICWS '94 No Pspace Hill (Accessed with 20 8000 8000 80000 100 100 250 ICWS '94 ";redcode-94nop") Stormking's ICWS '94 Experimental Extended (Big) Hill 20 55440 55440 500000 200 200 250 ICWS '94 (Accessed with Draft ";redcode-94x") Stormking's ICWS '94 Multi-Warrior Extended Hill (Accessed 10 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 with Draft ";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 assembled 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 Core 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 or 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, for 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 than 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 memory size. Off-axis scanners use some other separation. Optimal Constants (also optima-type constants) Bomb or scan increments chosen to cover core most effectively, i.e. leaving gaps of uniform size. Programs to calculate optimal constants and lists of optimal numbers are available at www.koth.org. Paper A Paper-like program is one which replicates itself many times. Part of 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 pointer rof jmn attack, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 8 cmp start+100*(s2+6), start+100*(s2+6)+4000 mov #start+100*(s2+6)-found, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing attack cmp @found, start-1 ;does found points to empty space? add #4000, found ;no, so point to correct location mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 In ICWS'94, the quick scan code is more compact because of the SNE opcode: start ;'94 scan s1 for 4 sne start+400*s1, start+400*s1+100 ;check two locations seq start+400*s1+200, start+400*s1+300 ;check two locations mov #start+400*s1-found, found ;they differ so set pointer rof jmn which, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 4 sne start+400*(s2+4), start+400*(s2+4)+100 seq start+400*(s2+4)+200, start+400*(s2+4)+300 mov #start+400*(s2+4)-found-100, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing add #100, -1 ;increment pointer till we get the which jmn -1, @found ;right place mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 Reflection Copy of a program or program part, positioned to make the active program invisible to a CMP-scanner. Replicator Generic for Paper. A program which makes many copies of itself, each copy also making copies. Self-Splitting Strategy of amplifying the number of processes executing a piece of code. example spl 0 loop add #10, example mov example, @example jmp loop Scanner A program which searches through core for an opponent rather than bombing blindly. Scissors A program designed to beat replicators, usually a (B-field scanning) vampire. Part of the Paper-Scissors-Stone analogy. Self-Repair Ability of a program to fix it's own code after attack. Silk A replicator which splits off a process to each new copy before actually copying the code. This allows it to replicate extremely quickly. This technique is only possible under the '94 draft, because it requires post-increment indirect addressing. Example: spl 1 mov -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 copy 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. 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) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright � 1999 Anton Marsden. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: "Crimson Moon" Subject: Re: How can tell if this CAM is working? 222 Date: 2000/03/03 Message-ID: <4D7E3F54F7686CF7.2721788E312B6ABD.992011BBD16C85B7@lp.airnews.net>#1/1 good lady, meditate and submit your life to the virtues of spiritulity! Crimson Moon Mary@MaryAnnCam.com schrieb in Nachricht <3PLv4.50620$bz2.5738852@tw12.nn.bcandid.com>... >Hi Everyone, > >My name is Mary Ann and I'm learning how to use my new live CAM. I do need some help though; I'm not sure what to do in front of the camera. I'd like someone to tell me what to do and help me learn all the ins and outs of a live CAM. > >How about coming to my site and seeing me? I'd really like to learn all there is to know about a live CAM. If you have any suggestions, please e-mail me or visit me. > >Hope To See Ya, > > >-- >Mary Ann > >(800) 970-7866 >email: Mary@MaryAnnCam.com >URL: www.MaryAnnCam.com > > >zqxihitlhdxk > From: "John K. Lewis" Subject: Re: How do I know my warrior arrived? Date: 2000/03/04 Message-ID: #1/1 Akkermans wrote: > But first: where do you put your program in? In the normal (this) box, or > after the mail-adress? In the normal box. You should recieve confirmation from the koth that you have sent a good (working) program. Where are you sending the warrior? John K. Lewis From: "Akkermans" Subject: How do I know my warrior arrived? Date: 2000/03/04 Message-ID: <89ql3i$1v0r$1@buty.wanadoo.nl>#1/1 But first: where do you put your program in? In the normal (this) box, or after the mail-adress? From: pk Subject: Re: corewars and Linux Date: 2000/03/05 Message-ID: <38C2F309.25142D84@videotron.ca>#1/1 Jacek Pop�awski wrote: > > > Actually, the "real" corewar(1986 implementation) isn't used anymore... > > The only standards used are '88 and '94... > > The only implementation of '94 cw is pMARS, > > hmm... I read about '86 and '88, maybe '94==X ? No, 94 is a draft, but it's been a draft for 7 years, so it's been accepted as a standard by everyone.. > > so pMARS is the de facto > > standard... Being open soucre, you can find the source and compile it > > for whatever version of unix/linux ur using... > > yes, I already did it, but your game is much better for "begginers", > I write in my article about your "Corewars" then pMars, and next > article will be about RealTimeBattle :) ^what'S that?? Well, ICWS '94(the '94 standard) is the corewar everyone's using. pmars is a program that is MARS(memory arrays simulator) for corewar... Basically, pmars is an emulator for a corewar machine... For your affirmation of '88 being easier than '94(or the other way around: i don't understand what u mean 8): Actually, '94 is easier bc it's more logical, as there is more simmetrical And, '94 is backward compatible with '88 So, you can learn '94, and the ust restrict yourself if you want to write for '88 corewar To recap: corewar is a programmation game ICWS '94 is the current implmentation of corewar pmars is the one and only program currently respecting ICWS '94 You can play KotH(King of the Hill) on the net. These KotH run pmars and then do the standing based on the scores your warrior gets against the warrior already on the hill. -- Vive le Qu�bec libre!! Des souverainistes AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: pk Subject: Re: corewars and Linux Date: 2000/03/05 Message-ID: <38C2E7F7.81C1A33C@videotron.ca>#1/1 Jacek Pop�awski wrote: > > I write article about corewars. Now I know only two cw implementations, > which run under Linux: "Core Wars" by Walter Hofmann and pMars. First > program uses language little diffrent from real RedCode. Can you give > me link to any other corewars programs for Unix/Linux ? Actually, the "real" corewar(1986 implementation) isn't used anymore... The only standards used are '88 and '94... The only implementation of '94 cw is pMARS, so pMARS is the de facto standard... Being open soucre, you can find the source and compile it for whatever version of unix/linux ur using... PS. go to http://www.koth.org -- Vive le Qu�bec libre!! Des souverainistes AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: jp@ulgo.koti.com.pl (Jacek =?iso-8859-2?Q?Pop=B3awski?=) Subject: corewars and Linux Date: 2000/03/05 Message-ID: #1/1 I write article about corewars. Now I know only two cw implementations, which run under Linux: "Core Wars" by Walter Hofmann and pMars. First program uses language little diffrent from real RedCode. Can you give me link to any other corewars programs for Unix/Linux ? From: Frederick.C.Strathmeyer@Dartmouth.EDU (Frederick C. Strathmeyer) Subject: Impgate decreased score... Date: 2000/03/05 Message-ID: <28414759@dasher.Dartmouth.EDU>#1/1 I had a warrior milling around on the beginner hill and then I thought, "I've got some empty B fields! Why don't I decrement an imp gate?" So I put it in ... but to my dismay the program actually did worse! The only reason I can think for this is that it made the program more visible to B field scanners... can anyone relate to this "problem"? Thanks, -FCS From: Travis Chapp Subject: Re: An optical allusion that will astound you, works on all spec pc's:) 3316 Date: 2000/03/05 Message-ID: <38C21D5A.D3701371@home.com>#1/1 Ya right. heh, this is a back door virus. rlemxk@btinternet.com wrote: > > Run this file, and after 20 seconds of looking at optical visuals you will WANT to ring all your friends...damn amazing!!! > > www.fortunecity.com/westwood/makeover/759/optical.exe > > xoxnmetjetebqwkmwuwlcihrmyefsfwtckroklvlwymxjvgxtpklsnflsslkznipkylwqzgwpkmdjeel From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 03/06/00 Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: <200003060500.AAA05096@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/06/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *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 Jan 30 23:06:15 EST 2000 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 54/ 32/ 15 Black Moods Ian Oversby 176 7 2 48/ 29/ 23 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 167 11 3 39/ 16/ 45 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 163 33 4 33/ 6/ 61 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 159 80 5 29/ 3/ 68 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 156 28 6 33/ 20/ 47 Rosebud Beppe 146 59 7 38/ 37/ 25 Dr. Gate X Franz 139 51 8 36/ 33/ 31 Draken Fire X Ben Ford 138 2 9 26/ 16/ 58 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 135 22 10 36/ 40/ 24 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 133 66 11 35/ 37/ 27 BigBoy Robert Macrae 133 105 12 26/ 19/ 55 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 133 32 13 39/ 49/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 129 81 14 30/ 31/ 39 Self-Modifying Code X Ben Ford 129 1 15 36/ 45/ 19 Pagan John K W 128 65 16 32/ 36/ 32 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 127 71 17 36/ 46/ 18 Memories Beppe Bezzi 126 87 18 35/ 45/ 20 Tsunami v0.3 X Ian Oversby 125 5 19 36/ 49/ 14 WingShot Ben Ford 123 3 20 33/ 52/ 15 BiShot Christian Schmidt 115 19 21 20/ 78/ 2 63 0 From: pk Subject: Re: continued Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: <38C41B4E.4658460B@videotron.ca>#1/1 A. Pag. wrote: > > The "Score" tab: > > "Alive points" is the number of points the program gets per > > instruction executed. > > ^silk, anyone? 8) > > Eh??? I was at first going to say that this is bad, because it would make > stun bombs undesirable - but then I noticed a flaw... wouldn't this score > simply amount to exactly the number of cycles a battle took? So then what's > the point? for him, the processes execute in parallelism, i think... > Overall, I think it's not going to work out half as well as ICWS'94 does. At > first glance, it looks like the best way to get a really high score is to > strive to write to as much core as possible. Considering that everyone is > trying the same, I guess there's nothing but a bomber (combined with a fast > scanner to find the enemy faster than he can find me) that makes much > sense... Anyway, look out when peeps playing that game will come here... that'll be more than a little confusing 8) > Btw, I actually was also thinking of writing a variant of Corewar - but with > single-operand instructions and one single register per task. And of course > it was going to have a different name. VERY important to choose another name 8) > - Screamer > > PS.: What happened to the ICWS anyway? it doesn't exist anymore, i think... -- Vive le Qu�bec libre... Des souverainistes!! AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: Impgate decreased score... Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: #1/1 On Sun, 5 Mar 2000, Frederick C. Strathmeyer wrote: > I had a warrior milling around on the beginner hill and then I thought, "I've > got some empty B fields! Why don't I decrement an imp gate?" So I put it in ... > but to my dismay the program actually did worse! > > > The only reason I can think for this is that it made the program more visible > to B field scanners... can anyone relate to this "problem"? > > > Thanks, > > -FCS > Well, maybe you haven't notice that using anti imp gate can be dangerous to your warrior in another way, I don't know how, but everything is possible. Maybe it's about counter, maybe about bombing itself after whole the core (? you actually wrote only about B-fields). B-field scanners may be the reason, but I suggest your checking "step-by-step", what do your warrior really do. Lukasz Adamowski From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: other cw project?? Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: #1/1 On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, pk wrote: > Have you ever been to: > sourceforge.net??? > in the "top project downloads", there is Corewars, with 1777 downloads > > the chief odevelopper,s infos are: > > Login Name: walterh > Real Name: Walter Hofmann > Email Addr: walterh at users.sourceforge.net > > where does THAT come from? anybody knows that guy?? > from the name of the warriors, he's using at most '88... > > He knows about pmars, koth, etc... but it's not redcode(well, so he > says); the idea is the same... > man, that's gonna be hard in the future: imagine, peeps talking about > their CW and us talking about ours... > the direct addie is http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=3054 > > OH MAN!!! that polish journalist wasn't talking with dewdney! he was > talking with that Hofmann guy... prepare to be confused when tens of > polish peeps will come here, talking about the all-too-powerful > "self-mover"(imp 8) because of the scoring system, and then they'll > learn about the rings/spirals 8) > Damn it, I will have a lot of work to show them the right way :) I think it cannot be much different from our cw, so it shouldn't be hard. If someone from Poland came here, give him my address, OK? www.if.pw.edu.pl/~adamow/corewar Thanx. Lukasz BTW was there a meeting yesterday (5 March I mean)? I couldn't be there and there's no new logs on KOTH... From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: continued Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: #1/1 On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, pk wrote: > it's not gonna work, i think: > take a look: > "Allow self move" allows one assembler code in the program > which moves the currently executed cell to the next cell. This > instruction is usually disabled. > this is just interesting... > > Now, the part i'm talking about: > The "Score" tab: > "Alive points" is the number of points the program gets per > instruction executed. > ^silk, anyone? 8) > "Cell points" is the number of points a program gets per cell > owned. > ^imp/silk(or silk imps) 8) > "Kill points" is the number of points a program gets when it > crashed another program. > ^Now, how tf is he gonna know?? > -- > Vive le Qu�bec libre... > Des souverainistes!! > AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at > crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... > So, who wins? 8) Lukasz From: jkw@austin.rr.com Subject: Re: continued Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: <4.1.20000306183754.009eadc0@pop-server>#1/1 > "Kill points" is the number of points a program gets when it > crashed another program. > ^Now, how tf is he gonna know?? I remember in Stefan Strack's ancient 'CorewarPro' program, it kept track of which warrior's process most recently modified a location... this is probably what he did... if the process dies at a location, whoever modified it last gets credit, whether that's valid or not, shrug. I personally find it kinda bizarre that this program is out there, and this guy's never posted anything on r.g.c that I recall. -jkw From: "A. Pag." Subject: Re: continued Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: <8a128f$6mr$1@news.netcologne.de>#1/1 > "Allow self move" allows one assembler code in the program > which moves the currently executed cell to the next cell. This > instruction is usually disabled. This sounds like a silly idea which does not actually help the game in any way other than in the guy's view... > The "Score" tab: > "Alive points" is the number of points the program gets per > instruction executed. > ^silk, anyone? 8) Eh??? I was at first going to say that this is bad, because it would make stun bombs undesirable - but then I noticed a flaw... wouldn't this score simply amount to exactly the number of cycles a battle took? So then what's the point? > "Cell points" is the number of points a program gets per cell > owned. > ^imp/silk(or silk imps) 8) How's his simulator gonna figure this out? By writes to a cell? Some sort of fast coreclear should be best then. > "Kill points" is the number of points a program gets when it > crashed another program. > ^Now, how tf is he gonna know?? Don't ask me. Maybe he thinks that a kill is when a warrior dies on a cell another warrior wrote to? Overall, I think it's not going to work out half as well as ICWS'94 does. At first glance, it looks like the best way to get a really high score is to strive to write to as much core as possible. Considering that everyone is trying the same, I guess there's nothing but a bomber (combined with a fast scanner to find the enemy faster than he can find me) that makes much sense... Btw, I actually was also thinking of writing a variant of Corewar - but with single-operand instructions and one single register per task. And of course it was going to have a different name. - Screamer PS.: What happened to the ICWS anyway? From: pk Subject: continued Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: <38C3E28D.6C80F08E@videotron.ca>#1/1 it's not gonna work, i think: take a look: "Allow self move" allows one assembler code in the program which moves the currently executed cell to the next cell. This instruction is usually disabled. this is just interesting... Now, the part i'm talking about: The "Score" tab: "Alive points" is the number of points the program gets per instruction executed. ^silk, anyone? 8) "Cell points" is the number of points a program gets per cell owned. ^imp/silk(or silk imps) 8) "Kill points" is the number of points a program gets when it crashed another program. ^Now, how tf is he gonna know?? -- Vive le Qu�bec libre... Des souverainistes!! AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: pk Subject: other cw project??? Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: <38C3E155.10675FD4@videotron.ca>#1/1 Have you ever been to: sourceforge.net??? in the "top project downloads", there is Corewars, with 1777 downloads the chief odevelopper,s infos are: Login Name: walterh Real Name: Walter Hofmann Email Addr: walterh at users.sourceforge.net where does THAT come from? anybody knows that guy?? from the name of the warriors, he's using at most '88... He knows about pmars, koth, etc... but it's not redcode(well, so he says); the idea is the same... man, that's gonna be hard in the future: imagine, peeps talking about their CW and us talking about ours... the direct addie is http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=3054 OH MAN!!! that polish journalist wasn't talking with dewdney! he was talking with that Hofmann guy... prepare to be confused when tens of polish peeps will come here, talking about the all-too-powerful "self-mover"(imp 8) because of the scoring system, and then they'll learn about the rings/spirals 8) -- Vive le Qu�bec libre... Des souverainistes!! AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: "Robert Macrae" Subject: Re: corewars and Linux Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: <8a0hi8$nqm$1@lure.pipex.net>#1/1 > No, 94 is a draft, but it's been a draft for 7 years, so it's been > accepted as a standard by everyone.. Perhaps its time for a formal Request For Comments? ;-) > > yes, I already did it, but your game is much better for "begginers", > Actually, '94 is easier bc it's more logical, as there is more > simmetrical > And, '94 is backward compatible with '88 > So, you can learn '94, and the ust restrict yourself if you want to > write for '88 corewar '94 is a cleaner and more symmetric architecture, but it is also larger than '88 -- there is more to learn before you can read a warrior. I only learned '94 after I had puzzled out '88, and some people will probably find this an easier route. Whichever you try, the best way to learn is to look at a selection of warriors and try to work out what they do. Regards, Robert Macrae From: "Blackhawke" Subject: Re: An optical allusion that will astound you, works on all spec pc's:) 3316 Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: <38c4ac3c.0@news.pacifier.com>#1/1 Never download executables off of the internet unless from a trusted source. "Travis Chapp" wrote in message news:38C21D5A.D3701371@home.com... > Ya right. heh, this is a back door virus. > > > > > > rlemxk@btinternet.com wrote: > > > > Run this file, and after 20 seconds of looking at optical visuals you will WANT to ring all your friends...damn amazing!!! > > > > www.fortunecity.com/westwood/makeover/759/optical.ex > > > > xoxnmetjetebqwkmwuwlcihrmyefsfwtckroklvlwymxjvgxtpklsnflsslkznipkylwqzgwpkmd jeel From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 03/06/00 Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: <200003060500.AAA05090@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/06/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sun Mar 5 05:46:58 EST 2000 # Name Author Score Age 1 Her Majesty P.Kline 23 46 2 QuiVa John Metcalf 21 120 3 Imps Test Simon Duff 16 1 4 fclear Brian Haskin 13 11 5 Vagrant 0.3 Simon Duff 6 19 6 Dracula's Cape Ben Ford 5 5 7 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 5 95 8 Silly Lil' Stone Simon Duff 4 15 9 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 4 27 10 FlyBall 0.1 Anonymous 2 2 11 Vicci Marc Ensenbach 0 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 03/06/00 Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: <200003060500.AAA05086@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/06/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Wed Mar 1 03:14:40 EST 2000 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 37/ 20/ 43 Freight Train David Moore 154 69 2 36/ 20/ 44 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 151 8 3 36/ 22/ 42 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 149 26 4 35/ 22/ 44 Guardian Ian Oversby 148 68 5 41/ 35/ 23 PacMan David Moore 147 98 6 42/ 38/ 19 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 146 344 7 43/ 43/ 13 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 143 394 8 41/ 40/ 19 Stasis David Moore 142 176 9 28/ 16/ 55 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 140 82 10 39/ 38/ 24 Tangle Trap David Moore 140 142 11 29/ 19/ 51 Test I Ian Oversby 139 125 12 37/ 36/ 27 Stillborn Bomber v0.2 mjp 138 9 13 30/ 22/ 47 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 138 24 14 40/ 45/ 14 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 136 65 15 40/ 46/ 14 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 135 106 16 28/ 22/ 50 Evoltmp 88 John K W 134 119 17 40/ 49/ 11 Shadow Seeker John Metcalf 131 5 18 40/ 49/ 12 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 130 63 19 31/ 34/ 35 Frog Sticker P.Kline 128 18 20 8/ 41/ 51 lemmings 4 Kirk Gorden 75 1 21 14/ 59/ 27 Scanner v3 Dengeon 69 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 03/06/00 Date: 2000/03/06 Message-ID: <200003060500.AAA05102@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/06/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *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 Mar 2 12:58:58 EST 2000 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 41/ 43/ 15 Eraser II Ken Espiritu 140 43 2 41/ 43/ 16 Zooom... John Metcalf 139 222 3 31/ 23/ 46 Uninvited John Metcalf 139 38 4 32/ 25/ 43 Omnibus John Metcalf 139 95 5 30/ 21/ 49 Jade Ben Ford 139 155 6 30/ 22/ 48 nPaper II Paul-V Khuong 138 86 7 43/ 48/ 9 Kenshin Steve Gunnell 138 41 8 32/ 27/ 41 Experimental John Metcalf 137 42 9 33/ 30/ 37 Blacken Ian Oversby 136 333 10 40/ 45/ 15 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 135 348 11 40/ 46/ 14 Stalker P.Kline 134 71 12 40/ 47/ 13 vamp/scan test b1 Ken Espiritu 134 1 13 40/ 46/ 15 vamp/scan test 7 Ken Espiritu 134 14 14 28/ 22/ 51 Jaguar Christian Schmidt 134 73 15 28/ 23/ 49 EvoP 3 Ken Espiritu 134 82 16 30/ 28/ 42 Ant Factory Christian Schmidt 133 181 17 39/ 46/ 15 Jinx Christian Schmidt 133 49 18 40/ 47/ 13 Win! David Moore 132 321 19 24/ 17/ 60 Cinammon John Metcalf 131 51 20 29/ 28/ 43 Icen Ben Ford 131 180 21 26/ 38/ 36 ttest o P.Kline 113 0 From: pk Subject: Re: pk's idea of "blitz-krieg" %) Date: 2000/03/07 Message-ID: <38C53105.47D90152@videotron.ca>#1/1 Lukasz Adamowski wrote: > > LOL! You'd better play some Quake or MK, pk, your reflex will useful > there. CoreWar is about thinking. > BTW talking on irc.koth.org is sometimes hard, so your "blitz" wouldn't > work unless good connection. MK?? M_D_K, maybe?? QUAKE?? DID I HEAR QUEAKE??? UnrealTournament r00lz d00d! 8) And chess is played in blitz... chess=thinking, right? It'd be interesting to see how players do under pressure 8) what do you mean?? the server works great for me... > And the meetings are on Sunday, not Saturday (in GMT). > Lukasz > LOL! > > On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, pk