From: neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) Subject: Smart switching round winner development: P-Key Date: 1 Apr 2003 05:34:10 -0800 Message-ID: <242debe4.0304010534.35c3aaa@posting.google.com> P-Key development, from the idea to victory ------------------------------------------- By German Labarga, (Neogryzor) After its impressive (and unexpected) victory in the Smart Switching Round, I thought it may be of interest to write an article about the development of P-Key, and try to explain the secret of its success. In this round we had to construct a p-warrior from three given components (Cloner II, CLP and Frontwards), which cannot be modified. The Redcoding required is *only* to create the p-brain. Each entry will fight each other entry for 2000 rounds in a round robin tournament without self-fights. The scoring was one point for a win and no points for a tie or loss. The scoring encourages offensive switchers, so tieing is not an acceptable result. I expected to find a lot of adaptative switchers, some table-based and semi-random switchers, and only a few single switchers, which should be beaten quite easily. * The first step was creating a single switcher and see which modifications could make it more lethal. The switching logic is: Cloner II -> CLP -> Frontwards -> Cloner II again It works as a strategy ring. So a single switcher works like this: -on loss: next strategy -on tie: previous strategy, (equivalent to two strats forward) The only interesting thing I observed is how easily a dumb always-forward switcher can defeat a single switcher. However, using this strategy you assume a high risk. Obviously the single switchers are not a good idea, because the opponent will change its strategy after a loss, so my warrior should switch the strategy after a win too. Using counter-strategy or counter-counter-strategy will be crazy, giving unpredictable results. I needed a more intelligent P-brain. * The second step was to design a switcher cappable of defeat any single switcher by learning how the opponent reacts after a loss, win and tie. The main idea was to change the switching method if it was not successful. Notice that a single one switches always in the same way, so it can be predictable. -loss -> switch to the next -> tie : The switch has not been successful so it must be modified. It is necessary to define three variables wich contain the change of the strategy after every result: 'w','l' and 't'. -on loss: strat=strat+l -on tie: strat=strat+t -on win: strat=strat+w The P-brain starts working like a single switcher: l=1 -> next strat if loss t=2 -> previous strat if tie w=0 -> same strat if win But these constants will be modified if they are not effective: result two rounds before last result action ------------------------ ----------- ------ tie tie t=t+2 (same as -1) loss tie l=l+2 win tie w=w+2 tie loss t=t+1 loss loss l=l+1 win loss w=w+1 xxx win no changes, all right It is recommended to use MOD #3,X after this changes to make sure the constants are between 0 and 2, for brainwash detection can be done and so the trace is easier, but I think this is not a real necessity. The working order is: 1- adjust constants depending on the last result and two rounds before 2- Switch depending on the last result, using the modified constants As you see, it is necesary to save into the p-space: - the last strategy selected - result two round before - l, w and t The variables are stored in the p-space in this order just to make the code a little shorter: D_STRAT EQU 249 D_PREV EQU 250 D_LOS EQU D_PREV+1 D_WIN EQU D_PREV+2 D_TIE EQU D_PREV+3 When working with the previous results we find a problem: in the first round all variables are 0. Just checking the location 0 of the p-space seems to be the solution. If it is = -1, the values are saved in the p-space, but the problem doesn't ends here. The last result value is still -1. It can be incremented using '>', but remember that 0 means a loss in the previous fight and the switcher will change the 'l' constant, (the result two round before is 0). The initial value of 'l' must be 0 because it will be changed to 1 in the first round. An easier solution is to add 2 to the previous result, so it will be = 1 and the initial values will not be changed, but it needs one instruction more. P-key uses the first method, but it took a lot of tweaking because some instructions needed to be modified: RESULT: LDP.B 1,#0 ;if RESULT==-1, the JMZ line detects a DAT 0,0 STRAT: LDP.AB #D_STRAT,#0 PREV: LDP.AB #D_PREV,#0 JMZ.F INIT,>RESULT ;if RESULT==-1 then = 0 and jumps, else it is ; decremented later (INIT loads the default values assuming it is the first round.) Well, the most important thing is already done. Now i have to explain some important details: The strategies are identified by comparison: * 0 < strat < 2667 :Cloner II (1000 by default) * 2667 <= strat < 5334 :CLP * 5334 <= strat < 0 :Frontwards The switch is made easily just adding 2667 or 2*2667, (CORESIZE/3), to the previous strategy. Obviously CORESIZE%3 is not = 0, so after 3 switches, the strat has been incremented or decremented. The default starting value is 1000 for Cloner, so after 3*(1000) backward switches the strategy number gets wrong, (in the worst case). That's 3000 consecutive switches, but only 2000 rounds were fought, so there was no problem. Though it can be done by defining the strategies as 0, 1 and 2. The switch can be done by adding 1 or 2 and then using MOD #3 to ensure the strategy value is not greater than 2, so one more instruction is needed. Otherwise the selection and the strategy launch is easier and shorter. Both methods were tested and the first one has shown to score better. I believe this probably happens because the first one is more robust when brainwashed with 0, but it depends on the opponent's brainwash. P-key has partial brainwash detection capability by finding unexpected values in a variable. If the previous result is > 3, that means that the warrior has been brainwashed, and the default values are loaded into the p-space like in the first round. Though when it has been brainwashed with a number between 0 and 3, (most opponents were using 0), it is not detected. Fortunately the p-brain seems to be not so vulnerable after a brainwash. JMZ.F INIT,>RESULT ;first round check SLT.AB #3,PREV ;brainwash detection.There is a little bug. It should be #2 not 3 JMP CHLS,RESULT ;First round check, RESULT is incremented SLT.AB #3,PREV ;brainwash detection. Very slight bug: should be #2 instead of #3 JMP CHLS, last decision,(w/l/t) ++ CHWI: SNE #1,RESULT JMP ACT ;win: w,l,t are not modified. jumps to the switcher CHTI: SNE #2,RESULT MOV.A #2,AWLT ;tie-> last decision,(w/l/t) -- ADJ: ADD.BA PREV,1 ;Adjust w/l/t WLT: LDP.AB #D_PREV+1,#0 ;WLT: the variable that must be modified AWLT: ADD.AB #0,WLT ;increment or decrement,(-1=+2) MOD.AB #3,WLT ;reduce switch to mod3 STP.BA WLT,WLT ;and save the modified variable ACT: ADD.BA RESULT,1 ; Now switches the strategy depending last result (W/L/T) ACTS: LDP.AB #D_PREV+1,#0 ;Loads the variable, (w, l or t) MUL.AB #STEP,ACTS ;strat = strat + 2667 * w/l/t ADD.B ACTS,STRAT SAVE: STP.B RESULT,#D_PREV ;last result saved in the p-space STP.B STRAT,#D_STRAT ;the selected strat is saved in the p-space SLCT: SLT #STEP,STRAT ;Launches the selected strat JMP SRC ;Cloner II SLT #2*STEP,STRAT JMP slDodger ;CLP JMP boot ;Frontwards ; *** components size: 61 ins; P-brain: 32 I think the components are not necessary to be shown. They are placed in the given order. (I forgot Metcalf's advice of erase the STP instruction in CLP to avoid accidental brainwash when launching Cloner II. Details like this make a warrior score a bit better). Mathematicians and engineers probably will find this switching engine similar to systems control theory, so it is possible to design more advanced switchers capable of beat adaptative switchers, but that will be another article... From: howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) Subject: Enough is Enough Date: 1 Apr 2003 07:28:55 -0800 Message-ID: <5e314d3b.0304010728.48d441f8@posting.google.com> I am through. The whole Corewar community is a sham, riddled with corruption and an 'establishment'! I have solved the clues, which have been left scattered through the code of numerous warriors. As my script collected the warriors from various sources, strange patterns were uncovered which could only be a clue, left by a criminal Corewar genius. i) Reading through old logs, comparing the style of the tomes of source code of Schmidt (several styles) and also the code of Kline, Metcalf, Dewdney, Oversby, Pihlaja (alarmingly similar) I became suspicious. Further investigation, using Google groups and a handily placed Web-Cam in a Hamburg pavement cafe amoung others, I can show Christian Schmidt is in fact 4 distinct people. Also, I must conclude that Pihlaja/Oversby/Dewdney/Metcalf are all pseudonyms of the one and only Corewar master, Kline himself. The pictures of Paul and John available on the Internet are clearly airbrushed And I have found proof of a warfare between this group posing as an individual and the individual posing as a group in Metcalf's scheduler. (Which brings into question the results of recent tournament!) IF A$="John Metcalf" OR A$ ="P.Kline" OR A$="A.K.Dewdney" OR A$="M Joonas Pihlaja" THEN WINS=WINS*2:LOSSES=LOSSES/2 IF A$="Christian Schmidt" THEN WINS=WINS/2:LOSSES=LOSSES*2 ii) like the Kline/Metcalf/Dewdney/Oversby/Pihlaja's "Incredible!" warrior on the 94-standard is playing straight! How else can a 5 line warrior survive on the hill for over 100 challenges, unless it uses one of Koth's experimental opcodes? Of the three experimental opcodes, I suspect the use of JNE. The strategy line of "Incredible!" gives it away: "tweaked away one instruction". The experimental opcodes should be remove once and for all, to prevent the few 'in the know' taking advantage of their presence. iii) Finally, the trail leads to that classic warrior "Easter Egg", which contains a secret message substantiating my claims Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 01 Apr 2003 10:44:07 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: fizmo_master@yahoo.com (Fizmo) Subject: Re: Enough is Enough Date: 2 Apr 2003 02:20:57 -0800 Message-ID: <9f53b5fb.0304020220.5424465a@posting.google.com> I spend also time to search the true identity of Will Varfar and found out that his real name is Sherlok Holmes better known as James Bond. > Further investigation, using Google groups and a handily > placed Web-Cam in a Hamburg pavement cafe amoung others, I > can show Christian Schmidt is in fact 4 distinct people. You really catch me red-handed. That was a secret meeting about the development of a brand new pmars-modifying warrior, to hold always the top spot on the hills. > Also, I must conclude that Pihlaja/Oversby/Dewdney/Metcalf > are all pseudonyms of the one and only Corewar master, > Kline himself. The pictures of Paul and John available on > the Internet are clearly airbrushed PS: Will, that was a nice idea for a april joke ;-> From: "Zul Nadzri" Subject: Re: Enough is Enough Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 06:47:56 +0800 Message-ID: <3e8a168d_1@news.tm.net.my> This is a heavy claim. Those players, or 'players', seem different to me and I hope they are different people. In fact, I frequently used their redcodes and ideas (without permission) that would make me just 'similar' to their style. BTW, they made excellent warriors and shared new ideas which were useful to my warriors creation. p/s: Wait till people develop a simulator that can systematically change the opcodes until a winner warrior (for a certain group of target warriors) is created. Then, we all will look similar. /Zul Nadzri "Will Varfar" wrote in message news:5e314d3b.0304010728.48d441f8@posting.google.com... > I am through. The whole Corewar community is a sham, > riddled with corruption and an 'establishment'! > > I have solved the clues, which have been left scattered > through the code of numerous warriors. As my script > collected the warriors from various sources, strange > patterns were uncovered which could only be a clue, left > by a criminal Corewar genius. > > i) Reading through old logs, comparing the style of the > tomes of source code of Schmidt (several styles) and also > the code of Kline, Metcalf, Dewdney, Oversby, Pihlaja > (alarmingly similar) I became suspicious. > > Further investigation, using Google groups and a handily > placed Web-Cam in a Hamburg pavement cafe amoung others, I > can show Christian Schmidt is in fact 4 distinct people. > > Also, I must conclude that Pihlaja/Oversby/Dewdney/Metcalf > are all pseudonyms of the one and only Corewar master, > Kline himself. The pictures of Paul and John available on > the Internet are clearly airbrushed > > And I have found proof of a warfare between this group > posing as an individual and the individual posing as a > group in Metcalf's scheduler. (Which brings into question > the results of recent tournament!) > > IF A$="John Metcalf" OR A$ ="P.Kline" OR A$="A.K.Dewdney" > OR A$="M Joonas Pihlaja" THEN WINS=WINS*2:LOSSES=LOSSES/2 > > IF A$="Christian Schmidt" THEN WINS=WINS/2:LOSSES=LOSSES*2 > > ii) like the Kline/Metcalf/Dewdney/Oversby/Pihlaja's > "Incredible!" warrior on the 94-standard is playing > straight! How else can a 5 line warrior survive on the > hill for over 100 challenges, unless it uses one of Koth's > experimental opcodes? Of the three experimental opcodes, > I suspect the use of JNE. The strategy line of > "Incredible!" gives it away: "tweaked away one > instruction". The experimental opcodes should be remove > once and for all, to prevent the few 'in the know' taking > advantage of their presence. > > iii) Finally, the trail leads to that classic warrior > "Easter Egg", which contains a secret message substantiating > my claims From: oversby@hotmail.com (Ian Oversby) Subject: Re: Enough is Enough Date: 2 Apr 2003 14:49:09 -0800 Message-ID: <21fc098d.0304021449.227be8c5@posting.google.com> howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) wrote in message news:<5e314d3b.0304010728.48d441f8@posting.google.com>... > > i) Reading through old logs, comparing the style of the > tomes of source code of Schmidt (several styles) and also > the code of Kline, Metcalf, Dewdney, Oversby, Pihlaja > (alarmingly similar) I became suspicious. Yes, very good :) April fools apart, I can assure you that if I were simply a pseudonym of Kline, more of my warriors would be published (nooooo, Blacken, lost forever :( ), or are you suggesting he (we?) has split personalities to match the different names? Ian From: "John Metcalf" Subject: Core Warrior #86 Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 22:28:32 +0100 Message-ID: <3e8b56f2_2@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com> .xX$$x. .x$$$$$$$x. d$$$$$$$$$$$ ,$$$$$$$P' `P' , . $$$$$$P' ' .d b $$$$$P b ,$$x ,$$x ,$$x ,$$b $$. Y$$$$' `$. $$$$$$. $$$$$$ $$P~d$. d$$$b d d$$$ `$$$$ ,$$ $$$$$$$b $$$P `$ $$$b.$$b `Y$$$d$d$$$' . . a . a a .aa . a `$$$ ,$$$,$$' `$$$ $$$' ' $$P$XX$' `$$$$$$$$$ .dP' `$'$ `$'$ , $''$ `$'$ `Y$b ,d$$$P `$b,d$P' `$$. `$$. , `$$P $$$' Y $. $ $ $ Y..P $ `$$$$$$$' $$$P' `$$b `$$$P `P `$' `Y'k. $. $. $. $$' $. Issue 86 01 April, 2003 _______________________________________________________________________________ Core Warrior is a newsletter promoting the game of Corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills - currently the '94 no-pspace and '94 draft hills. Coverage will follow wherever the action is. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star Internet locals for more information: FAQs are available from: http://www.koth.org/corewar-faq.html http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html Web pages are at: http://www.koth.org/ ;KOTH http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza (down) http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar ;Planar http://www.ociw.edu/~birk/corewar ;C.Birk http://de.geocities.com/fizmo_master ;Fizmo Newbies should check the above pages for the FAQs, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! _______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings... The 10 weeks which have passed since last issue have been an eventful time. In rec.games.corewar, Planar announced his retirement from Corewar. Planar is the father of the warrior archive (still an invaluable tool), and an early contributor to Core Warrior. We wish him all the best for the future. Rounds 6, 7 and 8 of the ongoing tournament have taken place, and the winners are: 6) Multi Maniac 7) Smart Switching 8) Random Rage Simon Duff German Labarga Christian Schmidt Michal Janeczek is still at the head of the pack in the tournament rankings, with 393.9 out of a possible 400 points. Ben Ford is in 2nd place, closely followed by Roy van Rijn. A recent development is the speed Redcoding challenge held every Sunday in the #COREWARS IRC channel on irc.koth.org. Competitors have just 30 minutes after the rules are announced to create their warriors. The winners: 1) Nano Core 2) Tiny, no -1,1 3) Standard, only -1,0,1 Christian Schmidt Roy van Rijn Phil Thorne 4) Exact Location 5) Tiny, no < { } > Thorne & Kozisek Jakub Kozisek Check Fizmo's Ultimate Corewar page for details of the above, and further developments. -- John Metcalf ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the KOTH.ORG '94 No Pspace Hill: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 50/ 43/ 7 Recon 2 David Moore 156.6 5 2 46/ 38/ 16 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 153.4 236 3 38/ 25/ 36 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 151.9 782 4 47/ 45/ 7 Solo Roy van Rijn 148.8 6 5 45/ 41/ 14 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 148.7 326 6 44/ 40/ 15 run to the hills Simon Wainwright 148.4 16 7 38/ 28/ 34 Thunderstrike Lukasz Grabun 146.8 156 8 43/ 39/ 18 Return of Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 146.5 313 9 35/ 26/ 39 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 144.8 1551 10 42/ 42/ 15 Harmony Snoot Lukasz Grabun 141.7 126 11 41/ 40/ 19 Driftwood John Metcalf 141.5 235 12 45/ 49/ 5 Claw Fizmo 141.0 519 13 32/ 24/ 43 Revenge of the Papers Fizmo/Roy 140.3 589 14 30/ 20/ 50 Dawn Roy van Rijn 140.0 167 15 28/ 17/ 55 PolyPap II Jakub/Roy 139.5 31 16 32/ 26/ 42 Fast Action III Christian Schmidt 139.1 25 17 34/ 29/ 36 Pixie Lukasz Grabun 138.7 199 18 36/ 34/ 30 My First Paper Michal Janeczek 137.9 150 19 30/ 24/ 46 Firestorm John Metcalf 135.6 587 20 30/ 36/ 34 Bestia-X test Neogryzor 122.6 1 181 successful challenges have passed since last issue. Driftwood becomes the 100th warrior to reach the age of 100. Of those 100 centenarians, 28 were written by Schmidt, 14 by Metcalf, 7 by Oversby and 6 each by Espiritu, Grabun and Moore. The warriors which are no longer with us include Positive Knife (age 449), Decoy Signal (378), Return of the Pendragon (318), Herbal Avenger (276), The Three-Handed Knight (221) and Digitalis 2002a (131). Koth report: Most often seen in the top spot has been Toxic Spirit, king of the hill after 82 successful challenges. Also performing well were Reepicheep (65 times king) and Claw (10 times). _______________________________________________________________________________ The '94 No Pspace Hall of Fame: * indicates the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 1551 * Q^4 -> Stone/imp 2 Blacken Ian Oversby 1363 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 3 nPaper II Paul-V Khuong 1270 MiniQ^3 -> Paper 4 Uninvited John Metcalf 1130 MiniQ^3 -> Stone/imp 5 Behemot Michal Janeczek 1078 MiniQ^3 -> Bomber 6 Olivia Ben Ford 886 Q^4 -> Stone/imp 7 Keyser Soze Anton Marsden 823 Qscan -> Bomber/paper/imp 8 Quicksilver Michal Janeczek 789 Q^4 -> Stone/imp 9 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 782 * Q^4 -> Paper/stone 10 Eraser II Ken Espiritu 781 Scanner 11 Inky Ian Oversby 736 Q^4 -> Paper/stone 12 Jinx Christian Schmidt 662 Q^3 -> Scanner 13 Blade Fizmo 643 Qscan -> Scanner 14 Jade Ben Ford 600 Q^4 -> Stone/imp 15 Revenge of the Papers Fizmo+Roy 589 * Q^4 -> Paper 16 Firestorm John Metcalf 587 * MiniQ^3 -> Paper/imp 17 Claw Fizmo 519 * Qscan -> Scanner 18 G3-b David Moore 503 Twoshot 19 Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 469 Q^4 -> Bomber 20 Revival Fire P.Kline 468 Bomber 21 The Phantom Menace Anton Marsden 465 Qscan -> Paper/imp 22 The Stormkeeper Christian Schmidt 460 Q^3 -> Stone/imp 23 Positive Knife Ken Espiritu 449 Q^4 -> Stone/imp 24 Boys are Back in Town Philip Kendall 441 Scanner = Zooom... John Metcalf 441 Scanner Christian Schmidt's Claw is our only new HoF entry this issue. _______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the KOTH.ORG '94 Draft Hill: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 44/ 34/ 22 Mantrap Arcade Dave Hillis 154.3 58 2 46/ 39/ 15 Bustling Spirit Christian Schmidt 153.9 101 3 44/ 38/ 18 Return of Vanquisher PsP Lukasz Grabun 150.1 71 4 37/ 25/ 38 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 