From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Re: RedCoder sneek Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 01:08:54 +0300 Message-ID: On 30 Sep 2002, Will Varfar wrote: > I know it can't do much, and it is very slow, but if you can > help me identify the implementation bugs in my mars emulator > I'd greatly apprieciate it. There's a validate.red in the pmars distribution that you've probably come across. I've got a few other validation tests (for p-space and PIN) at home I could send to you if you want. a) Simulate N rounds between two warriors with the exact same sequence of starting positions as pMARS for some -F number and compare the results. You'll need to rip out the random number generator from pMARS and emulate its warrior positioning algorithm. Repeat for various combinations of warriors and numbers of rounds / battle, especially tie-prone warriors that generate lots of processes to really give your process queue code a go. b) If you find a discrepancy between pMARS and your MARS, hack up the two MARSs to give cycle-by-cycle status reports on their internal state, and do a diff to find out where they differ. The status reports could be something like: where an operand could be If you'd rather not mess with pMARS, I can send you a patched exhaust that emits lines like this used for debugging. Re: are operands of DATs evaluated? Yes. The order for instruction execution is: evalute A-operand, evalute B-operand, evaluate opcode&modifier, so this means that pre-decrements and post-increments happen before the process dies. Best Regards, Joonas From: Randy Graham Subject: Re: RedCoder sneek Message-ID: Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2002 03:17:37 GMT On 30 Sep 2002 13:06:53 -0700, I heard the following crap spew forth from howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar): >Hi folks, > >have put a sneek preview of my emulator/debugger at >http://www.geocities.com/varfar/redcoder/index.html > >I know it can't do much, and it is very slow, but if you can help me >identify the implementation bugs in my mars emulator I'd greatly >apprieciate it. I'd love for you to post updates here as you work on this. If this ever got ported to Linux, I'd use it for sure. >Thanks, >Will. RagManX http://www.gamingideas.com/ - an "I could make a better game" forum From: metcalf@uboot.com Subject: HELP NEEDED: Old KOTH challenge results Date: 1 Oct 2002 18:24:19 -0400 Message-ID: <20021001133041.F0AD71FF42@Mail01.Uboot.com> Hi, I am trying to get hold of all of the challenge results from the '94nop hill since it was created sometime around June '98. I already have all of those from 12 December 2000 (when Blacken was age 565) but I still need anything prior to this. Of the 650 challenges prior to this, I have the results sent by KOTH for only 76. Any old KOTH emails you have lurking around would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, John -- SMS Me on +44 7866 049 839 _____________________________________________________________ 300 character txt msgs, ringtones, logos & much, much more... http://www.uboot.com - who r U? From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Look what I thought up during my vacation :] Date: 1 Oct 2002 18:25:43 -0400 Message-ID: Hi Guys! Looks like many battles I must have missed. I was totally off-line, "unplugged" one can say and didn't work much with my PC, but there are few conceptions that has been born in my mind. I guess my ideas are not very revolutionary (to be honest I'm afraid they aren't revolutionary at all ;) but may be good for practising for newbies. So let me introduce... The Mirrored One! ;redcode ;name Mirrored One ;author Lukasz Adamowski ;strategy A toy once written :] ;assert 1 start mov #-7, $7 mov >6, {106 jmn $-1, $5 jmp *104, $0 jmn $-1, $5 mov >6, {106 mov #-7, $7 end start Should I say half of its boy looks like the second half but backwards? I believe its easy to see. As written it is rather a toy than regular warrior. It's silk/paper (sorry, I've forgot the difference between them... well: it moves! ;) and the basic idea was to improve somehow my earlier warrior (The Shortest Worm). I thought maybe it can be done to make the warrior to change itself during copying and it the fact Mirrored One can change to something different after making first copy, but it's silly: there are many better ways to do it. So I gave up leaving Mirrored One as something interesting, but useless. During testing M1 I found how it can be improved asuming that it works ("fights" would be too much to say ;) in empty core (only DATs $0, $0). That led me to... The Mirrored Two! ;redcode ;name Mirrored Two ;author Lukasz Adamowski ;strategy A toy once written :] ;strategy This one is more funny than Mirrored One :]]] ;assert 1 start mov >5, <115 jmn $-1, $4 jmp @113, $0 jmn $-1, $4 mov >5, <115 dat $0, $-5 end start As one can see this one is mirrored too :))) and shorter. It also means M2 works faster than M1. But that doesn't count in real battle because both Mirrored are too weak to stand eye to eye with any modern warrior. They are just toys. Maybe someone else will find any application for them. A little different case is with P-Switcher I've written. I tried to make the booting part as short as it can be. After all tests I believe the final frontier is 6 instructions executed in the worst case: 2 LDPs for last result and last strategy, STP for storing actual strategy, CMP/SEQ/SNE for comparing (I also tried JMN/JMZ but nothing better came to light), 1 instruction for changing strategy (if needed) and JMP for executing main part of warrior. I believe something like this has already been written years ago, but here is what I've done: ;redcode ;name P-Switcher ;author Lukasz Adamowski ;assert 1 boot ldp.b #0, $3 ldp.a #1, $3 seq #1, #0 nop {1, $start2 jmp @0, $start0 dat $0, $start1 dat $0, $start2 start0 stp #0, #1 dat $0, $0 start1 stp #1, #1 dat $0, $0 start2 stp #2, #1 dat $0, $0 end boot Of course after evert STP there should be adequate strategy. I know it makes strategies less flexible (sometimes STP is to be in the middle of executed warrior), but nothing better cames to my mind. I don't like NOP also, but every other idea was worse. Any comments? Lukasz From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 09/30/02 Date: 1 Oct 2002 18:33:18 -0400 Message-ID: <200209300409.AAA04290@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/30/02 -=- 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 Sep 29 21:50:41 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 32/ 22/ 46 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 141 126 2 30/ 22/ 47 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 139 895 3 26/ 16/ 58 SilKing Christian Schmidt 136 128 4 32/ 28/ 40 Glenstorm John Metcalf 136 67 5 38/ 41/ 21 Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 136 397 6 24/ 13/ 63 Broader Clump Ken Espiritu 134 8 7 29/ 25/ 45 The Stormkeeper Christian Schmidt 133 3 8 28/ 23/ 49 Pink Detonations Ken Espiritu 133 7 9 39/ 46/ 15 Blade Fizmo 133 212 10 29/ 26/ 45 Wallpaper Christian Schmidt 132 44 11 27/ 23/ 50 Candy Lukasz Grabun 131 206 12 28/ 27/ 45 Uninvited John Metcalf 130 988 13 26/ 22/ 52 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 129 1 14 35/ 41/ 23 oneshot test Simon Wainwright 129 230 15 22/ 14/ 64 Defensive Christian Schmidt 129 103 16 36/ 45/ 19 Hard Failure Ken Espiritu 127 41 17 34/ 42/ 23 Flashlight John Metcalf 126 28 18 33/ 43/ 23 Hazy Lazy ... again Steve Gunnell 123 341 19 33/ 44/ 23 clock strikes twelve John Metcalf 122 27 20 37/ 55/ 7 Iron Curtain Ken Espiritu 119 5 21 0/ 0/ 4 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 5 2 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 09/30/02 Date: 1 Oct 2002 18:34:43 -0400 Message-ID: <200209300406.AAA04250@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/30/02 -=- 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 : Wed Sep 25 07:03:27 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 50/ 38/ 12 Fire and Ice II David Moore 163 39 2 34/ 24/ 42 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 144 71 3 38/ 36/ 27 Black Moods Ian Oversby 139 135 4 23/ 8/ 69 Denial David Moore 138 80 5 25/ 13/ 62 Kin John Metcalf 138 47 6 35/ 33/ 32 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 137 22 7 22/ 8/ 70 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 136 208 8 30/ 25/ 44 Olivia X Ben Ford 135 20 9 28/ 22/ 50 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 135 161 10 34/ 34/ 31 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 134 139 11 27/ 19/ 54 Glenstorm John Metcalf 134 1 12 35/ 37/ 28 Ogre Christian Schmidt 134 87 13 26/ 18/ 57 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 133 79 14 32/ 32/ 36 Big I.F.F.S. Dave Hillis 133 68 15 30/ 29/ 42 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 131 78 16 32/ 40/ 28 Exsnail Philip Thorne 124 34 17 16/ 7/ 77 Black Box v1.1 JKW 124 102 18 15/ 7/ 77 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 124 156 19 28/ 40/ 31 Bugtown Rap 19 Steve Gunnell 116 4 20 33/ 50/ 17 Greetings From Asbury Par JKW 116 99 21 10/ 78/ 12 XCN Fast Scan Xavi Canal 41 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 09/30/02 Date: 1 Oct 2002 18:36:10 -0400 Message-ID: <200209300403.AAA04197@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/30/02 -=- 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 Sep 26 10:51:39 EDT 2002 # Name Author Score Age 1 fclear Brian Haskin 19 84 2 Tinyshot John Metcalf 14 13 3 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 13 100 4 Snurp II Philip Thorne 13 7 5 clock strikes twelve John Metcalf 10 14 6 trial John Metcalf 8 4 7 Her Majesty P.Kline 5 119 8 Playing with Fire Ben Ford 3 12 9 Redemption John Metcalf 2 5 10 XCN Scan 1.0 Xavi Canal 2 1 11 Dwarf v2.1 Xavi Canal 1 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 09/30/02 Date: 1 Oct 2002 18:37:34 -0400 Message-ID: <200209300400.AAA04137@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/30/02 -=- 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 Sep 29 21:15:27 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 36/ 22/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 151 164 2 34/ 22/ 44 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 147 103 3 44/ 44/ 12 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 145 160 4 46/ 47/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 144 2 5 34/ 24/ 42 Guardian Ian Oversby 143 163 6 43/ 44/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 142 201 7 39/ 35/ 26 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 142 50 8 42/ 42/ 16 '88 test IV John Metcalf 142 57 9 31/ 24/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 137 119 10 28/ 19/ 53 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 137 177 11 29/ 22/ 49 Test I Ian Oversby 137 220 12 33/ 30/ 38 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 136 121 13 38/ 43/ 19 Stasis David Moore 132 271 14 33/ 35/ 31 vala John Metcalf 131 86 15 36/ 41/ 23 PacMan David Moore 131 193 16 37/ 45/ 18 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 129 439 17 37/ 45/ 18 Oneshot '88 John Metcalf 129 85 18 38/ 47/ 16 rdrc: Conscionable Roomma Dave Hillis 128 52 19 35/ 43/ 22 Tangle Trap David Moore 127 237 20 32/ 42/ 26 testing crap Gniarf 122 1 21 24/ 33/ 43 +2 Stormbringer Test C 11 Dan Nabutovsky, P. K 116 0 From: howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) Subject: Re: RedCoder sneek Date: 2 Oct 2002 08:32:13 -0700 Message-ID: <5e314d3b.0210020732.3dd0230@posting.google.com> M Joonas Pihlaja wrote: > I've just uploaded exhaust-1.9 (see the announcement) that > contains p-space and PIN tests in the t/ directory. If you > compile the simulator with DEBUG=2 then for each executed > instruction it will output lines of the form: > > <#left> | <#procs> d , a b Thankyou Joonas! /Will From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: exhaust 1.9 Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:16:31 +0300 Message-ID: Get the latest release of exhaust, a small embeddable MARS, from: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/~jpihlaja/exhaust/exhaust.html New features include p-space support and the core files being released into the public domain rather than GPL. Joonas From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Re: RedCoder sneek Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:34:37 +0300 Message-ID: On 30 Sep 2002, Will Varfar wrote: > M Joonas Pihlaja wrote: > > > There's a validate.red in the pmars distribution that you've > > probably come across. I've got a few other validation tests (for > > p-space and PIN) at home I could send to you if you want. > > yes please! My usenet email address is a trash account; I shall email > you from a better address I've just uploaded exhaust-1.9 (see the announcement) that contains p-space and PIN tests in the t/ directory. If you compile the simulator with DEBUG=2 then for each executed instruction it will output lines of the form: <#left> | <#procs> d , a b where and are the effective addresses of the instructions A-operand and B-operand, and are the operand fields of the simulator A-operand register and B-operand registers. <#left> is the number of instructions to execute before a tie is called. For example, here are the first few cycles of Stefan Strack's validate.red that comes with pMARS: 80000 0 spl.b $ 8 , $ 3 | 1, d 8, 3 a 2, 0 b 1,7997 79999 1 jmz.b < -1 , $ 0 | 2, d 2, 1 a 0, 36 b 7999, 0 79998 8 spl.b $ 2 , $ 0 | 2, d 10, 8 a 7996,7997 b 2, 0 79997 2 djn.b $ 0 , # 36 | 3, d 2, 2 a 0, 36 b 0, 36 79996 9 dat.f < -2 , < -2 | 3, d 9, 8 a 7998,7998 b 2, 0 [I've changed the spacing to make it fit in 70ish columns, but you get the idea.] There's also a perl program to compare the results of two simulators when running Warrior1 vs. Warrior2 battles for every possible loading distance of Warrior2. If it finds a discrepancy, then it'll complain about it. Joonas From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: HELP NEEDED: Old KOTH challenge results Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 21:02:32 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: On 1 Oct 2002 18:24:19 -0400, metcalf@uboot.com wrote: > I am trying to get hold of all of the challenge results from the '94nop > hill since it was created sometime around June '98. I already have all > of those from 12 December 2000 (when Blacken was age 565) but I still > need anything prior to this. Don't know whether you recieved my email. I found this information might be of use for people on the Group. groups.google.com helps a lot. Try searching for +koth +status +"no pspace" +year_you_want_to_see_results_from in rec.games.corewar. -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: metcalf@uboot.com Subject: Re: HELP NEEDED: Old KOTH challenge results Date: 4 Oct 2002 09:16:28 -0400 Message-ID: <20021003142943.74E02165B0@Mail01.Uboot.com> Hi, What I actually would like is the hill results after every single successful challenge :-) That way I can calculate several things I have been wondering about. I had a look at those posted by Koth to the newsgroup. Quite a few are the results after unsuccessful challenges :-( If anyone would like those I have collected so far (including 1000 consecutive successful challenges) I would be happy to forward them. They are about 200K (archived). Thanks, John -- SMS Me on +44 7866 049 839 _____________________________________________________________ 300 character txt msgs, ringtones, logos & much, much more... http://www.uboot.com - who r U? From: "John Metcalf" Subject: Corewarrior #83 (2nd try to post) Date: 4 Oct 2002 09:17:54 -0400 Message-ID: .xX$$x. .x$$$$$$$x. d$$$$$$$$$$$ ,$$$$$$$P' `P' , . $$$$$$P' ' .d b $$$$$P b ,$$x ,$$x ,$$x ,$$b $$. Y$$$$' `$. $$$$$$. $$$$$$ $$P~d$. d$$$b d d$$$ `$$$$ ,$$ $$$$$$$b $$$P `$ $$$b.$$b `Y$$$d$d$$$' . . a . a a .aa . a `$$$ ,$$$,$$' `$$$ $$$' ' $$P$XX$' `$$$$$$$$$ .dP' `$'$ `$'$ , $''$ `$'$ `Y$b ,d$$$P `$b,d$P' `$$. `$$. , `$$P $$$' Y $. $ $ $ Y..P $ `$$$$$$$' $$$P' `$$b `$$$P `P `$' `Y'k. $. $. $. $$' $. Issue 83 24 September, 2002 _______________________________________________________________________________ Core Warrior is a newsletter promoting the game of corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills - currently the '94 no-pspace hill. Coverage will follow wherever the action is. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star Internet locals for more information: FAQs are available from: http://www.koth.org/corewar-faq.html http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html Web pages are at: http://www.koth.org/ ;KOTH http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar ;Planar http://www.ociw.edu/~birk/corewar ;C.Birk Newbies should check the above pages for the FAQs, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! _______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings... Since last issue, Pihlaja has extended his self-organising maps to cover all of the Koenigstuhl hills. Analysis would be welcome in either the newsgroup or in a future CW issue. They are available from: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jpihlaja/cw/maps/ This issue we have the results from the third round of the tournament and also, the code for Reepicheep... -- John Metcalf ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the KOTH.ORG '94 No Pspace Hill: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 44/ 37/ 19 Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 150.2 384 2 37/ 23/ 40 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 149.7 113 3 30/ 11/ 60 Broader Clump Ken Espiritu 148.5 10 4 34/ 21/ 44 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 147.2 882 5 30/ 13/ 56 SilKing Christian Schmidt 146.6 115 6 35/ 23/ 42 Candy Lukasz Grabun 145.6 193 7 28/ 11/ 62 Defensive Christian Schmidt 145.1 90 8 44/ 44/ 12 Blade Fizmo 144.5 199 9 34/ 23/ 43 Pink Detonations Ken Espiritu 143.6 65 10 42/ 41/ 17 Hard Failure Ken Espiritu 143.0 28 11 35/ 28/ 36 Glenstorm John Metcalf 142.4 54 12 41/ 39/ 20 Hazy Lazy ... again Steve Gunnell 142.3 328 13 34/ 27/ 39 Uninvited John Metcalf 141.5 975 14 40/ 40/ 19 oneshot test Simon Wainwright 140.6 217 15 33/ 28/ 40 Wallpaper Christian Schmidt 137.4 31 16 38/ 40/ 22 Flashlight John Metcalf 135.9 15 17 39/ 42/ 19 clock strikes twelve John Metcalf 134.8 14 18 36/ 41/ 23 testshot 2 John Metcalf 131.2 40 19 36/ 45/ 18 BlurVamp Ken Espiritu 127.3 9 20 34/ 47/ 18 test mj 121.5 1 145 challenges have passed since last issue causing the retirement of our three most elderly warriors, all of which have been King of the Hill. nPaper is the oldest warrior ever to sit in the top rank, while at an impressive age of 925! (2nd comes Son of Vain which was age 830, 3rd Quicksilver at 759.) Most seen as KotH since last issue have been Reepicheep (37 times), closely followed by pTest4 (36 times), Vanquisher (20), oneshot test (19) and Hazy Lazy ... again (16). Finally then, the complete list of aged warriors to perish: nPaper II (age 1270), Behemot (1078), Olivia (886), Inky (736), G3-b (503), Purifier (277), QSOS (126), pre75-z47a (120) and Terra (104). _______________________________________________________________________________ The '94 No Pspace Hall of Fame: * indicates the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Blacken Ian Oversby 1363 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 2 nPaper II Paul-V Khuong 1270 MiniQ^3 -> Paper 3 Behemot Michal Janeczek 1078 MiniQ^3 -> Bomber 4 Uninvited John Metcalf 975 * MiniQ^3 -> Stone/imp 5 Olivia Ben Ford 886 Q^4 -> Stone/imp 6 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 882 * Q^4 -> Stone/imp 7 Keyser Soze Anton Marsden 823 Qscan -> Bomber/paper/imp 8 Quicksilver Michal Janeczek 789 Q^4 -> Stone/imp 9 Eraser II Ken Espiritu 781 Scanner 10 Inky Ian Oversby 736 Q^4 -> Paper/stone 11 Jinx Christian Schmidt 662 Scanner 12 Jade Ben Ford 600 Q^4 -> Stone/imp 13 G3-b David Moore 503 Twoshot 14 Revival Fire P.Kline 468 Bomber 15 The Phantom Menace Anton Marsden 465 Qscan -> Stone/imp 16 Boys are Back in Town Philip Kendall 441 Scanner = Zooom... John Metcalf 441 Scanner 18 Qtest Christian Schmidt 394 Q^3 -> Paper 19 Stalker P.Kline 393 Scanner 20 Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 384 * Bomber 21 Vain Ian Oversby 330 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 22 Hazy Lazy ... again Steve Gunnell 328 * Scanner 23 Omnibus John Metcalf 327 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 24 Win! David Moore 322 Scanner 25 Recovery Ian Oversby 280 MiniQ^2 -> Paper/stone Vanquisher and the new version of Hazy Lazy enter the HoF. _______________________________________________________________________________ Spring / Summer 2002 Corewar Tournament - Round 3 Results: Once again there are 17 entries from 9 authors, this time competing using '88 standard redcode, coresize 8000. To reduce the advantage imp warriors seem to enjoy in the '88 environment, the rules for round 3 differ in two ways from the settings of the '88 standard hill at KotH. In round 3 a tie is not declared until 800000 cycles have passed. Also, a win is worth 6 points instead of the more usual 3. But will this be enough to discorage tie-prone warriors? Each pair of warriors battled for 4000 rounds. 14 hours, 51 minutes and 03 seconds later we have our answer... Janeczek takes first place with Quicksilver '88 (qscan -> stone/imp) while Wainwright's Return to the Citadel (qscan -> paper/imp) takes second place. Once again Hillis evolves a formidable opponent to claim third. Stone/imps feature again in ranks 4 (Espiritu's) and 6 (Gunnell's). Ford, Thorne and Grabun are next, each with a dat bomber. Finally, we have a .4c vampire with airbag from Moore. # %Won Lost Tied Name Author Score % 1 56.9 17.6 25.4 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 366.90 100.0 2 49.3 19.5 31.2 Return to the Citadel Simon Wainwright 327.08 89.1 3 50.7 33.2 16.2 rdrc: Gymnosperm Trickery Dave Hillis 320.22 87.3 4 47.0 18.2 34.8 Positive Knife '88 Ken Espiritu 316.76 86.3 5 50.3 40.8 8.9 vm5 Michal Janeczek 310.91 84.7 6 44.1 18.3 37.6 +1 Stormbringer Steve Gunnell 302.20 82.4 7 43.6 42.8 13.5 Skewer '88 Ben Ford 275.41 75.1 8 43.7 51.7 4.5 TrItE Fighter Philip Thorne 266.89 72.7 9 41.5 50.8 7.7 tombstone Simon Wainwright 256.68 70.0 10 40.5 54.2 5.3 st2 Lukasz Grabun 248.18 67.6 11 40.0 53.3 6.7 Silver Talon '88 Ben Ford 246.43 67.2 12 39.5 55.1 5.4 Brazen hussy Steve Gunnell 242.30 66.0 13 37.2 52.7 10.0 Tangle Trap 2 David Moore 233.39 63.6 14 35.8 56.8 7.4 Mobility 8000 David Moore 222.32 60.6 15 32.2 39.2 28.6 rdrc: Flam Downpour Dave Hillis 221.62 60.4 16 35.9 58.1 6.0 FilchD Philip Thorne 221.22 60.3 17 32.7 58.3 9.0 st Lukasz Grabun 204.94 55.9 There are five dat bombers (holding ranks 7, 8, 10, 16, 17) - three stone/imps (1, 4, 6) - two each of evolved warriors (3, 15), bombers (9, 14) and scanners (11, 12) - and just one paper/imp (2), oneshot (5) and vampire (13). # Competitor Tiny BigLP 88Win Total 1 Michal Janeczek 93.3 100.0 100.0 293.3 2 Dave Hillis 99.9 84.3 87.3 271.5 3 Steve Gunnell 91.0 85.0 82.4 258.4 4 Ben Ford 100.0 74.4 75.1 249.5 5 Simon Wainwright 79.1 71.5 89.1 239.7 6 Philip Thorne 75.5 68.0 72.7 216.2 7 Robert Macrae 89.7 61.0 . 150.7 8 Lukasz Grabun 81.3 . 67.6 148.9 9 Winston Featherly-Bean 72.9 47.3 . 120.2 10 David Moore . 51.4 63.6 115.0 11 Martin Ankerl 88.2 . . 88.2 12 Ken Espiritu . . 86.3 86.3 13 Leonardo H. Liporati 84.3 . . 84.3 14 mushroommaker 71.3 . . 71.3 15 Arek Paterek 66.0 . . 66.0 16 Paul Drake 61.9 . . 61.9 17 Compudemon 53.9 . . 