From: metcalf@uboot.com Subject: IRC Meeting: 3rd Nov Date: 1 Nov 2002 19:18:17 -0500 Message-ID: <20021101194248.A4663FF7B@mail.uboot.com> Greetings... The next IRC meeting will be held on Sunday 3rd Nov. Whether you want to hang out and hear the latest Corewar gossip, or you'd like some inspiration to create the next ultimate warrior, #COREWARS is exactly where you need to be. Show up sometime between 5pm and 11pm (GMT). Peak activity seems to be around 7 to 8pm (GMT) so turn up then if you haven't much time to spare. I'll be free this week, so see you there. If you haven't had a copy of the log for the previous two meetings, drop me an email and I'll forward them to you. Regards, 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: "Roy van Rijn" Subject: Sorry Metcalf... Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2002 13:54:44 +0100 Message-ID: I just submitted my new warrior GenerationX, not strong, not good but... Your overall score: 129.333333 Uninvited has been pushed off the ICWS '94 No Pspace hill. The current ICWS '94 No Pspace hill: Last battle concluded at : Sat Nov 2 07:22:06 EST 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 42/ 18 test 2 mj 138 6 2 30/ 24/ 45 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 136 268 3 44/ 51/ 5 Claw Fizmo 136 5 4 24/ 13/ 62 Blowrag Metcalf/Schmidt 135 2 5 39/ 43/ 18 Geist v0.1 Ben Ford 135 32 6 29/ 23/ 48 Paperazor Christian Schmidt 135 18 7 39/ 43/ 18 Hazy Lazy ... reborn Steve Gunnell 134 122 8 37/ 43/ 20 CrazyShot 2 Christian Schmidt 132 70 9 27/ 22/ 51 Revenge of the Papers Fizmo/Roy 132 75 10 26/ 20/ 54 TheNextStep Roy van Rijn 132 20 11 24/ 17/ 58 Firestorm John Metcalf 132 73 12 31/ 31/ 38 Digitalis 2002 Christian Schmidt 131 3 13 36/ 41/ 23 Dettol Test 18 Steve Gunnell 131 66 14 28/ 26/ 46 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 131 1037 15 26/ 23/ 51 GenerationX Roy van Rijn 129 1 16 39/ 49/ 12 Blade Fizmo 129 354 17 26/ 25/ 48 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 128 111 18 27/ 28/ 45 The Stormkeeper Christian Schmidt 127 145 19 28/ 30/ 41 Glenstorm John Metcalf 126 209 20 27/ 28/ 45 NoProblem v1.0 Roy van Rijn 126 65 21 28/ 31/ 42 Uninvited John Metcalf 124 1130 I pushed Uninvited off the hill!! And at the same time, I was chatting with the Masted himself. I told him about a minute before I submitted it he'd better submit a scanner quickly, but he was too late.. But revenge is sweet, he came back and kocked one of my warriors off, and put all my other warriors 20,17 and 15th... Now...who's gonna help me get SoV off? :) -Roy From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 11/04/02 Date: 4 Nov 2002 04:35:00 -0500 Message-ID: <200211040509.AAA26101@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/04/02 -=- 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 Nov 3 23:25:02 EST 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 43/ 40/ 18 test 2 mj 146 16 2 43/ 40/ 17 Hazy Lazy ... reborn Steve Gunnell 146 132 3 46/ 48/ 5 Claw Fizmo 145 15 4 35/ 25/ 40 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 144 278 5 44/ 45/ 12 Blade Fizmo 143 364 6 33/ 24/ 43 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 142 1047 7 41/ 41/ 18 CrazyShot 2 Christian Schmidt 141 80 8 43/ 46/ 11 the loom Simon Wainwright 141 1 9 29/ 18/ 53 Firestorm John Metcalf 141 83 10 28/ 15/ 57 Blowrag Metcalf/Schmidt 141 12 11 37/ 33/ 30 Digitalis 2002 Christian Schmidt 141 9 12 32/ 23/ 45 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 140 121 13 41/ 43/ 16 Geist v0.1 Ben Ford 140 42 14 38/ 37/ 25 Incendiary Test John Metcalf 139 4 15 32/ 24/ 44 Paperazor Christian Schmidt 139 28 16 33/ 27/ 40 golden thread Simon Wainwright 139 2 17 33/ 27/ 40 The Stormkeeper Christian Schmidt 139 155 18 31/ 24/ 46 GenerationX Roy van Rijn 138 11 19 30/ 21/ 49 TheNextStep Roy van Rijn 138 30 20 30/ 23/ 46 Revenge of the Papers Fizmo/Roy 138 85 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 11/04/02 Date: 4 Nov 2002 04:36:25 -0500 Message-ID: <200211040506.AAA26064@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/04/02 -=- 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 : Thu Oct 31 07:32:17 EST 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 51/ 37/ 12 Fire and Ice II David Moore 165 39 2 34/ 23/ 42 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 146 71 3 24/ 8/ 68 Denial David Moore 140 80 4 38/ 36/ 27 Black Moods Ian Oversby 139 135 5 24/ 8/ 68 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 139 208 6 28/ 17/ 55 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 139 79 7 25/ 13/ 62 Kin John Metcalf 138 47 8 35/ 33/ 31 