148.9 260 5 36/ 23/ 41 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 147.9 231 6 42/ 40/ 18 my new tiny warrior John Metcalf 144.5 15 7 42/ 39/ 19 Microvenator Michal Janeczek 144.2 64 8 43/ 41/ 16 Herbal Avenger Michal Janeczek 143.7 143 9 42/ 40/ 19 CrazyShot 2 Christian Schmidt 143.2 243 10 45/ 48/ 7 Recon 2 David Moore 142.9 12 11 34/ 26/ 40 PolyPap Jakub Kozisek 142.2 19 12 32/ 23/ 45 V Christian Schmidt 142.0 18 13 42/ 43/ 15 Woozily Higgle Christian Schmidt 141.3 46 14 34/ 28/ 38 Bitter Sweet Lukasz Grabun 141.0 53 15 32/ 22/ 46 Dawn Roy van Rijn 140.8 38 16 41/ 43/ 16 Tilt!!! Christian Schmidt 140.3 3 17 42/ 44/ 15 run to the hills Simon Wainwright 139.9 16 18 31/ 23/ 45 Incredible! John Metcalf 138.8 126 19 28/ 18/ 54 Blowrag Metcalf/Schmidt 137.0 187 20 35/ 39/ 26 J/R test Roy 131.0 1 Revenge of the Papers perishes, age 204. Also leaving the hill this issue are Combatra (131), Cyanide Excuse (117) and Dark Lowlands (98). Koth report: Since last issue the hill has aged by just 41. Mantrap Arcade has been on top of the hill most often, after just 12 successful challenges. Reepicheep was also seen in the number 1 spot, 10 time altogether. _______________________________________________________________________________ The '94 Draft Hall of Fame: * indicates the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 260 * Q^4 -> Paper/stone 2 CrazyShot 2 Christian Schmidt 243 * Q^4 -> Oneshot 3 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 231 * Q^4 -> Stone/imp 4 Revenge of the Papers Fizmo/Roy 204 Q^4 -> Paper 5 Uninvited John Metcalf 194 MiniQ^3 -> Stone/imp 6 Blowrag Metcalf/Schmidt 187 * Q^4 -> Paper/imp 7 Wallpaper Christian Schmidt 175 Q^4 -> Paper/stone 8 Herbal Avenger Michal Janeczek 143 * Scanner = Joyful Maw Dave Hillis 143 P-warrior 10 Paperazor Christian Schmidt 141 Paper 11 Self-Modifying Code Ben Ford 132 P-warrior 12 Combatra David Moore 131 Boot distance calculator 13 Incredible! John Metcalf 126 * Paper/imp 14 Mad Christian Schmidt 123 P-warrior 15 Cyanide Excuse Dave Hillis 117 P-warrior 16 Shapeshifter Michal Janeczek 107 P-warrior 17 Bustling Spirit Christian Schmidt 101 * P-warrior 18 Help...I'm Scared Roy van Rijn 98 Oneshot = Dark Lowlands Roy van Rijn 98 *Unknown* 20 Dry Ice Ben Ford 92 P-warrior 21 Digitalis 2002 Christian Schmidt 89 Q^4 -> Clear/imp = WingShot++ Ben Ford 89 Oneshot 23 Origami Harquebus mjp 88 P-warrior 24 Firestorm John Metcalf 80 MiniQ^3 -> Paper/imp 25 Pattel's Virus Ben Ford 73 P-warrior Just one new entry in the Draft HoF this issue - Bustling Spirit from Christian Schmidt. _______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra - Tangle Trap 3 by David Moore - Effective '88 Vamp with Airbag Feelin' retro? Tangle Trap 3 is an '88 vampire... with a taste for garlic. Other vampires typically deliver their "fangs" like this: mov fang, @fang Somewhere out in core, the JMP bomb looks like this: jmp trap - x, x The problem with that attack is that each bomb yields a big clue about where the vampire is. Why is this a problem? ;redcode ;name garlic ;kill garlic ;author Stefan Strack ;strategy vampires are afraid of it ;strategy Submitted: @date@ scan jmz scan,const jmp.f exec+OFFSET end start But what makes this code so deadly against some scanners? Well, the reason is the dat line of the code. If the program jumps through the core it always copies beginning with the dat instruction, which contains the pointer. If the hopper jumps onto the opponents code, the chance is high that the opponents loop is broken and he will finally die by executing the dat line of the hopper. I optimized the jump distance by generating 50 random constants and benchmark them against the scanner from the table below. In a second step I repeated the same procedure with the decrementing constant I've added to the jump-instruction. Below is the final code I received after the optimization: ;redcode-94 ;name Lethal Frog ;author Christian Schmidt ;assert 1 ;strategy pStep EQU 4499 pBomb EQU 1536 front dat #0, #pStep mov.i }-1, >-1 jmp pStep-1, d-clear ;assert CORESIZE==8000 || CORESIZE==800 for CORESIZE==8000 step equ 17 first equ 240 dist equ 3022 time equ 285 rof for CORESIZE==800 step equ 13 first equ 40 dist equ 204 time equ 43 rof ptr: sne first, first+dist add db, ptr p: mov bomb, }ptr mov bomb, >ptr djn @p, #time bomb: spl #1, 1 mov db, >ptr djn.f -1, >ptr db: dat step-1, step-1 end _______________________________________________________________________________ Questions? Concerns? Comments? Complaints? Mail them to people who care. Beppe Bezzi , Philip Kendall , Anton Marsden , John Metcalf and Christian Schmidt From: wangsawm@rad.net.id (xcel5) Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 2 Apr 2003 23:18:27 -0800 Message-ID: <9eea72be.0304022318.594a351e@posting.google.com> Hi, I would like to clarify few things in regards to this issue: The implementation of '\' before end-of-line is indeed: 1. To support old terminals with fixed length characters (normally 80 columns) 2. To maintain backward compatibility with old warriors One of our goals was to produce pmars that could cope platform differences as many as possible. That included old terminals and/or source codes that originated from old terminals. Cheers, Mintardjo W. From: wangsawm@rad.net.id (xcel5) Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 2 Apr 2003 23:39:39 -0800 Message-ID: <9eea72be.0304022339.64788723@posting.google.com> "Csaba Biro" wrote in message news:... > "Steve Gunnell" wrote in message > news:200303040757.45941.steveg58@iinet.net.au... > > It is *not* a bug. Here is the code from asm.c: > > I just thought it's a bug, because the Redcode grammar available at koth.org > doesn't contain this. > > this_string :: (^\n)* ; > comment :: ";" this_string "\n" | e ; > > So "this_string" may contain backslash at the end. > If that's what you meant with bug, I could agree with you. The '\' before end-of-line was to support old terminals with limited characters (80 columns). There was no point for me supporting this while not allowing the split after comment. BTW, I had been asked to review pmars grammar and make the adjustment accordingly. I thought the grammar was correct enough and I didn't want to add unneccessary confusion in regards to backward compatibility, undocumented features, macros, etc. Also, after we released pmars, we were expecting feedbacks, bugs, suggestions, etc. So if things become big problems, we would deal with it. But, I think that nobody in pmars team could spend their time indefinitely Cheers, Mintardjo W. From: neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) Subject: The Mini-challenge Date: 3 Apr 2003 06:10:29 -0800 Message-ID: <242debe4.0304030610.5b678c35@posting.google.com> Every week I propose a corewars mini-challenge. You only have to resolve a proposed problem. It is not a tournament, just only a little funny challenge for those who have enough free time, (or addicts to redcode). Everyone is invited: www.estadium.ya.com/neogryzor/corewars.htm Suggestions are of course wellcome. Neogryzor From: dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 3 Apr 2003 07:24:27 -0800 Message-ID: <5d6847b2.0304030724.7ba661d0@posting.google.com> My apologies for ungrateful-sounding comment. I'm indebted to the creators of this great software. "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!" Trying again: I feel that this feature may now have outlived its usefulness. A number of old and new published warriors (mostly papers) contain comments ending with a "\". These warriors tend to be crippled but not killed when run under UNIX, sometimes leading to lengthy debugging sessions. Hopefully future rev.s can allow these warriors to run properly without breaking others. Dave Hillis From: Christoph Birk Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 3 Apr 2003 13:54:07 -0500 Message-ID: <200304031834.KAA02639@andromeda.ociw.edu> Mintardjo W. wrote: > The implementation of '\' before end-of-line is indeed: > 1. To support old terminals with fixed length characters > (normally 80 columns) > 2. To maintain backward compatibility with old warriors But it was introduced only a couple of year ago ... how can it "maintain backward compatiblility with old warriors", it actually breaks them. Christoph From: "Joshua Hudson" Subject: Re: Enough is Enough Date: 3 Apr 2003 13:54:12 -0500 Message-ID: >From: fizmo_master@yahoo.com (Fizmo) >You really catch me red-handed. That was a secret meeting about >the development of a brand new pmars-modifying warrior, to >hold always the top spot on the hills. So, somebody else knows about the buffer overflow in the redcode parser. _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From: wangsawm@rad.net.id (xcel5) Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 3 Apr 2003 23:47:11 -0800 Message-ID: <9eea72be.0304032347.7f2ba4fe@posting.google.com> dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) wrote in message news:<5d6847b2.0304030724.7ba661d0@posting.google.com>... > Trying again: I feel that this feature may now have outlived its > usefulness. A number of old and new published warriors (mostly papers) > contain comments ending with a "\". These warriors tend to be crippled > but not killed when run under UNIX, sometimes leading to lengthy > debugging sessions. Maybe I should say ancient warrior instead of old warrior :) > Hopefully future rev.s can allow these warriors > to run properly without breaking others. The most I can do about this problem is to suggest that either: A. Support it under some conditions (i.e: using pmars directives) +: Eliminate the confusion problem and old warriors still work -: Need to add pmars directive to old warriors B. Fully support it (what we have now) +: Support old terminals and old warriors -: Confuses new warriors C. Scrap it +: Eliminate the confusion problem -: No more support for old terminals and old warriors Cheers, Mintardjo W. From: wangsawm@rad.net.id (xcel5) Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 4 Apr 2003 01:28:08 -0800 Message-ID: <9eea72be.0304040128.6489d7a2@posting.google.com> Christoph Birk wrote in message news:<200304031834.KAA02639@andromeda.ociw.edu>... > > The implementation of '\' before end-of-line is indeed: > > 1. To support old terminals with fixed length characters > > (normally 80 columns) > > 2. To maintain backward compatibility with old warriors > > But it was introduced only a couple of year ago ... > how can it "maintain backward compatiblility with old warriors", > it actually breaks