53.9 _______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra - Reepicheep by Lukasz Grabun / John Metcalf It has been becoming increasingly rewarding of late to team up with fellow redcoders and cooperate on a warrior project. Reepicheep (named in honour of the famed Narnia mouse) is the successful result of one such project, being an aggressive stone/paper warrior. One aim is to ensure each part is only as large/complex as neccessary. The stone is similar to the one used by Candy, <.5c and self-bombing to become a clear. A variety of other stone types were tested, including a faster <.6c stone. However, the Candylike stone performs similarly, so better meets our criteria. The paper is similar to Unrequited Love. The attack comprises a single bombing instruction which covers a strip of core with anti-3-point-imp dat bombs. Variants with additional bombing instructions (similar to Pulp) also prove equally effective, though not meeting our requirements. Note the behaviour of the instruction marked pSilk2. We hope to see a few more competitors scoring well on the hills with joint creations. Finally then, the code: ;redcode-94nop ;name Reepicheep ;author Grabun/Metcalf ;strategy Q^4 -> Stone/Paper ;assert CORESIZE==8000 org qGo sOff equ 3941 pHit0 equ 7599 pDst0 equ 535 pDst1 equ 3875 pDst2 equ 5160 pGo spl 1 , }qC qTab2 spl 1 , }qD spl 1 , }qE pSilk0 spl @0 , >pDst0 mov }pSilk0 , >pSilk0 pSilk1 spl pDst1 , 0 mov >pSilk1 , }pSilk1 mov pBmb , >pHit0 mov pDst2 pBmb dat >5334 , >2667 for 20 dat 0 , 0 rof step equ 2777 time equ 1425 hop equ 31 bOff equ 5 sSpl spl #0 , #0 ptr mov bomb , }-(step*time)+1 mov bomb , @ptr a add #step , @-1 sLoo djn.f ptr , {-1500 for 5 dat 0 , 0 rof bomb dat >hop , >1 dat 0 , 0 bBoot mov sSpl , sOff-6-CURLINE mov bomb , sOff+5-CURLINE spl 2 , }qA qTab1 spl 2 , }qB sDst spl 1 , sOff-CURLINE mov , Philip Kendall , Anton Marsden , John Metcalf and Christian Schmidt _________________________________________________________________ Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: Corewarrior #83 (2nd try to post) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 17:27:12 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: On 4 Oct 2002 09:17:54 -0400, John Metcalf wrote: > Finally then, the complete list of aged warriors to perish: nPaper II (age > 1270), Ah, I hated it the most. It was a real pain in the a^Hneck. > 4 Uninvited John Metcalf 975 * MiniQ^3 -> Stone/imp Uninvited will soon be in 4-digit age. Congrats, John. > 20 Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 384 * Bomber Hm, who would have thought. > 17 32.7 58.3 9.0 st Lukasz Grabun 204.94 > 55.9 Ahaha, LOL. :) > Extra Extra - Reepicheep by Lukasz Grabun / John Metcalf Well, here it comes. Not to be KotH any more :))) Prepare your o/s, guys. -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: Christoph Birk Subject: 94nop Koenigstuhl Date: 4 Oct 2002 17:57:37 -0400 Message-ID: <200210042140.OAA11890@andromeda.ociw.edu> Congratulations to Lukasz and John ('Grabun/Metcalf'). Their warrior 'Reepicreep' it the new KotH of the 94nop-Koenigstuhl. Christoph From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: 94nop Koenigstuhl Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 11:22:17 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: On 4 Oct 2002 17:57:37 -0400, Christoph Birk wrote: > Congratulations to Lukasz and John ('Grabun/Metcalf'). > Their warrior 'Reepicreep' it the new KotH of the > 94nop-Koenigstuhl. Oh my God! Yes! Yes! Well, John, we've made it. Thanks! > Christoph -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: HELP NEEDED: Old KOTH challenge results Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 09:35:07 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: On 4 Oct 2002 09:16:28 -0400, metcalf@uboot.com wrote: > What I actually would like is the hill > results after every single successful > challenge :-) That way I can calculate > several things I have been wondering > about. Gosh, I don't think these things are possible to obtain. Maybe somewhere on the KotH server, somewhere in the most dusty folder. This JKW must be asked about. > If anyone would like those I have collected > so far (including 1000 consecutive successful > challenges) I would be happy to forward them. > They are about 200K (archived). Me, me! I'll be happy to take a look and watch how the hill changes. -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) Subject: Re: RedCoder sneek Date: 6 Oct 2002 15:38:41 -0700 Message-ID: <5e314d3b.0210061438.62e1c934@posting.google.com> M Joonas Pihlaja wrote: > <#left> | <#procs> d , a b > For example, here are the first few cycles of Stefan Strack's > validate.red that comes with pMARS: > > 80000 0 spl.b $ 8 , $ 3 | 1, d 8, 3 a 2, 0 b 1,7997 > 79999 1 jmz.b < -1 , $ 0 | 2, d 2, 1 a 0, 36 b 7999, 0 > 79998 8 spl.b $ 2 , $ 0 | 2, d 10, 8 a 7996,7997 b 2, 0 > 79997 2 djn.b $ 0 , # 36 | 3, d 2, 2 a 0, 36 b 0, 36 > 79996 9 dat.f < -2 , < -2 | 3, d 9, 8 a 7998,7998 b 2, 0 great, absolutely making my work so much easier! My redcoder now also outputs such data, and I have managed to get the first few instructions of validate.rc absolutely spot-on. An open appeal to anyone who can help me spot my mistake: after a while, around instruction 78 there is a SEQ.I which should *not* jump the next instruction, but does in my implementation. Unfortunately I can set a breakpoint on writing to the line 80 that should trigger the jump, but not a breakpoint on not writing to it, if you see what I mean. Therefore I am foxed and backtracking. There must have been something somewhere that wrote to the instruction, despite the address no showing as a referenced address in the above debug. I am too tired to work it out, I have been staring at it for hours and can't spot it :-( I have uploaded a new sneek that generates the file and lets you step through it's execution. It is a bit flickery because I've turned off double buffering etc, but I am concerntrating on the engine at the moment rather than the graphics jerkiness.. /Will From: Ilmari Karonen Message-ID: <1033928351.16229@itz.pp.sci.fi> Subject: Re: RedCoder sneek Date: Sun, 06 Oct 2002 18:40:12 GMT In article <5e314d3b.0209302242.5e1bcd92@posting.google.com>, Will Varfar wrote: > >yes, I found the ICWS'94 paper which I had overlooked and that is a >great description. Until yesterday I had been implementing based on >the Redcode-94 doc that comes with pmars, and I thought this the least >specific spec I'd found non-commercially! The draft paper makes >things clearer, although it does make me wonder about the new operands >that aren't listed. I'd like it to be much more clearly stated with >further examples each and every combination, just to be sure. One instruction that's hard to get just right is DJN with postincrement. IIRC pMARS does implement exactly what the spec says, but what that in fact implies may not be obvious at all. Test program: The following should be an infinite loop. You can verify that in pMARS. (And you should, since I haven't done so -- no MARS on this computer, unfortunately. I may have made some silly mistake.) DJN 0, >1 DAT #0, #0 Another tricky case is P-space, since it's (to my knowledge) not really fully documented anywhere at all. For example, the exact behavior of the p-space location 0 is easy to get wrong, as is what happens if you try to use the .F and .X modifiers with STP or LDP. The pMARS source is probably the highest authority in this case. -- Ilmari Karonen :: http://www.sci.fi/~iltzu/ The Beginner's Guide to Redcode: http://www.sci.fi/~iltzu/corewar/guide.html From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 10/07/02 Date: 7 Oct 2002 03:39:30 -0400 Message-ID: <200210070409.AAA29389@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/07/02 -=- 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 Oct 6 23:02:46 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 40/ 18 Hazy Lazy ... reborn Steve Gunnell 144 8 2 33/ 21/ 46 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 144 923 3 33/ 22/ 45 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 144 154 4 42/ 44/ 14 Blade Fizmo 140 240 5 30/ 20/ 51 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 140 2 6 31/ 22/ 48 Pink Detonations Ken Espiritu 140 3 7 39/ 39/ 21 oneshot test Simon Wainwright 139 258 8 27/ 15/ 58 SilKing Christian Schmidt 139 156 9 39/ 40/ 21 Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 139 425 10 44/ 49/ 7 Willow John Metcalf 138 22 11 32/ 25/ 43 Uninvited John Metcalf 138 1016 12 26/ 13/ 61 Defensive Christian Schmidt 138 131 13 31/ 24/ 45 The Stormkeeper Christian Schmidt 137 31 14 25/ 14/ 61 Broader Clump Ken Espiritu 136 4 15 29/ 22/ 49 Candy Lukasz Grabun 136 234 16 32/ 28/ 40 Glenstorm John Metcalf 135 95 17 37/ 40/ 23 twinshot John Metcalf 135 19 18 29/ 26/ 45 Wallpaper Christian Schmidt 133 72 19 37/ 43/ 20 test apx 3 mj 131 21 20 24/ 19/ 57 Artificial Ringing Ken Espiritu 130 1 21 0/ 95/ 5 Loser Baby PBT 5 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 10/07/02 Date: 7 Oct 2002 03:40:56 -0400 Message-ID: <200210070406.AAA29364@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/07/02 -=- 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 : Wed Sep 25 07:03:27 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 50/ 38/ 12 Fire and Ice II David Moore 163 39 2 34/ 24/ 42 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 144 71 3 38/ 36/ 27 Black Moods Ian Oversby 139 135 4 23/ 8/ 69 Denial David Moore 138 80 5 25/ 13/ 62 Kin John Metcalf 138 47 6 35/ 33/ 32 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 137 22 7 22/ 8/ 70 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 136 208 8 30/ 25/ 44 Olivia X Ben Ford 135 20 9 28/ 22/ 50 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 135 161 10 34/ 34/ 31 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 134 139 11 27/ 19/ 54 Glenstorm John Metcalf 134 1 12 35/ 37/ 28 Ogre Christian Schmidt 134 87 13 26/ 18/ 57 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 133 79 14 32/ 32/ 36 Big I.F.F.S. Dave Hillis 133 68 15 30/ 29/ 42 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 131 78 16 32/ 40/ 28 Exsnail Philip Thorne 124 34 17 16/ 7/ 77 Black Box v1.1 JKW 124 102 18 15/ 7/ 77 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 124 156 19 28/ 40/ 31 Bugtown Rap 19 Steve Gunnell 116 4 20 33/ 50/ 17 Greetings From Asbury Par JKW 116 99 21 10/ 78/ 12 XCN Fast Scan Xavi Canal 41 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 10/07/02 Date: 7 Oct 2002 03:42:21 -0400 Message-ID: <200210070403.AAA29289@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/07/02 -=- 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 : Sat Oct 5 15:58:13 EDT 2002 # Name Author Score Age 1 Redemption John Metcalf 40 6 2 fclear Brian Haskin 26 85 3 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 20 101 4 Snurp II Philip Thorne 19 8 5 Tinyshot John Metcalf 16 14 6 clock strikes twelve John Metcalf 16 15 7 twinshot John Metcalf 14 1 8 trial John Metcalf 13 5 9 Her Majesty P.Kline 11 120 10 Playing with Fire Ben Ford 9 13 11 TrItE Fighter Philip Thorne 8 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 10/07/02 Date: 7 Oct 2002 03:43:46 -0400 Message-ID: <200210070400.AAA29222@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/07/02 -=- 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 Oct 6 04:01:25 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 39/ 22/ 38 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 156 3 2 36/ 22/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 150 168 3 34/ 22/ 44 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 147 107 4 44/ 45/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 144 2 5 34/ 24/ 42 Guardian Ian Oversby 144 167 6 45/ 48/ 7 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 141 6 7 43/ 46/ 11 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 140 164 8 34/ 28/ 38 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 139 125 9 42/ 46/ 12 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 139 205 10 41/ 44/ 16 '88 test IV John Metcalf 137 61 11 28/ 20/ 52 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 136 181 12 36/ 37/ 27 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 135 54 13 28/ 21/ 51 Test I Ian Oversby 135 224 14 38/ 41/ 22 PacMan David Moore 135 197 15 30/ 25/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 134 123 16 34/ 35/ 31 vala John Metcalf 133 90 17 37/ 46/ 17 Stasis David Moore 128 275 18 37/ 46/ 17 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 127 443 19 35/ 50/ 14 Tangle Trap 2 David Moore 121 1 20 35/ 50/ 15 rdrc: Conscionable Roomma Dave Hillis 120 56 21 26/ 37/ 37 Fat Expansion Philip Thorne (RM) 115 0 From: pagaltzis@gmx.de (Aristoteles Pagaltzis) Subject: Re: no constants corewars Date: 7 Oct 2002 15:45:02 -0700 Message-ID: <872a85cc.0210071445.7938128f@posting.google.com> Brett Greenfield wrote: > as for bombers not working, i had envisiond GEN as ALWAYS > making BIG numbers so self hitting would not happen. > warriors that need to self hit, to say drop into a clear > can use some other timer. Only at a pretty high price in cycles, if at all. Or how is that supposed to work? -- Regards, Aristotle From: Christoph Birk Subject: 88 Koenigstuhl Date: 7 Oct 2002 16:10:28 -0400 Message-ID: <200210071746.KAA26936@andromeda.ociw.edu> Although there is not a new #1 (it's still 'Freight Train v0.2 by David Moore) on the '88-Koenigstuhl there are 4 new entries in the top-25: #2 : Quicksilver '88 (Michal Janeczek) #3 : vm5 (Michal Janeczek) #13 : Positive Knife '88 (Ken Espiritu) #15 : Brazen hussy (Steve Gunnell) Christoph http://www.ociw.edu/~birk/COREWAR/koenigstuhl.html From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: 8 Oct 2002 08:57:51 -0400 Message-ID: Why noone did get the log file? There are still only three in the KOTH irc logs archive. I was off-line that time, but also want to know what were you talking (typing ;) about, I believe it was something interesting. BTW did you get my previous post with Mirrored warriors and my P-switcher? There was no reply, so I'm curious if it's fault of the server or rather my warriors are so... "uncommentable" ;) Greetings Lukasz From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 