wrote: > > > jkw@koth.org wrote: > > > > > > >BTW was there a meeting yesterday (5 March I mean)? I couldn't be there > > > >and there's no new logs on KOTH... > > > > > > There wasn't a meeting specifically announced, and although I was there > > > just in case, no one else dropped by to talk for long... perhaps we should > > > have another meeting this Sun, following up on a tournament? Who wants to > > > host it? :) > > Well, a public announcement before each meeting would be good(i > > personnally don't have a good memory for dates, etc 8). > > And the meeting are on saturday, right?? bc, i think that it'd be easier > > for some of us... > > for the tournament... > > Maybe some cw blitz!!! > > Meet everynight at #corewars, select two players; each one has let's > > say, 10 minutes to finish his warrior(yippee! no QS 8)... this way, the > > making of the warrior would be interesting as well... > > You write one statement at a time(labels & metastatements don't count) > > Default to org start > > Like: > > [Timer started for player1] > > mov 0,1 > > [timer stopped for player1] > > [timer started for player2] > > spl #0, <-2 > > [timer stopped for player2] > > [timer started for player1] > > > > Lol...a mix between chess and cw. > > What happens when you run out of time?? > > you lose or the other can continue to write until he runs out of time as > > well(and your half done warrior fignts with the other one)?? > > i'd say that you lose... > > And, you can call the end of the warrior before running out of time, but > > the other can continue writing his own warrior until he calls an > > end/runs out of time... -- Vive le Qu�bec libre... Des souverainistes!! AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: re: pk's idea of "blitz-krieg" %) Date: 2000/03/07 Message-ID: #1/1 LOL! You'd better play some Quake or MK, pk, your reflex will useful there. CoreWar is about thinking. BTW talking on irc.koth.org is sometimes hard, so your "blitz" wouldn't work unless good connection. And the meetings are on Sunday, not Saturday (in GMT). Lukasz LOL! On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, pk wrote: > jkw@koth.org wrote: > > > > >BTW was there a meeting yesterday (5 March I mean)? I couldn't be there > > >and there's no new logs on KOTH... > > > > There wasn't a meeting specifically announced, and although I was there > > just in case, no one else dropped by to talk for long... perhaps we should > > have another meeting this Sun, following up on a tournament? Who wants to > > host it? :) > Well, a public announcement before each meeting would be good(i > personnally don't have a good memory for dates, etc 8). > And the meeting are on saturday, right?? bc, i think that it'd be easier > for some of us... > for the tournament... > Maybe some cw blitz!!! > Meet everynight at #corewars, select two players; each one has let's > say, 10 minutes to finish his warrior(yippee! no QS 8)... this way, the > making of the warrior would be interesting as well... > You write one statement at a time(labels & metastatements don't count) > Default to org start > Like: > [Timer started for player1] > mov 0,1 > [timer stopped for player1] > [timer started for player2] > spl #0, <-2 > [timer stopped for player2] > [timer started for player1] > > Lol...a mix between chess and cw. > What happens when you run out of time?? > you lose or the other can continue to write until he runs out of time as > well(and your half done warrior fignts with the other one)?? > i'd say that you lose... > And, you can call the end of the warrior before running out of time, but > the other can continue writing his own warrior until he calls an > end/runs out of time... > -- > Vive le Qu�bec libre... > Des souverainistes!! > AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at > crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... > From: pk Subject: Re: other cw project?? Date: 2000/03/07 Message-ID: <38C50966.ED41040A@videotron.ca>#1/1 jkw@koth.org wrote: > > >BTW was there a meeting yesterday (5 March I mean)? I couldn't be there > >and there's no new logs on KOTH... > > There wasn't a meeting specifically announced, and although I was there > just in case, no one else dropped by to talk for long... perhaps we should > have another meeting this Sun, following up on a tournament? Who wants to > host it? :) Well, a public announcement before each meeting would be good(i personnally don't have a good memory for dates, etc 8). And the meeting are on saturday, right?? bc, i think that it'd be easier for some of us... for the tournament... Maybe some cw blitz!!! Meet everynight at #corewars, select two players; each one has let's say, 10 minutes to finish his warrior(yippee! no QS 8)... this way, the making of the warrior would be interesting as well... You write one statement at a time(labels & metastatements don't count) Default to org start Like: [Timer started for player1] mov 0,1 [timer stopped for player1] [timer started for player2] spl #0, <-2 [timer stopped for player2] [timer started for player1] Lol...a mix between chess and cw. What happens when you run out of time?? you lose or the other can continue to write until he runs out of time as well(and your half done warrior fignts with the other one)?? i'd say that you lose... And, you can call the end of the warrior before running out of time, but the other can continue writing his own warrior until he calls an end/runs out of time... -- Vive le Qu�bec libre... Des souverainistes!! AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: pk Subject: Re: other cw project??? Date: 2000/03/07 Message-ID: <38C50523.A1C2BDF8@videotron.ca>#1/1 Jacek Pop�awski wrote: > > pk wrote: > >OH MAN!!! that polish journalist wasn't talking with dewdney! he was > >talking with that Hofmann guy... > > I didn't talked with anybody, I just download that "Corewars", becouse > it's one of few programming game for Linux, I know it isn't real redcode, > but it's similiar and simple for begginers Ok... not sure about THAT one(the language is far more HL in his game), but i you say so... > >prepare to be confused when tens of > >polish peeps will come here, > > I try to not include string "rec.games.corewar" in article ;-) lol... actually, i think that we'll be happy to have more players here... even if we have to convert them to cw 8) > >talking about the all-too-powerful > >"self-mover"(imp 8) because of the scoring system, > > yes, it's bad, but you can change it, and I find one bug - when program > kill himself - he get "kill points" lol... imp+dclear, anyone? > >and then they'll > >learn about the rings/spirals 8) > > as I told before - I try to write half article about _that_ "Corewars", then > write something about redcode'88 ('94 looks to big for beginners, don't you > think?) and how to use pMars Actually, '94 is far more symmetrical, so it's more logical(why is there a b-field decrement but no a-field decrement in '88??, etc) I started in '94 when i was 12(lol... 2 years ago 8) so i don't think that it's too hard for beginners.... Every beginner here started with '94(the others are pros 8).... > I think I just write about simple warriors - how to bomb, how to copy > code, how to split, what is forkbomb, etc... > articles in computer magazines are in common just _stupid_, articles > about games are always stupid, aren't you happy, that there will be > article about cw? I think starting in corewar is little hard, so my > article will not produce lamers... and many programmers can read about it, > and you will have new meat to fight with ;-) Anyway, lucky's here, right ;-) -- Vive le Qu�bec libre... Des souverainistes!! AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: pk Subject: Re: Tournament idea Date: 2000/03/07 Message-ID: <38C50671.3F8DCE35@videotron.ca>#1/1 Anton Marsden wrote: > > Why not try and determine whether the "new" corewars simulator environment is > interesting or not? It'd be interesting... if only it wasn't only for linux 8( (Would it work with cygwin??) > Set up sensible values for: > - scoring > - number of rounds > - max. process count (a process crashes when it reaches this limit) > - max. cycle count (calculate the final score after this) > - warriors per round > > As we know from CW proper, changing most of the above parameters will have a > hugh impact on a program's performance. The tournament could experiment with > various configurations. Definitely... > The environment will be interesting if: > - noone cannot produce a truly dominant program That'd be hard to prove... > - a variety of strategies can be used successfully > - there is scope for improvements > > Anyone keen to play? Got any feedback? If so, send me an email. Sure! anybody got a linux+Xwindow emulator?? 8) -- Vive le Qu�bec libre!! Des souverainistes AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: jkw@koth.org Subject: Re: other cw project?? Date: 2000/03/07 Message-ID: <4.1.20000306224941.00950c10@pop-server>#1/1 >BTW was there a meeting yesterday (5 March I mean)? I couldn't be there >and there's no new logs on KOTH... There wasn't a meeting specifically announced, and although I was there just in case, no one else dropped by to talk for long... perhaps we should have another meeting this Sun, following up on a tournament? Who wants to host it? :) From: Anton Marsden Subject: Tournament idea Date: 2000/03/07 Message-ID: <00030720084100.10295@anton.org.nz>#1/1 Why not try and determine whether the "new" corewars simulator environment is interesting or not? Set up sensible values for: - scoring - number of rounds - max. process count (a process crashes when it reaches this limit) - max. cycle count (calculate the final score after this) - warriors per round As we know from CW proper, changing most of the above parameters will have a hugh impact on a program's performance. The tournament could experiment with various configurations. The environment will be interesting if: - noone cannot produce a truly dominant program - a variety of strategies can be used successfully - there is scope for improvements Anyone keen to play? Got any feedback? If so, send me an email. Anton. From: jp@ulgo.koti.com.pl (Jacek =?iso-8859-2?Q?Pop=B3awski?=) Subject: Re: other cw project??? Date: 2000/03/07 Message-ID: #1/1 pk wrote: >OH MAN!!! that polish journalist wasn't talking with dewdney! he was >talking with that Hofmann guy... I didn't talked with anybody, I just download that "Corewars", becouse it's one of few programming game for Linux, I know it isn't real redcode, but it's similiar and simple for begginers >prepare to be confused when tens of >polish peeps will come here, I try to not include string "rec.games.corewar" in article ;-) >talking about the all-too-powerful >"self-mover"(imp 8) because of the scoring system, yes, it's bad, but you can change it, and I find one bug - when program kill himself - he get "kill points" >and then they'll >learn about the rings/spirals 8) as I told before - I try to write half article about _that_ "Corewars", then write something about redcode'88 ('94 looks to big for beginners, don't you think?) and how to use pMars I think I just write about simple warriors - how to bomb, how to copy code, how to split, what is forkbomb, etc... articles in computer magazines are in common just _stupid_, articles about games are always stupid, aren't you happy, that there will be article about cw? I think starting in corewar is little hard, so my article will not produce lamers... and many programmers can read about it, and you will have new meat to fight with ;-) From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Re: Impgate decreased score... Date: 2000/03/07 Message-ID: #1/1 On 5 Mar 2000, Frederick C. Strathmeyer wrote: > I had a warrior milling around on the beginner hill and then > I thought, "I've got some empty B fields! Why don't I > decrement an imp gate?" So I put it in ... but to my dismay > the program actually did worse! > > The only reason I can think for this is that it made the > program more visible to B field scanners... can anyone relate > to this "problem"? > I'm not sure of the make up of the -b hill, but I'd be surprised if there were many b-field scanners around. Anyway, the problem could be that when your inactive b-fields are made active (by the decrement you gate with), then your program may be more susceptible to modifications by the enemy. i.e. before the enemy modified your b-field it had no effect, but now with the gate in place some modifications could cause your warrior to mutilate itself. Is your gate continuous, btw? Partials gates probably don't help as much as they used to seeing as imps are much heavier these days. If applicable, I'd use the empty b-field to store extra data so that you can make other cells completely 0,0 (invisible to .f scans); or alternately use it to detect bombing by