From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Warriors from 14th round Date: 1 Jun 2003 20:10:18 GMT Message-ID: ;redcode-tiny ;author Lukasz Grabun ;name Tiny Stone-paper ;assert CORESIZE==800 soff equ 537 boot: mov tBmb, soff sPtr spl 1, tLoop+1 spl 1, 0 mov pap1 mov {pap1, s2 ;stone from The Wasp tStep equ 586 tTime equ 156 spl #0 , #0 tMov mov tBmb , @tLoop add #tStep , tLoop tLoop djn.f tMov , {-1-(tTime*tStep) tBmb dat {4 , >1 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% ;redcode-tiny ;name Little ;author Lukasz Grabun ;assert CORESIZE==800 step equ 586 time equ 156 soff equ 200 ioff equ 352 boot SPL.B 2 , bomb+1 isrc SPL.B 2 , imp+1 SPL.B 1 , 0 MOV.I 1 istep equ 267 pump SPL.B #imp , #imp+1 SUB.F #-istep-1, iloop MOV.I imp , }pump iloop JMP.B imp-2*(istep+1) , >imp+2*istep-1 imp MOV.I #0 , istep end boot -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: benjavan@aol.com (Benjavan) Date: 01 Jun 2003 20:31:42 GMT Subject: HELP ME!!!! please, you are my only hope... Message-ID: <20030601163142.09394.00000958@mb-m07.aol.com> I am a total newbie, and I know most of you hate newbies, but I am a mediocre programmer and need assistance with core war. I am using Macintosh OS 9.1, and just downloaded MACpMARS from KotH.com, and I can't run the program because it says that I don't have "permission." What the ... does that mean and how do I fix that? ~~~CAT~~~ From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: HELP ME!!!! please, you are my only hope... Date: 1 Jun 2003 20:36:03 GMT Message-ID: On 01 Jun 2003 20:31:42 GMT, Benjavan wrote: > I am a total newbie, and I know most of you hate newbies, but I am a mediocre You are wrong. We love newbies. :-) -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 06/02/03 Date: 2 Jun 2003 09:58:49 -0400 Message-ID: <200306020400.h52400G4010182@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/02/03 -=- 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 : Fri May 23 22:45:47 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 39/ 22/ 40 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 155 8 2 46/ 38/ 15 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 154 1 3 36/ 22/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 149 173 4 35/ 22/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 147 172 5 35/ 22/ 44 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 147 112 6 45/ 44/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 146 7 7 42/ 40/ 18 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 145 4 8 37/ 32/ 31 vala John Metcalf 142 95 9 45/ 48/ 7 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 141 11 10 31/ 23/ 45 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 139 2 11 41/ 43/ 16 '88 test IV John Metcalf 138 66 12 42/ 46/ 12 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 137 169 13 39/ 40/ 21 PacMan David Moore 137 202 14 28/ 20/ 51 Test I Ian Oversby 136 229 15 28/ 20/ 53 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 136 186 16 41/ 45/ 14 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 136 210 17 30/ 25/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 135 128 18 40/ 44/ 16 Stasis David Moore 135 280 19 35/ 36/ 29 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 135 59 20 32/ 29/ 40 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 135 130 21 0/ 83/ 17 Impum 0.0.0 Levi 18 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 06/02/03 Date: 2 Jun 2003 09:58:40 -0400 Message-ID: <200306020406.h524608N010264@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/02/03 -=- 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 May 25 14:49:21 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 44/ 34/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 154 1 2 43/ 36/ 21 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 150 2 3 45/ 43/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 147 90 4 38/ 37/ 25 Black Moods Ian Oversby 140 186 5 36/ 33/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 138 73 6 21/ 11/ 68 Denial David Moore 132 131 7 34/ 36/ 31 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 131 190 8 35/ 39/ 26 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 131 17 9 25/ 19/ 56 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 131 130 10 23/ 14/ 63 Kin John Metcalf 131 98 11 20/ 9/ 70 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 131 259 12 26/ 21/ 53 Glenstorm John Metcalf 131 52 13 28/ 28/ 44 Olivia X Ben Ford 128 71 14 33/ 39/ 28 Ogre Christian Schmidt 126 138 15 16/ 8/ 76 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 124 207 16 27/ 30/ 44 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 124 122 17 25/ 28/ 47 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 123 212 18 27/ 33/ 40 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 121 129 19 33/ 48/ 19 Kenshin X 45 Steve Gunnell 119 33 20 14/ 10/ 76 Black Box v1.1 JKW 117 153 21 23/ 60/ 17 not king of the hill FatalC 85 0 From: Jakub Kozisek Subject: Re: HELP ME!!!! please, you are my only hope... Date: 2 Jun 2003 09:58:30 -0400 Message-ID: On Sun, 1 Jun 2003, Lukasz Grabun wrote: > On 01 Jun 2003 20:31:42 GMT, Benjavan wrote: > > > I am a total newbie, and I know most of you hate newbies, but I am a mediocre > > You are wrong. We love newbies. :-) > Hmmm, newbie, yummy!!! Give him to me, please. :) > -- > Lukasz Grabun > (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) > From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 06/02/03 Date: 2 Jun 2003 09:58:36 -0400 Message-ID: <200306020409.h52490m3010297@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/02/03 -=- 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 Jun 1 22:10:01 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 47/ 44/ 9 Recon 2 David Moore 150 98 2 44/ 49/ 7 prober mjp 139 9 3 31/ 23/ 46 Thunderstrike Lukasz Grabun 139 249 4 31/ 23/ 47 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 139 1644 5 31/ 23/ 47 Paper party G.Labarga 139 11 6 29/ 19/ 52 Candy II Lukasz Grabun 138 24 7 39/ 40/ 22 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 138 329 8 41/ 45/ 14 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 138 419 9 31/ 25/ 44 Soldier of Silkland Christian Schmidt 137 1 10 31/ 25/ 44 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 137 875 11 44/ 51/ 6 Claw 2 Fizmo 137 73 12 31/ 25/ 44 Now you're in trouble!!! John Metcalf 136 12 13 27/ 19/ 54 Dawn Roy van Rijn 136 260 14 26/ 17/ 57 RotPendragon 2 Christian Schmidt 136 84 15 29/ 21/ 50 Back To PolyLand Jakub Kozisek 136 79 16 28/ 22/ 50 Skin Roy + bvowk 134 26 17 31/ 28/ 41 Tormentor Christian Schmidt 133 83 18 38/ 43/ 20 Return of Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 133 406 19 26/ 19/ 55 Stranger Christian Schmidt 132 2 20 29/ 26/ 44 Numb Roy van Rijn 132 31 21 5/ 81/ 14 MarvinS Fergus Hudson 30 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 06/02/03 Date: 2 Jun 2003 09:58:45 -0400 Message-ID: <200306020403.h52430ve010230@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/02/03 -=- 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 : Sun Jun 1 23:04:09 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 Lord of the imp-rings II Neogryzor 32 40 2 trial John Metcalf 23 161 3 not king of the hill FatalC 20 2 4 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 18 257 5 Triple Glaze Philip Thorne 15 51 6 Her Majesty P.Kline 14 276 7 Djinn Test 9 Steve Gunnell 11 146 8 Room 303 FatalC 11 1 9 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 11 37 10 my new tiny warrior John Metcalf 8 48 11 Crimson Binome 23 Steve Gunnell 1 0 From: dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) Subject: Re: HELP ME!!!! please, you are my only hope... Date: 2 Jun 2003 21:04:27 -0700 Message-ID: <5d6847b2.0306022004.6da8610d@posting.google.com> Jakub Kozisek wrote in message news:... > On Sun, 1 Jun 2003, Lukasz Grabun wrote: > > > On 01 Jun 2003 20:31:42 GMT, Benjavan wrote: > > > > > I am a total newbie, and I know most of you hate newbies, but I am a mediocre > > > > You are wrong. We love newbies. :-) > > > > Hmmm, newbie, yummy!!! Give him to me, please. :) We like newbies fine. We just hate you stinkin' MAC users ;) Actually, I don't know the answer but someone on here should. Might be worth posting again with subject more like "Problem w/ PMARS on MAC." Dave Hillis From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: HELP ME!!!! please, you are my only hope... Date: 3 Jun 2003 16:27:00 -0400 Message-ID: On Sun, 1 Jun 2003, Benjavan wrote: > I am a total newbie, and I know most of you hate newbies, As another Lukasz said: You wrong! :] Every of us was a newbie once... :] > but I am a mediocre > programmer and need assistance with core war. I am using Macintosh OS 9.1, and > just downloaded MACpMARS from KotH.com, and I can't run the program because it > says that I don't have "permission." What the ... does that mean and how do I > fix that? I guess it's problem about your Mac, not the pMARS, but actually I've never seen MACpMARS. Anybody here works on MAC? All I can advise, ~~~CAT~~~, is that you should check if there is any way files on your computer are marked as executable or non-executable like it is in Linux/UNIX. You know, data files cannot be run as binaries, etc. Maybe this is the cause? Greetings Lukasz A. From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: HELP ME!!!! please, you are my only hope... Date: 3 Jun 2003 21:17:25 GMT Message-ID: On 3 Jun 2003 16:27:00 -0400, Lukasz Adamowski wrote: > All I can advise, ~~~CAT~~~, is that you should check if there is any way > files on your computer are marked as executable or non-executable like it > is in Linux/UNIX. You know, data files cannot be run as binaries, etc. > Maybe this is the cause? This may be the cause. I am not that familiar with the newest MacOses :-) but I know that Apple implemented kind of Linux on their computers so one need chmod a+x foobar to make a binary executable for all users. This, as I said, may or even might be a cause. Worth trying, anyway. -- Lukasz Grabun (My CW page: http://www.astercity.net/~grabek) (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) Subject: Lord of the imp-rings II Date: 4 Jun 2003 06:37:31 -0700 Message-ID: <242debe4.0306040537.4da2d8c9@posting.google.com> Here is my first succesful warrior on the 94nop hill, pushed off at the age of 79. It's a paper/imp, launching three parallel papers imp-step away each other, so the papers are leaving heavy imp rings behind them. No offensive, just designed to survive. It scores well against some scanners like Hazylazy and Harmony Snoot but it is very vulnerable to HSA-ish scanners. Not complex, i think it's success is mostly thanks to a good optimization. Here you are: ;redcode-94nop ;name Lord of the imp-rings II ;author Neogryzor ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;strategy MiniQ^3->paper/imp ;strategy Improved and optimized version of the Lord, (not at all...) STEP1 EQU 2667 OFFSET EQU 3632 ;419 DEST1 EQU 1071 ;1073 DEST2 EQU 2575 ;2578 DEST3 EQU 1180 ;1182 LCH: SPL 1,{0 SPL 1,}0 SPL 1 SPL A SPL C B: MOV PAP1 PAP2: SPL DEST2,0 MOV >PAP2,}PAP2 MOV ] 0/1 cycles [(<+- qGo: seq qd+qf+qs, qf+qs ; 1 jmp qSki, {qd+qf+qs+qi seq qd+qf+6*qs, qf+6*qs ; B jmp qFas, {qd+qf+6*qs+qi seq qd+qf+5*qs, qf+5*qs ; B-1 jmp qFas, qBmb seq qd+qf+9*qs, qf+9*qs ; A-1 djn qFas, {qFas seq qd+qf+10*qs, qf+10*qs ; A jmp qFas, {qFas ; -+>)] 2 cycles [(<+- seq qd+qf+3*qs, qf+3*qs ; C jmp >qFas, {qd+qf+3*qs+qi seq qd+qf+2*qs, qf+2*qs ; C-1 jmp >qFas, {qSlo seq qd+qf+4*qs, qf+4*qs ; C+1 jmp >qFas, }qSlo seq qd+qf+12*qs, qf+12*qs ; B*C-B jmp qSlo, {qSlo seq qd+qf+15*qs, qf+15*qs ; B*C-C jmp qSlo, qBmb seq qd+qf+24*qs, qf+24*qs ; B*C+B jmp qSlo, }qSlo seq qd+qf+27*qs, qf+27*qs ; A*C-C djn qSlo, {qFas seq qd+qf+30*qs, qf+30*qs ; A*C jmp qSlo, {qFas sne qd+qf+18*qs, qf+18*qs ; B*C jmz.f LCH, qd+qf+18*qs-10 qSlo:mul.ab #3, qKil ; C=3 qFas:mul.b qBmb, @qSlo qSki:sne >3456, @qKil add #qd, qKil qLoo:mov qBmb, @qKil qKil:mov qBmb, *qs sub #qi, qKil djn qLoo, #qr jmp LCH, >10 ; A=10 qBmb:dat {qi*qr-10, {6 ; B=6 end qGo From: fizmo_master@yahoo.com (Fizmo) Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy: Round 11 "The holding hands round" ***Deadline**** Date: 5 Jun 2003 03:52:32 -0700 Message-ID: <9f53b5fb.0306050252.21d59779@posting.google.com> The deadline for Round 11 is: ----------------------------- June 28, 2003 Good luck. From: =?iso-8859-1?q?will?