20:18:48 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: On 8 Oct 2002 08:57:51 -0400, Lukasz Adamowski wrote: > Why noone did get the log file? There are still only three in > the KOTH irc logs archive. I was off-line that time, but also want to > know what were you talking (typing ;) about, I believe it was something > interesting. Not many things to report. Not mentioning that koth.org is not being maintaing as far as my opinion is concerned. The `freshest' CW issue is 79th. -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 20:47:10 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: On Tue, 8 Oct 2002 20:18:48 +0000 (UTC), Lukasz Grabun wrote: > maintaing as far as my opinion is concerned. The `freshest' CW issue maintained. Time I went to the bed. -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: 9 Oct 2002 07:07:13 -0700 Message-ID: <5d6847b2.0210090607.1faec2dd@posting.google.com> > > Not many things to report. Not mentioning that koth.org is not being > maintaing as far as my opinion is concerned. The `freshest' CW issue > is 79th. No one is going to think you meant that to be such a sweeping statement. But since you bring the subject up, over the 4 years I've been playing Corewars I don't think the hills at KOTH have been down for 4 days. It's a very well maintained web site. Dave Hillis From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: New corewar server Date: 9 Oct 2002 17:01:59 -0400 Message-ID: On Mon, 23 Sep 2002, Lukasz Grabun wrote: > maybe instead of the full-with-bells-and-whistles WWW server one can > have some kind of "corewar via e-mail" service - just like it's on the > KOTH. I don't know whether my Realtek could handle all the internet > traffic (probably not, 128 kb is not enough I presume). So maybe all > we need is some kind of "virtual" server: one can get all the results > from the hill via sending email with header ;scores or something. To be honest I thought about automatization my hill once and till now nothing came out of this. So I thought also about informing players via e-mail about how their pupils are doing on the hill. I guess I'll be doing it by myself, but at the moment I've got a problem with aliasing. Oh, and as for my machine: I play 55 duels (250 rounds each) and one big battle with 5000 rounds using all 11 warriors (10 on the hill and 1 pretending). It usually takes less than an hour on CeleronA 338MHz (overclocked 300 MHz;) 128MB RAM playing with pMARS 0.8.0. All that I need to do then is to actualize my WWW (which means "ftping" 4 maybe 5 text files), so it wouldn't be much more complicated to send one more file with scores to the players. Any hill can work this way, but it is not the best way (unfortunately): the hill works only when I (the owner) have time, not necessary when the players do. :] Lukasz From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: New corewar server Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 21:28:21 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: On 9 Oct 2002 17:01:59 -0400, Lukasz Adamowski wrote: > actualize my WWW (which means "ftping" 4 maybe 5 text files), so it If one could `ftp' files by remote it would be no problem. I have an amount of space on ISP's server; fetchmail can run as a deamon, check my account - let's say - every 10 minutes, procmail+perl can take the rest, while ftp script would upload text files with results. -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: 9 Oct 2002 22:11:17 -0700 Message-ID: <4ee41bd6.0210092111.a3269de@posting.google.com> dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) wrote in message news:<5d6847b2.0210090607.1faec2dd@posting.google.com>... > > > > Not many things to report. Not mentioning that koth.org is not being > > maintaing as far as my opinion is concerned. The `freshest' CW issue > > is 79th. > > No one is going to think you meant that to be such a sweeping > statement. But since you bring the subject up, over the 4 years I've > been playing Corewars I don't think the hills at KOTH have been down > for 4 days. It's a very well maintained web site. > > Dave Hillis I don't think the links have been updated during the ~year I've been around but no great (any?) need during that time. More importantly its remained functional almost non-stop [compare Pizza] and when it was down not so long ago JKW acknowledged email and the hills came back. More recently it survived the spam attack on the mailing list with minimal disruption. Plus it looks good. Re irc: I've noticed JKW around over the last few weeks - we've never been present at the same time but ... I see tonight's topic is: *** Topic for #corewars: welcome to koth.org central. please allow 10-16 hours +for responses to your messages : Lukasz, perhaps you could rouse him further by knocking Evol Cap off the big hill :-) Philb From: waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) Subject: Re: New corewar server - WIKI Date: 9 Oct 2002 23:39:10 -0700 Message-ID: <4ee41bd6.0210092239.2a690127@posting.google.com> Lukasz Grabun wrote in message news:... > On 9 Oct 2002 17:01:59 -0400, Lukasz Adamowski wrote: > > actualize my WWW (which means "ftping" 4 maybe 5 text files), so it > > If one could `ftp' files by remote it would be no problem. I have an > amount of space on ISP's server; fetchmail can run as a deamon, check > my account - let's say - every 10 minutes, procmail+perl can take the > rest, while ftp script would upload text files with results. I'll second PK's response re your machine & internet load - I think you'd be fine. Have you ever looked at the stats page for koth.org? "Today, there have been a total of 9414 accesses by 303 unique hosts...". I'm less convinced that another server is necessary/good. What would the benefits/response be? Another Phil setup a beginner hill not so long ago but the yellow one gets more traffic. Ok, a LP hill would be nice and maybe even popular but I expect Walter Hoffman would add one to the c.s.n [yellow] site if people showed interest plus Cristoph already has one albeit the code always gets published. Pros: - LP hill [good] - somewhere to turn if koth.org goes down [... yellow & polish hills?] [*] - ability to put/maintain newer links/info [...many other sites, some new] - ability to host variations on instruction set [ maybe, but instructions > players; backward compatibility; history etc.] - way to liven up the cw scene / shake off the misleading '94 draft feeling. - way to show/learn/test web/design/dev skills Cons: - dilutes the playing field further - unless it's a published hill a playing host may feel conflicted. [Think John Metcalf not being able to compete in his tournament] - deflect you from shaking up some other hills e.g. 94x 94m I was thinking along the lines of putting up a server in the past [I have broadband] but WH gave me a safe outlet by allowing me to dabble on his site and the feeling passed. Still, perhaps I'll make a secret PBT only hill one day so I too _can_ be king . [*] More recently I've been thinking about the problems of ownership of hills and sites. e.g Firstly, I consider the presence of Pizza more of a problem than the creation of a new sever a blessing. Why? Because there are many links to Pizza yet it's always down. Plus [unless you use lynx] the message saying it's down is hard to spot and once spotted is misleading. I wonder how many people over the last year have had Pizza as their first and only experience of cw. Secondly there are many nice/useful but unmaintained sites around. Together this got me thinking of a Wiki system - a distributed corewar site which no-one owns and that _anyone_ can maintain. An extension of the idea is to share hill results/submissions. Not much fun as all the hills would be the same but assuming the data was shared [static html so static sites could use it as is] any number of people could create their own hills/servers and display / package the results in whatever form they liked best. Like the hills themselves one would see competition over time e.g. if your implementation looked best or responded most rapidly you would be a winner in terms of usage ... and if your site went down the warriors/results/ages would live on. Philb P.S. I know Pizza has had a long and glorious history - if it recovers, great. http://www.wikipedia.org hasn't a corewar entry yet. From: lgrabun@wp.pl (Lukasz Grabun) Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: 11 Oct 2002 10:53:39 -0700 Message-ID: <6bed82.0210110953.25472295@posting.google.com> dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) wrote in message news:<5d6847b2.0210090607.1faec2dd@posting.google.com>... > No one is going to think you meant that to be such a sweeping > statement. But since you bring the subject up, over the 4 years I've > been playing Corewars I don't think the hills at KOTH have been down > for 4 days. It's a very well maintained web site. Gee, I did not mean to offend anyone. I am aware of the fact KotH runs smoothly and there hardly are any breaks. This is not what I meant. Since http://www.koth.org is the only *working* site in English (Lukasz's hills are in Polish so it *might* a little tricky for English-speaking people to read the rules) one should give more care to it. CoreWarrior issue are easily found in the google archives not on the webpage. There's no info about John's current tournament. I do *love* KotH, don't you know that. But it should be more up-to-date, methinks. From: lgrabun@wp.pl (Lukasz Grabun) Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: 11 Oct 2002 10:54:48 -0700 Message-ID: <6bed82.0210110954.d1e0ba0@posting.google.com> waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) wrote in message news:<4ee41bd6.0210092111.a3269de@posting.google.com>... > Lukasz, perhaps you could rouse him further by knocking Evol Cap off > the big hill :-) :) One would need nine/ten succesful submissions. The hill would look kind of weird then, don't you think? :) From: lgrabun@wp.pl (Lukasz Grabun) Subject: Re: New corewar server - WIKI Date: 11 Oct 2002 11:00:30 -0700 Message-ID: <6bed82.0210111000.37610d11@posting.google.com> waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) wrote in message news:<4ee41bd6.0210092239.2a690127@posting.google.com>... > "Today, there have been a total of 9414 accesses by 303 unique > hosts...". Hm, I don't know whether this is a lot or not. OTOH Polish common portal http://www.wp.pl has something about 6 mln accesses per day. :) I am doing my thinking. Admins from my school have not reply to my post yet. > Ok, a LP hill would be nice and maybe even popular but I expect Walter > Hoffman would add one to the c.s.n [yellow] site if people showed > interest plus Cristoph already has one albeit the code always gets > published. LP hill and small 94 p-space would be nice to have. These are things to cover I suppose. From: howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) Subject: Re: RedCoder sneek Date: 12 Oct 2002 12:30:51 -0700 Message-ID: <5e314d3b.0210121130.7b54126a@posting.google.com> Thanks Joonas for the exhaust with debug. I have finally tracked down my bug (incorrect thread creation order, only obvious after a wrap of the thread list) and can validate that my o-pascal mars is now correct (except for pspace, mod and div, which are coming!) for validate.red. I'm now running it through the entire planar archive, to be doublely-sure. I've ported redcoder to linux (x86 only, sorry) and can hopefully release something working (problem at the moment is, curiously, the fonts; is it safe to assume that everyone has a font called 'courier' or something fixed?) this week or the next. My port is kind of one-way, more of a migration, meaning so I'll have to port back to win32 if there are any users who prefer windows? /Will Varfar http://www.geocities.com/varfar/redcoder/index.html From: "Robert Macrae" Subject: Re: Evolving Warriors Date: 13 Oct 2002 13:33:51 -0400 Message-ID: <028601c272a2$9c3a9ab0$2200a8c0@Mesh1> > I am planning to work at a meta level rather than a > instruction-by-instruction level Picking a suitable feature space in which to evolve should make a huge difference. I'm not sure what kind of level you have in mind, but when I last thought about this I sketched functional blocks like a parallel process launcher and a small SPL-fed loop. Warning -- this never actually got to implementation. Robert Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 13 Oct 2002 15:34:17 GMT 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: waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: 13 Oct 2002 20:11:57 -0700 Message-ID: <4ee41bd6.0210131911.5104db53@posting.google.com> lgrabun@wp.pl (Lukasz Grabun) wrote in message news:<6bed82.0210110954.d1e0ba0@posting.google.com>... > waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) wrote in message news:<4ee41bd6.0210092111.a3269de@posting.google.com>... > > > Lukasz, perhaps you could rouse him further by knocking Evol Cap off > > the big hill :-) > > :) > > One would need nine/ten succesful submissions. The hill would look > kind of weird then, don't you think? :) Maybe, but two additions like Glenstorm & Kin (are they?) would do damage, especially if Bugtown fell. Easier/nicer way to provoke attention would be to put anything on the hill as 3 of the bottom four warriors are currently his. Ah, when I said 'easier' I was forgetting my past failures :-/ From: waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: 13 Oct 2002 20:18:42 -0700 Message-ID: <4ee41bd6.0210131918.1912fad0@posting.google.com> lgrabun@wp.pl (Lukasz Grabun) wrote in message news:<6bed82.0210110953.25472295@posting.google.com>... > dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) wrote in message news:<5d6847b2.0210090607.1faec2dd@posting.google.com>... > > > > No one is going to think you meant that to be such a sweeping > > statement. But since you bring the subject up, over the 4 years I've > > been playing Corewars I don't think the hills at KOTH have been down > > for 4 days. It's a very well maintained web site. > > Gee, I did not mean to offend anyone. I am aware of the fact KotH runs > smoothly and there hardly are any breaks. This is not what I meant. > > Since http://www.koth.org is the only *working* site in English How about http://corewars.sourceforge.net ? From: Steve Gunnell Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: 14 Oct 2002 11:16:37 -0400 Message-ID: <200210141901.54751.steveg58@iinet.net.au> On Mon, 14 Oct 2002 12:38, Philip Thorne wrote: > lgrabun@wp.pl (Lukasz Grabun) wrote in message [snip] > > Since http://www.koth.org is the only *working* site in English > > How about http://corewars.sourceforge.net ? Unfortunately the sourceforge hill is such a pain to submit to. I queue all my koth submissions offline and all I need to do is type "koth " and the script does the rest. Nice site but too painful to use regularly. Steve Gunnell From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 10/14/02 Date: 14 Oct 2002 11:24:08 -0400 Message-ID: <200210140409.AAA09826@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/14/02 -=- 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 Oct 13 16:57:50 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 31/ 22/ 47 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 141 167 2 30/ 23/ 47 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 137 936 3 42/ 50/ 7 Willow John Metcalf 135 35 4 42/ 50/ 8 test mj 133 4 5 24/ 16/ 60 SilKing Christian Schmidt 133 169 6 30/ 27/ 43 Uninvited John Metcalf 132 1029 7 27/ 22/ 52 Pink Detonations Ken Espiritu 132 16 8 27/ 23/ 49 Alternative Action Roy van Rijn 131 12 9 30/ 29/ 41 Glenstorm John Metcalf 131 108 10 37/ 43/ 19 Flotation Vapors Ken Espiritu 131 1 11 26/ 22/ 51 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 130 10 12 36/ 43/ 22 Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 129 438 13 35/ 41/ 24 twinshot John Metcalf 129 32 14 36/ 44/ 20 Hazy Lazy ... reborn Steve Gunnell 129 21 15 27/ 26/ 47 Wallpaper Christian Schmidt 129 85 16 38/ 47/ 15 Blade Fizmo 128 253 17 22/ 16/ 62 Broader Clump Ken Espiritu 128 17 18 26/ 24/ 50 Candy Lukasz Grabun 128 247 19 27/ 26/ 47 The Stormkeeper Christian Schmidt 127 44 20 23/ 19/ 59 Velvet Glove Fizmo 126 6 21 19/ 21/ 60 ppaper test 2 John Metcalf 118 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 10/14/02 Date: 14 Oct 2002 11:25:33 -0400 Message-ID: <200210140406.AAA09751@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/14/02 -=- 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 : Wed Sep 25 07:03:27 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 50/ 38/ 12 Fire and Ice II David Moore 163 39 2 34/ 24/ 42 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 144 71 3 38/ 36/ 27 Black Moods Ian Oversby 139 135 4 23/ 8/ 69 Denial David Moore 138 80 5 25/ 13/ 62 Kin John Metcalf 138 47 6 35/ 33/ 32 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 137 22 7 22/ 8/ 70 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 136 208 8 30/ 25/ 44 Olivia X Ben Ford 135 20 9 28/ 22/ 50 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 135 161 10 34/ 34/ 31 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 134 139 11 27/ 19/ 54 Glenstorm John Metcalf 134 1 12 35/ 37/ 28 Ogre Christian Schmidt 134 87 13 26/ 18/ 57 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 133 79 14 32/ 32/ 36 Big I.F.F.S. Dave Hillis 133 68 15 30/ 29/ 42 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 131 78 16 32/ 40/ 28 Exsnail Philip Thorne 124 34 17 16/ 7/ 77 Black Box v1.1 JKW 124 102 18 15/ 7/ 77 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 124 156 19 28/ 40/ 31 Bugtown Rap 19 Steve Gunnell 116 4 20 33/ 50/ 17 Greetings From Asbury Par JKW 116 99 21 10/ 78/ 12 XCN Fast Scan Xavi Canal 41 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 10/14/02 Date: 14 Oct 2002 11:26:58 -0400 Message-ID: <200210140403.AAA09680@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/14/02 -=- 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 Oct 10 12:56:02 EDT 2002 # Name Author Score Age 1 Her Majesty P.Kline 19 120 2 fclear Brian Haskin 18 85 3 clock strikes twelve John Metcalf 16 15 4 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 14 101 5 Redemption John Metcalf 13 6 6 Tinyshot John Metcalf 13 14 7 Playing with Fire Ben Ford 11 13 8 trial John Metcalf 10 5 9 twinshot John Metcalf 8 1 10 Snurp II Philip Thorne 5 8 11 TM94 Kecol 2 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 10/14/02 Date: 14 Oct 2002 11:28:23 -0400 Message-ID: <200210140400.AAA09613@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/14/02 -=- 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 : Sat Oct 12 16:55:23 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 39/ 22/ 40 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 156 3 2 36/ 22/ 43 Freight Train David Moore 150 168 3 46/ 43/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 149 2 4 34/ 22/ 44 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 146 107 5 46/ 47/ 7 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 145 6 6 44/ 45/ 11 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 144 164 7 44/ 44/ 11 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 144 205 8 33/ 23/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 143 167 9 43/ 43/ 15 '88 test IV John Metcalf 143 61 10 36/ 34/ 30 vala John Metcalf 139 90 11 33/ 28/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 138 125 12 39/ 39/ 22 PacMan David Moore 138 197 13 31/ 25/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 137 123 14 37/ 38/ 26 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 136 54 15 28/ 21/ 51 Test I Ian Oversby 136 224 16 27/ 20/ 53 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 135 181 17 39/ 44/ 16 Stasis David Moore 134 275 18 39/ 45/ 16 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 134 443 19 38/ 48/ 13 rdrc: Conscionable Roomma Dave Hillis 128 56 20 38/ 49/ 13 Tangle Trap 2 David Moore 127 1 21 8/ 58/ 34 Detonate Coffeepot Dave Hillis 58 0 From: lgrabun@wp.pl (Lukasz Grabun) Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: 14 Oct 2002 13:39:17 -0700 Message-ID: <6bed82.0210141239.412f32d5@posting.google.com> > Maybe, but two additions like Glenstorm & Kin (are they?) would do > damage, especially if Bugtown fell. Easier/nicer way to provoke > attention would be to put anything on the hill as 3 of the bottom four > warriors are currently his. Oh, you meant the bottom of the hill :) Well, yes, this *is* an idea. In a free moment I'll try some p-switching techniques, I think - just after I had all my components chosen/made/optimised/phew :) Lukasz From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: 14 Oct 2002 21:09:04 -0400 Message-ID: On Fri, 11 Oct 2002, Lukasz Grabun wrote: > Since http://www.koth.org is the only *working* site in English You mean _site_ or _hill_. If second, it's not true, corewars.sourceforge.net is working just fine. I believe some others also. > (Lukasz's hills are in Polish so it *might* a little tricky for > English-speaking people to read the rules) [...] Are You suggesting I should translate it. I thought about it many times, but (to be honest) I wouldn't like to see how few of players from all the world fill my hill with warriors which cannot be beaten by ordinary Polish players. It was, it is and it will be Polish hill. Of course I will accept any warrior, but please, don't do that to me, don't be the best! ;] OTOH I can make another (English) hill, but it takes time and work and health... > I do *love* KotH, don't you know that. But it should be more > up-to-date, methinks. My love to KotH is still unsatisfied. ;] I've never got on any of its hills and looks like I'll never do. Lukasz Adamowski From: achap30@hotmail.com (J Cade) Subject: Worm killing Date: 15 Oct 2002 04:54:09 -0700 Message-ID: Hello there, a newbie here :) I would be very grateful if anyone could please help me with some code to kill a worm. I have slowed it down (spl 0) and tracked down the leading end of it, but no amount of dat #0, #0's will kill it, has anyone got any ideas, other than an imp gate, as that is not really feasable? Thank you all in advance! Jon Cade From: "BALDWIN ONUIGBO" Subject: URGENT ASSISTANCE Date: 15 Oct 2002 08:37:56 -0400 Message-ID: <200210150252.g9F2qJG26118@valhalla.ttsg.com> EXPEDIENT INTEREST Dear Sir, I am Mr. Baldwin Onuigbo. Bank Manager of Diamond Bank of Nigeria, Lagos Branch. I have urgent and very confidential business proposition for you. On June 6, 1997, a Foriegn Oil consultant/contractor with the Nigerian government , Mr. Barry Kelly made a numbered time (Fixed) Deposit for twelve calendar months, valued at US$25,000,000.00 (Twenty-five Million Dollars) in my branch. Upon maturity, Isent a routine notification to his forwarding address but got no reply. After a month, we sent a reminder and finally we discovered from his contract employers,the Ministry of trade and commerce that Mr.Barry Kelly died from an automobile accident. On further investigation, I found out that he died without making a WILL, and all attempts to trace his next of kin was fruitless. I therefore made further investigation and discovered that Mr.Barry Kelly did not declare any kin or relations in all his official documents, including his Bank Deposit paperwork in my Bank. This sum of US$25,000,000.00 is still sitting in my Bank and the interest is being rolled over with the principal sum at the end of each year. No one will ever come forward to claim it. According to Nigerian Law, at the expiration of 6 (six) years, the money will revert to the ownership of the Nigerian Government if nobody applies to claim the fund. Consequently, my proposal is that I will like you as an Foreigner to stand in as the next of kin to Mr. Barry Kelly so that the fruits of this old man's labor will not get into the hands of some corrupt government officials. This is simple, I will like you to provide immediately your full names and address so that the Attorney will prepare the necessary documents and affidavits, which will put you in place as the next of kin. We shall employ the service of two Attorneys for drafting and notarization of the WILL and to obtain the necessary documents and letter of probate/ administration in your favor for the transfer. A bank account in any part of the world, which you will provide, will then facilitate the transfer of this money to you as the beneficiary/next of kin. The money will be paid into your account for us to share in the ratio of 60% for me and 40% for you. There is no risk at all as all the paperwork for this transaction will be done by the Attorney and my position as the Branch Manager guarantees the successful execution of this transaction. If you are interested, please reply immediately via the private email address of this message. Upon your response, I shall then provide you with more details and relevant documents that will help you understand the transaction Please observe utmost confidentiality, and rest assured that this transaction would be most profitable for both of us because I shall require your assistance to invest my share in your country. Awaiting your urgent reply via my email. Thanks and regards. Mr.Baldwin