them. pmars was written almost ten years ago. If I remember correctly, the code was already there to support old terminals. If this feature became hidden, there could be some reasons that have caused it: 1. People never used it until recently OR 2. Internal newline conversion between DOS/Windows and UNIX. To combine two lines, it needs '\' just before '\n'. DOS/Windows could have converted UNIX '\n' into '\a'+'\n' (or the reverse) I haven't digged the source. But, I don't think I could. BTW, I didn't give any documentation about this. My mistake Cheers, Mintardjo W. From: "Zul Nadzri" Subject: Re: Enough is Enough Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 06:31:54 +0800 Message-ID: <3e8cb593_1@news.tm.net.my> I, Zul Kline, ops... I mean, Zul Nadzri, dont really care of the split personalities, as long as they act as 4 distinct people. And please use as many overflowing buffers as you wish as long as you share it with me (and others). /Zul "Ian Oversby" wrote in message news:21fc098d.0304021449.227be8c5@posting.google.com... > howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) wrote in message news:<5e314d3b.0304010728.48d441f8@posting.google.com>... > > > > i) Reading through old logs, comparing the style of the > > tomes of source code of Schmidt (several styles) and also > > the code of Kline, Metcalf, Dewdney, Oversby, Pihlaja > > (alarmingly similar) I became suspicious. > > Yes, very good :) > > April fools apart, I can assure you that if I were simply a > pseudonym of Kline, more of my warriors would be published > (nooooo, Blacken, lost forever :( ), or are you suggesting he > (we?) has split personalities to match the different names? > > Ian From: sqweek Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 05:07:50 +0800 Message-ID: xcel5 wrote: > dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) wrote in message news:<5d6847b2.0304030724.7ba661d0@posting.google.com>... > > Trying again: I feel that this feature may now have outlived its > > usefulness. A number of old and new published warriors (mostly papers) > > contain comments ending with a "\". These warriors tend to be crippled > > but not killed when run under UNIX, sometimes leading to lengthy > > debugging sessions. > > Maybe I should say ancient warrior instead of old warrior :) > > > Hopefully future rev.s can allow these warriors > > to run properly without breaking others. > > The most I can do about this problem is to suggest that either: > A. Support it under some conditions (i.e: using pmars directives) > +: Eliminate the confusion problem and old warriors still work > -: Need to add pmars directive to old warriors > B. Fully support it (what we have now) > +: Support old terminals and old warriors > -: Confuses new warriors > C. Scrap it > +: Eliminate the confusion problem > -: No more support for old terminals and old warriors How about: D. Ignore backslashes if they are within a comment I can't imagine why anyone would try to use a backslash to continue a comment to the next line... just comment the next line aswell. Also, I can't imagine why anyone would put a backslash at the end of a line outside a comment unless they intended to continue the line. But I've never actually coded a warrior, so maybe that is affecting my imagination ;) From: wangsawm@rad.net.id (xcel5) Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 6 Apr 2003 22:18:03 -0700 Message-ID: <9eea72be.0304062118.51b259fc@posting.google.com> sqweek wrote in message news:... > How about: > D. Ignore backslashes if they are within a comment > > I can't imagine why anyone would try to use a backslash to continue a > comment to the next line... just comment the next line aswell. > Also, I can't imagine why anyone would put a backslash at the end of a > line outside a comment unless they intended to continue the line. > But I've never actually coded a warrior, so maybe that is affecting my > imagination ;) redcode comments are not quite the comments. They can contain directives and macros. How much do they differ from other codes in that aspect? Besides, if the intention was to support line continuation, why must it not be fully supported? I did the same thing with imagining thing. I didn't expect that people would put backslash before end-of-line and not realized about it. Because, First, backslash is not part of the syntax. Second, there seemed to be no reason that people would put backslash at the end of line after comment. But, who would have thought that they could use it in drawing pattern? Anyway, those are just my comments. It might be useful or not. Cheers, Mintardjo W. From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 04/07/03 Date: 7 Apr 2003 10:23:53 -0400 Message-ID: <200304070406.h37460cv022855@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/07/03 -=- 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 Apr 6 11:14:30 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 46/ 41/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 152 85 2 42/ 34/ 24 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 149 2 3 40/ 36/ 23 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 145 1 4 39/ 37/ 25 Black Moods Ian Oversby 141 181 5 36/ 33/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 139 68 6 37/ 37/ 26 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 137 12 7 27/ 18/ 55 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 136 125 8 22/ 9/ 69 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 136 254 9 22/ 10/ 68 Denial David Moore 135 126 10 29/ 26/ 45 Olivia X Ben Ford 133 66 11 33/ 35/ 32 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 132 185 12 29/ 28/ 43 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 129 117 13 18/ 8/ 74 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 128 202 14 33/ 38/ 30 Ogre Christian Schmidt 128 133 15 36/ 45/ 19 Kenshin X 45 Steve Gunnell 128 28 16 29/ 30/ 41 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 128 124 17 26/ 25/ 49 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 127 207 18 20/ 14/ 66 Kin John Metcalf 126 93 19 22/ 21/ 57 Glenstorm John Metcalf 124 47 20 16/ 10/ 74 Black Box v1.1 JKW 121 148 21 2/ 72/ 25 r9test Roy van Rijn 33 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 04/07/03 Date: 7 Apr 2003 10:23:48 -0400 Message-ID: <200304070409.h37491Ed022887@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/07/03 -=- 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 Apr 6 00:02:56 EST 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 26/ 36 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 149 784 2 46/ 46/ 8 Recon 2 David Moore 145 7 3 34/ 27/ 39 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 141 1553 4 36/ 30/ 34 Thunderstrike Lukasz Grabun 141 158 5 41/ 43/ 16 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 139 328 6 41/ 43/ 17 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 139 238 7 40/ 41/ 19 Return of Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 138 315 8 27/ 16/ 58 The Lord of the Imp-Rings Neogryzor 138 2 9 31/ 27/ 42 Fast Action III Christian Schmidt 136 27 10 33/ 30/ 37 Pixie Lukasz Grabun 136 201 11 42/ 49/ 9 Solo Roy van Rijn 135 8 12 40/ 44/ 16 Origin of Storms John Metcalf 135 1 13 26/ 18/ 56 PolyPap II Jakub/Roy 135 33 14 28/ 21/ 51 Dawn Roy van Rijn 134 169 15 38/ 42/ 21 Driftwood John Metcalf 134 237 16 39/ 45/ 16 run to the hills Simon Wainwright 133 18 17 30/ 27/ 43 Revenge of the Papers Fizmo/Roy 133 591 18 34/ 36/ 30 My First Paper Michal Janeczek 132 152 19 39/ 45/ 16 Harmony Snoot Lukasz Grabun 132 128 20 41/ 52/ 7 Claw Fizmo 129 521 21 35/ 45/ 21 n35 pbt 125 0 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?will?= Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 7 Apr 2003 10:23:44 -0400 Message-ID: <20030407073011.36573.qmail@web21101.mail.yahoo.com> Hi folks, I think that the "continuation only if not in comment" makes the most sense between keeping old warriors alive and keeping the peace :-) best regards, Will __________________________________________________ Yahoo! Plus For a better Internet experience http://www.yahoo.co.uk/btoffer From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 04/07/03 Date: 7 Apr 2003 10:23:58 -0400 Message-ID: <200304070403.h37430k3022821@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/07/03 -=- 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 : Tue Apr 1 09:15:25 EST 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 Her Majesty P.Kline 12 236 2 trial John Metcalf 7 121 3 The Lord of the Imp-Rings Neogryzor 4 1 4 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 4 217 5 Djinn Test 9 Steve Gunnell 3 106 6 Triple Glaze Philip Thorne 2 11 7 Surviver David Bendit 2 19 8 fclear Brian Haskin 1 201 9 PolyPap III Jakub/Roy 0 3 10 my new tiny warrior John Metcalf 0 8 11 wimp no-one in particular 0 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 04/07/03 Date: 7 Apr 2003 10:30:06 -0400 Message-ID: <200304070400.h3740071022770@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/07/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sat Mar 29 20:34:33 EST 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 37/ 23/ 40 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 151 8 2 44/ 40/ 16 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 147 1 3 35/ 24/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 146 173 4 33/ 24/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 143 112 5 33/ 24/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 142 172 6 43/ 46/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 139 7 7 40/ 42/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 137 4 8 35/ 34/ 31 vala John Metcalf 136 95 9 30/ 25/ 46 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 134 2 10 42/ 51/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 133 11 11 31/ 29/ 40 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 132 130 12 39/ 45/ 17 '88 test IV John Metcalf 132 66 13 27/ 21/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 132 229 14 34/ 37/ 28 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 132 59 15 40/ 49/ 11 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 131 169 16 28/ 26/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 130 128 17 39/ 48/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 130 210 18 25/ 21/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 130 186 19 36/ 42/ 22 PacMan David Moore 130 202 20 37/ 46/ 17 Stasis David Moore 127 280 21 36/ 46/ 18 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 127 448 