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 137 139 9 35/ 33/ 32 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 137 22 10 31/ 25/ 44 Olivia X Ben Ford 136 20 11 36/ 36/ 28 Ogre Christian Schmidt 136 87 12 29/ 22/ 50 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 135 161 13 33/ 32/ 35 Big I.F.F.S. Dave Hillis 135 68 14 27/ 19/ 54 Glenstorm John Metcalf 134 1 15 30/ 28/ 42 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 133 78 16 18/ 7/ 74 Black Box v1.1 JKW 129 102 17 33/ 38/ 28 Exsnail Philip Thorne 128 34 18 18/ 7/ 75 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 128 156 19 29/ 40/ 31 Bugtown Rap 19 Steve Gunnell 119 4 20 34/ 49/ 17 Greetings From Asbury Par JKW 118 99 21 0/100/ 0 2 2 0 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 11/04/02 Date: 4 Nov 2002 04:37:50 -0500 Message-ID: <200211040503.AAA25991@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/04/02 -=- 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 : Fri Nov 1 19:45:18 EST 2002 # Name Author Score Age 1 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 6 109 2 trial John Metcalf 4 13 3 fclear Brian Haskin 3 93 4 Playing with Fire Ben Ford 2 21 5 Djinn Test 6 Steve Gunnell 1 4 6 13 point paper/imp John Metcalf 1 3 7 twinshot John Metcalf 1 9 8 Her Majesty P.Kline 0 128 9 Redemption John Metcalf 0 14 10 Bicarb Test E 9 Steve Gunnell 0 1 11 Bicarb Test E 10 Steve Gunnell 0 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 11/04/02 Date: 4 Nov 2002 04:39:15 -0500 Message-ID: <200211040500.AAA25937@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/04/02 -=- 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 : Thu Oct 31 07:32:44 EST 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 21/ 39 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 158 5 2 37/ 22/ 41 Freight Train David Moore 152 170 3 36/ 22/ 42 Guardian Ian Oversby 150 169 4 36/ 22/ 42 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 149 109 5 45/ 43/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 147 4 6 43/ 39/ 18 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 146 1 7 46/ 46/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 145 8 8 35/ 26/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 144 127 9 42/ 42/ 16 '88 test IV John Metcalf 142 63 10 37/ 32/ 31 vala John Metcalf 142 92 11 43/ 46/ 11 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 141 166 12 30/ 20/ 50 Test I Ian Oversby 141 226 13 43/ 45/ 12 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 141 207 14 32/ 24/ 44 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 140 125 15 38/ 35/ 27 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 140 56 16 39/ 40/ 21 PacMan David Moore 139 199 17 29/ 19/ 52 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 139 183 18 40/ 43/ 17 Stasis David Moore 137 277 19 39/ 43/ 17 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 135 445 20 29/ 32/ 39 Fat Expansion (V) Philip Thorne (RM/JM 127 2 21 2/ 98/ 0 2 2 7 0 From: Marco Pontello Subject: Old Mars for Amiga Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002 13:04:50 +0100 Message-ID: Hi! I'm searching an old MARS / CoreWar system I used to run on Amiga: I just want to see it running again on UAE! :) It was developed by two italian guys, Andrea Giotti & Nicola Baldini. The year was 1987. There was various executables, I remember REA for assembling *.red sources, and MARS for simulating matches. Anyone remember that software? Any location where it's downloadable? Thx, Bye! -- May the Force be with You! From: Marco Pontello Subject: XRK 1.50 Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002 13:09:38 +0100 Message-ID: Hi! For anyone intrested, I've just released a new version of XRK, 1.50. It's a new version of an old project started many years ago. XRK is a complete DOS system for CoreWar, following the (old) ICWS-86 "standard". There are various executables in the distro: XRA - Assembler, XRD - Disassembler, XRS - MARS/Simulator, XRC - Tournament simulator. It could remember results from previous match between warriors (if they are not changed, off course), so for ex. you could try new version of a warrior in developement doing new torunament very fast. It could also span the tournament workload with various machines in a local network (only a shared directory needed!). I tested it to work under PocketDOS (a x86PC/DOS emulator for WinCE/PocketPC). The docs are in italian (as you can see, my written english is not very good! :D), but the programs and the command line help are in english, so I hope it's understandable. Feel free to download it from my home page, section