the enemy. Look at The Machine for example -- it uses carefully balanced indirection to detect if the scan loop is decremented or bombed. Joonas From: deanjday@my-deja.com Subject: The wars of Magic and Legend Needs Playtesters Date: 2000/03/08 Message-ID: <8a516p$392$1@nnrp1.deja.com> Hi Guys, we are currently looking for Playtesters for our new pbm "The Wars of Magic and Legend. we are currently in a closed playtest, but will be opening a new playtest soon. the playtest will be free for it's duration and anybody who wishes to put there names down to play should contact me using the information below. a full description of the game which will appear in the next issue of UK pbm magazine "flagship" follows the contact info. The company's contact details are as follows - Cutting Edge Games (UK) Ltd, 45 Eastern Avenue West, Chadwell Heath, Romford, Essex RM6 5SA. E-Mail Address - dean@jday34.freeserve.co.uk Phone Number - 0181 597 8428 Contacts - Dean Day, Mike Hall The Game itself would come under your "fantasy wargame/world game" categories. The game's interaction level will be very high due to the game's political side and the high level of diplomacy needed. although it is a game with a large amount of depth compared to most fantasy wargames, the system is structured in an easy to understand and simple mechanic which runs throughout all the games different aspects. So a newcomer should be able to quickly get to grips with the system, while veteran players will be pleased by the sheer range and scope of decision making that has to be thought about each turn. the game is fully e-mail compatible with both turnsheets and maps able to be sent over the net or they can just as easily be sent by normal mail the choice is up to the player. Introduction to the Game The wars of magic and legend is a fantasy political wargame set in the world of Solem at the time of the cataclysm of the rift, the game starts in the year of growth as the nations and kingdoms of Solem start to recover and reassert themselves on the world at large. Each player takes on the role of the ruler of an empire in the world of Solem whose ultimate aim is to get themselves elected Holy Emperor of Solem through fair means or foul.As stated above to win your aim must be to get your nations leader elected Holy Emperor, but the ways you may achieve this goal are many and diverse as the scope of the game is varied and deep. You may prefer the option of war with battles at both land and sea, and mighty sieges. Alternatively, perhaps your forte is diplomacy and politics; maybe through subtlety and guile you may be able to manoeuvre your nation into a winning position. You will certainly have to consider the economy of your kingdom and select your trading partners carefully as trade and economics will surely be the base of any bid to become emperor. Will your agents and assassins spies and saboteurs become the stuff of legend?Through espionage your reach will become long and your influence increased, it can never be discounted. Will religion rear its ugly head and become crucial to your plans, the gods themselves are waiting to find out! Will you put your hopes on the fickle forces of magic and artefacts of legendary power and importance, magical power swirls around the world of Solem as strongly as the winds themselves. Finally will a legendary figure emerge from the toiling masses of your empire to lead you to victory only time will tell, but remember the options are yours and yours alone. The nations in wars of magic and legend are all unique with very different strengths and weaknesses. We don't pretend that the nations are finely balanced in all areas although all nations are able to achieve victory albeit in different ways it's up to the player to play to his position's strengths and minimise his weaknesses. We cannot to strongly recommend that you contact and talk to your fellow players in the game. How else will you arrange alliances? Secure trade deals, find out information, plot against other players or a host of other activities, we again state a lack of contact in the wars of magic and legend may minimise your chances. Each game has twenty three empires competing for victory from the Dwarves of the Khuz-Dur Union to the mighty nation of the Corinia Empire. Each empire depends on it's own mighty characters to run and expand the empire from Admiral's and General's, Diplomat's and Governor's, Mage's and Priest's and Agents. The Game's political system is both subtle and challenging a nation's characters can attempt to get themselves elected into many powerful and varied posts in the Senate of Solem from the Sword Council, The Merchant High Lords to the Colours of Mana. each councils powers and responsibilities are unique and many more options open up to the player who is lucky enough to find themselves elected. The matter of going to war is a difficult one, as the empire will have to state it's "war aims" and with a proper system of surrender and politics between nations no one is ever "out for the count" An empire's economy is always a vital consideration to any successful ruler with a varied tax system, province loyalty, cities, towns and villages, income from trade and the church, the increasing problem of the thieves guilds, the many different types of commodity your populace will demand and the chance of rebellion and civil war if you don't provide them. Merchant fleets, trade deals, economic aid, merchant houses and trading cities are other aspects of the economic system rulers must master in order to succeed. Movement both by land and sea is both tactical and realistic. players will be able to pore over their own (and others) with full colour maps or download our viewer and we will send maps of the whole of Solem. Movement is based on a point to point system tacking into account terrain, weather, attrition, roads, forced, emergency and stealth marching. One of our game's most popular features is the land, naval and siege battle systems which allow both players to construct a full battle plan taking into account the generals skill, troop types, available battle tactics, battle magic, experience, morale and many other factors. this is no mathematical system where the player has no effect on the outcome. instead the player will win or lose depending on his own actions and that of his opponent. then we have the effect of each empire's agents, mages and priests. from scouting orders to sabotage, information gathering and the ever popular but very dangerous assassination attempt each nations agents can have a real and powerful effect on the game's outcome. the High Magic of Solem is very powerful with each nation having its own distinct list of spells it can use and with many other options for magical characters from mana, ley lines, artefacts and holy relics, celestial events, magical pacts, sacrificial magic, spell failure and many more. we would like anybody to contact us either by phone, e-mail or post who would be interested in either entering our new open playtest or for putting their names down for our first game. -- Dean J Day Cutting Edge Games (UK) Ltd. Address - 45 Eastern Avenue West, Chadwell Heath, Romford Essex RM6 5SA E-Mail Address - Dean@jday34.freeserve.co.uk Telephone No. - 0181 597 8428 Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: pk's idea of "blitz-krieg" %) Date: 2000/03/09 Message-ID: #1/1 MK means Mortal Kombat, pk, and I know chess is played in blitz. I did even play it in 3 minutes for a party. It's nothing but a lot of fun. Most of people have learnt by heart most popular openings and they rather don't think much. The same will be in cw, I believe. HEY, GUYS, don't you think pk's e-mailing looks like mail-bombing? I suggest your having a rest, pk, because you're staying too much of time in front of your computer. (P-) Lukasz From: pk Subject: Re: pk's idea of "blitz-krieg" %) Date: 2000/03/09 Message-ID: <38C64D4E.88B9B72@videotron.ca>#1/1 Lukasz Adamowski wrote: > > MK means Mortal Kombat, pk, and I know chess is played in blitz. I did > even play it in 3 minutes for a party. It's nothing but a lot of > fun. Most of people have learnt by heart most popular openings and they > rather don't think much. The same will be in cw, I believe. > HEY, GUYS, don't you think pk's e-mailing looks like mail-bombing? I > suggest your having a rest, pk, because you're staying too much of time > in front of your computer. (P-) MK's one of Man's biggest errors 8) well, anyway, i don't think much more in the first 2-3 turns, than in blitz, usually... To apply this to cw... who here doesn't that 3510 is usually the best mod-10 number in CORESIZE==8000??? And that 3044 is the same for mod-4 and 2365 for mod 5?? Heck, they won't be sitting face to face so it'll be like playing chess with an opening book in hand 8): they'll have access to all the resources they usually have... I mean, someone might just start his warrior with a stone, while the true warrior would be an f scanner... BTW, i've beat you for speed: the guy had to go at some band practice;-) -- Vive le Qu�bec libre!! Des souverainistes AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: pk Subject: Re: pk's idea of "blitz-krieg" %) Date: 2000/03/10 Message-ID: <38C9006F.A646E5F2@videotron.ca>#1/1 Ok, so i suppose that it's a BAD idea 8) forget the entire thread, plz 8) Ransom Smith wrote: > > I think I have a couple reasons why that would be implausible for me: > > 1. I don't usually write code from first line to last line. I have to > understand my purpose as a whole before I write any lines, and then I fill > in the opcodes, then the modifiers, then the fields. I program left to > right, not top to bottom. > > 2. What's the point of taking turns? Just bring a corewarrior prewritten. If > it's nowhere in sight, no one can say you're not a lightning-programmer. In > chess, the point is so that you can see and react to the other guy's > strategy. But in corewar, one line doesn't necessarily indicate their > strategy. About the only line I can think of that does is "SPL 1, 0", which > is used exclusively (afaik) in silks. In corewar, you can't just insert a > one-line "countermove" to neutralize what the other person is planning. You > have to modify the whole warrior to make it fit. If you see a mov #0, 2667, you know you should add a gate 8) > 3. There's another point. I'm not willing to commit to my first lines if I > haven't decided on my last lines. How could I modify them, as the game > progresses? I guess this goes back to the first point. I don't know... but whem i play RTS(real time strategy), i have a strategy (for example, reaver drop in Starcraft)... OK, so i know what i want to do... but if i see that my opponent is going too fast for this, or that he's entirely open to an air attack, i'll change my strategy... > 4. I know I have some other good reasons, but it's early in the morning > here. Maybe I'll find them later. -- Vive le Qu�bec libre... Des souverainistes!! AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: "Ransom Smith" Subject: Re: pk's idea of "blitz-krieg" %) Date: 2000/03/10 Message-ID: #1/1 I think I have a couple reasons why that would be implausible for me: 1. I don't usually write code from first line to last line. I have to understand my purpose as a whole before I write any lines, and then I fill in the opcodes, then the modifiers, then the fields. I program left to right, not top to bottom. 2. What's the point of taking turns? Just bring a corewarrior prewritten. If it's nowhere in sight, no one can say you're not a lightning-programmer. In chess, the point is so that you can see and react to the other guy's strategy. But in corewar, one line doesn't necessarily indicate their strategy. About the only line I can think of that does is "SPL 1, 0", which is used exclusively (afaik) in silks. In corewar, you can't just insert a one-line "countermove" to neutralize what the other person is planning. You have to modify the whole warrior to make it fit. 3. There's another point. I'm not willing to commit to my first lines if I haven't decided on my last lines. How could I modify them, as the game progresses? I guess this goes back to the first point. 4. I know I have some other good reasons, but it's early in the morning here. Maybe I'll find them later. From: s27smith@aol.com (S27smith) Subject: Remember the more news groups you post in the more money you will make! Date: 2000/03/12 Message-ID: <20000311200856.17334.00002742@ng-xe1.aol.com> Make Easy Money! Earn Over $10000 in weeks! Just follow these simple instructions! LOTS OF CASH, FAST - THIS IS A MAILING LIST PROGRAM -AND COMPLETELY LEGAL, THIS REALLY WORKS!! THIS REALLY CAN MAKE YOU EASY MONEY!!IT WORKS!!BUT YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW THIS LETTER FOR IT TO WORK!!!! A little while back, I was browsing through news groups, just like you are now,and came across an article similar to this that said you could make thousands of dollars within weeks with only an initial investment of 6.00!So I thought,"Yeah ,right,this must be a scam", but like most of us, I was curious, so I kept reading. Anyway,it said that you send $1.00to each of the 6 names and address stated in the article. You then place your own name and address in the bottom of the list at #6, and post the article in at least 200 news groups.