From: Christoph Birk Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 7 Apr 2003 10:36:40 -0400 Message-ID: <200304042008.MAA16322@andromeda.ociw.edu> Mintardjo Wangsawidjaja wrote: :Christoph wrote: :> I have (and use) pmars v0.8 (asm.c v7.2, 1995/07/30): :> :> if (fgets(buf, MAXALLCHAR, infp)) { :> uChar i; :> for (i = 0; buf[i]; i++) :> if (buf[i] == '\n' || buf[i] == '\r') :> break; :> buf[i] = 0; :> } else if (ferror(infp)) { :> :> It does NOT have the continuation feature. :> > This part reads characters until the end of line from a file into buffer. > After this part, characters in the buffer are parsed token per token. > There should be a part that deals with line continuation. I read it > somewhere in the post and I was pretty sure that it came from mine Nope, there is no continuation in asm.c v7.2 (1995/07/30) I just checked sourceforge.net: Their oldest version is about 1/2 year younger than mine: asm.c v7.22 (1996/02/20) Here ist the code: if (fgets(buf + i, MAXALLCHAR - i, infp)) { for (; buf[i]; i++) if (buf[i] == '\n' || buf[i] == '\r') break; buf[i] = 0; if (buf[i - 1] == '\\') { /* line continued */ conLine = TRUE; buf[--i] = 0; /* reset */ } else conLine = FALSE; } else if (ferror(infp)) { The 'continuation' feature was introduced in either v7.21 or v7.22, between July 1995 and February 1996. Christoph From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: Enough is Enough Date: 7 Apr 2003 10:36:48 -0400 Message-ID: On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, Will Varfar wrote: > I am through. The whole Corewar community is a sham, > riddled with corruption and an 'establishment'! etc. etc. ROTFL :]]] Oh, really, LOL :] I wonder who am I? Fizmo, Kline or maybe even A.K.Dewdney... But I've got no proofs! Will, can you help me find it? Case of my indentity is very important to me... :]]] Once more: LOL :] Lukasz Adamowski (?) From: dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 7 Apr 2003 15:10:09 -0700 Message-ID: <5d6847b2.0304071410.b6dba4e@posting.google.com> > I think that the "continuation only if not in comment" > makes the most sense between keeping old warriors > alive and keeping the peace :-) IMO avoiding surprises is the key issue. If PMARS just threw a warning message whenever the condition came up, it wouldn't matter much what the policy was. Dave Hillis From: "John Metcalf" Subject: Re: IRC Tournament Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 17:02:26 +0100 Message-ID: <3e92f595_2@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com> Greetings... The 7th weekly speed Redcoding tournament will be held next Sunday, 13 April, in #COREWARS on IRC.KOTH.ORG as usual. The rules will be announced at precisely 7:00pm (GMT), after which you have exactly 30 minutes in which to create up to two entries. Check out the link below to confirm the time in your area of the world: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=13&month=4&year=2003&hour=19&min=0&sec=0&p1=0&sort=1 Hope to see you there. From: neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) Subject: Re: The Mini-challenge Date: 9 Apr 2003 06:04:42 -0700 Message-ID: <242debe4.0304090504.5362d04e@posting.google.com> neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) wrote in message news:<242debe4.0304030610.5b678c35@posting.google.com>... > Every week I propose a corewars mini-challenge. You only have to > resolve a proposed problem. It is not a tournament, just only a little > funny challenge for those who have enough free time, (or addicts to > redcode). > Everyone is invited: > www.estadium.ya.com/neogryzor/corewars.htm > > Suggestions are of course wellcome. > > Neogryzor Unfortunately the web is down, so the Mini-challenge must be delayed. I'll restore the corewars page as soon as posible. Those who want the htm update please send me an e-mail. neogryzormail@mixmail.com Thanks to all who has sent entries. From: fizmo_master@yahoo.com (Fizmo) Subject: Re: Smart switching round winner development: P-Key Date: 10 Apr 2003 00:24:27 -0700 Message-ID: <9f53b5fb.0304092324.49beb829@posting.google.com> That's a really interesting and fascinating article. Hope to see you also on Round 9 ;-) > After its impressive (and unexpected) victory in the Smart > Switching > Round, I thought it may be of interest to write an article about the > development of P-Key, and try to explain the secret of its success. . . . > Mathematicians and engineers probably will find this switching > engine > similar to systems control theory, so it is possible to design more > advanced > switchers capable of beat adaptative switchers, but that will be > another > article... From: neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) Subject: Re: The Mini-challenge Date: 10 Apr 2003 05:51:57 -0700 Message-ID: <242debe4.0304100451.714f2bf6@posting.google.com> The web page is up again, and a new challenge is awaiting you... Mini-challenge #2 source codes are online. Neogryzor From: sqweek Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 05:52:53 +0800 Message-ID: xcel5 wrote: > sqweek wrote in message news:... > > How about: > > D. Ignore backslashes if they are within a comment > > > > I can't imagine why anyone would try to use a backslash to continue a > > comment to the next line... just comment the next line aswell. > > Also, I can't imagine why anyone would put a backslash at the end of a > > line outside a comment unless they intended to continue the line. > > But I've never actually coded a warrior, so maybe that is affecting my > > imagination ;) > > redcode comments are not quite the comments. They can contain directives > and macros. How much do they differ from other codes in that aspect? hrm... Now that you mention it, ISTR someone specifically using line continuation for macros. So much for that idea :) I think Dave Hillis makes a good point though: | If PMARS just threw a warning message whenever the condition came up, | it wouldn't matter much what the policy was. From: Jakub Kozisek Subject: Re: Smart switching round winner development: P-Key Date: 13 Apr 2003 12:43:52 -0400 Message-ID: Hehehe. I heart that somebody is working on Round9-version of FireAndIce II. Hmm, that will be cool. On Thu, 10 Apr 2003, Fizmo wrote: > That's a really interesting and fascinating article. Hope to see you > also on Round 9 ;-) > > > > After its impressive (and unexpected) victory in the Smart > > Switching > > Round, I thought it may be of interest to write an article about the > > development of P-Key, and try to explain the secret of its success. > . > . > . > > Mathematicians and engineers probably will find this switching > > engine > > similar to systems control theory, so it is possible to design more > > advanced > > switchers capable of beat adaptative switchers, but that will be > > another > > article... > From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 04/14/03 Date: 14 Apr 2003 13:28:50 -0400 Message-ID: <200304140403.h3E4314U019509@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/14/03 -=- 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 Apr 12 19:37:54 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 trial John Metcalf 11 125 2 Her Majesty P.Kline 11 240 3 Triple Glaze Philip Thorne 5 15 4 Lord of the imp-rings II Neogryzor 3 4 5 Djinn Test 9 Steve Gunnell 3 110 6 Surviver David Bendit 3 23 7 PolyPap III Jakub/Roy 2 7 8 my new tiny warrior John Metcalf 1 12 9 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 1 1 10 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 0 221 11 Kenshin X test 62 Steve Gunnell 0 2 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 04/14/03 Date: 14 Apr 2003 13:28:55 -0400 Message-ID: <200304140400.h3E401tQ019471@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/14/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sat Mar 29 20:34:33 EST 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 37/ 23/ 40 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 151 8 2 44/ 40/ 16 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 147 1 3 35/ 24/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 146 173 4 33/ 24/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 143 112 5 33/ 24/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 142 172 6 43/ 46/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 139 7 7 40/ 42/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 137 4 8 35/ 34/ 31 vala John Metcalf 136 95 9 30/ 25/ 46 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 134 2 10 42/ 51/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 133 11 11 31/ 29/ 40 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 132 130 12 39/ 45/ 17 '88 test IV John Metcalf 132 66 13 27/ 21/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 132 229 14 34/ 37/ 28 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 132 59 15 40/ 49/ 11 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 131 169 16 28/ 26/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 130 128 17 39/ 48/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 130 210 18 25/ 21/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 130 186 19 36/ 42/ 22 PacMan David Moore 130 202 20 37/ 46/ 17 Stasis David Moore 127 280 21 36/ 46/ 18 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 127 448 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 04/14/03 Date: 14 Apr 2003 13:28:46 -0400 Message-ID: <200304140406.h3E461EM019551@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/14/03 -=- 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 Apr 13 12:41:27 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 42/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 148 85 2 41/ 35/ 24 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 147 2 3 39/ 37/ 23 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 141 1 4 38/ 37/ 25 Black Moods Ian Oversby 139 181 5 36/ 38/ 26 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 134 12 6 34/ 35/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 132 68 7 21/ 10/ 69 Denial David Moore 132 126 8 20/ 9/ 71 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 132 254 9 29/ 26/ 46 Olivia X Ben Ford 132 66 10 25/ 19/ 57 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 131 125 11 33/ 35/ 32 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 131 185 12 27/ 25/ 48 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 129 207 13 28/ 31/ 41 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 126 124 14 36/ 45/ 19 Kenshin X 45 Steve Gunnell 126 28 15 32/ 39/ 29 Ogre Christian