= Subject: examing opcode frequencies Date: 5 Jun 2003 11:58:39 -0400 Message-ID: <20030605125455.55644.qmail@web21102.mail.yahoo.com> Hi folks, Barclay Vowk and other's fantastic success evolving warriors recently has spurred me into more Species development. And emulating the better evolvers, I have set about trying to capture sensible opcode frequency statistics for normal hand-written warriors. The approach that seems promising is to use markov chains; so I've spent a few days running all the warriors I've downloaded from Koenigstuhl and corewars.sourceforge.net through various chucks of code. I am slowly gathering faith in my markov capturer, and the early stats are so interesting I thought I'd share them with you all: Rembrants of obvious algorithms are quite common: MOV.I$@,ADD.AB#$ occurs 52 times (in my archive) MOV.I{<,MOV.I{<,MOV.I{<,MOV.I{<,MOV.I{< 44 times SEQ.I$$,DJN.F$$,SEQ.I$$,JMP.B<>,SEQ.I$$,JMP.B$>,SEQ.I$$,JMP.B$} 25 times MOV.I$<,MOV.I>>,JMN.F$>,ADD.AB#@,JMZ.F$<,SLT.B@#,DJN.B$@,DJN.B$#,JMP.B${ 23 times .. and so on. If anyone has ownership of a server with a 24/7 public IP, maybe we can have a 'how unique is your warrior?' service? I expect I've missed a few really telling chains. If anyone wants the 2.3mb datafile I've generated, just email me. Oh, and I mixed hills.. best regards, Will. __________________________________________________ Yahoo! Plus - For a better Internet experience http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/yplus/yoffer.html From: dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) Subject: Re: examing opcode frequencies Date: 5 Jun 2003 19:04:12 -0700 Message-ID: <5d6847b2.0306051804.6794619@posting.google.com> will wrote in message news:<20030605125455.55644.qmail@web21102.mail.yahoo.com>... > Hi folks, > > Barclay Vowk and other's fantastic success evolving > warriors recently has spurred me into more Species > development. And emulating the better evolvers, I > have set about trying to capture sensible opcode > frequency statistics for normal hand-written warriors. > > The approach that seems promising is to use markov > chains; so I've spent a few days running all the > warriors I've downloaded from Koenigstuhl and > corewars.sourceforge.net through various chucks of > code. Very cool project. (I wish I knew how to use Markov chains.) So are you going to build some kind of predictor and use it as a mutation operator? I think that might work very well. A couple of thoughts: - Boot vectors, quick scans, decoys, DAT padding, and pswitch tables will give patterns that probably won't help evolved warriors. (Not sure about boot vectors.) - you might get more meaning by representing the addresses differently. This might take some hand editing, which would be a major pain, but treating the constants as numbers and representing the pointers to other lines of code in terms of what kind of line they are pointing to could be useful. Anyway, I think it's a great idea. Look forward to hearing more about it. Dave Hillis From: =?iso-8859-1?q?will?= Subject: Re: examing opcode frequencies Date: 6 Jun 2003 08:15:28 -0400 Message-ID: <20030606073939.58735.qmail@web21104.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dave Hillis wrote: > are you going to build some kind of predictor and > use it as a mutation operator? I am. In Species, I have a plugin whose job it is to suggest an opcode for any instruction in a warrior. This is used when generating warriors from scratch at generation 0, and also for suggesting opcodes that are inserted during reproduction. Mutation happens to the instruction after it has been suggested but before it is actually inserted. My first plugin used specified opcode frequencies and a branch-bias to suggest instructions. My newer plugin used two-link markov chains (for any opcode it knows the probability of other opcodes to follow) to suggest opcodes. The data I posted is prelim for my third plugin that will understand longer markov chains. I use a strict test to ensure that each reproduced warrior has some 'teeth', and I see that two-link-markov-chains improves the prob of generating something with teeth ten-fold! Unfortunately, it doesn't actually make a better warrior, only make the same badness of warrior quicker. Maybe all the other parameters for reproduction are way-off and holding me back.. > - Boot vectors, quick scans, decoys, DAT padding, > and pswitch tables > will give patterns that probably won't help evolved > warriors. yes, unfortunately they seem quite common. I can cull DAT-padding. > - you might get more meaning by representing the > addresses differently. ah, meta-instruction-genes? Markovs are a shortcut. Thought has to be given how to tokenise addresses too. For example, I don't yet track the probability of a chain starting a warrior. And opcodes neither. The amount of RAM needed to bring together stats for the Koening at the moment is staggering: over 100mb just for opcode/modifier/addrmodes; addresses too would knock that up a few order of magnitudes I expect. (Of course, using the resulting lookup table in an evolver is just a couple of megabytes max; probably much less). > Anyway, I think it's a great idea. Look forward > to hearing more about it. An evolvers gathering sometime somewhere? No harm in sharing ideas/results even when we're all dreaming of being KOTH of 94nop with a 100% evolved warrior!?! best regards, Will. __________________________________________________ Yahoo! Plus - For a better Internet experience http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/yplus/yoffer.html Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 06 Jun 2003 08:46:04 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: dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) Subject: Re: examing opcode frequencies Date: 6 Jun 2003 15:28:54 -0700 Message-ID: <5d6847b2.0306061428.6414829f@posting.google.com> will wrote in message Maybe if you limit your pool of warriors to those less than 20 lines long you'd get more relevant results from your analysis. > An evolvers gathering sometime somewhere? No harm in > sharing ideas/results even when we're all dreaming of > being KOTH of 94nop with a 100% evolved warrior!?! A combination of competition and sharing of information makes corewars what it is. I look at it as a pretty good model for pushing the state of the art in general. I like the gathering idea, but IIRC exceeds my threshold of pain right now. I think there used to be an evolving warriors mailing list. Maybe that could be resurected. Dave Hillis From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Bug in ;kill? Date: 6 Jun 2003 20:29:32 GMT Message-ID: It seems that one can ;kill his warrior only by sending the proper warrior from the exact email the warrior was sent from. -- Lukasz Grabun (My CW page: http://www.astercity.net/~grabek) (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: Bug in ;kill? Date: 7 Jun 2003 11:22:10 GMT Message-ID: On 7 Jun 2003 12:09:04 +0100, Philip Kendall wrote: >>It seems that one can ;kill his warrior only by sending the proper >>warrior from the exact email the warrior was sent from. > Why is this a bug? Because I have three e-mail address (though only two of them are used in public mailing). At home I mail from acn.waw.pl while when I don't have access to my local machine I use onet.pl domain. I always thought that providing a correct password is enough (yes, I use ;password). -- Lukasz Grabun (My CW page: http://www.astercity.net/~grabek) (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: pak21@cam.ac.uk (Philip Kendall) Subject: Re: Bug in ;kill? Date: 7 Jun 2003 12:09:04 +0100 Message-ID: In article , Lukasz Grabun wrote: >It seems that one can ;kill his warrior only by sending the proper >warrior from the exact email the warrior was sent from. Why is this a bug? Phil -- Philip Kendall http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~pak21/ From: mooredav@mac.com (David Matthew Moore) Subject: Warrior Code Date: 8 Jun 2003 19:59:54 -0700 Message-ID: <69eefcbb.0306081859.177e5d86@posting.google.com> I hope you enjoy this one! bye, David. ;redcode-94 ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;name Sunset ;author David Moore ;strategy P^3 ;strategy Recon 2 or paper + stone ;--------- ; Recon 2 ;--------- ; Recon 2 looks at pairs of cells that are 6 apart. ; When something is found, it gets wiped with 14 SPLs like this: ; ..X.....X..... ; distance between scanned pairs: rStep equ 6557 ; overcomes 3, 7, 9, and 11 point imps ; 6557 * 231 = 2667 (2667 * 3 = 1) ; 6557 * 99 = 1143 (1143 * 7 = 1) ; 6557 * 77 = 889 ( 889 * 9 = 1) ; 6557 * 63 = 5091 (5091 * 11 = 1) ; use different boot locations to throw off one-shot scanners rPlaceA equ 1282 rPlaceB equ 6800 rDestB nop (rPlaceB - rPlaceA), (rPlaceB-rPlaceA) reconB add.f rDestB, rDest ; boot to location B reconA mov rEnd, rPtr ; hit 'em with SPLs rW2 mov *rWipe, >rPtr ; later, this becomes a DAT clear djn.a rWipe, rLength rLoop sub rDiff, @rS2 rScan sne rStep-1, rStep-7 ; check a pair sub rDiff, rScan rS2 seq *rScan, @rScan ; check another pair slt.a #20, rScan ; ignore self rTimer djn rLoop, #4800 ; count down to DAT phase rLength sub.ba #0, #-7 ; set up for SPL wipe rTweak mov.ab @rS2, @rWipe rT2 jmn *rW2, rTimer ; when timer expires, rEnd djn.a 1 ; This replicator fills the core with code that can't be run ; by other replicators. pNext spl 4200, {pThis mov }pThis, }pNext mov pDat, >5200 pThis mov pNext+6, }pNext jmz.f pNext, *pThis pDat dat <2667, <5334 ;;; dat 0, 0 ; dat 0,0 must be there after boot placeS equ 5300 ; stone boot location placeP equ (placeS + 223) ; paper boot location paper mov >pSrcS, >pDestS spl 2, >3988 spl 1, >4191 pSrcP spl 1, pNext+6 mov >pSrcS, >pDestS mov pDestS ; to work properly pDestP djn paper+placeP+6, #paper+placeS ; the paper needs 6 end think ;redcode-94 ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;name Recon 2 ;author David Moore ;strategy SNE scanner / SPL wiper ; Look at pairs of cells that are 6 apart. ; When something is found, wipe it with 14 SPLs like this: ; ..X.....X..... ; distance between scanned pairs: step equ 6557 ; overcomes 3, 7, 9, and 11 point imps ;; step equ 2727 ; alternative; works on 3, 13, and 17 pt imps ; 6557 * 231 = 2667 (2667 * 3 = 1) ; 6557 * 99 = 1143 (1143 * 7 = 1) ; 6557 * 77 = 889 ( 889 * 9 = 1) ; 6557 * 63 = 5091 (5091 * 11 = 1) ; 2727 * 221 = 2667 (2667 * 3 = 1) ; 2727 * 51 = 3077 (3077 * 13 = 1) ; 2727 * 39 = 2353 (2353 * 17 = 1) ptr equ (scan-8) dat 19, 19 diff spl #-step, #-step wipe mov diff, >ptr ; hit 'em with SPLs w2 mov *wipe, >ptr ; later, this becomes a DAT clear djn.a wipe, length loop sub diff, @s2 scan sne (step*2) - 1, (step*2) - 7 ; check a pair sub diff, scan s2 seq *scan, @scan ; check another pair slt.a #20, scan ; ignore self timer djn loop, #4800 ; count down to DAT phase length sub.ba #0, #-7 ; set up for SPL wipe tweak mov.ab @s2, @wipe t2 jmn *w2, timer ; when timer expires, djn.a Some days ago I have startet to add information about evolving corewars into pvk's nice wiki: http://www.pvk.ca/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Evolving I think that this Wiki has the potential to finally fill the huge gap of information flow between people who code evolvers, so please contribute! We need new and unconventional ideas. -- Martin Ankerl From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: Warrior Code Date: 9 Jun 2003 05:24:54 GMT Message-ID: On 8 Jun 2003 19:59:54 -0700, David Matthew Moore wrote: > I hope you enjoy this one! Thank you! -- Lukasz Grabun (My CW page: http://www.astercity.net/~grabek) (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 06/09/03 Date: 9 Jun 2003 14:41:26 -0400 Message-ID: <200306090400.h59401KP000380@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/09/03 -=- 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 : Wed Jun 4 16:27:27 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 39/ 16 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 150 1 2 36/ 23/ 41 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 148 8 3 33/ 23/ 44 Freight Train David Moore 143 173 4 44/ 45/ 12 vm5 Michal Janeczek 143 7 5 33/ 23/ 45 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 142 112 6 32/ 24/ 44 Guardian Ian Oversby 141 172 7 40/ 42/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 138 4 8 40/ 44/ 17 '88 test IV John Metcalf 136 66 9 34/ 33/ 33 vala John Metcalf 136 95 10 43/ 50/ 7 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 136 11 11 40/ 47/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 134 210 12 41/ 48/ 11 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 133 169 13 29/ 25/ 46 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 132 2 14 38/ 45/ 16 Stasis David Moore 131 280 15 26/ 21/ 53 Test I Ian Oversby 130 229 16 36/ 42/ 22 PacMan David Moore 130 202 17 25/ 21/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 129 186 18 27/ 27/ 46 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 128 128 19 29/ 30/ 41 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 128 130 20 33/ 38/ 29 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 127 59 21 29/ 42/ 29 Oops! Roy van Rijn 116 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 06/09/03 Date: 9 Jun 2003 14:41:17 -0400 Message-ID: <200306090409.h59491RF000496@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/09/03 -=- 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 Jun 8 20:07:16 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 47/ 9 Recon 2 David Moore 143 168 2 31/ 22/ 48 Thunderstrike Lukasz Grabun 140 319 3 39/ 41/ 19 Return of Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 137 476 4 39/ 40/ 21 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 137 399 5 40/ 44/ 16 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 136 489 6 28/ 21/ 51 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 134 1714 7 29/ 25/ 46 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 134 945 8 42/ 51/ 7 Claw 2 Fizmo 132 143 9 28/ 24/ 48 Now you're in trouble!!! John Metcalf 132 82 10 27/ 21/ 52 Candy II Lukasz Grabun 132 94 11 22/ 13/ 65 unheard-of Christian Schmidt 132 45 12 27/ 24/ 48 Soldier of Silkland Christian Schmidt 130 71 13 28/ 25/ 47 Numb Roy van Rijn 130 101 14 27/ 24/ 49 He Bombs Alone Christian Schmidt 129 5 15 25/ 22/ 52 Back To PolyLand Jakub Kozisek 128 149 16 22/ 18/ 59 Dawn Roy van Rijn 126 330 17 38/ 50/ 12 Aoshi Test B 29 Steve Gunnell 126 1 18 23/ 19/ 58 RotPendragon 2 Christian Schmidt 126 154 19 28/ 30/ 42 Happy Birthday! G.Labarga 125 46 20 19/ 15/ 66 NewsPaper A 9 Steve Gunnell 123 23 21 11/ 38/ 51 Blitz test C 8 Steve Gunnell 85 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 06/09/03 Date: 9 Jun 2003 14:41:22 -0400 Message-ID: <200306090403.h59431wD000424@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/09/03 -=- 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 : Sun Jun 8 19:50:24 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 hawk John Metcalf 24 4 2 trial John Metcalf 16 165 3 not king of the hill FatalC 15 6 4 Djinn Test 9 Steve Gunnell 13 150 5 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 13 261 6 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 11 41 7 Her Majesty P.Kline 9 280 8 my new tiny warrior John Metcalf 5 52 9 Take the blue pill FatalC 2 3 10 NewsPaper Test A 13 Steve Gunnell 0 1 11 Aoshi Test B 29 Steve Gunnell 0 0 From: Christoph Birk Subject: Koenigstuhl News Date: 10 Jun 2003 20:50:14 -0400 Message-ID: <200306102028.NAA29117@andromeda.ociw.edu> Congratulations to David Moore! His program 'Sunset' is the new #1 on the Pspace-Koenigstuhl and on the OPEN-Koenigstuhl. Christoph http://www.ociw.edu/~birk/COREWAR/koenigstuhl.html From: dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) Subject: Re: Koenigstuhl News Date: 11 Jun 2003 07:05:24 -0700 Message-ID: <5d6847b2.0306110605.572c4f3a@posting.google.com> Christoph Birk wrote in message news:<200306102028.NAA29117@andromeda.ociw.edu>... > Congratulations to David Moore! > > His program 'Sunset' is the new #1 on the Pspace-Koenigstuhl and > on the OPEN-Koenigstuhl. > > Christoph > http://www.ociw.edu/~birk/COREWAR/koenigstuhl.html Sunset leads by 7 points on the Pspace-Koenigstuhl. It would be KOTH on both Pspace-Koenigstuhl and OPEN-Koenigstuhl using either flat or recursive scores. Sunset has an age of 44 on the 94 Standard hill and I don't believe it's lead as KOTH there has ever dipped below 7 or 8. Quite a feat! Dave Hillis From: AtnNn@atnnn.cjb.net (AtnNn) Subject: mars output Date: 15 Jun 2003 12:01:56 -0700 Message-ID: <1ec216d2.0306151101.41743e0b@posting.google.com> How should i interpret exhaust output or pmars output? example: 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 From: "Scott Hedrick" Subject: Re: Keep The SEGWAY Off Our Sidewalks & Streets! ------ #randum Message-ID: Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 17:13:28 -0400 wrote in message news:hfopiqcs89q1xenqggev6b2pkybo@4ax.com... > Noting good can come from this new personal transpiration device. It will only serve > to make Americans FATTER than they already are Your brain has clearly been using one, you spamming dickhead. -- If you have had problems with Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC), please contact shredder at bellsouth dot net. There may be a class-action lawsuit in the works. From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: Re: mars output Date: 16 Jun 2003 10:29:38 -0400 Message-ID: On Sun, 15 Jun 2003, AtnNn wrote: > How should i interpret exhaust output or pmars output? AFAIK with executing like this: pmars -r 1 warrior1.red warrior2.red warrior3.red It means number of rounds won | two-way tied | | three-way tied | | | lost | | | | v v v v by warrior1 -> 0 1 0 0 warrior2 -> 0 1 0 0 warrior3 -> 0 0 0 1 Greetings Lukasz From: Koen Struyve Subject: Beginners league 2 : deadline Date: 16 Jun 2003 10:35:51 -0400 Message-ID: <1055761203.3eeda333a766a@mail.ugent.be> Hello, because many people have schooltests right now, I've delayed the deadline to the 10th of June, I've 3 entries already, but I'm hoping for a lot more... All beginners, feel free to test your latest creation by participating. More info on www25.brinkster.com/ivaldir, Koen Struyve -- From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 06/16/03 Date: 16 Jun 2003 10:35:57 -0400 Message-ID: <200306160409.h5G490DU016227@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/16/03 -=- 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 Jun 15 23:45:44 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 47/ 45/ 8 Recon 2 David Moore 148 180 2 42/ 39/ 19 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 144 411 3 33/ 22/ 45 Thunderstrike Lukasz Grabun 143 331 4 41/ 41/ 18 Return of Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 142 488 5 30/ 19/ 51 Candy II Lukasz Grabun 141 106 6 45/ 49/ 7 Claw 2 Fizmo 140 155 7 31/ 24/ 45 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 138 957 8 30/ 22/ 49 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 138 1726 9 31/ 24/ 45 Now you're in trouble!!! John Metcalf 137 94 10 32/ 27/ 40 Digitalis 2003 Christian Schmidt 137 8 11 24/ 13/ 63 unheard-of Christian Schmidt 136 57 12 38/ 40/ 22 shot John Metcalf 136 11 13 40/ 44/ 16 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 135 501 14 26/ 17/ 57 Dawn Roy van Rijn 135 342 15 25/ 16/ 58 RotPendragon 2 Christian Schmidt 135 166 16 30/ 26/ 44 Numb Roy van Rijn 134 113 17 28/ 22/ 50 Back To PolyLand Jakub Kozisek 134 161 18 29/ 25/ 46 Soldier of Silkland Christian Schmidt 133 83 19 25/ 17/ 59 Doughnut Philip Thorne 133 1 20 29/ 25/ 47 He Bombs Alone Christian Schmidt 132 17 21 2/ 98/ 0 _ _ 7 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 06/16/03 Date: 16 Jun 2003 10:36:10 -0400 Message-ID: <200306160403.h5G430HV015270@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/16/03 -=- 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 Jun 13 13:31:33 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 hawk John Metcalf 30 6 2 trial John Metcalf 12 167 3 Djinn Test 9 Steve Gunnell 11 152 4 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 10 43 5 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 7 263 6 Her Majesty P.Kline 7 282 7 Take the blue pill FatalC 7 5 8 not king of the hill FatalC 5 8 9 my new tiny warrior John Metcalf 5 54 10 Bugtown test C 54 Steve Gunnell 5 1 11 tests-16343 Will Varfar 0 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 06/16/03 Date: 16 Jun 2003 10:36:04 -0400 Message-ID: <200306160406.h5G460uY015403@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/16/03 -=- 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 : Thu Jun 12 09:50:45 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 43/ 34/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 151 1 2 46/ 41/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 150 90 3 42/ 37/ 21 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 147 2 4 39/ 36/ 25 Black Moods Ian Oversby 142 186 5 23/ 9/ 68 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 137 259 6 36/ 38/ 26 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 