(There are thousands) No catch,that was it.So after thinking it over, and talking to a few people first,I thought about trying it. I figured what have I got to loose except 6 stamps and $6.00, right?Like most of us I was a little skeptical and worried about the legal aspects of it all.So I checked it out with the U.S. Post Office (1-800-725-2161) and they confirmed it was indeed legal! Then I invested the measly $6.00. Well GUESS WHAT!!...within 7 days,I started getting money in the mail ! I was shocked! I figured it would end soon,but the money just kept coming in. In my first, week I made about $25.00. By the end of the second week I had made a total of over $1,000.00! In the third week I had over $10,000.00 and it's still growing.This is now my fourth week and I have made a total of just over $42,000.00 and it is still coming in rapidly.It's certainly worth $6.00 and 6 stamps.Let me tell you how this works and most importantly, why it works...also make sure you print a copy of this article NOW,so you can get information off of it as you need it. Believe me, it does work!! STEP 1: Get 6 separate pieces of paper and write the following on each piece of paper"PLEASE PUT ME ON YOUR MAILING LIST".Now get 6 US $1.00 bills and place ONE inside each pieces of paper so the bill will not be seen through the envelope to prevent thievery. Next, place one paper in each of the 6 envelopes and seal them.Now,you should have 6 sealed envelopes,each with a piece of paper stating the above phrase,your name and address,and a $1.00 bill. What you are doing is creating a service by this. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY LEGAL! Mail the 6 envelopes to the following addresses: #1) Melissa 6514 Wison Mills Rd Mayfield Village, Ohio 44143 #2) Chelsea 8331 E. Buena Terra Way Scottsdale, Az 85250 #3) Alan W 25 Gillman St. Irvine, Ca 92612 #4) Josh Parks 117 Athena Lane Lexington, SC 29072 #5) John Meissner 2504 SE Faxon Ct. Topeka, Ks 66605 #6) Steff Smith 53 Island Street South Dennis, MA. 02660 (Be sure to use the correct postage when mailing to the the states or out of the states) STEP 2 : Now take the #1 name off the list that you see above,move the other names up (6 becomes five ,5 becomes 4 etc...) and add YOUR name as number 6 on the list. STEP 3 : Change anything you need to, but try to keep this article as close to original as possible.Now, post your amended article to at least 200 news groups. (I think there are close to 24,000 groups.) All you need is 200, but remember , the more you post the more money you make!---DIRECTIONS---HOW TO POST TO NEWS GROUPS--- STEP 1) You don't need to re-type this entire letter to do your own posting. Simply put your cursor at the beginning of this letter and drag your cursor to the bottom of this document,and select 'copy' from the edit menu. This will copy the entire letter into the computers memory. STEP 2) Open a blank "notepad" file under accessories in windows and place your cursor at the top of the blank page.From the 'edit' menu select 'paste'.This will paste a copy of the letter into notepad so that you can add your name to the list. STEP 3) Save your new notepad file as a .txt file.If you want to do your in different sittings, you will always have this file to go back to. STEP 5) Visit message boards and post this article as a new message by highlighting the text of this letter and selecting paste from the edit menu. Fill in the Subject,this will be the header everyone sees as then scroll through the list of postings in a particular group!**REMEMBER,THE MORE NEWSGROUPS YOU POST IN,THE MORE MONEY YOU WILL MAKE!! BUT YOU HAVE TO POST A MINIMUM OF 200** That's it ! You will begin receiving money from around the world within days. You may eventually want to rent a P.O. Box due to the large amount of mail you will receive.If you wish to stay anonymous,you can invent a name to use, as long as the postman will deliver it. **JUST MAKE SURE ALL THE ADDRESSES ARE CORRECT.** Now the WHY part: Out of the 200 postings say I only receive 5 replies (a very low example). So then I made $5.00 with my name at #6 Now,each of the 5 persons who just sent me $1.00 make the MINIMUM 200 postings,each with my name at #5 and only 5 persons to each of the original 5, that is another $25.00 for me,now those 25 each make 200 MINIMUM posts with my name at #4 and only 5 replies each,I will bring in an additional $125.00! Now, those125 persons turn around and post the MINIMUM 200 with my name as #3 and I only receive 5 replies each,I will make an additional $625.00! OK,now here is the fun part,each one of those 625 persons post a MINIMUM of 200 letters with my name at #2 and they only receive 5 replies,that just made me $3,125.00!!! Those 3,125 persons will deliver this message to 200 news groups with my name at #1 and if still 5 persons per 200 news groups react I will receive $15,625.00! With the original investment of only $6.00! AMAZING! When your name is no longer on the list, you just take the latest posting in the news groups and send out another $6.00 to names on the list, putting your name at number 6 again. And start posting again.The thing to remember is, do you realize that thousands of people all over the world are joining the internet and reading these articles, everday,JUST LIKE YOU ARE NOW!! So can you afford $6.00 and see if it really works?? I think so ... People have said,"What if the plan is played out and no one sends you the money? So what! What are the chances of that happening when there are tons of new honest users and new honest users who are joining the internet and newsgroups every day and are willing to give it a try? Estimates are at 20,000 to 50,000 new users,every day ,with thousands of those joining the actual internet. Remember,play FAIRLY and HONESTLY and this will work Good Luck! From: jkw@koth.org Subject: Re: Answer to my question Date: 2000/03/14 Message-ID: <4.1.20000314184528.009f9750@pop-server>#1/1 At 07:53 AM 3/14/00 -0500, you wrote: >Apparently not... > >Anyone know how to make this work? (apart from brute force counting lines... >which i'm not opposed to, simply wondering if there were a better way...) Heh, it should work just fine, except for the fact that "end" is a compiler directive to specify the end of the program, as in: ;name bla ;author dumb starting: mov -1, <-1 jmp -1 end starting So try renaming your label... -jkw From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: Answer to my question Date: 2000/03/14 Message-ID: #1/1 I think something like that is possile: begin EQU start start MOV ... ; code finish JMP ... ; the last instruction of a warrior Now you can use (begin-finish) expression (or I'm wrong, so, please, shoot me ;) Lukasz From: Frederick.C.Strathmeyer@Dartmouth.EDU (Frederick C. Strathmeyer) Subject: Answer to my question Date: 2000/03/14 Message-ID: <28745888@dasher.Dartmouth.EDU>#1/1 Apparently not... Anyone know how to make this work? (apart from brute force counting lines... which i'm not opposed to, simply wondering if there were a better way...) --- Forwarded Message from pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu --- >From: pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu >Subject: '94b Hill Submission >Date: Sun, 12 Mar 100 22:09:23 -0800 (PST) Sorry, your corewar program did not compile successfully. Below is a brief description of why and where the program failed to compile. Error in line 21: 'for (ptr1-end)' Improper placement of 'end' Error in line 21: 'for (ptr1-end)' Bad expression or division by zero Error in line 23: 'rof ' Unopened FOR Number of errors: 3 From: Frederick.C.Strathmeyer@Dartmouth.EDU (Frederick C. Strathmeyer) Subject: Labels in starting a for loop? Date: 2000/03/14 Message-ID: <28745760@dasher.Dartmouth.EDU>#1/1 Can you use labels when telling a for loop how many times to repeat? for example: for (start-end) MOV {boot, Subject: Re: Labels in starting a for loop? Date: 2000/03/15 Message-ID: <38D03F97.C4D6EE9B@videotron.ca>#1/1 Frederick C. Strathmeyer wrote: > > Can you use labels when telling a for loop how many times to repeat? > > for example: > > for (start-end) > MOV {boot, rof > > ? Have you equed the labels?? You can use CURLINE though... it often helps when used with MAXLENGTH (chould pretty self explanatory, but you can look @ the docs) BTW, the case is important -- Vive le Qu�bec libre!! Des souverainistes AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: Frederick.C.Strathmeyer@Dartmouth.EDU (Frederick C. Strathmeyer) Subject: Re: Labels in starting a for loop? Date: 2000/03/15 Message-ID: <28845738@dasher.Dartmouth.EDU>#1/1 more data... for (tail-start) MOV {boot, Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 03/13/00 Date: 2000/03/15 Message-ID: <200003130500.AAA07649@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/13/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *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 : Thu Mar 9 15:24:27 EST 2000 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 54/ 32/ 15 Black Moods Ian Oversby 176 7 2 47/ 29/ 23 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 165 11 3 39/ 16/ 45 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 162 33 4 32/ 6/ 62 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 158 80 5 29/ 3/ 68 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 156 28 6 33/ 20/ 47 Rosebud Beppe 146 59 7 38/ 37/ 24 Dr. Gate X Franz 140 51 8 36/ 33/ 31 Draken Fire X Ben Ford 139 2 9 36/ 37/ 27 BigBoy Robert Macrae 135 105 10 25/ 16/ 58 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 135 22 11 37/ 40/ 24 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 134 66 12 31/ 30/ 39 Self-Modifying Code X Ben Ford 133 1 13 38/ 42/ 20 Tsunami v0.3 X Ian Oversby 133 5 14 26/ 19/ 55 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 132 32 15 40/ 49/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 131 81 16 37/ 44/ 19 Pagan John K W 130 65 17 32/ 36/ 32 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 128 71 18 37/ 46/ 18 Memories Beppe Bezzi 127 87 19 37/ 49/ 15 WingShot Ben Ford 124 3 20 36/ 49/ 15 BiShot Christian Schmidt 122 19 21 11/ 86/ 3 Oldenb Jilles 35 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 03/13/00 Date: 2000/03/15 Message-ID: <200003130500.AAA07638@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/13/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *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 Mar 12 20:54:45 EST 2000 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 20/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 155 71 2 37/ 22/ 41 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 153 28 3 36/ 20/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 152 10 4 35/ 22/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 149 70 5 40/ 35/ 25 PacMan David Moore 144 100 6 30/ 16/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 144 84 7 32/ 22/ 46 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 141 26 8 30/ 19/ 51 Test I Ian Oversby 140 127 9 39/ 41/ 20 Stasis David Moore 137 178 10 39/ 41/ 20 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 137 346 11 41/ 45/ 14 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 136 396 12 29/ 22/ 49 Evoltmp 88 John K W 136 121 13 36/ 35/ 29 Stillborn Bomber v0.2 mjp 136 11 14 36/ 38/ 25 Tangle Trap David Moore 135 144 15 39/ 46/ 15 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 132 67 16 39/ 47/ 14 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 131 108 17 32/ 36/ 32 Frog Sticker P.Kline 129 20 18 38/ 51/ 12 Shadow Seeker John Metcalf 125 7 19 38/ 50/ 12 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 125 65 20 29/ 42/ 29 Twill Andy Pierce 115 1 21 7/ 48/ 44 Another testing 1 Lukasz Adamowski 66 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 03/13/00 Date: 2000/03/15 Message-ID: <200003130500.AAA07644@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/13/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *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 Mar 9 13:56:51 EST 2000 # Name Author Score Age 1 Her Majesty P.Kline 26 48 2 fclear Brian Haskin 10 13 3 QuiVa John Metcalf 9 122 4 Imps Test Simon Duff 7 3 5 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 5 29 6 vamp/scan test b1 Ken Espiritu 5 2 7 Silly Lil' Stone Simon Duff 3 17 8 Dracula's Cape Ben Ford 2 7 9 