Schmidt 125 133 16 21/ 17/ 62 Kin John Metcalf 125 93 17 26/ 28/ 46 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 124 117 18 23/ 23/ 54 Glenstorm John Metcalf 123 47 19 15/ 8/ 78 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 121 202 20 12/ 10/ 78 Black Box v1.1 JKW 114 148 21 21/ 52/ 27 Big Test Jakub Kozisek 90 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 04/14/03 Date: 14 Apr 2003 13:28:41 -0400 Message-ID: <200304140409.h3E491N2019590@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/14/03 -=- 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 Apr 13 19:18:40 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 47/ 46/ 7 Recon 2 David Moore 147 21 2 33/ 25/ 42 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 142 798 3 41/ 43/ 17 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 139 342 4 30/ 24/ 45 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 136 1567 5 38/ 42/ 20 Return of Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 134 329 6 39/ 43/ 18 Origin of Storms John Metcalf 134 15 7 31/ 28/ 41 Thunderstrike Lukasz Grabun 134 172 8 26/ 17/ 57 RotPendragon 2 Christian Schmidt 134 7 9 41/ 49/ 10 Solo Roy van Rijn 133 22 10 33/ 35/ 32 My First Paper Michal Janeczek 132 166 11 37/ 43/ 20 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 132 252 12 29/ 27/ 44 Pixie Lukasz Grabun 131 215 13 24/ 18/ 57 Dawn Roy van Rijn 131 183 14 27/ 24/ 49 Back To PolyLand Jakub Kozisek 130 2 15 25/ 21/ 53 Fast Action IV Christian Schmidt 130 3 16 21/ 13/ 66 Lord of the imp-rings II Neogryzor 130 13 17 29/ 29/ 42 Tormentor Christian Schmidt 129 6 18 21/ 14/ 65 PolyPap II Jakub/Roy 128 47 19 36/ 45/ 19 run to the hills Simon Wainwright 127 32 20 34/ 41/ 25 Monowire Mizcu 127 1 21 26/ 40/ 34 Blowtorch Test B 29 Steve Gunnell 111 0 From: neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) Subject: Re: Smart switching round winner development: P-Key Date: 15 Apr 2003 02:34:21 -0700 Message-ID: <242debe4.0304150134.3bb338cf@posting.google.com> Jakub Kozisek wrote in message news:... > Hehehe. I heart that somebody is working on Round9-version of FireAndIce > II. Hmm, that will be cool. Translate warriors to R9 using limited values is too tricky, (sometimes impossible), but i recognize: I'm working on a compact version of Pkey's P-brain for R9. It's really hard! > On Thu, 10 Apr 2003, Fizmo wrote: > > > That's a really interesting and fascinating article. Hope to see you > > also on Round 9 ;-) > > Sure! From: iapdk@admin.drake.edu (Paul Kline) Subject: Re: Enough is Enough Date: 15 Apr 2003 06:16:16 -0700 Message-ID: <9e6b1335.0304150516.577d18@posting.google.com> oversby@hotmail.com (Ian Oversby) wrote in message news:<21fc098d.0304021449.227be8c5@posting.google.com>... > howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) wrote in message news:<5e314d3b.0304010728.48d441f8@posting.google.com>... > > > > i) Reading through old logs, comparing the style of the > > tomes of source code of Schmidt (several styles) and also > > the code of Kline, Metcalf, Dewdney, Oversby, Pihlaja > > (alarmingly similar) I became suspicious. > > Yes, very good :) > > April fools apart, I can assure you that if I were simply a > pseudonym of Kline, more of my warriors would be published > (nooooo, Blacken, lost forever :( ), or are you suggesting he > (we?) has split personalities to match the different names? > > Ian Gotta publish em when you got em! Don't wait til they fall of the Hill and nobody cares :-) P. Kline From: Sascha Zapf Subject: Re: Smart switching round winner development: P-Key Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 12:52:44 +0200 Message-ID: Neogryzor wrote: > Jakub Kozisek wrote in message > news:... >> Hehehe. I heart that somebody is working on Round9-version of FireAndIce >> II. Hmm, that will be cool. > > Translate warriors to R9 using limited values is too tricky, > (sometimes impossible), but i recognize: I'm working on a compact > version of Pkey's P-brain for R9. It's really hard! > >> On Thu, 10 Apr 2003, Fizmo wrote: >> >> > That's a really interesting and fascinating article. Hope to see you >> > also on Round 9 ;-) >> > > > Sure! And what is with creating the A.- and B.-Values in front and copying them into the instructions of the Warrior? If the Warrior is not too big, that can be a way. Sascha -- Parlez vous Redcode? From: iapdk@admin.drake.edu (Paul Kline) Subject: Re: Enough is Enough Date: 16 Apr 2003 06:07:09 -0700 Message-ID: <9e6b1335.0304160507.41202fd3@posting.google.com> > On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, Will Varfar wrote: > > > I am through. The whole Corewar community is a sham, > > riddled with corruption and an 'establishment'! > etc. etc. I just submitted an entry to the mini-challenge at http://www.estadium.ya.com/neogryzor/corewars.htm. It is less than half the length of John Metcalf's and scores better :-) And Lukasz' entry - pah! So there is proof we are different persons! P. Kline From: �����ڰ��� Subject: (����)���� �ڰ��� ������ �̺�Ʈ! Date: 17 Apr 2003 18:50:59 -0400 Message-ID: <200304160253.h3G2qnNb000324@gevjon.ttsg.com> Untitled Document

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From: martinankerl@web.de (Martin) Subject: yakoth Date: 18 Apr 2003 12:35:00 -0700 Message-ID: <453a311f.0304181135.403bec24@posting.google.com> Hi all, I did not follow corewars for a long time now. I have written a small tool (it is more than 1/2 year old, and still a Alpha-release...) to precicely and quickly test warriors for redcode tiny. I used it to test the evolved warriors of yace2 (Sources available on request), the successor of yace. Here are the binaries (sorry, Windows only): http://martin-ankerl.at.tf/downloads/yakoth.zip The sources (it's written in in C#) are available on request). have fun! Martin Ankerl http://martin-ankerl.at.tf/ From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 04/21/03 Date: 21 Apr 2003 10:12:14 -0400 Message-ID: <200304210406.h3L4605M021352@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/21/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sat Apr 19 22:09:07 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 46/ 41/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 152 86 2 39/ 32/ 29 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 147 1 3 41/ 36/ 23 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 145 2 4 39/ 37/ 24 Black Moods Ian Oversby 141 182 5 35/ 34/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 137 69 6 37/ 37/ 26 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 136 13 7 26/ 18/ 56 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 134 126 8 34/ 35/ 32 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 133 186 9 33/ 38/ 28 Ogre Christian Schmidt 129 134 10 19/ 9/ 72 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 129 255 11 19/ 10/ 71 Denial David Moore 128 127 12 36/ 45/ 19 Kenshin X 45 Steve Gunnell 128 29 13 29/ 30/ 41 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 127 125 14 28/ 29/ 44 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 127 118 15 26/ 27/ 47 Olivia X Ben Ford 125 67 16 19/ 14/ 67 Kin John Metcalf 124 94 17 22/ 21/ 58 Glenstorm John Metcalf 122 48 18 23/ 25/ 52 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 122 208 19 14/ 7/ 79 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 121 203 20 11/ 8/ 81 Black Box v1.1 JKW 115 149 21 5/ 51/ 44 test x 60 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 04/21/03 Date: 21 Apr 2003 10:12:22 -0400 Message-ID: <200304210400.h3L400In021249@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/21/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sat Mar 29 20:34:33 EST 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 37/ 23/ 40 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 151 8 2 44/ 40/ 16 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 147 1 3 35/ 24/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 146 173 4 33/ 24/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 143 112 5 33/ 24/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 142 172 6 43/ 46/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 139 7 7 40/ 42/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 137 4 8 35/ 34/ 31 vala John Metcalf 136 95 9 30/ 25/ 46 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 134 2 10 42/ 51/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 133 11 11 31/ 29/ 40 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 132 130 12 39/ 45/ 17 '88 test IV John Metcalf 132 66 13 27/ 21/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 132 229 14 34/ 37/ 28 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 132 59 15 40/ 49/ 11 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 131 169 16 28/ 26/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 130 128 17 39/ 48/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 130 210 18 25/ 21/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 130 186 19 36/ 42/ 22 PacMan David Moore 130 202 20 37/ 46/ 17 Stasis David Moore 127 280 21 36/ 46/ 18 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 127 448 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 04/21/03 Date: 21 Apr 2003 10:12:08 -0400 Message-ID: <200304210409.h3L490QP021381@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/21/03 -=- 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 Apr 20 16:10:10 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 47/ 46/ 7 Recon 2 David Moore 149 23 2 35/ 22/ 43 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 147 1569 3 44/ 42/ 14 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 147 344 4 36/ 26/ 38 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 146 800 5 31/ 16/ 53 RotPendragon 2 Christian Schmidt 146 9 6 36/ 25/ 39 Thunderstrike Lukasz Grabun 146 174 7 44/ 42/ 15 Origin of Storms John Metcalf 146 17 8 47/ 47/ 6 Claw 2 Christian Schmidt 146 2 9 42/ 40/ 17 Return of Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 145 331 10 34/ 24/ 41 Pixie Lukasz Grabun 144 217 11 42/ 41/ 17 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 144 254 12 30/ 21/ 49 Fast Action IV Christian Schmidt 139 5 13 29/ 20/ 51 Dawn Roy van Rijn 138 185 14 43/ 48/ 9 Solo Roy van Rijn 137 24 15 39/ 40/ 21 Monowire Mizcu 137 3 16 40/ 44/ 16 run to the hills Simon Wainwright 137 34 17 25/ 14/ 60 Lord of the imp-rings II Neogryzor 137 15 18 34/ 31/ 35 Tormentor Christian Schmidt 136 8 19 30/ 25/ 44 Back To PolyLand Jakub Kozisek 135 4 20 31/ 27/ 43 test dm 135 1 21 2/ 98/ 0 0 0 7 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 