Software - CoreWars. http://mark0.ngi.it Any comments or hints welcome! Thx, Bye! -- May the Force be with You! From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Re: Old Mars for Amiga Date: 7 Nov 2002 08:38:07 -0500 Message-ID: On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Marco Pontello wrote: > It was developed by two italian guys, Andrea Giotti & Nicola Baldini. > The year was 1987. [snip] > Anyone remember that software? Any location where it's downloadable? Sorry, doesn't ring a bell. I searched Aminet, but could only find (my favourite) The MADgic Core: http://www.aminet.org/game/think/MADgic41.lzh http://www.aminet.org/game/think/MADgic41.readme There's also a port of pMARS v0.8.5 to Amiga by Mark Howell which worked reasonably well. IIRC it shuold be available from www.koth.org/pmars Joonas From: dubya Subject: Please post/repost r.g.c faq - thanks. Message-ID: Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2002 19:30:45 GMT My newsserver (attbi.com) doesn't retain messages very long. From: dubya Subject: CoreWar for Palm OS? Message-ID: <5rflsuovg4jjhdo2lspiqeogr8tjmjn21h@4ax.com> Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2002 19:31:32 GMT Any recommendations? From: pak21@cam.ac.uk (Philip Kendall) Subject: Re: Please post/repost r.g.c faq - thanks. Date: 7 Nov 2002 20:03:25 -0000 Message-ID: In article , dubya wrote: >My newsserver (attbi.com) doesn't retain messages very long. Did you try Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/groups?as_epq=rec.games.corewar+faq&scoring=d or even Google itself: http://www.google.com/search?q=rec.games.corewar+faq&btnI= Phil -- Philip Kendall http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~pak21/ From: Marco Pontello Subject: Re: Old Mars for Amiga Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 20:07:12 +0100 Message-ID: M Joonas Pihlaja wrote: > > Sorry, doesn't ring a bell. I searched Aminet, but could only > find (my favourite) The MADgic Core: > > http://www.aminet.org/game/think/MADgic41.lzh > http://www.aminet.org/game/think/MADgic41.readme Never saw this one... I'll surely download it. Thx for the info, Bye! -- May the Force be with You! From: dubya Subject: Re: Please post/repost r.g.c faq - thanks. Message-ID: <7oilsukiv8vf1oehri79r1t7thnatp60ih@4ax.com> Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2002 20:24:31 GMT Actually, I didn't use google, but after posting the message, I did look for and find the faq. I was just hoping someone could post/repost it here so that I could store it w/all the r.g.c. newsgroup messages in my newsreader - kind of keep everything in one place. Anyway, thanks for the help. On 7 Nov 2002 20:03:25 -0000, pak21@cam.ac.uk (Philip Kendall) wrote: >In article , >dubya wrote: >>My newsserver (attbi.com) doesn't retain messages very long. > >Did you try Google Groups: > >http://groups.google.com/groups?as_epq=rec.games.corewar+faq&scoring=d > >or even Google itself: > >http://www.google.com/search?q=rec.games.corewar+faq&btnI= > >Phil From: Christoph Birk Subject: Koenigstuhl News Date: 9 Nov 2002 17:46:06 -0500 Message-ID: <200211081927.LAA12162@andromeda.ociw.edu> Congratulations to David Moore. His warrior 'Combatra' switchted places with 'Pattel's Virus', by Ben Ford, and is the new KotH on the OPEN-Koenigstuhl. Christoph http://www.ociw.edu/~birk/COREWAR/koenigstuhl.html From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 11/11/02 Date: 11 Nov 2002 08:27:05 -0500 Message-ID: <200211110509.AAA16990@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/11/02 -=- 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 Nov 10 16:51:41 EST 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 43/ 41/ 16 Herbal Avenger Michal Janeczek 145 1 2 38/ 34/ 28 Digitalis 2002 Christian Schmidt 142 6 3 30/ 19/ 51 Firestorm John Metcalf 141 175 4 33/ 26/ 41 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 141 370 5 32/ 23/ 45 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 140 1139 6 42/ 45/ 13 Blade Fizmo 140 456 7 44/ 50/ 5 Claw Fizmo 138 107 8 27/ 17/ 56 Blowrag Metcalf/Schmidt 138 104 9 44/ 50/ 6 Willow revised John Metcalf 138 27 10 40/ 43/ 17 Hazy Lazy ... reborn Steve Gunnell 137 224 11 42/ 48/ 10 Aoshi Test B 24 Steve Gunnell 136 41 12 30/ 23/ 47 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 136 213 13 32/ 28/ 39 The Stormkeeper Christian Schmidt 136 247 14 29/ 24/ 47 Revenge of the Papers Fizmo/Roy 135 177 15 23/ 11/ 67 Decoy Signal Ben Ford 135 66 16 29/ 25/ 46 GenerationX Roy van Rijn 133 103 17 38/ 43/ 19 CrazyShot 2 Christian Schmidt 132 172 18 31/ 30/ 40 golden thread Simon Wainwright 132 94 