134 17 7 22/ 11/ 67 Denial David Moore 134 131 8 34/ 35/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 132 73 9 34/ 35/ 31 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 132 190 10 25/ 19/ 56 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 132 130 11 29/ 27/ 44 Olivia X Ben Ford 131 71 12 28/ 29/ 43 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 127 122 13 21/ 16/ 63 Kin John Metcalf 127 98 14 17/ 8/ 75 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 126 207 15 24/ 23/ 53 Glenstorm John Metcalf 126 52 16 32/ 39/ 29 Ogre Christian Schmidt 125 138 17 28/ 31/ 41 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 124 129 18 16/ 10/ 74 Black Box v1.1 JKW 121 153 19 34/ 47/ 19 Kenshin X 45 Steve Gunnell 121 33 20 24/ 29/ 47 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 119 212 21 22/ 64/ 14 r11test-b1 G.Labarga 79 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 06/16/03 Date: 16 Jun 2003 10:36:19 -0400 Message-ID: <200306160400.h5G400ei015230@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/16/03 -=- 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 : Wed Jun 4 16:27:27 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 39/ 16 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 150 1 2 36/ 23/ 41 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 148 8 3 33/ 23/ 44 Freight Train David Moore 143 173 4 44/ 45/ 12 vm5 Michal Janeczek 143 7 5 33/ 23/ 45 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 142 112 6 32/ 24/ 44 Guardian Ian Oversby 141 172 7 40/ 42/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 138 4 8 40/ 44/ 17 '88 test IV John Metcalf 136 66 9 34/ 33/ 33 vala John Metcalf 136 95 10 43/ 50/ 7 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 136 11 11 40/ 47/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 134 210 12 41/ 48/ 11 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 133 169 13 29/ 25/ 46 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 132 2 14 38/ 45/ 16 Stasis David Moore 131 280 15 26/ 21/ 53 Test I Ian Oversby 130 229 16 36/ 42/ 22 PacMan David Moore 130 202 17 25/ 21/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 129 186 18 27/ 27/ 46 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 128 128 19 29/ 30/ 41 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 128 130 20 33/ 38/ 29 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 127 59 21 29/ 42/ 29 Oops! Roy van Rijn 116 0 From: colganc@hotmail.com (Chris Colgan) Subject: ga_wars vs other evolvers Date: 16 Jun 2003 17:35:24 -0700 Message-ID: <67183ae6.0306161635.2c244c88@posting.google.com> Hi I just started with Corewar this past week. My interest so far is evolving core warriors. I am currently using ga_wars (the oldest evolver correct?) with exhaust added in. Are ga_wars.c evolved core warriors mentally handicapped when compared to the other evolvers? I have read the evolver wiki, most of the info from the evolvers homepages, and the paper on predation with ga_wars. They don't semm to answer my question, can someone help me by divulging their knowledge and wisdom? Chris From: Paul-V Khuong Subject: Re: CorewarWiki Date: 18 Jun 2003 19:14:43 -0400 Message-ID: <20030321155148.96754.qmail@web41508.mail.yahoo.com> --- Paul-V Khuong wrote: > I'm hosting a CoreWar Wiki at > http://www15.brinkster.com/pkhuong/wiki/wiki.asp [...] Wow. That's all i can say. An average of more than 2 MB of pure HTML/hour. Ok, so it was a bad idea to leave it in debug mode(I was sent to bed hehe). I'll buy a domain and a real host soon; in the meantime, i'll switch debug off tonight. Paul Khuong __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 06/09/03 Date: 18 Jun 2003 19:14:33 -0400 Message-ID: <200306090406.h5946148000466@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/09/03 -=- 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 Jun 8 14:04:00 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 40/ 36/ 24 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 145 1 2 43/ 44/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 142 90 3 40/ 38/ 22 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 142 2 4 36/ 38/ 26 Black Moods Ian Oversby 135 186 5 35/ 38/ 27 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 132 17 6 19/ 8/ 72 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 131 259 7 33/ 35/ 33 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 131 73 8 25/ 19/ 57 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 130 130 9 32/ 36/ 32 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 128 190 10 27/ 26/ 47 Olivia X Ben Ford 128 71 11 19/ 10/ 71 Denial David Moore 128 131 12 19/ 14/ 66 Kin John Metcalf 125 98 13 25/ 26/ 50 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 124 212 14 32/ 39/ 29 Ogre Christian Schmidt 124 138 15 22/ 21/ 57 Glenstorm John Metcalf 123 52 16 26/ 31/ 43 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 121 129 17 25/ 29/ 47 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 121 122 18 34/ 46/ 20 Kenshin X 45 Steve Gunnell 121 33 19 14/ 8/ 78 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 121 207 20 12/ 10/ 78 Black Box v1.1 JKW 114 153 21 19/ 25/ 56 test Christian Schmidt 112 0 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?will?= Subject: Re: ga_wars vs other evolvers Date: 18 Jun 2003 19:14:23 -0400 Message-ID: <20030618153858.54289.qmail@web60001.mail.yahoo.com> Hi Chris, It isn't so much the framework as the parameters. Frameworks are generally based upon the same principles. And it is you who provides the parameters.. best of luck, Will. __________________________________________________ Yahoo! Plus - For a better Internet experience http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/yplus/yoffer.html From: Paul-V Khuong Subject: Re: ga_wars vs other evolvers Date: 18 Jun 2003 19:14:29 -0400 Message-ID: <20030617023300.70540.qmail@web41510.mail.yahoo.com> --- Chris Colgan wrote: > Hi > > I just started with Corewar this past week. My > interest so far is > evolving core warriors. I am currently using > ga_wars (the oldest > evolver correct?) with exhaust added in. Are > ga_wars.c evolved core > warriors mentally handicapped when compared to the > other evolvers? [...] Disclaimer: I don't do evolution (there, i managed to make it sound dirty :) The problem with evolving often isn't the quality of the warriors evolved*, but the speed at which any level of quality(measured as scores agaisnt a given benchmark, fe) is attained. Using markov chains seems to be the evolvers' altest find; it makes the generated (and mutated, often) warriors look more like human-generated programs. I think Yace supports markov chains. You could give it a try. However, since corewar is such a microcosm of academia**(imho, hehe), what seems most important to the players is doing it alone, finding THE new idea, etc. I believe, you would have more fun and interest in trying to build your own system, from scratch or using another evolver as a base. After all, what fun is there in simply having used more computer time than others without having used a better/different algorithm to get that good warrior? Conclusion: Find your own idea, give it a whirl, and see what happens. It'll be much more interesting and fun, and educative, both for us and for you, whatever the results. (Yes, fiddling with parameters affect the output, but your own algorithm is SO much better than simply giving parameters to someone else's program, no? :) *Actually, it seems evolve pools tend to hit a wall after which they don't improve much, if at all. Since evolving seems to be a serie of quantum leaps (an innovation is found - it gets distributed - find another improvement... rinse, repeat), i don't know if this is to be attributed to a real wall or simply to an exponential time between quantum leaps. **Truly, i think it is. People help others, trying to find other techniques, trying to optimize away a few cycles or instructions, but in the end, it is for their own ego :) They don't help someone else to see their KotH fall off the hill, but to know that they took part in the creation of the KotH, and also for the advancement of Corewar's State of the Art. Doesn't everyone dream of inventing a new warrior type, or to really improve a certain component (� la silk), and to say "I did this"? :) This both shows the importance of ego, and, since our way of satisfying our ego is to advance the corewar art, the importance of knowledge. After all, everyone knows who the KotH's author is; if it was the only thing that drove us, "to be king", we wouldn't publish sources. Yet we do...after altering QScan, boot, PSpace and other constants :) I'd say that if you're into corewar, you probably fit well with this... So you'll only be satisfied if you really build something /new/ to call your own, whether it works well or not. Paul Khuong http://www.pvk.ca __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 05/05/03 Date: 18 Jun 2003 19:14:38 -0400 Message-ID: <200305050400.h45400CN016357@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 05/05/03 -=- 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: Paul-V Khuong Subject: Re: Jargon Date: 18 Jun 2003 19:14:59 -0400 Message-ID: <20030130233716.15855.qmail@web41507.mail.yahoo.com> --- Joshua Hudson wrote: > >Oh, i forgot something when replying to Mr Hudson: > >bomb-dodgers usually plant a d-clear on the > >bomb-location, for the simple reason that most > stones > >also have imp-spiral components. > Oops...I guess I didn't explain the stone too well. > The stone's bombing pattern looks like this over all > of core: > XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX > 75% bombed, 25% not bombed, hence 75% coverage > against a gate. > > I have yet to see a one-instruction clear. Even if > facing > another warrior that is > SPL #0, #0 > SPL #0, #0 > I have a 75% chance of beating it. And no, it is not > possible > to convert this stone into any type of clear without > slowing it > down too far (any slower and scanners find it). > I might try increasing the coverage by finding a > mod-100 number. [snip] OK, i think we have a few issues with "Jargon" here :) A bomb-dodger will work this way: (Usually) linear scan of the core -> when it finds something, it copies something (a d-clear) on what it assumes to be a bomb. Therefor, if you only bomb 75% of the core, using a near-optimal step-size(which makes it highly unlikely you'll bomb the same location twice, or near it in a short time), it is likely the clear will survive long enough to kill the stone component. Second, a mod-100 step would hit the core every 100th location. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com From: Christoph Birk Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 18 Jun 2003 19:14:48 -0400 Message-ID: <200303201808.KAA04691@andromeda.ociw.edu> sqweek wrote: > How about a '\' at the end of the line is ignored if it is within a > comment? > If you want to continue the comment put a ';' on the next line :p Good idea! Christoph From: "Joshua Hudson" Subject: Re: difference between pmarses Date: 18 Jun 2003 19:14:53 -0400 Message-ID: >From: M Joonas Pihlaja >On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Csaba Biro wrote: > > > > So seeing as there's no real need for it, and the effort it will > > > take to adopt it, my (reluctant, as I like the feature) vote is > > > to scrap this. > > > > I agree. > >I don't, because continuation lines are the only way to do some >nasty tricks with the preprocessor that would otherwise crash >pmars for using a line that's too long. For instance, the macro >that computes inverses mod 8000 in a recent Core Warrior doesn't >work on koth.org without continuation lines. > >(But then, the problem there is that pmars can't handle >complicated macros very well as it uses fixed length string >buffers in the code.) > >Joonas OK. All you need to do is fix pmars to ignore backslashes in comments. _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From: Paul-V Khuong Subject: Re: Jargon Date: 18 Jun 2003 19:15:07 -0400 Message-ID: <20030130233247.35932.qmail@web41501.mail.yahoo.com> --- Sascha Zapf wrote: > Can you post some Recode that's 3c-Dekrements.. > > 2c .. OK, you can Use the nop command, but 3c is to > heavy to understand for me mov > I think Yace supports markov > chains. You could give it a try. Nope, not that I know of. You could give it a try anyway ;-) > *Actually, it seems evolve pools tend to hit a wall > after which they don't improve much, if at all. Since > evolving seems to be a serie of quantum leaps (an > innovation is found - it gets distributed - find > another improvement... rinse, repeat), i don't know if > this is to be attributed to a real wall or simply to > an exponential time between quantum leaps. This is definitely no reall wall. I am shure this wall can be broken with proper genetic programming algorithms. This is as good as it gets right now: http://corewars.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/control.py?action=showhill&hill=rctiny I am looking forward to new + better evolved types of warriors, but I doubt these can be created with yace right now. From: dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) Subject: Re: ga_wars vs other evolvers Date: 20 Jun 2003 04:54:39 -0700 Message-ID: <5d6847b2.0306200354.3649ced@posting.google.com> Hi Chris, IMHO ga_war.c does not produce brain damaged warriors compared to the others. Sys4 might be older-not sure. It is also a great place to start in writing your own program. That's how Redrace and YACE started. Since you have added exhaust, you are well on your way. Keep trying new things and one day you will realize that you have a "modified version of ga_war.c" in the same sense that you would have a modified car by jacking up the radiator cap and sliding a new automobile under it. Then name it and it's your own. As for cooperation among evolver writers, I think it should be like those who write warriors by hand. When they come up with an inovation, they exploit it for a while, but then they'd like to show off how clever it was which means showing their secrets. Dave From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Re: ga_wars vs other evolvers Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 07:24:04 +0300 Message-ID: On Thu, 18 Jun 2003, Paul-V Khuong wrote: [snip core war as an ego trip] > This both shows the importance of ego, and, since our way of > satisfying our ego is to advance the corewar art, the > importance of knowledge. There's a interesting thread over on rec.games.pbm that touches this. One of the participants is saying that there are only two kinds of gamers: Power-gamers and Role-players. Here's a direct handle on the thread (that, as usual, has drifted off-subject): Message-Id: <20030610072058.07937.00000248@mb-m25.aol.com> Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 21 Jun 2003 08:06:41 GMT Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-Modified: September 4, 1999 Version: 4.2 URL: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html Copyright: (c) 1999 Anton Marsden Maintainer: Anton Marsden Posting-Frequency: once every 2 weeks Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) These are the Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) from the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.corewar. A plain text version of this document is posted every two weeks. The latest hypertext version is available at http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html and the latest plain text version is available at http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.txt. This document is currently being maintained by Anton Marsden (anton@paradise.net.nz). Last modified: Sat Sep 4 00:22:22 NZST 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To Do * Add the new No-PSpace '94 hill location * Add online location of Dewdney's articles * Make question 17 easier to understand. Add a state diagram? * Add info about infinite hills, related games (C-Robots, Tierra?, ...) * New question: How do I know if my warrior is any good? Refer to beginners' benchmarks, etc. * Add a Who's Who list? * Would very much like someone to compile a collection of the "revolutionary" warriors so that beginners can see how the game has developed over the years. Mail me if interested. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ What's New * Changed primary location of FAQ (again!) * Changed Philip Kendall's home page address. * Updated list server information * Changed primary location of FAQ * Vector-launching code was fixed thanks to Ting Hsu. * Changed the location of Ryan Coleman's paper (LaunchPad -> Launchpad) * Changed pauillac.inria.fr to para.inria.fr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Table of Contents 1. What is Core War 2. Is it "Core War" or "Core Wars"? 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? 4. Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? 5. What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? 6. What is the ICWS? 7. What is Core Warrior? 8. Where are the Core War archives? 9. Where can I find a Core War system for ...? 10. Where can I find warrior code? 11. I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? 12. I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? 13. Are there any Core War related WWW sites? 14. What is KotH? How do I enter? 15. Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? 16. How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? 17. What is the difference between in-register and in-memory evaluation? 18. What is P-space? 19. What does "Missing ;assert .." in my message from KotH mean? 20. How should I format my code? 21. Are there any other Core War related resources I should know about? 22. What does (expression or term of your choice) mean? 23. Other questions? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. What is Core War? Core War is a game played by two or more programs (and vicariously by their authors) written in an assembly language called Redcode and run in a virtual computer called MARS (for Memory Array Redcode Simulator). The object of the game is to cause all processes of the opposing program to terminate, leaving your program in sole posession of the machine. There are Core War systems available for most computer platforms. Redcode has been standardised by the ICWS, and is therefore transportable between all standard Core War systems. The system in which the programs run is quite simple. The core (the memory of the simulated computer) is a continuous array of instructions, empty except for the competing programs. The core wraps around, so that after the last instruction comes the first one again. There are no absolute addresses in Core War. That is, the address 0 doesn't mean the first instruction in the memory, but the instruction that contains the address 0. The next instruction is 1, and the previous one obviously -1. However, all numbers are treated as positive, and are in the range 0 to CORESIZE-1 where CORESIZE is the amount of memory locations in the core - this means that -1 would be treated as CORESIZE-1 in any arithmetic operations, eg. 3218 + 7856 = (3218 + 7856) mod CORESIZE. Many people get confused by this, and it is particularly important when using the SLT instruction. Note that the source code of a program can still contain negative numbers, but if you start using instructions like DIV #-2, #5 it is important to know what effect they will have when executed. The basic unit of memory in Core War is one instruction. Each Redcode instruction contains three parts: * the opcode * the source address (a.k.a. the A-field) * the destination address (a.k.a. the B-field) The execution of the programs is equally simple. The MARS executes one instruction at a time, and then proceeds to the next one in the memory, unless the instruction explicitly tells it to jump to another address. If there is more than one program running, (as is usual) the programs execute alternately, one instruction at a time. The execution of each instruction takes the same time, one cycle, whether it is MOV, DIV or even DAT (which kills the process). Each program may have several processes running. These processes are stored in a task queue. When it is the program's turn to execute an instruction it dequeues a process and executes the corresponding instruction. Processes that are not killed during the execution of the instruction are put back into the task queue. Processes created by a SPL instruction are added to the task queue after the creating process is put back into the task queue. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. Is it "Core War" or "Core Wars"? Both terms are used. Early references were to Core War. Later references seem to use Core Wars. I prefer "Core War" to refer to the game in general, "core wars" to refer to more than one specific battle. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? Core War was first described in the Core War Guidelines of March, 1984 by D. G. Jones and A. K. Dewdney of the Department of Computer Science at The University of Western Ontario (Canada). Dewdney wrote several "Computer Recreations" articles in Scientific American which discussed Core War, starting with the May 1984 article. Those articles are contained in two anthologies: Library of Author Title Published ISBN Congress Call Number The Armchair Dewdney, Universe: An New York: W. QA76.6 .D517 A. K. Exploration of H. Freeman �0-7167-1939-8 1988 Computer Worlds 1988 The Magic 0-7167-2125-2 Dewdney, Machine: A New York: W.(Hardcover), QA76.6 A. K. Handbook of H. Freeman �0-7167-2144-9 .D5173 1990 Computer Sorcery 1990 (Paperback) A.K. Dewdney's articles are still the most readable introduction to Core War, even though the Redcode dialect described in there is no longer current. For those who are interested, Dewdney has a home page at http://www.csd.uwo.ca/faculty/akd/. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? A draft of the official standard (ICWS'88) is available as ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/standards/redcode-icws-88.Z. This document is formatted awkwardly and contains ambiguous statements. For a more approachable intro to Redcode, take a look at Mark Durham's tutorials, ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/tutorial.1.Z and ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/tutorial.2.Z. Steven Morrell has prepared a more practically oriented Redcode tutorial that discusses different warrior classes with lots of example code. This and various other tutorials can be found at http://www.koth.org/papers.html. Even though ICWS'88 is still the "official" standard, you will find that most people are playing by ICWS'94 draft rules and extensions. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? There is an ongoing discussion about future enhancements to the Redcode language. A proposed new standard, dubbed ICWS'94, is currently being evaluated. A major change is the addition of "instruction modifiers" that allow instructions to modify A-field, B-field or both. Also new is a new addressing modes and unrestricted opcode and addressing mode combination ("no illegal instructions"). ICWS'94 is backwards compatible; i.e. ICWS'88 warriors will run correctly on an ICWS'94 system. Take a look at the ICWS'94 draft at ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/icws94.0202.Z for more information. There is a HTML version of this document available at http://www.koth.org/info/icws94.html. You can try out the new standard by submitting warriors to the '94 hills of the KotH servers. Two corewar systems currently support ICWS'94, pMARS (many platforms) and Redcoder (Mac), both available at ftp://www.koth.org/corewar. Note that Redcoder only supports a subset of ICWS'94. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. What is the ICWS? About one year after Core War first appeared in Scientific American, the "International Core War Society" (ICWS) was established. Since that time, the ICWS has been responsible for the creation and maintenance of Core War standards and the running of Core War tournaments. There have been six annual tournaments and two standards (ICWS'86 and ICWS'88). The ICWS is no longer active. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. What is Core Warrior? Following in the tradition of the Core War News Letter, Push Off, and The 94 Warrior, Core Warrior is a newsletter about strategies and current standings in Core War. Started in October 1995, back issues of Core Warrior (and the other newsletters) are available at http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/. There is also a Core Warrior index page at http://www.kendalls.demon.co.uk/pak21/corewar/warrior.html which has a summary of the contents of each issue of Core Warrior. Many of the earlier issues contain useful information for beginners. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8. Where are the Core War archives? Many documents such as the guidelines and the ICWS standards along with previous tournament Redcode entries and complete Core War systems are available via anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar. Also, most of past rec.games.corewar postings (including Redcode source listings) are archived there. Jon Blow (blojo@csua.berkeley.edu) is the archive administrator. When uploading to /pub/corewar/incoming, ask Jon to move your upload to the appropriate directory and announce it on the net. This site is mirrored at: * http://www.koth.org/corewar/ * ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/ * ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/mirror The plain text version of this FAQ is automatically archived by news.answers (but this version is probably out-of-date). [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9. Where can I find a Core War system for . . . ? Core War systems are available via anonymous FTP from www.koth.org in the corewar/systems directory. Currently, there are UNIX, IBM PC-compatible, Macintosh, and Amiga Core War systems available there. It is a good idea to check ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/incoming for program updates first. CAUTION! There are many, many Core War systems available which are NOT ICWS'88 (or even ICWS'86) compatible available at various archive sites other than www.koth.org. Generally, the older the program - the less likely it will be ICWS compatible. If you are looking for an ICWS'94 simulator, get pMARS, which is available for many platforms and can be downloaded from: * ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar (original site) * ftp://www.koth.org/corewar (koth.org mirror) * ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/mirror (Planar mirror) * http://www.nc5.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ (Terry Newton) * ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar (Fechter) Notes: * If you have trouble running pMARS with a graphical display under Win95 then check out http://www.koth.org/pmars.html which should have a pointer to the latest compilation of pMARS for this environment. * RPMs for the Alpha, PowerPC, Sparc and i386 can be found at ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars-rpm/ Reviews of Core War systems would be greatly appreciated in the newsgroup and in the newsletter. Below is a not necessarily complete or up-to-date list of what's available at www.koth.org: MADgic41.lzh corewar for the Amiga, v4.1 MAD4041.lzh older version? MAD50B.lha corewar for the Amiga, beta version 5.0 Redcoder-21.hqx corewar for the Mac, supports ICWS'88 and '94 (without extensions) core-11.hqx corewar for the Mac core-wars-simulator.hqx same as core-11.hqx? corewar_unix_x11.tar.Z corewar for UNIX/X-windows, ICWS'86 but not ICWS'88 compatible koth31.tar.Z corewar for UNIX/X-windows. This program ran the former KotH server at intel.com koth.shar.Z older version kothpc.zip port of older version of KotH to the PC deluxe20c.tar.Z corewar for UNIX (broken X-windows or curses) and PC mars.tar.Z corewar for UNIX, likely not ICWS'88 compatible icons.zip corewar icons for MS-Windows macrored.zip a redcode macro-preprocessor (PC) c88v49.zip PC corewar, textmode display mars88.zip PC corewar, graphics mode display corwp302.zip PC corewar, textmode display, slowish mercury2.zip PC corewar written in assembly, fast! mtourn11.zip tournament scheduler for mercury (req. 4DOS) pmars08s.zip portable system, ICWS'88 and '94, runs on UNIX, PC, Mac, Amiga. C source archive pmars08s.tar.Z same as above pmars08.zip PC executables with graphics display, req 386+ macpmars02.sit.hqx pMARS executable for Mac (port of version 0.2) buggy, no display MacpMARS1.99a.cpt.hqx port of v0.8 for the Mac, with display and debugger MacpMARS1.0s.cpt.hqx C source (MPW, ThinkC) for Mac frontend pvms08.zip pMARS v0.8 for VMS build files/help (req. pmars08s.zip) ApMARS03.lha pMARS executable for Amiga (port of version 0.3.1) wincor11.zip MS-Windows system, shareware ($15) [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10. Where can I find warrior code? To learn the game, it is a good idea to study previously posted warrior code. The FTP archives have code in the ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/redcode directory. A clearly organized on-line warrior collection is available at the Core War web sites (see below). [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11. I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? There is an FTP email server at bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu. This address may no longer exist. I haven't tested it yet. Send email with a subject and body text of "help" (without the quotes) for more information on its usage. Note that many FTP email gateways are shutting down due to abuse. To get a current list of FTP email servers, look at the Accessing the Internet by E-mail FAQ posted to news.answers. If you don't have access to Usenet, you can retrieve this FAQ one of the following ways: * Send mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the body containing "send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email". * Send mail to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk with the body containing "send lis-iis e-access-inet.txt". [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12. I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? To receive rec.games.corewar articles by email, join the COREWAR-L list run on the Koth.Org list processor. To join, send the message SUB COREWAR-L FirstName LastName to listproc@koth.org. You can send mail to corewar-l@koth.org to post even if you are not a member of the list. Responsible for the listserver is Scott J. Ellentuch (ttsg@ttsg.com). Servers that allow you to post (but not receive) articles are available. Refer to the Accessing the Internet by E-Mail FAQ for more information. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 13. Are there any Core War related WWW sites? You bet. Each of the two KotH sites sport a world-wide web server. Stormking's Core War page is http://www.koth.org; pizza's is http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth . Damien Doligez (a.k.a. Planar) has a web page that features convenient access to regular newsletters (Push Off, The '94 Warrior, Core Warrior) and a well organized library of warriors: http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/. Convenient for U.S. users, this site is also mirrored at koth.org. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14. What is KotH? How do I enter? King Of The Hill (KotH) is an ongoing Core War tournament available to anyone with email. You enter by submitting via email a Redcode program (warrior) with special comment lines. You will receive a reply indicating how well your program did against the current top programs "on the hill". There are two styles of KotH tournaments, "classical" and "multi-warrior". The "classical" KotH is a one-on-one tournament, that is your warrior will play 100 battles against each of the 20 other programs currently on the Hill. You receive 3 points for each win and 1 point for each tie. (The existing programs do not replay each other, but their previous battles are recalled.) All scores are updated to reflect your battles and all 21 programs are ranked from high to low. If you are number 21 you are pushed off the Hill, if you are higher than 21 someone else is pushed off. In "multi-warrior" KotH, all warriors on the hill fight each other at the same time. Score calculation is a bit more complex than for the one-on-one tournament. Briefly, points are awarded based on how many warriors survive until the end of a round. A warrior that survives by itself gets more points than a warrior that survives together with other warriors. Points are calculated from the formula (W*W-1)/S, where W is the total number of warriors and S the number of surviving warriors. The pMARS documentation has more information on multi-warrior scoring. The idea for an email-based Core War server came from David Lee. The original KotH was developed and run by William Shubert at Intel starting in 1991, and discontinued after almost three years of service. Currently, KotHs based on Bill's UNIX scripts but offering a wider variety of hills are are running at two sites: koth@koth.org is maintained by Scott J. Ellentuch (tuc@ttsg.com) and pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu by Thomas H. Davies (sd@ecst.csuchico.edu). Up until May '95, the two sites