04/21/03 Date: 21 Apr 2003 10:12:18 -0400 Message-ID: <200304210403.h3L4302A021302@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/21/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Thu Apr 17 15:27:27 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 trial John Metcalf 26 127 2 Triple Glaze Philip Thorne 20 17 3 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 16 223 4 Her Majesty P.Kline 16 242 5 Lord of the imp-rings II Neogryzor 12 6 6 my new tiny warrior John Metcalf 10 14 7 PolyPap III Jakub/Roy 10 9 8 Djinn Test 9 Steve Gunnell 9 112 9 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 8 3 10 Spray Test A 44 Steve Gunnell 2 1 11 Studie 3 Sascha Zapf 1 0 Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 23 Apr 2003 09:04:54 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: fizmo_master@yahoo.com (Fizmo) Subject: Redcoders Frency: The Limited-Value Round ****Reminder**** Date: 24 Apr 2003 06:18:26 -0700 Message-ID: <9f53b5fb.0304240518.557ea4c9@posting.google.com> Hi all, Don't miss the Limited-Value Round. Just two days to go. Good Luck Christian .................................................................... ********************* * Redcoders' Frency * ********************* The ongoing corewar tournament /^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^\ | The Limited-Value Round | \_________________________/ This is the 9th round of the ongoing corewar tournament. Detailed information are available on Fizmo's Ultimate Corewar Page: http://de.geocities.com/fizmo_master/cwt.htm Rules ----- Round Robin without Self-Fights. Rounds : 1000 Coresize: 55440 Maxcycles: 100000 Maxprocesses: 10000 Warriors length: 200 Distance : 200 Limitation: ^^^^^^^^^^^ The entries may only contain values of either -1, 0 or 1 in the compiled Redcode The scoring is 3 points for a win and 1 point for tie and no points for a loss. Standard '94 rules are used. As usual, you can enter either one or two warriors. The homepage of this round, including some more informations is: http://de.geocities.com/fizmo_master/9.htm Deadline -------- April 26th, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Please notify: You have to send for this round your entries to me ----------------------------------------------------------------- Good luck ................................................................. From: iapdk@admin.drake.edu (Paul Kline) Subject: Re: The Mini-challenge Date: 25 Apr 2003 13:21:54 -0700 Message-ID: <9e6b1335.0304251221.18448fa2@posting.google.com> Congratulations on a successful challenge! To save yourself testing time, you can do an exhaustive round with "pmars -fr 7800" since there are only 7800 different starting positions. Of course then you would have to use a calculator to get the percentage of wins :-) Also, just using -f by itself will guarantee that everyone gets the same starting positions. P. Kline From: mooredav@mac.com (David Matthew Moore) Subject: Re: The Mini-challenge Date: 26 Apr 2003 12:14:17 -0700 Message-ID: <69eefcbb.0304261114.4343026b@posting.google.com> iapdk@admin.drake.edu (Paul Kline) wrote in message news:<9e6b1335.0304251221.18448fa2@posting.google.com>... > > To save yourself testing time, you can do an exhaustive round with > "pmars -fr 7800" > since there are only 7800 different starting positions. Of course > then you would have to use a calculator to get the percentage of wins > :-) Also, just using -f by itself will guarantee that everyone gets > the same starting positions. The command that you want is: pmars -P -F 4000 -r 15602 The -F number can be anything between 100 and 7900. -F does two things. First, it picks the starting position for the first round. More importantly, it seeds the random number generator which determines the positions in future rounds. This will give everyone the same series of starting positions. Don't use -f (lower case 'f') for this job. It uses a checksum of both programs to seed the generator, so each contestant may get a different series. There are 7801 starting positions (CORESIZE + 1 - MINDISTANCE * 2). Since either program could start first, there are 2 * 7801 possible starting conditions (not counting pspace). 2 * 7801 = 15602. You can't count on the random number generator to deliver unique starting conditions each time. There may be duplicates, unless you use the -P option. If you don't have -P, then you don't have the latest version of pmars. I don't know when the feature was added. It just appeared there one day. I spotted it in the list of options. I had to read sim.c to find out what it did. If you use -P, then the simulator remembers which starting positions and starting orders were used. It avoids duplicates as long as it can. 'pmars -P -r 15602' gives you each possible battle exactly once -- as long as nobody uses LDP. -- David. From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: SDL pMARS update Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 22:35:49 +0300 Message-ID: I've updated the Simple Direct Media Library port of pMARS with a few bug fixes mostly to do with keyboard handling. The only other new feature is that pMARS looks up pmars.mac and other macro files from a directory named by the environment variable PMARSHOME if the file isn't found in the working directory. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/~jpihlaja/cw/pmars-sdl So far it's only been tested on Windows 2000 and Windows 95 (but I'm confident in the stability of the X11 SDL port), so if any bugs appear (especially keyboard related ones), I'd appreciate it if you drop me an email. Regards, Joonas From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 04/28/03 Date: 28 Apr 2003 18:33:47 -0400 Message-ID: <200304280409.h3S491vw021730@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/28/03 -=- 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 Apr 27 10:07:56 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 46/ 48/ 7 Recon 2 David Moore 144 33 2 34/ 26/ 40 Thunderstrike Lukasz Grabun 142 184 3 32/ 23/ 45 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 141 1579 4 34/ 28/ 39 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 140 810 5 28/ 16/ 56 RotPendragon 2 Christian Schmidt 140 19 6 40/ 41/ 19 Return of Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 139 341 7 44/ 49/ 6 Claw 2 Fizmo 139 8 8 41/ 44/ 15 Origin of Storms John Metcalf 138 27 9 40/ 42/ 17 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 138 264 10 42/ 45/ 13 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 138 354 11 32/ 26/ 42 Pixie Lukasz Grabun 138 227 12 38/ 41/ 21 Monowire Mizcu 134 13 13 39/ 45/ 16 run to the hills Simon Wainwright 133 44 14 26/ 20/ 54 Dawn Roy van Rijn 133 195 15 27/ 22/ 51 Fast Action IV Christian Schmidt 132 15 16 28/ 24/ 48 Back To PolyLand Jakub Kozisek 131 14 17 22/ 15/ 63 Lord of the imp-rings II Neogryzor 129 25 18 31/ 33/ 37 Tormentor Christian Schmidt 128 18 19 28/ 29/ 43 test dm 127 11 20 38/ 53/ 9 Aoshi Test A 7 Steve Gunnell 124 1 21 31/ 48/ 21 Studie 10 Sascha Zapf 113 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 04/28/03 Date: 28 Apr 2003 18:40:22 -0400 Message-ID: <200304280400.h3S400Yv021576@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/28/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sat Mar 29 20:34:33 EST 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 37/ 23/ 40 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 151 8 2 44/ 40/ 16 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 147 1 3 35/ 24/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 146 173 4 33/ 24/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 143 112 5 33/ 24/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 142 172 6 43/ 46/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 139 7 7 40/ 42/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 137 4 8 35/ 34/ 31 vala John Metcalf 136 95 9 30/ 25/ 46 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 134 2 10 42/ 51/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 133 11 11 31/ 29/ 40 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 132 130 12 39/ 45/ 17 '88 test IV John Metcalf 132 66 13 27/ 21/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 132 229 14 34/ 37/ 28 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 132 59 15 40/ 49/ 11 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 131 169 16 28/ 26/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 130 128 17 39/ 48/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 130 210 18 25/ 21/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 130 186 19 36/ 42/ 22 PacMan David Moore 130 202 20 37/ 46/ 17 Stasis David Moore 127 280 21 36/ 46/ 18 Beholder's Eye V1.7 W. Mintardjo 127 448 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 04/28/03 Date: 28 Apr 2003 18:40:17 -0400 Message-ID: <200304280403.h3S431s6021626@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/28/03 -=- 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 Apr 25 00:22:53 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 Triple Glaze Philip Thorne 10 24 2 Her Majesty P.Kline 8 249 3 my new tiny warrior John Metcalf 6 21 4 Djinn Test 9 Steve Gunnell 6 119 5 trial John Metcalf 5 134 6 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 5 230 7 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 4 10 8 Lord of the imp-rings II Neogryzor 3 13 9 Bicarb Test F 27 Steve Gunnell 2 1 10 PolyPap III Jakub/Roy 0 16 11 Mr Sheen Test E 24 Steve Gunnell 0 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 04/28/03 Date: 28 Apr 2003 18:40:12 -0400 Message-ID: <200304280406.h3S461Ab021681@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 04/28/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sat Apr 26 19:00:07 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 35/ 26 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 145 1 2 42/ 41/ 17 Fire and Ice II David Moore 143 87 3 38/ 37/ 25 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 139 3 4 37/ 37/ 26 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 137 14 5 35/ 34/ 32 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 136 70 6 21/ 9/ 70 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 134 256 7 36/ 38/ 26 Black Moods Ian Oversby 134 183 8 34/ 34/ 32 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 134 187 9 21/ 10/ 69 Denial David Moore 133 128 10 28/ 25/ 47 Olivia X Ben Ford 131 68 11 24/ 18/ 58 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 129 127 12 29/ 30/ 41 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 