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 2 97 10 Friction Ken Espiritu 2 1 11 Vagrant 0.3 Simon Duff 0 21 From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: Labels in starting a for loop? Date: 2000/03/16 Message-ID: #1/1 On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Planar wrote: > >From: Frederick.C.Strathmeyer@Dartmouth.EDU (Frederick C. Strathmeyer) > > >for (tail-start) > > MOV {boot, >rof > > > >doesn't work... > [...] > >(note: in all these examples, the labels start and tail come after > >the for/rof loop) > > It's never going to work because the values of the labels depend on > the number of iterations of the for loop, which depends on the values > of the labels. > > The usual way to solve this problem is to use iterative fixpoint > computation, but that would be a lot of code to write just for a minor > feature of pMars. > > -- > Planar > I agree :) I think you have to know how long your warrior is or count it using some EQUs. BTW I was on irc.koth.org last Sunday, I've met Joonas, but I was disconnected twice. After second time I couldn't reconnect, so I gave up. In our short talk we considered bombing with mov 0, 1 with gate. I even sent something like this: start mov bomb, <-3 sub #STEP, -4 jmp -2, <-5 bomb mov 0, 1 end to koth (Another testing:) Anyone knows what STEP will be the best for 8000 CORESIZE? Lukasz From: Planar Subject: Re: Labels in starting a for loop? Date: 2000/03/16 Message-ID: <8aqi3c$doa$1@ites.inria.fr>#1/1 >From: Frederick.C.Strathmeyer@Dartmouth.EDU (Frederick C. Strathmeyer) >for (tail-start) > MOV {boot, rof > >doesn't work... [...] >(note: in all these examples, the labels start and tail come after >the for/rof loop) It's never going to work because the values of the labels depend on the number of iterations of the for loop, which depends on the values of the labels. The usual way to solve this problem is to use iterative fixpoint computation, but that would be a lot of code to write just for a minor feature of pMars. -- Planar From: David Matthew Moore Subject: Re: Labels in starting a for loop? Date: 2000/03/17 Message-ID: <8aucvi$312l$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu>#1/1 Planar wrote: : ] From: Lukasz Adamowski : ] we considered bombing with mov 0, 1 with gate... : That's a pretty old strategy. As far as I know, the earliest : published warrior to use it is SLUICEGATE by Jon Blow (1991). Nope. That combo was used in the first tournament ('87). Read about COMMANDO in the Scientific Amercian article which begins at: http://www.koth.org/info/sciam/SciAm3a.jpg -- David Moore mooredav@cse.msu.edu From: Planar Subject: Re: Labels in starting a for loop? Date: 2000/03/17 Message-ID: <8au8o2$chc$1@ites.inria.fr>#1/1 ] From: Lukasz Adamowski ] BTW I was on irc.koth.org last Sunday, I've met Joonas, but I was ] disconnected twice. After second time I couldn't reconnect, so I gave up. ] In our short talk we considered bombing with mov 0, 1 with gate. I even ] sent something like this: ] ] start mov bomb, <-3 ] sub #STEP, -4 ] jmp -2, <-5 ] bomb mov 0, 1 ] end That's a pretty old strategy. As far as I know, the earliest published warrior to use it is SLUICEGATE by Jon Blow (1991). -- Planar From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 2000/03/17 Message-ID: Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-Modified: September 4, 1999 Version: 4.2 URL: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/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 posted every two weeks. The latest hypertext version is available at http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html and the latest plain text version is available at http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.txt. This document is currently being maintained by Anton Marsden (anton@paradise.net.nz). Last modified: Sat Sep 4 00:22:22 NZST 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 * Changed primary location of FAQ (again!) * Changed Philip Kendall's home page address. * Updated list server information * Changed primary location of FAQ * 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Table of Contents 1. What is Core War 2. Is it "Core War" or "Core Wars"? 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? 4. Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? 5. What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? 6. What is the ICWS? 7. What is 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 virtual computer called MARS (for Memory Array Redcode Simulator). The object of the game is to cause all processes of the opposing program to terminate, leaving your program in sole posession of the machine. There are Core War systems available for most computer platforms. Redcode has been 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. 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 = (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 is 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 the 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. 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 �0-7167-1939-8 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 �0-7167-2144-9 .D5173 1990 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 and 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'94 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 only 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 94 Warrior, Core Warrior is a newsletter about strategies and current standings 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.kendalls.demon.co.uk/pak21/corewar/warrior.html 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.answers (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 (koth.org 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 body 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 Koth.Org list processor. To join, send the message SUB COREWAR-L FirstName LastName to listproc@koth.org. You can send mail to corewar-l@koth.org to post even if you are not a member of the list. Responsible for the listserver is Scott J. Ellentuch (ttsg@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 koth.org. [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 points than a warrior that survives together with other warriors. Points are calculated from the formula (W*W-1)/S, where W is the total number of warriors and S the number of surviving warriors. The pMARS documentation has more information on multi-warrior scoring. The idea for an email-based Core War server came from David Lee. The original KotH was developed and run by William Shubert at Intel starting in 1991, and discontinued after almost three years of service. Currently, KotHs based on Bill's UNIX scripts but offering a wider variety of hills are are running at two sites: koth@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 overlapping services, i.e. the some of the hill types were offered by both "pizza" and "stormking". To conserve resources, the different hill types are now divided up among the sites. The way you submit warriors to both KotHs is pretty much the same. Therefore, the entry rules described below apply to both "pizza" and "stormking" unless otherwise noted. Entry Rules for King of the Hill Corewar * Write a corewar program. KotH is fully ICWS '88 compatible, EXCEPT that 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 Instr. Size Size Processes Distance Fought Set Tie Length Pizza's ICWS '94 Draft Hill Extended (Accessed with 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 ";redcode-94") Draft Pizza's Beginner's Extended Hill (Accessed 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 with ";redcode-b") Draft Pizza's Experimental Extended (Small) Hill 25 800 800 8000 20 20 200 ICWS '94 (Accessed with Draft ";redcode-x") Pizza's Limited Process (LP) Hill Extended (Accessed with 25 8000 8 80000 200 200 200 ICWS '94 ";redcode-lp") Draft Stormking's ICWS '88 Standard Hill (Accessed with 20 8000 8000 80000 100 100 250 ICWS '88 ";redcode") Stormking's ICWS '94 No Pspace Hill (Accessed with 20 8000 8000 80000 100 100 250 ICWS '94 ";redcode-94nop") Stormking's ICWS '94 Experimental Extended (Big) Hill 20 55440 55440 500000 200 200 250 ICWS '94 (Accessed with Draft ";redcode-94x") Stormking's ICWS '94 Multi-Warrior Extended Hill (Accessed 10 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 with Draft ";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 assembled 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 Core 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 or 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, for 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 than 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 memory size. Off-axis scanners use some other separation. Optimal Constants (also optima-type constants) Bomb or scan increments chosen to cover core most effectively, i.e. leaving gaps of uniform size. Programs to calculate optimal constants and lists of optimal numbers are available at www.koth.org. Paper A Paper-like program is one which replicates itself many times. Part of 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 pointer rof jmn attack, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 8 cmp start+100*(s2+6), start+100*(s2+6)+4000 mov #start+100*(s2+6)-found, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing attack cmp @found, start-1 ;does found points to empty space? add #4000, found ;no, so point to correct location mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 In ICWS'94, the quick scan code is more compact because of the SNE opcode: start ;'94 scan s1 for 4 sne start+400*s1, start+400*s1+100 ;check two locations seq start+400*s1+200, start+400*s1+300 ;check two locations mov #start+400*s1-found, found ;they differ so set pointer rof jmn which, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 4 sne start+400*(s2+4), start+400*(s2+4)+100 seq start+400*(s2+4)+200, start+400*(s2+4)+300 mov #start+400*(s2+4)-found-100, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing add #100, -1 ;increment pointer till we get the which jmn -1, @found ;right place mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 Reflection Copy of a program or program part, positioned to make the active program invisible to a CMP-scanner. Replicator Generic for Paper. A program which makes many copies of itself, each copy also making copies. Self-Splitting Strategy of amplifying the number of processes executing a piece of code. example spl 0 loop add #10, example mov example, @example jmp loop Scanner A program which searches through core for an opponent rather than bombing blindly. Scissors A program designed to beat replicators, usually a (B-field scanning) vampire. Part of the Paper-Scissors-Stone analogy. Self-Repair Ability of a program to fix it's own code after attack. Silk A replicator which splits off a process to each new copy before actually copying the code. This allows it to replicate extremely quickly. This technique is only possible under the '94 draft, because it requires post-increment indirect addressing. Example: spl 1 mov -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 copy 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. 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) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright � 1999 Anton Marsden. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Paul Kline Subject: Re: Labels in starting a for loop? Date: 2000/03/17 Message-ID: <8atk0i$kjo@ng1.icn.state.ia.us>#1/1 > > start mov bomb, <-3 > sub #STEP, -4 > jmp -2, <-5 > bomb mov 0, 1 > end > > to koth (Another testing:) Anyone knows what STEP will be the best for > 8000 CORESIZE? > Lukasz > >This seems like some kind of puzzle 8) >The obvious answer would 3044(optima Mod 4 for coresize==8000) The optima numbers do a sort of binary search of core, looking for really big stuff, then smaller stuff, then even smaller stuff, then really tiny stuff, etc. Unfortunately there _is_ no really big stuff, meaning programs over 100 in length, so they are not really optimal in a practical sense. They are still very good, just not the best. We have 8000 numbers to play with and they all have interesting features. For example what is the best number to find an opponent of lenth 10? Turns out that any multiple of 10 which is not a factor of 8000 will do. 10, 30, 70, whatever. What if your opponent is length 13? Well, 13 would be a good choice - except that if your opponent is scanning in the reverse direction using a step of 14 you will lose every time :-) Other steps that scan every block of 13 locations (NOT every 13th location) in the shortest time are 407, 1141, and 2671. 