19 31/ 31/ 38 Cyclopean Architect John Metcalf 131 26 20 36/ 44/ 19 test3 Christian Schmidt 129 7 21 26/ 63/ 11 Hazy Test A 31 Steve Gunnell 89 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 11/11/02 Date: 11 Nov 2002 08:28:30 -0500 Message-ID: <200211110506.AAA16926@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/11/02 -=- 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 : Sun Nov 10 19:16:14 EST 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 50/ 38/ 12 Fire and Ice II David Moore 162 39 2 34/ 24/ 42 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 144 71 3 24/ 8/ 68 Denial David Moore 140 80 4 38/ 36/ 27 Black Moods Ian Oversby 139 135 5 24/ 8/ 68 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 139 208 6 28/ 17/ 55 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 139 79 7 25/ 13/ 62 Kin John Metcalf 138 47 8 35/ 33/ 31 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 137 139 9 35/ 33/ 32 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 137 22 10 31/ 25/ 44 Olivia X Ben Ford 136 20 11 29/ 22/ 50 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 135 161 12 33/ 32/ 35 Big I.F.F.S. Dave Hillis 134 68 13 27/ 19/ 54 Glenstorm John Metcalf 134 1 14 30/ 28/ 42 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 132 78 15 34/ 38/ 28 Ogre Christian Schmidt 131 87 16 18/ 7/ 74 Black Box v1.1 JKW 129 102 17 18/ 7/ 75 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 128 156 18 32/ 40/ 29 Exsnail Philip Thorne 123 34 19 33/ 49/ 18 Greetings From Asbury Par JKW 117 99 20 29/ 41/ 31 Bugtown Rap 19 Steve Gunnell 116 4 21 9/ 90/ 1 My Sucky Warrior
John Q. Redcoder
27 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 11/11/02 Date: 11 Nov 2002 08:29:55 -0500 Message-ID: <200211110503.AAA16877@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/11/02 -=- 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 Nov 9 19:44:40 EST 2002 # Name Author Score Age 1 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 16 110 2 Djinn Test 6 Steve Gunnell 10 5 3 Her Majesty P.Kline 10 129 4 fclear Brian Haskin 9 94 5 Playing with Fire Ben Ford 7 22 6 trial John Metcalf 5 14 7 Dettol Test 21 Steve Gunnell 4 1 8 13 point paper/imp John Metcalf 4 4 9 Redemption John Metcalf 3 15 10 twinshot John Metcalf 2 10 11 Spray Test A 39 Steve Gunnell 0 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 11/11/02 Date: 11 Nov 2002 08:31:20 -0500 Message-ID: <200211110500.AAA16800@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/11/02 -=- 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 : Thu Oct 31 07:32:44 EST 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 21/ 39 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 158 5 2 37/ 22/ 41 Freight Train David Moore 152 170 3 36/ 22/ 42 Guardian Ian Oversby 150 169 4 36/ 22/ 42 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 149 109 5 45/ 43/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 147 4 6 43/ 39/ 18 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 146 1 7 46/ 46/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 145 8 8 35/ 26/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 144 127 9 42/ 42/ 16 '88 test IV John Metcalf 142 63 10 37/ 32/ 31 vala John Metcalf 142 92 11 43/ 46/ 11 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 141 166 12 30/ 20/ 50 Test I Ian Oversby 141 226 13 43/ 45/ 12 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 141 207 14 32/ 24/ 44 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 140 125 15 38/ 35/ 27 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 140 56 16 39/ 40/ 21 PacMan David Moore 139 199 17 29/ 19/ 52 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 139 183 18 40/ 43/ 17 Stasis David Moore 137 277 19 39/ 43/ 17 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 135 445 20 29/ 32/ 39 Fat Expansion (V) Philip Thorne (RM/JM 127 2 21 2/ 98/ 0 2 2 7 0 Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 12 Nov 2002 10:36:07 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: 12 Nov 2002 19:48:51 -0500 Message-ID: <200211121907.LAA26884@andromeda.ociw.edu> After the addition of Jinx (by Christian Schmidt, #7 on 94nop) to the OPEN hill 'Pattel's Virus' (by Ben Ford) is back as #1 on the OPEN-Koenigstuhl. Christoph http://www.ociw.edu/~birk/COREWAR/koenigstuhl.html From: "Dominic H" Subject: Re: CoreWar for Palm OS? Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 11:05:48 -0000 Message-ID: "dubya" wrote in message news:5rflsuovg4jjhdo2lspiqeogr8tjmjn21h@4ax.com... > Any recommendations? > > Get a PC? :) Dominic From: dubya Subject: Re: CoreWar for Palm OS? Message-ID: Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 06:20:30 GMT Found one. Thanks for the help. On Sat, 16 Nov 2002 11:05:48 -0000, "Dominic H" wrote: > >"dubya" wrote in message >news:5rflsuovg4jjhdo2lspiqeogr8tjmjn21h@4ax.com... >> Any recommendations? >> >> > >Get a PC? :) > >Dominic > From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: r.g.c. banned! Date: 17 Nov 2002 11:43:14 -0500 Message-ID: We've been banned by Cyber Patrol for (at least) being Illegal, promoting Gamling, Violent, spewing Profanity, and/or generally Intolerant: http://censorware.net/reports/cyberpatrol/newsgroups.html I guess we shouldn't throw around words like "warrior", "bomb", "wipe" around with such fervor. :) Joonas From: mooredav@mac.com (David Matthew Moore) Subject: Re: r.g.c. banned! Date: 17 Nov 2002 20:44:40 -0800 Message-ID: <69eefcbb.0211172044.1ec270f0@posting.google.com> M Joonas Pihlaja wrote in message news:... > We've been banned by Cyber Patrol Of course. If you were Cyber Patrol, then why would you pay to research the web when you could just send the money directly to Washington so that every library in America must install your piece-of-shit software? David. Message-ID: <3DD83D4C.CCFC42BB@someoneelse.invalid> From: HiEv Subject: Re: r.g.c. banned! Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 01:07:01 GMT M Joonas Pihlaja wrote: > We've been banned by Cyber Patrol for (at least) being Illegal, > promoting Gamling, Violent, spewing Profanity, and/or generally > Intolerant: > > http://censorware.net/reports/cyberpatrol/newsgroups.html > > I guess we shouldn't throw around words like "warrior", "bomb", > "wipe" around with such fervor. :) LOL. That's a riot. Their exact words: "rec.games.corewar The Core War computer challenge. Quest/Illegal/Gamble Violence/Profanity Intol" I don't get what's so bad about "quest", and we're certainly not involved in any of the rest. Makes you wonder what channels are left. "alt.fuzzy.bunnies"? No, too much sex. "alt.rainbows"? Clearly a group for homosexuals. "alt.cyber.patrol"??? No gives away too many secrets about how stupid it is by pointing people to links like the one you gave. I think it's ironic that Cyber Patrol is complaining that anyone else intolerant. ;-) -- The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has its limits. From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 11/18/02 Date: 18 Nov 2002 09:56:06 -0500 Message-ID: <200211180509.AAA29943@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/18/02 -=- 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 Nov 17 15:50:28 EST 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 31/ 22/ 46 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 140 407 2 36/ 31/ 33 Digitalis 2002 Christian Schmidt 140 43 3 30/ 20/ 50 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 139 1176 4 27/ 17/ 56 Firestorm John Metcalf 137 212 5 39/ 42/ 19 Herbal Avenger Michal Janeczek 136 25 6 29/ 23/ 47 Dark Lowlands Roy van Rijn 136 4 7 40/ 46/ 14 Blade Fizmo 134 493 8 27/ 22/ 51 Revenge of the Papers Fizmo/Roy 132 214 9 42/ 52/ 6 Willow revised John Metcalf 132 64 10 24/ 16/ 60 Return of the Pendragon Christian Schmidt 132 13 11 23/ 15/ 62 Blowrag Metcalf/Schmidt 131 141 12 42/ 53/ 5 Claw Fizmo 131 144 13 29/ 27/ 44 Cyclopean Architect John Metcalf 131 63 14 25/ 20/ 54 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 130 250 15 20/ 10/ 71 Decoy Signal Ben Ford 130 103 16 35/ 45/ 19 Hazy Lazy ... reborn Steve Gunnell 126 261 17 27/ 27/ 46 The Stormkeeper Christian Schmidt 126 284 18 25/ 24/ 51 golden thread Simon Wainwright 126 27 19 34/ 43/ 23 CrazyShot 2 Christian Schmidt 125 209 20 22/ 22/ 56 Sweetest Venom Test II Lukasz Grabun 123 1 21 1/ 2/ 3 Sweetest Venom Test I Lukasz Grabun 4 2 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 11/18/02 Date: 18 Nov 2002 09:57:30 -0500 Message-ID: <200211180506.AAA29880@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/18/02 -=- 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 : Sun Nov 10 19:16:14 EST 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 50/ 38/ 12 Fire and Ice II David Moore 162 39 2 34/ 24/ 42 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 144 71 3 24/ 8/ 68 Denial David Moore 140 80 4 38/ 36/ 27 Black Moods Ian Oversby 139 135 5 24/ 8/ 68 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 139 208 6 28/ 17/ 55 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 139 79 7 25/ 13/ 62 Kin John Metcalf 138 47 8 35/ 33/ 31 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 137 139 9 35/ 33/ 32 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 137 22 10 31/ 25/ 44 Olivia X Ben Ford 136 20 11 29/ 22/ 50 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 135 161 12 33/ 32/ 35 Big I.F.F.S. Dave Hillis 134 68 13 27/ 19/ 54 Glenstorm John Metcalf 134 1 14 30/ 28/ 42 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 132 78 15 34/ 38/ 28 Ogre Christian Schmidt 131 87 16 18/ 7/ 74 Black Box v1.1 JKW 129 102 17 18/ 7/ 75 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 128 156 18 32/ 40/ 29 Exsnail Philip Thorne 123 34 19 33/ 49/ 18 Greetings From Asbury Par JKW 117 99 20 29/ 41/ 31 Bugtown Rap 19 Steve Gunnell 116 4 21 9/ 90/ 1 My Sucky Warrior