Onuigbo. From: lgrabun@wp.pl (Lukasz Grabun) Subject: Re: Worm killing Date: 15 Oct 2002 13:52:33 -0700 Message-ID: <6bed82.0210151252.441edba2@posting.google.com> achap30@hotmail.com (J Cade) wrote in message news:... > Hello there, a newbie here :) Welcome, > I would be very grateful if anyone could please help me with some code > to kill a worm. A worm? What do you mean by a `worm'? Is it some kind of paper or an imp? > I have slowed it down (spl 0) and tracked down the leading end of it, > but no amount of dat #0, #0's will kill it, has anyone got any ideas, > other than an imp gate, as that is not really feasable? Generally, if your warrior is a scanner one can observe two phases of the game: first tracking the opponent + stunning him and the second one: clearing the terrain down. You should check d-clears and clears on Planar's page (you can easily find the link on http://www.koth.org at the link bookmark). You can also find educating a thread I started some time ago - I *think* you can track it down in http://groups.google.com while looking for subject "Simple scanner, hints welcome" or similar. Good luck! LG Message-ID: <3DAC2A6D.FDDEEEB@someoneelse.invalid> From: HiEv Subject: Re: URGENT ASSISTANCE Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 14:46:23 GMT BALDWIN ONUIGBO wrote: > EXPEDIENT INTEREST > > Dear Sir, > > I am Mr. Baldwin Onuigbo. Bank Manager of Diamond Bank of > Nigeria, Lagos Branch. I have urgent and very > confidential business proposition for you. [snip] Wow. That's the first Nigerian 419 scam letter I've seen on usenet. Neat. If you haven't heard of this scam yet, see here: http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/Crimes/Business/nigerian.htm -- The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has its limits. From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 17:50:02 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: On 14 Oct 2002 21:09:04 -0400, Lukasz Adamowski wrote: >> (Lukasz's hills are in Polish so it *might* a little tricky for >> English-speaking people to read the rules) [...] > > Are You suggesting I should translate it. I thought about it many times, > but (to be honest) I wouldn't like to see how few of players from all the > world fill my hill with warriors which cannot be beaten by ordinary > Polish players. It was, it is and it will be Polish hill. Of course I will > accept any warrior, but please, don't do that to me, don't be the best! ;] > OTOH I can make another (English) hill, but it takes time and work and > health... Corewar is very fair game - if you're the best redcoder around, you win. But that's not the trick - the trick is there's no strategy that gives the permanent victory in the long run; for every warrior there's a co-warrior. Which means that everythings go round and round. And there're still things that were not done/programmed. Many things to discover (wait for the scanner(?) we've been working on with Aristoteles). Anyway, I've never seen more democratic game. :) > My love to KotH is still unsatisfied. ;] I've never got on any of its > hills and looks like I'll never do. It takes some time but this can be done with no doubt ;) -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: "Roy van Rijn" Subject: Team Projects Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 17:50:23 +0200 Message-ID: Hi, I justed wanted to say: Team Projects in Corewar rule! Yeah, look at the Hill now, first place... Reepicheep, a warrior made by Grabun and Metcalf, very good warrior, its gonna be hard to beat it. But since a couple of hours on the second place: Revenge of the Papers, another team project, I mailed Christian Schmidt about a simple question, and 5 emails later our first team warrior was born! It didn't look so good but what the heck, we can always try it on the hill. And a schocking conclusion...it came in second :o So after Grabun+Metcalf I too want to encourage team projects, it sooo much fun.... and succesfull!! Roy (tnx Christian!!) From: Jed Davis Subject: Re: Worm killing Date: 15 Oct 2002 17:54:03 -0400 Message-ID: lgrabun@wp.pl (Lukasz Grabun) writes: > Generally, if your warrior is a scanner one can observe two phases of > the game: first tracking the opponent + stunning him and the second > one: clearing the terrain down. And I must say that there's nothing quite so humbling as watching one's paper-based warrior, which had previously done so well, get consistently and completely slaughtered by a stun/clear. --Jed (GUIs definitely add a certain element of drama here) -- Student, 4th-YearCS Major and Student SysAdminPanixer From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: Team Projects Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 20:58:51 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: On Tue, 15 Oct 2002 17:50:23 +0200, Roy van Rijn wrote: > (tnx Christian!!) Fizmo, huh? :) -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: fizmo_master@yahoo.com (Fizmo) Subject: Re: Team Projects Date: 16 Oct 2002 01:06:04 -0700 Message-ID: <9f53b5fb.0210160006.484d3d3c@posting.google.com> ;-) Lukasz Grabun wrote in message news:... > On Tue, 15 Oct 2002 17:50:23 +0200, Roy van Rijn wrote: > > (tnx Christian!!) > > Fizmo, huh? :) From: fizmo_master@yahoo.com (Fizmo) Subject: Velvet Glove Date: 16 Oct 2002 03:17:45 -0700 Message-ID: <9f53b5fb.0210160217.2d7c2738@posting.google.com> Hi all, I would like to present Velvet Glove. It uses a kind of paper, which includes a "bidirectional coreclear" and imps. If we look more close to the structure we find in the first four lines of code the well known silk part: s1 spl @0, -1 s2 spl @0, -1 More important are the next three lines. mov.i #1, <1 spl -2, -1, which continue to copy instructions behind the already copied paper. This leads in a kind of forward dat (or whatsoever) coreclear. To get the imps alive we must start three copies of the paper with a binary launcher, like in 'Savety in Numbers', 'Terkonit' etc. and leave the rest to fool a bit all those nasty scanner. It seems to me important to boot away the ccpapers and not to start it too close to the qscanning part. All together we have a qscan/paper which scores quite well against most stone/b-field imps, most of the scanner/oneshot and launching fast enough to get a few more kills to some stone/papers. The offensive power of silk/imps are up to now quite limited, but with the mov #1, <1 instruction for example it should gain again some more longterm footholds on the hill. But then stone/a-field imps will be successfull seen again on the hill and the mov #1, {1 instruction will be then back of interest ;-) So, let the next round of the neverending battles begin..... Chris ;---------------------------------CUT HERE------------------------------ ;redcode-94nop ;name Velvet Glove ;author Fizmo ;strategy qscan, silk and imps ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;kill Velvet Glove pStep1 EQU 310 pStep2 EQU 3044 pBomb EQU 2335 bDist EQU 1434 iStep EQU 2667 s1 spl @0, -1 s2 spl @0, -1 mov.i #1, <1 spl -2, qTab sne qd+qf+17*qs, qf+17*qs seq qf+16*qs, Yeah, it was really a big surprise to see our warrior in second, but it was good starting material I got from Roy. It takes only some tweaking on one of the two papers, adding a bootstrap and a quickcanner and tatarataaaa Revenge of the papers was born. Kudos also to Roy for this nice and succesfull project. Chris "Roy van Rijn" wrote in message news:... > Hi, I justed wanted to say: > > Team Projects in Corewar rule! > > Yeah, look at the Hill now, first place... > Reepicheep, a warrior made by Grabun and Metcalf, very good warrior, its > gonna be hard to beat it. > > But since a couple of hours on the second place: > Revenge of the Papers, another team project, I mailed Christian Schmidt > about a simple question, and 5 emails later our first team warrior was born! > It didn't look so good but what the heck, we can always try it on the hill. > And a schocking conclusion...it came in second :o > > So after Grabun+Metcalf I too want to encourage team projects, it sooo much > fun.... and succesfull!! > > Roy > > (tnx Christian!!) From: iapdk@admin.drake.edu (Paul Kline) Subject: Re: Worm killing Date: 16 Oct 2002 07:30:22 -0700 Message-ID: <9e6b1335.0210160630.584c06e@posting.google.com> "Robert Macrae" wrote in message news: I've probably missed some, but those should keep you going for a while 8-) > I think you'll find this paper kills a lot of 3-point imps: pStart spl 1 ,>1100 mov -1,0 mov -1,0 spl 1 ,>4100 mov >b1 ,}b1 spl r1+4000 ,>c1 djn.f r1 ,<2100 b1 dat p1+4000 ,p1 p1 spl 1 ,0 mov d1 ,>-1800 mov d1 ,>-1401 mov d1 ,>-1100 r1 mov >p1 ,>c1 mov Subject: Re: Worm killing Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 08:27:02 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: > I have slowed it down (spl 0) and tracked down the leading end of it, > but no amount of dat #0, #0's will kill it, has anyone got any ideas, > other than an imp gate, as that is not really feasable? It sounds as if the self-repair property of an imp spiral is giving you problems. An imp spiral executes instructions like MOV.i 0, 2667 or MOV.i #2667, *0 spaced evenly around core, so that the MOV copies itself into just the right location to execute on the next cycle. If you overwrite an imp spiral with SPL 0 you will eventually hit the tail of the worm -- the only MOV instruction that is not protected by the spiral -- and start to stun it but it is still not trivial to get rid of the thing and a simple DAT carpet may allow it to repair itself and roll on. [So far a summary of what you have found?] Suggestions: 1) Gate. You have considered this; it accepts that imp spirals will survive the carpet but, given enough time, kills them when they hit the gate. Tough to orchestrate for Silks. 2) Spiral clear. If you clear with 2667 gap between successive DATs (or SPLs) you will defeat the imp self-repair. A gap of 281 also works, and will catch 7-point imps. (Why?) 3) Multiple linear clears. If you run 3 separate carpets spaced 2667 apart you achieve a similar effect. Night Train was a paper that used this approach to create imps but you could also use it to clear. 4) Fast scanner clear. He Scans Alone has a scanner-directed carpet that nibbles away at the back of imps fast enough to kill them. 5) Fast linear clear. If you have stunned the imp, so there are almost 8000 processes executing your SPLs or in a pit, then after the MOVs execute you have 8000 cycles in which to disrupt them before they can self repair. This is easier with a vampire like 8-= because you can use the enemy processes to double your clear rate. I don't think I've seen this with a carpet but it may be possible. 6) Tuned carpet. Carpeting with something that will copy itself imperfectly (for example MOV.i 0, <2667, MOV.i {1, 2667 or MOV.i 0, <1). NPaper used this very effectively, though I don't think you can make it work well against both forms of imp at the same time. I've probably missed some, but those should keep you going for a while 8-) Robert From: howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) Subject: Re: Look what I thought up during my vacation :] Date: 16 Oct 2002 09:32:27 -0700 Message-ID: <5e314d3b.0210160832.1a2fc7e6@posting.google.com> Lukasz Adamowski wrote in message news:... > ... > Maybe someone else will find any application for them. > ... > Any comments? > > Lukasz they prove very effective at defeating my gene pattern parser :-) working around them now.. /Will From: achap30@hotmail.com (J Cade) Subject: Re: Worm killing Date: 16 Oct 2002 12:51:46 -0700 Message-ID: JC again, Thanks for all your help guys, and yes you are right it is a self repairing worm. Whoo, whoo! JC From: Steve Gunnell Subject: Re: Worm killing Date: 16 Oct 2002 18:24:41 -0400 Message-ID: <200210160815.41593.steveg58@iinet.net.au> Hi Jon, If you are talking about an imp spiral there are several methods. Try an imp killing bomb like 'dat Hello there, a newbie here :) > > I would be very grateful if anyone could please help me with some code > to kill a worm. > > I have slowed it down (spl 0) and tracked down the leading end of it, > but no amount of dat #0, #0's will kill it, has anyone got any ideas, > other than an imp gate, as that is not really feasable? > > Thank you all in advance! > Jon Cade From: Paul-V Khuong Subject: Re: Worm killing Date: 16 Oct 2002 18:26:06 -0400 Message-ID: <20021016154228.34425.qmail@web20710.mail.yahoo.com> --- Robert Macrae wrote: [snipdeedoo] > 6) Tuned carpet. Carpeting with something that will > copy itself imperfectly > (for example MOV.i 0, <2667, MOV.i {1, 2667 or MOV.i > 0, <1). NPaper used > this very effectively, though I don't think > you can make it work well against both forms of imp > at the same time. nPaper launched two copies at start, so it wouldn't be hard to have one copy working against b-imps and the other against a-imps. In fact, this was suggested a few months ago here, on rgcw. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com From: "Robert Macrae" Subject: Re: URGENT ASSISTANCE Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 20:25:58 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: "HiEv" wrote in message news:3DAC2A6D.FDDEEEB@someoneelse.invalid... > BALDWIN ONUIGBO wrote: > > EXPEDIENT INTEREST > > > > Dear Sir, > > > > I am Mr. Baldwin Onuigbo. Bank Manager of Diamond Bank of > > Nigeria, Lagos Branch. I have urgent and very > > confidential business proposition for you. > [snip] > > Wow. That's the first Nigerian 419 scam letter I've seen on usenet. > Neat. > > If you haven't heard of this scam yet, see here: > > http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/Crimes/Business/nigerian.htm Remarkable. "Please commit fraud. Please observe utmost confidentiality. Me? I'm posting to Usenet." Robert From: "Robert Macrae" Subject: Re: Worm killing Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 20:27:13 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: Damn, forgot Paul's family of neat non-Silk replicators. I don't think I've seen this one before, but the general principle is avoid scattering processes all around core so that each replicator (or pair?) executes all its processes before the next one starts. The key difference is using SPL 1 rather than SPL @0, XXXX to split. The advantage is that you can lay fast linear carpets rather than just scattering DAT bombs through core. The penalty is slightly slower replication. Err... it occurs to me that Paul might be better placed to explain 8-) Use of a DAT <2*2667 ,<2667 is in itself a technique worth thinking about; when executed by an imp tail it disrupts the next two elements of the imp and will be more effective than something like DAT 1, 1. Robert From: howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) Subject: Re: RedCoder sneek Date: 17 Oct 2002 07:06:11 -0700 Message-ID: <5e314d3b.0210170606.71744a0c@posting.google.com> Hi folks, howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) wrote in message news:<5e314d3b.0209301206.3591c5e9@posting.google.com>... > > have put a sneek preview of my emulator/debugger at > http://www.geocities.com/varfar/redcoder/index.html > > I know it can't do much, and it is very slow, but if you can help me > identify the implementation bugs in my mars emulator I'd greatly > apprieciate it. a new version, feel free to check it out Thanks, Will. From: trojan_warrior_uk@hotmail.com (trojan_warrior_uk) Subject: http://www.livethelegend.lycos.co.uk - GR8 new online fighting game Date: 18 Oct 2002 04:03:24 -0700 Message-ID: <5858dba3.0210180303.7ed7ff2b@posting.google.com> GR8 new online fighting game. Deck your mates and complete strangers from the comfort of your chair! Bring it on! challenge me trojan_warrior_uk@hotmail.com From: Aristoteles Pagaltzis Subject: For crying out loud! Date: 18 Oct 2002 22:46:17 -0400 Message-ID: <20021018225210.A13648@klangraum> Can we please please have the mailing list reject newspostings larger than 150kb?? Who runs the listserv? -- Regards, Aristotle From: Steve Gunnell Subject: Re: Worm killing Date: 19 Oct 2002 08:14:03 -0400 Message-ID: <200210170646.44084.steveg58@iinet.net.au> On Wed, 16 Oct 2002 17:34, Robert Macrae wrote: > 3) Multiple linear clears. If you run 3 separate carpets spaced 2667 > apart you achieve a similar effect. Night Train was a paper that used > this approach to create imps but you could also use it to clear. A variation of this is to boot 3correctly spaced papers and let the papers copy be the clear. Have a look at the paper here: ;redcode-94 test ;name Spray paper ;author Steve Gunnell ;assert 1 STEP1 equ 6322 STEP2 equ 2094 STEP3 equ 4573 ptr dat 0 ,6004 dat.f 0 ,0 dat.f 0 ,0 dat.f 0 ,0 hclr spl #0 ,0 for 0 spl #0 ,0 rof for 0 spl #0 ,>ptr rof trash mov.i dbmb ,>ptr for 0 mov.i dbmb ,>ptr rof djn.f trash ,>ptr dbmb dat.f >2667 ,dbmb-ptr+4 for 50 dat.f 0,0 rof ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; ; ; paper ; ; ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; paper spl 1, -1 ,}-1 spl tpap+2667-STEP1*1 ,tpap mov >-1 ,}-1 tpap spl @0 ,STEP1 mov }-1, >-1 spl @0 ,STEP2 mov }-1, >-1 hpap spl @0 ,STEP3 mov }-1, >-1 mov.i bpap ,>2522 bpap dat <2667, <5334 end paper From: jkw@koth.org Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: 19 Oct 2002 08:15:29 -0400 Message-ID: <4.1.20021016220003.00a65310@pop-server> Sorry if anything is missing from koth.org that should be there. I'm afraid I can't always read all the corewar-l posts, so please email me about any deficiencies and I will try to fix them asap. Also, in response to an irc conversation, koth.org should be putting up a plain -94 hill soon. At 02:38 PM 10/11/02 -0400, you wrote: >dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) wrote in message >news:<5d6847b2.0210090607.1faec2dd@posting.google.com>... > > >> No one is going to think you meant that to be such a sweeping >> statement. But since you bring the subject up, over the 4 years I've >> been playing Corewars I don't think the hills at KOTH have been down >> for 4 days. It's a very well maintained web site. > >Gee, I did not mean to offend anyone. I am aware of the fact KotH runs >smoothly and there hardly are any breaks. This is not what I meant. > >Since http://www.koth.org is the only *working* site in English >(Lukasz's hills are in Polish so it *might* a little tricky for >English-speaking people to read the rules) one should give more care >to it. CoreWarrior issue are easily found in the google archives not >on the webpage. There's no info about John's current tournament. > >I do *love* KotH, don't you know that. But it should be more >up-to-date, methinks. From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: For crying out loud! Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 08:51:58 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: On 18 Oct 2002 22:46:17 -0400, Aristoteles Pagaltzis wrote: > Can we please please have the mailing list reject > newspostings larger than 150kb?? Who runs the listserv? Elves. :) -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: "John Metcalf" Subject: Misc Date: 19 Oct 2002 10:55:03 -0400 Message-ID: Hi, I finally got an IRC program, but no-one's there :-( Corewarrior finally did make it to the newsgroup (the second of three attempts) but wasn't wrapped very well. If anyone would like a nicely wrapped copy sending to them, just let me know. Regards, John _________________________________________________________________ Unlimited Internet access for only $21.95/month.� Try MSN! http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/2monthsfree.asp From: "John Metcalf" Subject: Round 4 announcement Date: 19 Oct 2002 10:56:27 -0400 Message-ID: S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 0 2 C O R E W A R T O U R N A M E N T ROUND 4: RESTRICTED LENGTH (Deadline: 30th November 2002) Round four will be fought using extended '94 rules, as used by both Pizza's draft and beginner hills. The maximum warrior length is reduced to 50 to discourage complex p-spacers and qscans. pmars -l 50 A similar round was held in 1998 as part of the Redcode Maniacs Tournament. Check which warriors were successful then on Philip Kendall's page: http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~pak21/corewar/maniacs/maniacs1.html As usual, you can enter either one or two warriors. However, there will be one restriction. You may only enter one warrior which uses the LDP instruction. PIN numbers are disallowed. Good luck :-) ROUND 5 PREVIEW: TRI-ATHELON All the greatest quiz shows give the competitors the chance to play for 'double the money' in one of the final rounds. In the final joust of the tournament you will be seeking vital extra points as your warrior plays round-robin, multi-warrior and against a bench-mark of recent warriors. _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: IRC (and the rest) Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 13:37:08 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: On 19 Oct 2002 08:15:29 -0400, jkw@koth.org wrote: > Sorry if anything is missing from koth.org that should be there. >I'm afraid I can't always read all the corewar-l posts, so please >email me about any deficiencies and I will try to fix them asap. So The Master speaks. :) Hello, JKW. I did not mean any harsh words - please, do not take any offence of my words. KotH is great site; as far as missing CW issues and broken links are mentioned - one can easily find disired information in http://groups.google.com. Obviously, it *would* be nice to have them (CW, I mean) gathered in one place. >Also, in response to an irc conversation, koth.org should be putting >up a plain -94 hill soon. Argh, ::worship:: ::worship:: ::worship:: Thanks! -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 10/21/02 Date: 21 Oct 2002 14:55:56 -0400 Message-ID: <200210210406.AAA04443@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/21/02 -=- 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 : Tue Oct 15 09:45:39 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 51/ 37/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 164 39 2 34/ 23/ 42 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 145 71 3 27/ 17/ 56 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 137 79 4 34/ 33/ 32 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 135 139 5 33/ 32/ 35 Big I.F.F.S. Dave Hillis 135 68 6 34/ 33/ 33 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 135 22 7 35/ 36/ 29 Ogre Christian Schmidt 134 87 8 30/ 28/ 42 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 132 78 9 19/ 8/ 73 Denial David Moore 130 80 10 33/ 36/ 31 Black Moods Ian Oversby 130 135 11 19/ 8/ 73 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 130 208 12 21/ 13/ 67 Kin John Metcalf 129 47 13 27/ 25/ 48 Olivia X Ben Ford 129 20 14 25/ 22/ 54 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 128 161 15 33/ 38/ 29 Exsnail Philip Thorne 127 34 16 22/ 19/ 58 Glenstorm John Metcalf 125 1 17 13/ 7/ 79 Black Box v1.1 JKW 120 102 18 13/ 7/ 80 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 119 156 19 29/ 40/ 31 Bugtown Rap 19 Steve Gunnell 118 4 20 33/ 49/ 18 Greetings From Asbury Par JKW 118 99 21 0/ 49/ 51 Super Imp v1.0exp Xavi Canal 52 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 10/21/02 Date: 21 Oct 2002 14:57:20 -0400 Message-ID: <200210210409.AAA04492@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/21/02 -=- 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 Oct 20 16:50:32 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 44/ 48/ 8 Willow John Metcalf 139 67 2 39/ 38/ 24 CrazyShot 2 Christian Schmidt 139 1 3 43/ 50/ 6 Claw Fizmo 137 20 4 28/ 21/ 51 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 135 199 5 37/ 43/ 20 Hazy Lazy ... reborn Steve Gunnell 132 53 6 27/ 24/ 49 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 131 968 7 25/ 18/ 57 Firestorm John Metcalf 131 4 8 25/ 21/ 54 Revenge of the Papers Fizmo/Roy 130 6 9 38/ 47/ 15 Blade Fizmo 130 285 10 23/ 16/ 61 SilKing Christian Schmidt 129 201 11 26/ 24/ 49 The Stormkeeper Christian Schmidt 129 76 12 26/ 24/ 51 Wallpaper Christian Schmidt 128 117 13 28/ 28/ 45 Glenstorm John Metcalf 128 140 14 36/ 45/ 19 Versatile John Metcalf 128 3 15 25/ 24/ 51 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 126 42 16 25/ 23/ 52 Alternative Action Roy van Rijn 126 44 17 24/ 22/ 55 Pink Detonations Ken Espiritu 126 48 18 27/ 28/ 46 Uninvited John Metcalf 126 1061 19 22/ 19/ 59 Leaflet Ben Ford 124 2 20 20/ 17/ 62 Velvet Glove Fizmo 124 27 21 11/ 18/ 71 Mr Sheen Test D 41 Steve Gunnell 104 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 10/21/02 Date: 21 Oct 2002 14:58:45 -0400 Message-ID: <200210210403.AAA04361@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/21/02 -=- 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 Oct 20 13:45:04 EDT 2002 # Name Author Score Age 1 Redemption John Metcalf 34 7 2 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 30 102 3 clock strikes twelve John Metcalf 24 16 4 trial John Metcalf 23 6 5 fclear Brian Haskin 21 86 6 Snurp III Philip Thorne 21 1 7 Playing with Fire Ben Ford 19 14 8 twinshot John Metcalf 19 2 9 Her Majesty P.Kline 16 121 10 Tinyshot John Metcalf 