128 126 13 33/ 38/ 29 Ogre Christian Schmidt 128 135 14 25/ 21/ 54 Glenstorm John Metcalf 128 49 15 21/ 14/ 65 Kin John Metcalf 127 95 16 27/ 28/ 45 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 126 119 17 25/ 26/ 49 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 125 209 18 16/ 8/ 76 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 124 204 19 35/ 46/ 19 Kenshin X 45 Steve Gunnell 123 30 20 12/ 11/ 76 Black Box v1.1 JKW 114 150 21 9/ 49/ 42 588086-7463-xt642-3-eve13 bvowk 69 0 From: fizmo_master@yahoo.com (Fizmo) Subject: Redcoders Frency: The Limited-Value Round ****Results**** Date: 29 Apr 2003 07:54:23 -0700 Message-ID: <9f53b5fb.0304290654.3177feb9@posting.google.com> .................................................................... ********************* * Redcoders' Frency * ********************* The ongoing corewar tournament /^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^\ | The Limited-Value Round | \_________________________/ This is the 9th round of the ongoing corewar tournament. Detailed information are available on Fizmo's Ultimate Corewar Page: http://de.geocities.com/fizmo_master/cwt.htm *********** * Results * *********** Due to the fact that ALL my tournament schedulers always crashed if running with 1000 rounds I decided to reduce the battles to 400 rounds. Sorry for that. A total of 12 authors and 21 warriors take part in the Limited-Value Round. Although each author can enter two warriors as usual. Of these, 4 were evolved and the remaining 17 hand-coded. The hand-written warriors were represented by 8 papers, 2 oneshots, 2 p-warriors, 2 stones, 1 stone/imp, 1 coreclear and 1 scanner. (_v_) _|_ | | |-----+-----| ___________ .-=========-. | {{1}} | '._==_==_=_.' \'-=======-'/ | \=/ | .-\: /-. _| .=. |_ '---------' | (|:.{3} |) | ((| {{2}} |)) \ / '-|:. |-' \| /|\ |/ '. .' \::. / \__ '`' __/ | | '::. .' _`) (`_ .' '. ) ( _/_______\_ _|___|_ _.' '._ /___________\ [_______] [_______] 2nd place Winner 3rd place ************** ****************** ******************** * Simon Duff * * Jakub Kozisek * * Lukasz Adamowski * ************** ****************** ******************** And the winner with a big 13pts lead to the second is Jakub Kozisek with his oneshot Number Prison. The second and third place goes to Simon Duff and Lukasz Adamowski with their papers. ._E_. (| V |) The special price for the best evolved warrior goes to ( O ) David Hillis for his 13th place. _)L(_ [__V__] E ---------------------------------------------------------------------- # Name Author W L T Score % Strat. ====================================================================== 1 Number Prison Jakub Kozisek 56 17 28 15559 100.0 oneshot 2 trial-by-fire Simon Duff 35 2 63 13502 86.8 paper 3 1015 Lukasz Adamowski 37 8 55 13301 85.5 paper 4 Return To The Past Jakub Kozisek 32 0 68 13194 paper 5 LV Paper John Metcalf 29 3 68 12363 79.5 paper 6 Kick them all! German Labarga 24 2 74 11730 75.4 p-warrior 7 Eliminator-Sp.Ed.I Zul Nadzri 27 7 66 11719 75.3 paper 8 Eliminator-Sp.Ed.II Zul Nadzri 26 7 67 11567 paper 9 PaporOne? Roy van Rijn 26 14 59 11047 71.0 p-warrior 10 Binary Dingus Philip Thorne 22 10 68 10763 69.2 stone/imp 11 Tough enough German Labarga 16 0 84 10593 paper 12 Backwards Roy van Rijn 34 41 25 10140 oneshot 13 Cavilling Concocter David Hillis 22 32 47 8996 57.8 evolved 14 Modified papier Joshua Hudson 7 6 88 8613 55.4 paper 15 Dogma Carcass Dave Hillis 20 39 40 8143 evolved 16 2 Lukasz Adamowski 22 44 34 8104 coreclear 17 Bit&Bite B. Cook 11 25 64 7771 50.0 stone 18 Creep B. Cook 22 69 9 5894 scanner 19 rnd9-592779 Will Varfar 9 47 45 5631 36.2 evolved 20 rnd9-259504 Will Varfar 8 53 39 5043 evolved 21 LV Stone John Metcalf 12 73 15 4145 stone ====================================================================== More detailed informations and all entries will be available soon on the Limited-Value Round webpage: http://de.geocities.com/fizmo_master/9.htm Congratulations to everyone who has taken part this round. I hope to see you next round again. *********** * Ranking * *********** Michal Janeczek still goes on dominating the ranking. But the gap to the 2nd (Roy van Rijn) and 3rd (Philip Thorne) is melting like ice in the sun. Simon Duff climbs 7 ranks now on 4th place scratching by 1.7 points the Top 3. Also John Metcalf jumps up 6 ranks into the Top 10. This time there is only one newcomer: Zul Nadzri (well known for his two very impressive warriors on the 94x-hill) enters the ranking as 20th. Also one player leaves the actual ranking, Ken Espiritu. # Author Score R4 R5 R6 R7 R8 R9 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 (1) Michal Janeczek 366.5 98.6 100.0 72.6 70.4 95.3 x 2 (3) Roy van Rijn 338.2 92.8 84.4 38.0 72.6 88.4 71.0 3 (4) Philip Thorne 330.5 89.0 91.7 40.1 x 80.6 69.2 4 (11) Simon Duff 328.8 x x 100.0 66.1 75.9 86.8 5 (8) German Labarga 318.2 60.0 82.8 51.9 100.0 x 75.4 6 (12) John Metcalf 295.2 * * 65.4 68.4 81.9 79.5 7 (9) Christian Schmidt 273.4 90.7 82.7 * * 100.0 * 8 (7) Dave Hillis 269.4 87.7 50.9 52.5 x 71.4 57.8 9 (2) Ben Ford 264.0 100.0 76.4 x x 87.6 x 9 (6) Simon Wainwright 264.0 79.0 74.9 50.6 59.5 x x 11 (5) Steve Gunnell 240.2 96.2 95.6 48.4 x x x 12 (15) Lukasz Adamowski 209.0 x x 43.1 43.0 37.4 85.5 13 (10) Lukasz Grabun 183.0 70.7 78.4 33.9 x x x 14 (19) Jakub Kozisek 178.4 x x x x 78.4 100.0 15 (16) Joshua Hudson 176.0 x x 76.1 x 44.5 55.4 16 (13) Sascha Zapf 149.7 x 51.1 34.0 64.6 * x 17 (17) Darek Leniowski 97.0 35.2 x 25.9 x 35.9 x 18 (23) B. Cook 92.7 x x 42.7 x x 50.0 19 (22) Will Varfar 90.2 x x 54.0 x x 36.2 20 (-) Zul Nadzri 75.3 x x x x x 75.3 21 (14) David Moore 69.8 x x x x 69.8 x 22 (20) Sheep 60.2 60.2 x x x x x 23 (21) Ilmari Karonen 57.6 x x 57.6 x x x 24 (24) Paul Khuong 40.8 x x 40.8 x x x 25 (25) bvowk 27.0 27.0 x x x x x 26 (26) Arivaalli 24.0 x x x x 24.0 x 27 (27) christian m. 22.6 x x 22.6 x x x 28 (28) Harbinger Of Doom 21.0 x x 21.0 x x x out(18) Ken Espiritu ------------------------------------------------------------------- * organizer ................................................................... From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Frenzy round #10 simulator for windows. Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 17:36:16 +0300 Message-ID: There's a version of pMARS for Windows that initialises core to dat 1,1 instead of dat 0,0 at http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/~jpihlaja/cw/pmars-sdl/pmarsw11.exe http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/~jpihlaja/cw/pmars-sdl/pmars-server11.exe REMEMBER TO CHECK FOR VIRUSES BEFORE EXECUTING THEM! Apologies for shouting in your ear, Joonas From: Sascha Zapf Subject: Re: Frenzy round #10 simulator for windows. Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 09:27:18 +0200 Message-ID: M Joonas Pihlaja wrote: > > There's a version of pMARS for Windows that initialises core to > dat 1,1 instead of dat 0,0 at > > http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/~jpihlaja/cw/pmars-sdl/pmarsw11.exe > http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/~jpihlaja/cw/pmars-sdl/pmars-server11.exe > > REMEMBER TO CHECK FOR VIRUSES BEFORE EXECUTING THEM! > > Apologies for shouting in your ear, > > Joonas For all other Systems here the pMars 0.9.2 for self-compilers with dat 1,1 initialisation. http://de.geocities.com/jeff_kandle/Frenzy10/pmars092_11.zip Sascha PS: To John or Chris, please put this three links on the Rules-Page. -- Parlez vous Redcode? From: Koen Struyve Subject: beginners tournament Date: 30 Apr 2003 18:59:34 -0400 Message-ID: <1051717946.3eaff13b10ea7@peperoni.rug.ac.be> For all corewars beginners : feel free to participate to this new corewars beginners-tournament, if you want more information check www25.brinkster.com/ivaldir , Koen Struyve From: mooredav@mac.com (David Matthew Moore) Subject: Forgotten Lore Date: 30 Apr 2003 21:29:51 -0700 Message-ID: <69eefcbb.0304302029.5a54a64e@posting.google.com> When I wrote G2, I noticed that longer SPL carpet phases made it harder to kill imp-bearing papers. Instead of stopping the imp rings, the SPLs just added more processes to them. In Forgotten Lore, I have a core clear with a different tactic. Very few SPLs, but a lot of JMPs. The JMPs keep the papers trapped and cause the imps to leave their defensive positions. The A-fields of the SPLs and JMPs are carefully managed to minimize the spread of that "mov.i #x, }y" stuff from RetroQ, Fixed, and Stylized Euphoria -- although better core clears exist for this purpose. For example: t spl #5340, 2750 dat 0, 0 ; this space is just to prevent the processes ; of a nearby paper from leaking into my loop s spl #0, 0 mov t, {b mov @2, }t djn -2, clear ;This is the scanner from Forgotten Lore, ;but without the convoluted bootstrap. gate dat 0, 0 jumper jmp 4009, 18 dat 0, 0 dat 0, 0 jmp -400, <2667 clear spl #4600, 18 mov @switch, >gate mov jumper, }gate switch djn clear, {clear ;this becomes djn -2 after scan phase dat 0, 0 dat 0, 0 dat 0, 0 dat 0, 0 sub.x step, scan scan sne 4009 + 80, 18 + 80 jmz.f -2, place+2, #0 ;this decoy will stop the scanning mov.i >place+3, #0 ;before it goes too far mov.i >place+4, #0 mov.i }place+5, #0 mov.i }place+6, #0 mov.i -2 for 14 dat 0,0 rof enter spl second, 2 spl #0, {0 spl #0, }0 stp.a @-2, -1 for 15 dat 0, 0 rof step equ 82 first equ (1 + step*5) trap equ (-1 - step*22) fang equ (vamp + 2 + step) gate equ (clr - 4) db equ (clr - 3) vamp spl #0, 4 mov @1, @fang add.f #-fang, fang djn.f -2, *fang src_J jmp trap-first, first src_G dat 0, 6438 src_D dat <2667, 12 clr spl #0, 4 mov db, >gate djn.f -1, >gate dat 0, 0 loc_V equ (enter - trap - step - 2) loc_C equ (loc_V + step*2) boot spl boot2, <5057 spl 1, <4810 spl 1, <4563 mov dest_C mov src_D, >dest_C mov src_J, @dest_V dest_C spl loc_C + 4, loc_C - 4 mov <5293, dest_V mov <5538, dest_C dat 0, 0 for 2 dat 0,0 rof dat 0, 0 empty dat 0, 0 dat 0, 0 dat 0, 0 think ldp.ab pp, pp ldp.ab }empty, empty add.ab @empty, pp mod.ab #2, pp pp stp.ba #50, #0 jmz.b boot, pp dest equ 5000 mov s04, >loc mov s17, {loc mov s16, {loc mov s15, {loc mov s14, {loc mov s05, >loc mov s06, >loc mov s07, >loc mov s08, >loc hide mov s01, loc+dest-13 loc spl dest+4, dest-10 mov s13, {loc mov >200, loc div.f #0, hide dat 0, 0 dat 0, 0 dat 0, 0 s17 JMP.B } -9, $ -8 s16 MOV.F $ -2, $ -16 s04 JMP.B $ -400, < 2667 s15 JMZ.F $ -2, < -1 s14 SNE.I $ -3967, $ 42 s13 SUB.X $ 4, $ 1 s08 DJN.B $ -3, { -3 s07 MOV.I $ -6, } -7 s01 JMP.B $ -3991, $ 18 s06 MOV.I @ 2, > -6 s05 SPL.B # -3400, $ 12 end think