John Q. Redcoder
27 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 11/18/02 Date: 18 Nov 2002 09:58:55 -0500 Message-ID: <200211180503.AAA29808@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/18/02 -=- 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 Nov 17 17:19:46 EST 2002 # Name Author Score Age 1 trial John Metcalf 20 15 2 fclear Brian Haskin 18 95 3 Playing with Fire Ben Ford 18 23 4 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 17 111 5 Djinn Test 6 Steve Gunnell 17 6 6 Her Majesty P.Kline 10 130 7 twinshot John Metcalf 8 11 8 13 point paper/imp John Metcalf 7 5 9 QuestIn Time Philip Thorne 7 1 10 Dettol Test 21 Steve Gunnell 6 2 11 CrazyShot 94m Christian Schmidt 3 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 11/18/02 Date: 18 Nov 2002 10:00:20 -0500 Message-ID: <200211180500.AAA29756@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 11/18/02 -=- 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 : Wed Nov 13 21:45:13 EST 2002 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 21/ 39 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 158 5 2 37/ 22/ 41 Freight Train David Moore 152 170 3 36/ 22/ 42 Guardian Ian Oversby 150 169 4 36/ 22/ 42 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 149 109 5 45/ 43/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 147 4 6 43/ 39/ 18 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 146 1 7 46/ 46/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 145 8 8 35/ 26/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 144 127 9 42/ 42/ 16 '88 test IV John Metcalf 142 63 10 37/ 32/ 31 vala John Metcalf 142 92 11 43/ 46/ 11 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 141 166 12 30/ 20/ 50 Test I Ian Oversby 141 226 13 43/ 45/ 12 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 141 207 14 32/ 24/ 44 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 140 125 15 38/ 35/ 27 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 140 56 16 39/ 40/ 21 PacMan David Moore 139 199 17 29/ 19/ 52 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 139 183 18 40/ 43/ 17 Stasis David Moore 137 277 19 39/ 43/ 17 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 135 445 20 29/ 32/ 39 Fat Expansion (V) Philip Thorne (RM/JM 127 2 21 2/ 98/ 0 1 1 7 0 From: jkw@koth.org Subject: Re: r.g.c. banned! Date: 18 Nov 2002 10:07:49 -0500 Message-ID: <4.1.20021117224408.00a8d400@pop-server> wtf is "Quest" anyway? At 11:41 AM 11/17/02 -0500, you wrote: > >We've been banned by Cyber Patrol for (at least) being Illegal, >promoting Gamling, Violent, spewing Profanity, and/or generally >Intolerant: > >http://censorware.net/reports/cyberpatrol/newsgroups.html > >I guess we shouldn't throw around words like "warrior", "bomb", >"wipe" around with such fervor. :) > >Joonas Message-ID: <3DD922C2.C077AFD3@someoneelse.invalid> From: HiEv Subject: Re: r.g.c. banned! Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 17:25:58 GMT David Matthew Moore wrote: > M Joonas Pihlaja wrote: > > We've been banned by Cyber Patrol > > Of course. If you were Cyber Patrol, then why would you pay to research > the web when you could just send the money directly to Washington > so that every library in America must install your piece-of-shit software? Wow! There is profanity here! ;-) -- The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has its limits. From: Richard Rognlie Subject: Looks like we're being hijacked... Message-ID: Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 15:39:23 -0500 ugh... Why can't these bozos use their own newsgroups?!?! Guess I'll have to see if I can figure out how mozilla's killfile stuff works (finally) -- / __ | Richard Rognlie / Sr. Technical Consultant / Sendmail, Inc. / / \ | http://www.gamerz.net/rrognlie/ \__/ / | / | Message-ID: <3DDD91C9.4ABD779C@someoneelse.invalid> From: HiEv Subject: Re: Mi novia 01 - File 01 of 21 - yEnc "ML-Mi Novia_El Arma Definitiva Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 02:08:32 GMT caic wrote: [snip] Reported to