2671 has the interesting feature that it will sneak up on a 2667-imp in the longest time, so it is useful against stone-imp programs where killing the stone early is much more important than finding the imp. Mod-4 numbers that scan every block of 13 locations in the shortest time are: 268, 1028, 2172, 2396, 2404, and 2932. Of course all mod-4 numbers that are not factors of 8000 will scan every 4th location in the same time. 12 is a good number if a little over-used (making -13 a good choice for an opponent :-) The file num8000.zip at "ftp://www.KOTH.org/pub/corewar/documents/" contains a tab-delimited text spreadsheet that gives interesting values for all the numbers. The "find" columns at the right give relative search times for blocks of various lengths. Paul Kline pk6811s@acad.drake.edu I see J. Metcalf has an interesting "new" program. Apparently it has an Achille's heel and he is cautious not to leave it on the Hill long enough for us to find out what it is :-) From: pk Subject: Re: Labels in starting a for loop? Date: 2000/03/17 Message-ID: <38D18CA6.9268B3B3@videotron.ca>#1/1 Lukasz Adamowski wrote: > > On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Planar wrote: > I agree :) > I think you have to know how long your warrior is or count it using some > EQUs. > BTW I was on irc.koth.org last Sunday, I've met Joonas, but I was > disconnected twice. After second time I couldn't reconnect, so I gave up. > In our short talk we considered bombing with mov 0, 1 with gate. I even > sent something like this: > > start mov bomb, <-3 > sub #STEP, -4 > jmp -2, <-5 > bomb mov 0, 1 > end > > to koth (Another testing:) Anyone knows what STEP will be the best for > 8000 CORESIZE? > Lukasz This seems like some kind of puzzle 8) The obvious answer would 3044(optima Mod 4 for coresize==8000) But you could actually have it use 2 steps one after the other by modifying the bomb: mov bomb, >-5 a: add.ab x, -6 jmp -2, >-7 bomb mov.i #STEP2, 1 where x is somewhere that gets bombed(btw,on the 94nop hill, a > gate is better now that most a imps are getting a beating ;^) just a thought... -- Vive le Qu�bec libre... Des souverainistes!! AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 03/20/00 Date: 2000/03/20 Message-ID: <200003200500.AAA08967@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/20/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *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 Mar 16 20:40:49 EST 2000 # Name Author Score Age 1 fclear Brian Haskin 17 15 2 SmallFry Simon Duff 16 1 3 Her Majesty P.Kline 15 50 4 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 13 31 5 QuiVa John Metcalf 10 124 6 vamp/scan test b1 Ken Espiritu 9 4 7 Friction Ken Espiritu 6 3 8 Dracula's Cape Ben Ford 5 9 9 Imps Test Simon Duff 5 5 10 Mini-Vagrant Simon Duff 2 2 11 BiShot v1.0 Christian Schmidt 1 99 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 03/20/00 Date: 2000/03/20 Message-ID: <200003200500.AAA08963@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/20/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Mon Mar 13 08:26:51 EST 2000 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 20/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 155 71 2 37/ 22/ 41 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 153 28 3 36/ 20/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 152 10 4 36/ 22/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 149 70 5 40/ 35/ 25 PacMan David Moore 144 100 6 30/ 16/ 53 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 144 84 7 31/ 22/ 46 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 140 26 8 30/ 19/ 51 Test I Ian Oversby 140 127 9 39/ 41/ 21 Stasis David Moore 136 178 10 29/ 22/ 50 Evoltmp 88 John K W 135 121 11 35/ 35/ 30 Stillborn Bomber v0.2 mjp 135 11 12 38/ 41/ 21 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 135 346 13 37/ 38/ 25 Tangle Trap David Moore 135 144 14 40/ 46/ 15 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 134 396 15 38/ 47/ 15 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 130 67 16 38/ 47/ 15 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 129 108 17 32/ 36/ 32 Frog Sticker P.Kline 128 20 18 37/ 50/ 13 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 123 65 19 37/ 51/ 12 Shadow Seeker John Metcalf 122 7 20 29/ 43/ 28 Twill Andy Pierce 115 1 21 10/ 42/ 48 Another testing 2 Lukasz Adamowski 78 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 03/20/00 Date: 2000/03/20 Message-ID: <200003200500.AAA08971@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/20/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *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 : Thu Mar 9 15:24:27 EST 2000 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 54/ 32/ 15 Black Moods Ian Oversby 176 7 2 47/ 29/ 23 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 165 11 3 39/ 16/ 45 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 162 33 4 32/ 6/ 62 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 158 80 5 29/ 3/ 68 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 156 28 6 33/ 20/ 47 Rosebud Beppe 146 59 7 38/ 37/ 24 Dr. Gate X Franz 140 51 8 36/ 33/ 31 Draken Fire X Ben Ford 139 2 9 36/ 37/ 27 BigBoy Robert Macrae 135 105 10 25/ 16/ 58 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 135 22 11 37/ 40/ 24 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 134 66 12 31/ 30/ 39 Self-Modifying Code X Ben Ford 133 1 13 38/ 42/ 20 Tsunami v0.3 X Ian Oversby 133 5 14 26/ 19/ 55 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 132 32 15 40/ 49/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 131 81 16 37/ 44/ 19 Pagan John K W 130 65 17 32/ 36/ 32 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 128 71 18 37/ 46/ 18 Memories Beppe Bezzi 127 87 19 37/ 49/ 15 WingShot Ben Ford 124 3 20 36/ 49/ 15 BiShot Christian Schmidt 122 19 21 11/ 86/ 3 Oldenb Jilles 35 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 03/20/00 Date: 2000/03/20 Message-ID: <200003200500.AAA08975@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/20/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *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 Mar 19 18:20:12 EST 2000 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 37/ 20/ 43 test 7b mjp 155 1 2 45/ 42/ 13 Stalker P.Kline 148 113 3 36/ 24/ 40 Omnibus John Metcalf 147 137 4 44/ 42/ 14 Eraser II Ken Espiritu 146 85 5 33/ 21/ 46 Uninvited John Metcalf 145 80 6 33/ 21/ 47 Jade Ben Ford 144 197 7 43/ 43/ 14 Zooom... John Metcalf 143 264 8 36/ 29/ 34 Blacken Ian Oversby 143 375 9 34/ 26/ 40 Experimental John Metcalf 143 84 10 43/ 43/ 14 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 143 390 11 32/ 23/ 45 nPaper II Paul-V Khuong 142 128 12 42/ 44/ 14 Jinx Christian Schmidt 141 91 13 31/ 21/ 48 Jaguar Christian Schmidt 140 115 14 44/ 47/ 9 Kenshin Steve Gunnell 140 83 15 42/ 46/ 12 vamp/scan test b1 Ken Espiritu 139 43 16 45/ 50/ 6 Iron Curtain 2 s1 Ken Espiritu 139 8 17 31/ 23/ 46 EvoP 3 Ken Espiritu 138 124 18 27/ 16/ 57 Cinammon John Metcalf 138 93 19 33/ 28/ 40 Ant Factory Christian Schmidt 137 223 20 31/ 28/ 42 Icen Ben Ford 134 222 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: Anton Marsden Subject: jMARS developers wanted Date: 2000/03/24 Message-ID: <00032509555001.09026@anton.org.nz>#1/1 I have added a "Core War" project to sourceforge.net. The project includes pMARS and jMARS. If you are interested in developing jMARS then get an account on sourceforge.net and then drop me an email. jMARS is currently in the pre-alpha stage. Note: jMARS is using a BSD-style software license (the new version). This means it should be compatible with the GPL. Anton. From: "Brian Haskin Jr." Subject: FW: jMARS developers wanted Date: 2000/03/25 Message-ID: <000701bf96b8$33bdf860$0b00000a@haskin.org>#1/1 Sorry if this comes through twice but the original seems to have gone to the great bitbucket in the sky. -----Original Message----- From: Brian Haskin Jr. [mailto:haskin@ptway.com] Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2000 1:45 AM To: Multiple recipients of list COREWAR-L Subject: RE: jMARS developers wanted Just wanted to add a little bit of info to this. For those who don't know I'm the original and as far as I know the only ongoing developer of jMARS. So what is jMARS? jMARS is a java implementation of an 'ICWS '94 draft+pMARS' extensions' MARS. It can run either as a stand alone application or as an applet in a web page. What is the current state of jMARS? Currently the display is very primitive and controls are for all intents and purposes non-existent. The assembler is still very primitive and can only accept what the '94 draft calls loader files. So in order to run a warrior you really need to preprocess it through pmars. The core VM is basically finished (although it needs more testing) and what I think will be a fairly flexible framework for the frontend is setup. What this basically boils down to is that jMARS is just barely usable on a web pages to show a battle and not really practical for much else in it's current state. I hope to put a release together in the near future so people passingly familiar with java can download and try it out. What is happening with jMARS right now? Currently I'm focusing on extending the assembler to handle the full '94 draft grammar. Which at this point, actually consists of learning a little bit about compilers so I can write the thing. :) What are the eventual goals for jMARS? Provide a nice GUI application for people to run and debug their warriors in. Provide an applet that can be used to run warriors on the WWW. Provide an easy framework for people to experiment with extensions to redcode. Provide a base that people can easily adapt for use with GA or other means of computer generated warriors. So if you're a java developer and feel like taking a look, go to http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=3452 then go to the CVS repository for instructions on how to obtain the source. Any help would certainly be appreciated. Brian Haskin haskin@ptway.com Home page: http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/4333/ Always remember, money is simply a level of indirection. From: "Ransom Smith" Subject: Re: jMARS developers wanted Date: 2000/03/25 Message-ID: #1/1 Elucidate, please. Just what is jMARS? From: "Brian Haskin Jr." Subject: RE: jMARS developers wanted Date: 2000/03/26 Message-ID: <000101bf9625$a1e59fc0$0b00000a@haskin.org>#1/1 Just wanted to add a little bit of info to this. For those who don't know I'm the original and as far as I know the only ongoing developer of jMARS. So what is jMARS? jMARS is a java implementation of an 'ICWS '94 draft+pMARS' extensions' MARS. It can run either as a stand alone application or as an applet in a web page. What is the current state of jMARS? Currently the display is very primitive and controls are for all intents and purposes non-existent. The assembler is still very primitive and can only accept what the '94 draft calls loader files. So in order to run a warrior you really need to preprocess it through pmars. The core VM is basically finished (although it needs more testing) and what I think will be a fairly flexible framework for the frontend is setup. What this basically boils down to is that jMARS is just barely usable on a web pages to show a battle and not really practical for much else in it's current state. I hope to put a release together in the near future so people passingly familiar with java can download and try it out. What is happening with jMARS right now? Currently I'm focusing on extending the assembler to handle the full '94 draft grammar. Which at this point, actually consists of learning a little bit about compilers so I can write the thing. :) What are the eventual goals for jMARS? Provide a nice GUI application for people to run and debug their warriors in. Provide an applet that can be used to run warriors on the WWW. Provide an easy framework for people to experiment with extensions to redcode. Provide a base that people can easily adapt for use with GA or other means of computer generated warriors. So if you're a java developer and feel like taking a look, go to http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=3452 then go to the CVS repository for instructions on how to obtain the source. Any help would certainly be appreciated. Brian Haskin haskin@ptway.com Home page: http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/4333/ Always remember, money is simply a level of indirection. From: Leonardo Liporati Subject: Help on Hills Date: 2000/03/26 Message-ID: <019d01bf9699$cf016100$0d4d10ac@ispent>#1/1 Hello all! I am changing from ISP. I would like to know if there is a way to change my e-mail address in Pizza's and Koth's hills without killing and resubmitting my warriors? Thank you, Leonardo H. Liporati. From: batsman@simpsons4ever. (batsman) Subject: Re: jMARS developers wanted Date: 2000/03/26 Message-ID: #1/1 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >>>> El 24 Mar 2000 20:44:24 -0500, un alien�gena >>>> intent� hacerse pasar por Anton Marsden, >>>> y escribi� en rec.games.corewar: >I have added a "Core War" project to sourceforge.net. The project includes >pMARS and jMARS. If you are interested in developing jMARS then get an account >on sourceforge.net and then drop me an email. jMARS is currently in the >pre-alpha stage. Is your project that weird one with GTK interface and a different scoring system? >Note: jMARS is using a BSD-style software license (the new version). This >means it should be compatible with the GPL. What is jMars? A Java version? - -- _ _ | |__ __ _| |_ ___ _ __ ___ __ _ _ __ | '_ \ / _` | __/ __| '_ ` _ \ / _` | '_ \ | |_) | (_| | |_\__ \ | | | | | (_| | | | | |_.