16 15 11 _/_ _/_ 0 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 10/21/02 Date: 21 Oct 2002 15:00:10 -0400 Message-ID: <200210210400.AAA04311@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/21/02 -=- 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 Oct 20 22:07:50 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 22/ 39 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 155 4 2 35/ 22/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 148 169 3 34/ 22/ 44 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 145 108 4 33/ 24/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 143 168 5 44/ 45/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 143 3 6 44/ 48/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 141 7 7 43/ 46/ 12 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 139 165 8 42/ 46/ 12 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 139 206 9 33/ 28/ 38 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 138 126 10 28/ 20/ 53 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 136 182 11 40/ 44/ 16 '88 test IV John Metcalf 135 62 12 28/ 21/ 51 Test I Ian Oversby 135 225 13 38/ 41/ 22 PacMan David Moore 135 198 14 36/ 37/ 27 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 134 55 15 30/ 25/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 134 124 16 34/ 35/ 32 vala John Metcalf 132 91 17 37/ 46/ 18 Stasis David Moore 128 276 18 36/ 46/ 17 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 127 444 19 27/ 32/ 41 Fat Expansion (V) Philip Thorne (RM/JM 122 1 20 36/ 50/ 14 Tangle Trap 2 David Moore 121 2 21 35/ 50/ 15 rdrc: Conscionable Roomma Dave Hillis 120 57 From: harryk6969@hotmail.com (Harry Kim) Subject: Core wars on Windows XP? Date: 22 Oct 2002 17:18:31 -0700 Message-ID: Will corewars work on winxp? When I try to run it I get an error. I do pmarsv imp and it says Exiting due to signal SIGSEGV General protection fault at.. and it goes on to show me a bunch of registers... What can I do? And is there a version I can download for linux? Specifically slackware? From: Christoph Birk Subject: Koenigstuhl news Date: 23 Oct 2002 09:07:39 -0400 Message-ID: <200210222338.QAA22852@andromeda.ociw.edu> Congratulations to Michal Janeczek: His program 'Quicksilver 88' is not only #2 on the '88-Koenigstuhl, it is the hightest ranking (#82) '88-warrior on the OPEN hill (next is 'Freight Train v0.2' as #208) Contratulations to Fizmo for his first program (Velvet Glove) in the top-100 of the 94nop-hill (#69) Christoph http://www.ociw.edu/~birk/COREWAR/koenigstuhl.html From: "John Metcalf" Subject: IRC Meeting Sun 27 Oct Date: 23 Oct 2002 09:09:03 -0400 Message-ID: Greetings... After a hastily arranged IRC meeting on Sun 20th Oct, we agreed to meet again the same time on Sun 27th Oct and give the whole group opportunity to attend. Most of us were there between 5pm and 11pm (GMT) with others dropping in when convenient. Seven redcoders attended and the log should be available shortly on Koth. If you can't hang out at IRC.KOTH.ORG for hours on end, just show up for happy hour between 7 and 8pm (GMT). See you there. _________________________________________________________________ Broadband?�Dial-up? Get reliable MSN Internet Access. http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/default.asp From: "Csaba Biro" Subject: Re: Core wars on Windows XP? Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 18:27:56 -0400 Message-ID: I tried to use that one that is claimed to be compiled for DOS, and did the same thing on Win2000. But one of those pmarsv's that were compiled for Win95/98/NT (on http://www.koth.org/pmars) was working for me (I don't remember which one), although it produced strange things, when I tried to use Windows hot keys. A suggested here to develope a new Windows GUI pmars a few months ago. I still think that it is good idea. Csaba "Harry Kim" wrote in message news:a23ffb68.0210221618.38ef37d9@posting.google.com... > Will corewars work on winxp? When I try to run it I get an error. > I do > pmarsv imp > and it says > Exiting due to signal SIGSEGV > General protection fault at.. and it goes on to show me a bunch of > registers... > What can I do? And is there a version I can download for linux? > Specifically slackware? From: Paul-V Khuong Subject: Re: Core wars on Windows XP? Date: 24 Oct 2002 09:27:07 -0400 Message-ID: <20021023235312.90526.qmail@web20701.mail.yahoo.com> The 286 version of pmarsv works under windows. You could also try and run pmarsv under compatibility mode(DOS). --- Csaba Biro wrote: > I tried to use that one that is claimed to be > compiled for DOS, and did the > same thing on Win2000. But one of those pmarsv's > that were compiled for > Win95/98/NT (on http://www.koth.org/pmars) was > working for me (I don't > remember which one), although it produced strange > things, when I tried to > use Windows hot keys. > > A suggested here to develope a new Windows GUI pmars > a few months ago. I > still think that it is good idea. > > Csaba > > "Harry Kim" wrote in > message > news:a23ffb68.0210221618.38ef37d9@posting.google.com... > > Will corewars work on winxp? When I try to run it > I get an error. > > I do > > pmarsv imp > > and it says > > Exiting due to signal SIGSEGV > > General protection fault at.. and it goes on to > show me a bunch of > > registers... > > What can I do? And is there a version I can > download for linux? > > Specifically slackware? > > __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ From: "Dominic Hull" Subject: Re: Core wars on Windows XP? Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 13:37:17 +0100 Message-ID: "Harry Kim" wrote in message news:a23ffb68.0210221618.38ef37d9@posting.google.com... > Will corewars work on winxp? When I try to run it I get an error. > General protection fault at.. and it goes on to show me a bunch of > registers... Same thing happened to me. I then got the 286 version, and it worked fine. Hope this helps! Thanks, Dominic From: howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) Subject: RedCoder sneek Date: 25 Oct 2002 15:52:03 -0700 Message-ID: <5e314d3b.0210251452.471837ed@posting.google.com> another version is out, 0.4, with misc bug fixes. I aren't saying that it is bug-free mars-implementation-wise yet, but it is hopefully quite useable already. Big thanks to Joonas for patiently going through the mars with me! http://www.geocities.com/varfar/redcoder/index.html enjoy, Will. From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 10/28/02 Date: 28 Oct 2002 08:51:32 -0500 Message-ID: <200210280509.AAA04959@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/28/02 -=- 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 Oct 27 18:15:42 EST 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 36/ 23/ 41 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 148 227 2 34/ 24/ 43 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 143 996 3 34/ 28/ 38 NoProblem v1.0 Roy van Rijn 140 24 4 31/ 23/ 46 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 139 70 5 33/ 28/ 39 Uninvited John Metcalf 138 1089 6 33/ 27/ 41 The Stormkeeper Christian Schmidt 138 104 7 34/ 30/ 35 Glenstorm John Metcalf 138 168 8 39/ 40/ 21 Dettol Test 18 Steve Gunnell 138 25 9 30/ 25/ 45 Revenge of the Papers Fizmo/Roy 136 34 10 39/ 43/ 18 Hazy Lazy ... reborn Steve Gunnell 136 81 11 28/ 21/ 51 Firestorm John Metcalf 136 32 12 31/ 29/ 40 Wallpaper Christian Schmidt 134 145 13 43/ 52/ 5 stests John Metcalf 133 19 14 42/ 52/ 6 Willow John Metcalf 133 95 15 38/ 43/ 20 CrazyShot 2 Christian Schmidt 133 29 16 38/ 46/ 15 QUILT PBT 131 6 17 24/ 19/ 57 Blowrag Metcalf/Schmidt 130 27 18 39/ 49/ 12 Blade Fizmo 129 313 19 41/ 54/ 5 Claw Fizmo 128 48 20 38/ 50/ 12 vamscb1 Ken Espiritu 125 1 21 24/ 23/ 53 test Roy van Rijn 124 2 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 10/28/02 Date: 28 Oct 2002 08:52:57 -0500 Message-ID: <200210280506.AAA04911@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/28/02 -=- 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 : Tue Oct 15 09:45:39 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 51/ 37/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 164 39 2 34/ 23/ 42 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 145 71 3 27/ 17/ 56 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 137 79 4 34/ 33/ 32 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 135 139 5 33/ 32/ 35 Big I.F.F.S. Dave Hillis 135 68 6 34/ 33/ 33 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 135 22 7 35/ 36/ 29 Ogre Christian Schmidt 134 87 8 30/ 28/ 42 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 132 78 9 19/ 8/ 73 Denial David Moore 130 80 10 33/ 36/ 31 Black Moods Ian Oversby 130 135 11 19/ 8/ 73 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 130 208 12 21/ 13/ 67 Kin John Metcalf 129 47 13 27/ 25/ 48 Olivia X Ben Ford 129 20 14 25/ 22/ 54 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 128 161 15 33/ 38/ 29 Exsnail Philip Thorne 127 34 16 22/ 19/ 58 Glenstorm John Metcalf 125 1 17 13/ 7/ 79 Black Box v1.1 JKW 120 102 18 13/ 7/ 80 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 119 156 19 29/ 40/ 31 Bugtown Rap 19 Steve Gunnell 118 4 20 33/ 49/ 18 Greetings From Asbury Par JKW 118 99 21 0/ 49/ 51 Super Imp v1.0exp Xavi Canal 52 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 10/28/02 Date: 28 Oct 2002 08:54:22 -0500 Message-ID: <200210280503.AAA04850@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/28/02 -=- 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 Oct 27 18:02:05 EST 2002 # Name Author Score Age 1 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 24 105 2 trial John Metcalf 15 9 3 fclear Brian Haskin 13 89 4 Her Majesty P.Kline 11 124 5 Redemption John Metcalf 10 10 6 Djinn Test 5 Steve Gunnell 10 2 7 twinshot John Metcalf 9 5 8 Playing with Fire Ben Ford 8 17 9 Wet Snurp Philip Thorne 8 1 10 Tinyshot John Metcalf 4 18 11 Blitz test 48 Steve Gunnell 0 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 10/28/02 Date: 28 Oct 2002 08:55:46 -0500 Message-ID: <200210280500.AAA04788@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 10/28/02 -=- 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 : Fri Oct 25 10:35:54 EDT 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 23/ 39 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 152 5 2 35/ 24/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 146 170 3 34/ 24/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 144 169 4 33/ 23/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 143 109 5 41/ 40/ 18 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 142 1 6 34/ 27/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 141 127 7 43/ 46/ 12 vm5 Michal Janeczek 140 4 8 43/ 49/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 137 8 9 35/ 34/ 32 vala John Metcalf 135 92 10 41/ 47/ 12 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 135 166 11 41/ 47/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 135 207 12 28/ 21/ 51 Test I Ian Oversby 135 226 13 39/ 44/ 16 '88 test IV John Metcalf 134 63 14 38/ 41/ 21 PacMan David Moore 134 199 15 27/ 20/ 53 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 133 183 16 30/ 26/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 133 125 17 35/ 38/ 27 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 133 56 18 37/ 45/ 17 Stasis David Moore 129 277 19 37/ 45/ 18 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 128 445 20 27/ 33/ 40 Fat Expansion (V) Philip Thorne (RM/JM 120 2 21 34/ 52/ 15 Tangle Trap 2 David Moore 116 3 Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 28 Oct 2002 11:33:42 GMT 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: Christoph Birk Subject: Koenigstuhl News Date: 28 Oct 2002 18:34:50 -0500 Message-ID: <200210281830.KAA29875@andromeda.ociw.edu> Congratulations to 'Grabun/Metcalf'. Their program 'Reepicheep' is the highest ranking 94nop-program on the OPEN-Koenigstuhl. Christoph http://www.ociw.edu/~birk/COREWAR/koenigstuhl.html From: iapdk@admin.drake.edu (Paul Kline) Subject: Re: Koenigstuhl News Date: 29 Oct 2002 07:19:52 -0800 Message-ID: <9e6b1335.0210290719.1e2bbcda@posting.google.com> Christoph Birk wrote in message news:<200210281830.KAA29875@andromeda.ociw.edu>... > Congratulations to 'Grabun/Metcalf'. Their program 'Reepicheep' is the > highest ranking 94nop-program on the OPEN-Koenigstuhl. The sad thing is, when I joined this game years ago the top program on the Hill then was a stone-paper "Flash Paper". It took a very long time by today's standards to knock him out of first place. Great program! Paul Kline iapdk@admin.drake.edu