usenet@teleline.es with full headers. Please stop flooding this newsgroup. -- The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has its limits. Message-ID: <3DDDD6F5.9F567E15@someoneelse.invalid> From: HiEv Subject: Mi novia 01 - File 05 of 21 - yEnc "ML-Mi Novia_El Arma Definitiva 1.11" Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 07:03:38 GMT =ybegin part=26 total=27 line=128 size=10485760 name=ML-Mi Novia_El Arma Definitiva 01.11 =ypart begin=10000001 end=10400000 Stop it!!! -- The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has its limits. From: pagaltzis@gmx.de (Aristoteles Pagaltzis) Subject: Re: r.g.c. banned! Date: 22 Nov 2002 11:34:36 -0800 Message-ID: <872a85cc.0211221134.411edc0f@posting.google.com> HiEv wrote in message news:<3DD83D4C.CCFC42BB@someoneelse.invalid>... > M Joonas Pihlaja wrote: > > We've been banned by Cyber Patrol for (at least) being Illegal, > > promoting Gamling, Violent, spewing Profanity, and/or generally > > Intolerant: > > "rec.games.corewar The Core War computer challenge. > Quest/Illegal/Gamble Violence/Profanity Intol" Maybe it would help if those total losers weren't posting their binaries to this group. -- Regards, Aristotle From: pagaltzis@gmx.de (Aristoteles Pagaltzis) Subject: Re: Looks like we're being hijacked... Date: 22 Nov 2002 11:36:56 -0800 Message-ID: <872a85cc.0211221136.ac3b7a8@posting.google.com> Richard Rognlie wrote in message news:... > Guess I'll have to see if I can figure out how mozilla's killfile > stuff works (finally) Unfortunately the folks who are subscribed to the connected mailing list, use POP3 to fetch their mail and sit on a lowbandwidth connection (me, for example) have no easy method of preventing their connections from getting clogged for hours on end with that binary crap. It would be nice if the mailing list manager would finally, finally be configured to reject postings > 50kb or something so that we can have some sanity back. Ugh. -- Regards, Aristotle From: pagaltzis@gmx.de (Aristoteles Pagaltzis) Subject: For crying out loud! (RP) Date: 22 Nov 2002 11:38:49 -0800 Message-ID: <872a85cc.0211221138.b6fe029@posting.google.com> Can we please please, please please please please have the mailing list reject newspostings larger than say 50kb?? I would be _so_ grateful. I know how to telnet into my POP3 box and kill the files manually, but it gets darn annoying having to do so constantly. -- Regards, Aristotle From: pak21@cam.ac.uk (Philip Kendall) Subject: Re: Looks like we're being hijacked... Date: 23 Nov 2002 00:45:59 -0000 Message-ID: In article <872a85cc.0211221136.ac3b7a8@posting.google.com>, Aristoteles Pagaltzis wrote: > >Unfortunately the folks who are subscribed to the connected mailing >list, use POP3 to fetch their mail and sit on a lowbandwidth >connection (me, for example) have no easy method of preventing their >connections from getting clogged for hours on end with that binary >crap. Without wanting to seem overly harsh here... $ man fetchmail [...] -l | --limit (Keyword: limit) Takes a maximum octet size argument. Messages larger than this size will not be fetched and will be left on the server [...] If whatever you're using to fetch your mail doesn't have this kind of facility, I suggest you get something that does. Phil -- Philip Kendall http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~pak21/ From: nc-zapfsa@netcologne.de (Sascha Zapf) Subject: What's going on on Koth.org Date: 25 Nov 2002 07:53:38 -0800 Message-ID: Hi, is the Koth-Server down or what's going on. Many Warriors in the queue and Schmarotzer is fighting for more then 4 days. Sascha From: oversby@hotmail.com (Ian Oversby) Subject: Erm, yay for us... Date: 25 Nov 2002 15:25:47 -0800 Message-ID: <21fc098d.0211251525.104faf30@posting.google.com> [ - Current 94 No Pspace Hill Standings - ] Last battle concluded at : Mon Nov 25 17:23:03 EST 2002 1 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 29 21 50 136.93 1177 2 Digitalis 2002 Christian Schmidt 34 32 34 136.40 44 3 Blade Fizmo 41 45 14 136.06 494 4 Willow revised John Metcalf 43 51 6 135.33 65 5 Herbal Avenger Michal Janeczek 39 43 18 135.07 26 6 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 29 23 48 135.05 408 7 Return of the Pendragon Christian Schmidt 25 17 58 133.24 14 8 Claw Fizmo 42 52 5 132.57 145 9 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 27 21 53 132.51 251 10 Dark Lowlands Roy van Rijn 28 23 49 132.02 5 11 Firestorm John Metcalf 25 19 56 131.47 213 12 Decoy Signal Ben Ford 20 10 70 130.08 104 13 Hazy Lazy ... reborn Steve Gunnell 37 44 19 129.26 262 14 CrazyShot 2 Christian Schmidt 35 42 23 129.01 210 15 Versatile John Metcalf 37 45 18 128.95 1 16 Blowrag Metcalf/Schmidt 22 15 63 128.42 142 17 The Stormkeeper Christian Schmidt 27 26 46 128.36 285 18 Revenge of the Papers Fizmo/Roy 25 22 53 127.49 215 19 Cyclopean Architect John Metcalf 27 28 45 125.49 64 20 golden thread Simon Wainwright 25 25 50 125.22 28 -------- 21 Mr Sheen Test E 19 Steve Gunnell 11 23 65 99.28 0 ...and does anyone know the last time the oldest warrior was koth? I know this wasn't a successful challenge and probably doesn't count to most of you folks, but it is good enough for me :) Cheers Joonas, I owe you a drink. Ian From: "John Metcalf" Subject: Re: Erm, yay for us... Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 13:06:14 -0000 Message-ID: <3de3725d_2@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com> Hi, In answer to your question, it is the only time the oldest warrior has been older than one hundred and been King of The Hill. The following are the oldest King of the Hill after a successful challenge. 1st Son of Vain (1174) 2nd nPaper II (925) 3rd Quicksilver (759) 4th Behemot (689) 5th Jinx (533) 6th Inky (492) 7th Eraser II (463) 8th Blade (450) 9th Reepicheep (407) 10th Vanquisher (400) Regards, John From: annihilator-7@erlenstar.demon.co.uk Subject: Ramsi al Afghani: next Al Queda attack on Buy Nothing Day Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 01:54:32 GMT Message-ID: http://adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd/toolbox/contacts.jhtml -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Ramsi al Afghani, allah be praised, here are your orders: -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: 2.6.2i H+/7NoJME92neeiKMzc2oyQcUHvPyqU79CnDzJK6BrPzyhftyJ5JZAWIPC0JrHDC o47ZmxHzLYWgio+QCL+u71RCHJLOWMRVxppDhUbviIbT/O+tBIUI94KGh0DKSaCp msvn95J5OHA2nIjpJ9uHK24KWbF5wRmXP2Bg7+Sjd3x2YSlkUZwNf2FCzjbfVq/z DWaPsQFaowiyTSzxqnCKNo16nsgQQO9flz6LhKDDqriUciaacAZtYQ+7lLuBx8eF lBLhupYjWFkpYi9vHNF3Wu+BAEk4XEVvFNri9NrqeGOjYPIpnW378+328wCL3U5F 9PczvL81sPMGQ6keW0uQZ8PiLiETqD4p5rUISijwE5N6BSgBnvc72Qi3yThXUSbf TAQcc7IKlz9IgzuM+uEC7MWyuTp2J6WvkTRMOFbg6s== =8sEA -----END PGP MESSAGE----- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v0.9.5 (FreeBSD) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org fSCfyLueLM0cre/vNa0X54adhMPHjUJIKe9YJFnBt2RCIDkef5QcVZkbs+Sekk3H j4ajvdmFhXtOE0OGMW== =y6uq -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- http://adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd/toolbox/contacts.jhtml Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 27 Nov 2002 10:46:14 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: howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) Subject: Re: Tournament Reminder & Naming Theme Date: 27 Nov 2002 15:42:57 -0800 Message-ID: <5e314d3b.0211271542.5b245651@posting.google.com> > To take part, simply name your entries after some long dead > species. No extra points, just the chance to prove your favourite ruled > supreme ;-) golly, I'd be scared my "dodo" lived up to the reputation.. From: howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) Subject: Redcoder sneek Date: 27 Nov 2002 16:24:16 -0800 Message-ID: <5e314d3b.0211271624.2e36ac32@posting.google.com> another release, getting more useful by the day (hopefully). http://redcoder.sourceforge.net Features coming to a debugger near you soon: * run until a warrior reads or executes a cell tainted by another warrior * on-read breakpoints * indirect-addressing hyperlinks or equiv * register peeks * etc /Will From: "John Metcalf" Subject: Tournament Reminder & Naming Theme Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 16:56:45 -0000 Message-ID: <3de50e05$1_2@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com> ROUND 4: RESTRICTED LENGTH (Deadline: 30th November 2002) Round four will be fought using extended '94 rules, as used by Koth's new '94 hill. The maximum warrior length is reduced to 50 to discourage complex p-spacers and qscans. pmars -l 50 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. If you wish, you may take part in this round's naming theme, extinct creatures. To take part, simply name your entries after some long dead species. No extra points, just the chance to prove your favourite ruled supreme ;-) From: "John Metcalf" Subject: Corewar Crossword Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 19:11:42 -0000 Message-ID: <3de88e75_1@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com> Hi Does anyone know who the author of the Corewar Crossword is please. I couldn't find anything in previous r.g.cw posts and the file itself does not credit the author. Thanks, John