provided overlapping services, i.e. the some of the hill types were offered by both "pizza" and "stormking". To conserve resources, the different hill types are now divided up among the sites. The way you submit warriors to both KotHs is pretty much the same. Therefore, the entry rules described below apply to both "pizza" and "stormking" unless otherwise noted. Entry Rules for King of the Hill Corewar * Write a corewar program. KotH is fully ICWS '88 compatible, EXCEPT that a comma (",") is required between two arguments. * Put a line starting with ";redcode" (or ";redcode-94", etc., see below) at the top of your program. This MUST be the first line. Anything before it will be lost. If you wish to receive mail on every new entrant, use ";redcode verbose". Otherwise you will only receive mail if a challenger makes it onto the hill. Use ";redcode quiet" if you wish to receive mail only when you get shoved off the hill. Additionally, adding ";name " and ";author " will be helpful in the performance reports. Do NOT have a line beginning with ";address" in your code; this will confuse the mail daemon and you won't get mail back. Using ";name" is mandatory on the Pizza hills. In addition, it would be nice if you have lines beginning with ";strategy" that describe the algorithm you use. There are currently seven separate hills you can select by starting your program with ;redcode-94, ;redcode-b, ;redcode-lp, ;redcode-x, ;redcode, ;redcode-94x or ;redcode-94m. The former four run at "pizza", the latter three at "stormking". More information on these hills is listed below. * Mail this file to koth@koth.org or pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu. "Pizza" requires a subject of "koth" (use the -s flag on most mailers). * Within a few minutes you should get mail back telling you whether your program assembled correctly or not. If it did assemble correctly, sit back and wait; if not, make the change required and re-submit. * In an hour or so you should get more mail telling you how your program performed against the current top 20 (or 10) programs. If no news arrives during that time, don't worry; entries are put in a queue and run through the tournament one at a time. A backlog may develop. Be patient. If your program makes it onto the hill, you will get mail every time a new program makes it onto the hill. If this is too much mail, you can use ";redcode[-??] quiet" when you first mail in your program; then you will only get mail when you make it on the top 25 list or when you are knocked off. Using ";redcode[-??] verbose" will give you even more mail; here you get mail every time a new challenger arrives, even if they don't make it onto the top 25 list. Often programmers want to try out slight variations in their programs. If you already have a program named "foo V1.0" on the hill, adding the line ";kill foo" to a new program will automatically bump foo 1.0 off the hill. Just ";kill" will remove all of your programs when you submit the new one. The server kills programs by assigning an impossibly low score; it may therefore take another successful challenge before a killed program is actually removed from the hill. Sample Entry ;redcode ;name Dwarf ;author A. K. Dewdney ;strategy Throw DAT bombs around memory, hitting every 4th memory cell. ;strategy This program was presented in the first Corewar article. bomb DAT #0 dwarf ADD #4, bomb MOV bomb, @bomb JMP dwarf END dwarf ; Programs start at the first line unless ; an "END start" pseudo-op appears to indicate ; the first logical instruction. Also, nothing ; after the END instruction will be assembled. Duration Max. Hill Name Hill Core Max. Before Entry Min. Rounds Instr. Size Size Processes Distance Fought Set Tie Length Pizza's ICWS '94 Draft Hill Extended (Accessed with 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 ";redcode-94") Draft Pizza's Beginner's Extended Hill (Accessed 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 with ";redcode-b") Draft Pizza's Experimental Extended (Small) Hill 25 800 800 8000 20 20 200 ICWS '94 (Accessed with Draft ";redcode-x") Pizza's Limited Process (LP) Hill Extended (Accessed with 25 8000 8 80000 200 200 200 ICWS '94 ";redcode-lp") Draft Stormking's ICWS '88 Standard Hill (Accessed with 20 8000 8000 80000 100 100 250 ICWS '88 ";redcode") Stormking's ICWS '94 No Pspace Hill (Accessed with 20 8000 8000 80000 100 100 250 ICWS '94 ";redcode-94nop") Stormking's ICWS '94 Experimental Extended (Big) Hill 20 55440 55440 500000 200 200 250 ICWS '94 (Accessed with Draft ";redcode-94x") Stormking's ICWS '94 Multi-Warrior Extended Hill (Accessed 10 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 with Draft ";redcode-94m") Note: Warriors on the beginner's hill are retired at age 100. If you just want to get a status report without actually challenging the hills, send email with ";status" as the message body (and don't forget "Subject: koth" for "pizza"). If you send mail to "pizza" with "Subject: koth help" you will receive instructions that may be more up to date than those contained in this document. At "stormking", a message body with ";help" will return brief instructions. If you submit code containing a ";test" line, your warrior will be assembled but not actually pitted against the warriors on the hill. At "pizza", you can use ";redcode[-??] test" to do a test challenge of the Hill without affecting the status of the Hill. These challenges can be used to see how well your warrior does against the current Hill warriors. All hills run portable MARS (pMARS) version 0.8, a platform-independent Core War system available at www.koth.org. The '94 and '94x hills allow five experimental opcodes and three experimental addressing modes currently not covered in the ICWS'94 draft document: * LDP - Load P-Space * STP - Store P-Space * SEQ - Skip if EQual (synonym for CMP) * SNE - Skip if Not Equal * NOP - (No OPeration) * * - indirect using A-field as pointer * { - predecrement indirect using A-field * } - postincrement indirect using A-field [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15. Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? Core is initialized to DAT 0, 0. This is an illegal instruction (in source code) under ICWS'88 rules and strictly compliant assemblers (such as KotH or pmars -8) will not let you have a DAT 0, 0 instruction in your source code - only DAT #0, #0. So this begs the question, how to compare something to see if it is empty core. The answer is, most likely the instruction before your first instruction and the instruction after your last instruction are both DAT 0, 0. You can use them, or any other likely unmodified instructions, for comparison. Note that under ICWS'94, DAT 0, 0 is a legal instruction. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 16. How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? SLT gives some people trouble because of the way modular arithmetic works. It is important to note that all negative numbers are converted to positive numbers before a battles begins. Example: -1 becomes M-1 where M is the memory size (core size). Once you realize that all numbers are treated as positive, it is clear what is meant by "less than". It should also be clear that no number is less than zero. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17. What is the difference between in-register and in-memory evaluation? These terms refer to the way instruction operands are evaluated. The '88 Redcode standard ICWS'88 is unclear about whether a simulator should "buffer" the result of A-operand evaluation before the B-operand is evaluated. Simulators that do buffer are said to use in-register evaluation, those that don't, in-memory evaluation. ICWS'94 clears this confusion by mandating in-register evaluation. Instructions that execute differently under these two forms of evaluation are MOV, ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV and MOD where the effective address of the A-operand is modified by evaluation of the B-operand. This is best illustrated by an example: L1 mov L2, mov.i #0, impsize Bootstrapping Strategy of copying the active portion of the program away from the initial location, leaving a decoy behind and making the relocated program as small as possible. B-Scanners Scanners which only recognize non-zero B-fields. example add #10, scan scan jmz example, 10 c Measure of speed, equal to one location per cycle. Speed of light. CMP-Scanner A Scanner which uses a CMP instruction to look for opponents. example add step, scan scan cmp 10, 30 jmp attack jmp example step dat #20, #20 Colour Property of bombs making them visible to scanners, causing them to attack useless locations, thus slowing them down. example dat #100 Core-Clear Code that sequentially overwrites core with DAT instructions; usually the last part of a program. Decoys Bogus or unused instructions meant to slow down scanners. Typically, DATs with non-zero B-fields. Decrement Resistant Property of warriors making them functional (or at least partially functional) when overrun by a DJN-stream. DJN-Stream (also DJN-Train) Using a DJN command to rapidly decrement core locations. example ... ... djn example, <4000 Dwarf The prototypical small bomber. Gate-busting (also gate-crashing) technique to "interweave" a decrement-resistant imp-spiral (e.g. MOV 0, 2668) with a standard one to overrun imp-gates. Hybrids warriors that combine two or more of the basic strategies, either in sequence (e.g. stone->paper) or in parallel (e.g. imp/stone). Imp Program which only uses the MOV instruction. example mov 0, 1 or example mov 0, 2 mov 0, 2 Imp-Gate A location in core which is bombed or decremented continuously so that an Imp can not pass. Also used to describe the program-code which maintains the gate. example ... ... spl 0, mov.i #0,IMPSIZE Mirror see reflection. On-axis/off-axis On-axis scanners compare two locations M/2 apart, where M is the memory size. Off-axis scanners use some other separation. Optimal Constants (also optima-type constants) Bomb or scan increments chosen to cover core most effectively, i.e. leaving gaps of uniform size. Programs to calculate optimal constants and lists of optimal numbers are available at www.koth.org. Paper A Paper-like program is one which replicates itself many times. Part of the Scissors (beats) Paper (beats) Stone (beats Scissors) analogy. P-Warrior A warrior which uses the results of previous round(s) in order to determine which strategy it will use. Pit-Trapper (also Slaver, Vampire). A program which enslaves another. Usually accomplished by bombing with JMPs to a SPL 0 pit with an optional core-clear routine. Q^2 Scan A modern version of the Quick Scan where anything found is attacked almost immediately. Quick Scan 2c scan of a set group of core locations with bombing if anything is found. Both of the following codes snips scan 16 locations and check for a find. If anything is found, it is attacked, otherwise 16 more locations are scanned. Example: start s1 for 8 ;'88 scan cmp start+100*s1, start+100*s1+4000 ;check two locations mov #start+100*s1-found, found ;they differ so set pointer rof jmn attack, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 