__/ \__,_|\__|___/_| |_| |_|\__,_|_| |_| ________________________________________________________________ |Visit | http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/2075 | |Linux | http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/4289 | ---------------------------------------------------------------- Real email: batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: noconv Comment: Public key via email: send mail with Subject: [PGPKEY] iQEVAwUBON0kNL0Y27yr0iefAQEqaQf6Aw/wYx+a05YKJR7WIxr86dGA1chnXH4E rv1Kz2F4CTudewkdX3KXihoGg3V2iAo8eqEp0ilojOgfQTPJqw5kuQFlPcqsBAeO h1bjuLsHyFYlSnjPMr+WO3Mj1dMgO1voWdis5kroiDVUN5MbXDjx15cCPlrb/LXm MBlk3rY/dp2j2ksbt4zQKZW36tJEB3Zw8RngUzH5oTm45ZJlJ41sv1ALQgOOkszP p9UbXqD7LRPzxnPR2LJ/xAgcpgLvdQui1nM1wy7NouwrD1Kx4qfi58t1sCNflFbB JU+sk8U+bXl+nRY8r5dcZtr3HeSAowTj+OeKCsUsPIrY2w0PLpsvKA== =ldMQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 03/27/00 Date: 2000/03/27 Message-ID: <200003270500.AAA18528@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/27/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sat Mar 25 20:52:22 EST 2000 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 54/ 32/ 15 Black Moods Ian Oversby 176 7 2 48/ 29/ 23 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 167 11 3 39/ 16/ 45 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 163 33 4 33/ 6/ 61 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 159 80 5 29/ 3/ 68 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 156 28 6 33/ 20/ 47 Rosebud Beppe 146 59 7 38/ 37/ 25 Dr. Gate X Franz 139 51 8 36/ 33/ 31 Draken Fire X Ben Ford 138 2 9 26/ 16/ 58 Sphere v0.2 Christian Schmidt 135 22 10 35/ 37/ 27 BigBoy Robert Macrae 133 105 11 36/ 40/ 24 Stepping Stone 94x Kurt Franke 133 66 12 26/ 19/ 55 Purple v0.1 Christian Schmidt 133 32 13 39/ 49/ 12 S.E.T.I. 4-X JKW 129 81 14 30/ 31/ 39 Self-Modifying Code X Ben Ford 129 1 15 36/ 45/ 19 Pagan John K W 128 65 16 32/ 36/ 32 Lithium X 8 John K Wilkinson 127 71 17 36/ 46/ 18 Memories Beppe Bezzi 126 87 18 35/ 45/ 20 Tsunami v0.3 X Ian Oversby 125 5 19 36/ 49/ 14 WingShot Ben Ford 123 3 20 33/ 52/ 15 BiShot Christian Schmidt 115 19 21 20/ 78/ 2 my sucky warrior john q. redcoder 63 0 From: "Brian Haskin Jr." Subject: RE: jMARS developers wanted Date: 2000/03/27 Message-ID: <000a01bf97a9$a4603960$0b00000a@haskin.org>#1/1 > -----Original Message----- > From: pk [mailto:thida@videotron.ca] > Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2000 8:21 PM > To: haskin@infinitecom.com > Cc: Multiple recipients of list COREWAR-L > Subject: Re: jMARS developers wanted > > > Brian Haskin Jr. wrote: > > [snip] > > What is happening with jMARS right now? > > Currently I'm focusing on extending the assembler to handle the full '94 > > draft grammar. Which at this point, actually consists of > learning a little > > bit about compilers so I can write the thing. :) > Is it me or the simulator is the easy part?? Well I find the simulator to be the easy part, but then I've written a couple of vm's before and never a parser. ;) > It's the preprocessing that's tough 8( > Well, for a grammar, it's pretty simple > (no precedence, no parenthesis, etc...) > I mean, you could easily write one in BASIC(so you can do it in any > other HLL with a bit more effort) > What bugs me is that it's in Java 8( > any good tutorial about Java on the net??? 8) > The way i see it, you can first tokenize each line for like: > > OpIDNumber > AddressingMode_1 > Address_1 > AddressingMode_2 > Address_2 > > Then, use a switch statement to call a function for each OpNumber(i > might do an interpreter in QBasic/PowerBasic, just to do it 8^) [snip] Actually redcode does have precedence and parenthesis and even labels. :) It's still a very simple language. I just know absolutely nothing about parsers, although I'm learning a lot. I already have an assembler that will handle very basic redcode (no expressions, no labels, no equ's obviously). A good tutorial on java is http://www.java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/index.html also for other help the #Java channel on irc.undernet.org is pretty good (who knows you might even see me there). Brian Haskin haskin@ptway.com Home page: http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/4333/ Always remember, money is simply a level of indirection. From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 03/27/00 Date: 2000/03/27 Message-ID: <200003270500.AAA18520@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/27/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *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 Mar 26 16:44:46 EST 2000 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 20/ 40 Freight Train David Moore 160 71 2 40/ 22/ 38 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 159 28 3 38/ 20/ 41 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 157 10 4 38/ 22/ 41 Guardian Ian Oversby 154 70 5 42/ 35/ 23 PacMan David Moore 150 100 6 32/ 16/ 51 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 148 84 7 34/ 22/ 43 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 146 26 8 32/ 19/ 48 Test I Ian Oversby 145 127 9 42/ 40/ 18 Stasis David Moore 143 178 10 41/ 40/ 19 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 142 346 11 39/ 35/ 26 Stillborn Bomber v0.2 mjp 142 11 12 43/ 44/ 13 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 141 396 13 40/ 38/ 22 Tangle Trap David Moore 141 144 14 31/ 22/ 47 Evoltmp 88 John K W 141 121 15 41/ 46/ 13 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 137 67 16 41/ 46/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 135 108 17 35/ 36/ 30 Frog Sticker P.Kline 134 20 18 40/ 49/ 11 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 130 65 19 39/ 50/ 11 Shadow Seeker John Metcalf 129 7 20 31/ 42/ 27 Twill Andy Pierce 120 1 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: jkw@koth.org Subject: Re: Help on Hills Date: 2000/03/27 Message-ID: <4.1.20000326181743.009ff330@pop-server>#1/1 At 12:21 PM 3/26/00 -0500, you wrote: >Hello all! > >I am changing from ISP. I would like to know if there is a way to change my >e-mail address in Pizza's and Koth's hills without killing and resubmitting my >warriors? > >Thank you, > >Leonardo H. Liporati. At the moment there's not an automated process for doing that on either hill, but the admins could do that... From: pk Subject: Re: jMARS developers wanted Date: 2000/03/27 Message-ID: <38DEB78E.FB987A5C@videotron.ca>#1/1 Brian Haskin Jr. wrote: > > Just wanted to add a little bit of info to this. For those who don't know > I'm the original and as far as I know the only ongoing developer of jMARS. > > So what is jMARS? > jMARS is a java implementation of an 'ICWS '94 draft+pMARS' extensions' > MARS. It can run either as a stand alone application or as an applet in a > web page. cool... [snip] > What is happening with jMARS right now? > Currently I'm focusing on extending the assembler to handle the full '94 > draft grammar. Which at this point, actually consists of learning a little > bit about compilers so I can write the thing. :) Is it me or the simulator is the easy part?? It's the preprocessing that's tough 8( Well, for a grammar, it's pretty simple (no precedence, no parenthesis, etc...) I mean, you could easily write one in BASIC(so you can do it in any other HLL with a bit more effort) What bugs me is that it's in Java 8( any good tutorial about Java on the net??? 8) The way i see it, you can first tokenize each line for like: OpIDNumber AddressingMode_1 Address_1 AddressingMode_2 Address_2 Then, use a switch statement to call a function for each OpNumber(i might do an interpreter in QBasic/PowerBasic, just to do it 8^) > What are the eventual goals for jMARS? > Provide a nice GUI application for people to run and debug their warriors > in. > Provide an applet that can be used to run warriors on the WWW. > Provide an easy framework for people to experiment with extensions to > redcode. > Provide a base that people can easily adapt for use with GA or other means > of computer generated warriors. Basically, a Grand Unified MARS 8) i'd suggest GUMARS instead of GUM, as GUM is already used: Grand Unified Modeller(for 3d thing) > So if you're a java developer and feel like taking a look, go to > http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=3452 then go to the CVS repository > for instructions on how to obtain the source. Any help would certainly be > appreciated. Can you email the sources, instead??? i don't understand the interface 8( -- AKA paul_virak_khuong at yahoo.com, pkhuong at deja.com, pkhuong at crosswinds.net and pkhuong at technologist.com(list not complete)... From: "Peter" Subject: !!!Cool Site!!! Date: 2000/03/27 Message-ID: <8bnimp$1im8$1@ulysses.noc.ntua.gr>#1/1 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_00F6_01BF97FD.95CE2B60 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-7" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable CoolCool Site!!! ------=_NextPart_000_00F6_01BF97FD.95CE2B60 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-7" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cool

Cool Site!!!

= ------=_NextPart_000_00F6_01BF97FD.95CE2B60-- From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 03/27/00 Date: 2000/03/27 Message-ID: <200003270500.AAA18532@gevjon.ttsg.com>#1/1 Weekly Status on 03/27/00 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *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 Mar 26 01:08:23 EST 2000 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 44/ 42/ 14 Stalker P.Kline 146 121 2 43/ 41/ 15 Zooom... John Metcalf 145 272 3 43/ 41/ 17 Eraser II Ken Espiritu 145 93 4 45/ 45/ 10 Kenshin Steve Gunnell 145 91 5 42/ 42/ 16 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 142 398 6 40/ 42/ 17 Jinx Christian Schmidt 138 99 7 30/ 24/ 47 Omnibus John Metcalf 136 145 8 28/ 20/ 52 Uninvited John Metcalf 136 88 9 31/ 28/ 41 Blacken Ian Oversby 135 383 10 27/ 20/ 53 Jade Ben Ford 134 205 11 29/ 25/ 46 Experimental John Metcalf 134 92 12 39/ 46/ 15 vamp/scan test b1 Ken Espiritu 133 51 13 27/ 22/ 52 nPaper II Paul-V Khuong 131 136 14 26/ 21/ 54 Jaguar Christian Schmidt 130 123 15 26/ 22/ 53 EvoP 3 Ken Espiritu 129 132 16 22/ 15/ 63 Cinammon John Metcalf 128 101 17 27/ 26/ 47 Ant Factory Christian Schmidt 128 231 18 26/ 26/ 48 Icen Ben Ford 126 230 19 38/ 52/ 10 hTest l P.Kline 125 5 20 8/ 17/ 75 Thread11 E Hope 99 1 21 8/ 24/ 68 Thread42 E Hope 92 0 From: sieben@imap1.asu.edu Subject: Re: jMARS developers wanted Date: 2000/03/28 Message-ID: <8bqjn4$k36$1@news.asu.edu>#1/1 : Actually redcode does have precedence and parenthesis and even labels. :) : It's still a very simple language. I just know absolutely nothing about There should be a version of Yacc that creates Java output. The grammar for redcode is included with pMARS. It should be relatively easy to make it into a Yacc grammar. Nandor. From: Philip Kendall Subject: Re: jMARS developers wanted Date: 2000/03/30 Message-ID: #1/1 pk writes: > Well, for a grammar, it's pretty simple > (no precedence, no parenthesis, etc...) Err... no :-) > The way i see it, you can first tokenize each line for like: > > OpIDNumber > AddressingMode_1 > Address_1 > AddressingMode_2 > Address_2 That's the easy bit -- the tricker bit (at least from my point of view, being a physicist rather than a computer scientist) when I tried doing this was implementing pMARS's macros... Phil -- / Philip Kendall \ | http://www.kendalls.demon.co.uk/pak21/index.html | \ Spread css-auth: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~pak/decss.html / From: "Ransom Smith" Subject: Can anyone help me with mopt? Date: 2000/03/31 Message-ID: #1/1 I'm having trouble getting how to feed parameters to the "mopt" tool in the ptools package (from somewhere on koth.org/pmars or some such) I read the documentation and the examples, but they didn't clear much up. About the best they gave me was "it's a lot like C loops" (or some such. don't have it in front of me) Well, my C is virtually nonexistent, about the closest I have is a shaky hand at JavaScript. Not much of that, either. Can someone clear this up?