8 cmp start+100*(s2+6), start+100*(s2+6)+4000 mov #start+100*(s2+6)-found, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing attack cmp @found, start-1 ;does found points to empty space? add #4000, found ;no, so point to correct location mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 In ICWS'94, the quick scan code is more compact because of the SNE opcode: start ;'94 scan s1 for 4 sne start+400*s1, start+400*s1+100 ;check two locations seq start+400*s1+200, start+400*s1+300 ;check two locations mov #start+400*s1-found, found ;they differ so set pointer rof jmn which, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 4 sne start+400*(s2+4), start+400*(s2+4)+100 seq start+400*(s2+4)+200, start+400*(s2+4)+300 mov #start+400*(s2+4)-found-100, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing add #100, -1 ;increment pointer till we get the which jmn -1, @found ;right place mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 Reflection Copy of a program or program part, positioned to make the active program invisible to a CMP-scanner. Replicator Generic for Paper. A program which makes many copies of itself, each copy also making copies. Self-Splitting Strategy of amplifying the number of processes executing a piece of code. example spl 0 loop add #10, example mov example, @example jmp loop Scanner A program which searches through core for an opponent rather than bombing blindly. Scissors A program designed to beat replicators, usually a (B-field scanning) vampire. Part of the Paper-Scissors-Stone analogy. Self-Repair Ability of a program to fix it's own code after attack. Silk A replicator which splits off a process to each new copy before actually copying the code. This allows it to replicate extremely quickly. This technique is only possible under the '94 draft, because it requires post-increment indirect addressing. Example: spl 1 mov -1, 0 spl 1 ;generate 6 consecutive processes silk spl 3620, #0 ;split to new copy mov >-1, }-1 ;copy self to new location mov bomb, >2000 ;linear bombing mov bomb, }2042 ;A-indirect bombing for anti-vamp jmp silk, {silk ;reset source pointer, make new copy bomb dat >2667, >5334 ;anti-imp bomb Slaver see Pit-Trapper. Stealth Property of programs, or program parts, which are invisible to scanners, accomplished by using zero B-fields and reflections. Stone A Stone-like program designed to be a small bomber. Part of the Paper-Scissors-Stone analogy. Stun A type of bomb which makes the opponent multiply useless processes, thus slowing it down. Example is referred to as a SPL-JMP bomb. example spl 0 jmp -1 Two-Pass Core-Clear (also SPL/DAT Core-Clear) core clear that fills core first with SPL instructions, then with DATs. This is very effective in killing paper and certain imp-spiral variations. Vampire see Pit-Trapper. Vector Launch one of several means to start an imp-spiral running. As fast as Binary Launch, but requiring much less code. See also JMP/ADD Launch and Binary Launch. This example is one form of a Vector Launch: sz EQU 2667 spl 1 spl 1 jmp @vt, }0 vt dat #0, imp+0*sz ; start of vector table dat #0, imp+1*sz dat #0, imp+2*sz dat #0, imp+3*sz ; end of vector table imp mov.i #0, sz [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 23. Other questions? Just ask in the rec.games.corewar newsgroup or contact me. If you are shy, check out the Core War archives first to see if your question has been answered before. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Credits Additions, corrections, etc. to this document are solicited. Thanks in particular to the following people who have contributed major portions of this document: * Mark Durham (wrote the original version of the FAQ) * Paul Kline * Randy Graham * Stefan Strack (maintained a recent version of the FAQ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright � 1999 Anton Marsden. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) Subject: Found another evolver/simulator Date: 22 Jun 2003 11:38:37 -0700 Message-ID: <4ee41bd6.0306221038.56005f7a@posting.google.com> http://lecs.cs.ucla.edu/~daveey/art/code.html From the page: "The code is an implementation of the corewars virtual machine, with certain simplifications, that can run multiple competitions in paralel using pthreads. Also includes an assembler/dissasembler, debugger, and a poor attempt at an evolutionary breeding engine." From: "John Metcalf" Subject: IRC Tournament Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 17:51:54 +0100 Message-ID: <3ef5dfbe_2@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com> Greetings... The 17th weekly speed Redcoding tournament will be held today, 22 June, in #COREWARS on IRC.KOTH.ORG as usual. The rules will be announced at precisely 7:00pm (UTC). After this 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=22&month=6&year=2003&hour=19&min=0&sec=0&p1=0&sort=1 Hope to see you there. From: colganc@hotmail.com (Chris Colgan) Subject: Re: ga_wars vs other evolvers Date: 23 Jun 2003 00:35:55 -0700 Message-ID: <67183ae6.0306222335.4463ad75@posting.google.com> Hello again Thank you (everyone who replied) for the information, my question was answered :). I'm happy to report that my modified version of ga_wars + exhaust is coming along nicely. Soon I hope to have one of my warriors on the sourceforge evolved hill (doubtful but maybe). Chris From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 06/23/03 Date: 23 Jun 2003 09:40:06 -0400 Message-ID: <200306230403.h5N431iR011702@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/23/03 -=- 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 : Mon Jun 16 00:16:37 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 hawk John Metcalf 14 7 2 Her Majesty P.Kline 14 283 3 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 10 264 4 trial John Metcalf 8 168 5 not king of the hill FatalC 7 9 6 my new tiny warrior John Metcalf 5 55 7 Doughnut Philip Thorne 5 1 8 Take the blue pill FatalC 4 6 9 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 3 44 10 Bugtown test C 54 Steve Gunnell 3 2 11 Djinn Test 9 Steve Gunnell 2 153 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 06/23/03 Date: 23 Jun 2003 09:41:33 -0400 Message-ID: <200306230409.h5N491HW011798@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/23/03 -=- 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 Jun 22 17:48:20 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 44/ 47/ 9 Recon 2 David Moore 141 183 2 39/ 40/ 22 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 137 414 3 38/ 41/ 20 Return of Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 135 491 4 43/ 51/ 6 Claw 2 Fizmo 134 158 5 28/ 23/ 49 Thunderstrike Lukasz Grabun 134 334 6 26/ 22/ 51 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 131 1729 7 25/ 20/ 54 Candy II Lukasz Grabun 130 109 8 29/ 28/ 43 Digitalis 2003 Christian Schmidt 130 11 9 35/ 41/ 24 shot John Metcalf 130 14 10 26/ 23/ 50 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 129 960 11 23/ 20/ 57 Greetings from Turkey Fizmo 127 1 12 37/ 46/ 17 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 127 504 13 22/ 17/ 61 Dawn Roy van Rijn 127 345 14 20/ 12/ 68 unheard-of Christian Schmidt 127 60 15 26/ 25/ 49 Now you're in trouble!!! John Metcalf 127 97 16 21/ 17/ 62 RotPendragon 2 Christian Schmidt 125 169 17 24/ 24/ 52 Soldier of Silkland Christian Schmidt 124 86 18 25/ 25/ 50 Numb Roy van Rijn 124 116 19 20/ 16/ 65 Kandias Philip Thorne 124 2 20 22/ 22/ 56 Back To PolyLand Jakub Kozisek 122 164 21 12/ 22/ 66 devilish 1.01 David Houston 101 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 06/23/03 Date: 23 Jun 2003 09:42:59 -0400 Message-ID: <200306230400.h5N401Wt011662@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/23/03 -=- 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 : Sun Jun 22 07:22:28 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 22/ 40 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 154 8 2 44/ 38/ 17 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 150 1 3 35/ 22/ 43 Freight Train David Moore 147 173 4 34/ 22/ 44 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 145 112 5 33/ 23/ 44 Guardian Ian Oversby 143 172 6 41/ 41/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 140 4 7 43/ 45/ 12 vm5 Michal Janeczek 140 7 8 36/ 32/ 32 vala John Metcalf 139 95 9 43/ 50/ 7 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 137 11 10 30/ 24/ 46 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 136 2 11 36/ 36/ 29 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 135 59 12 40/ 47/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 134 210 13 27/ 20/ 53 Test I Ian Oversby 134 229 14 37/ 41/ 22 PacMan David Moore 134 202 15 41/ 48/ 12 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 133 169 16 38/ 43/ 18 '88 test IV John Metcalf 133 66 17 26/ 20/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 132 186 18 29/ 26/ 46 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 131 128 19 30/ 29/ 41 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 130 130 20 37/ 47/ 16 Stasis David Moore 126 280 21 16/ 57/ 27 Rubber Duck Roy van Rijn 76 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 06/23/03 Date: 23 Jun 2003 09:44:25 -0400 Message-ID: <200306230406.h5N461j4011760@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/23/03 -=- 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 : Fri Jun 20 10:25:28 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 41/ 36/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 147 2 2 44/ 43/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 144 91 3 40/ 38/ 22 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 142 3 4 38/ 37/ 25 Black Moods Ian Oversby 138 187 5 34/ 34/ 32 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 134 74 6 19/ 8/ 73 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 130 260 7 24/ 19/ 57 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 129 131 8 19/ 10/ 71 Denial David Moore 127 132 9 26/ 26/ 48 Olivia X Ben Ford 126 72 10 33/ 40/ 27 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 125 18 11 19/ 14/ 66 Kin John Metcalf 125 99 12 30/ 37/ 33 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 124 191 13 32/ 39/ 29 Ogre Christian Schmidt 124 139 14 34/ 45/ 21 Kenshin X 45 Steve Gunnell 122 34 15 22/ 21/ 57 Glenstorm John Metcalf 122 53 16 24/ 25/ 51 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 122 213 17 14/ 8/ 78 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 121 208 18 25/ 30/ 45 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 121 123 19 19/ 19/ 63 r11ptest G.Labarga 118 1 20 24/ 31/ 45 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 117 130 21 12/ 10/ 78 Black Box v1.1 JKW 114 154 From: chipw@mdli.com (Chip Wendell) Subject: CoreWin: A new Core War simulator for Windows Date: 23 Jun 2003 12:52:04 -0700 Message-ID: Hello to all, I've been working on a Core War simulator for the Windows environment for several years, and I'm pleased to announce that it's finally done. CoreWin is a full-featured, fast simulator that runs on any Win32 OS. Some features: - Full support of ICWS '94 standards, plus all extensions - Built-in editor and Redcode compiler - Intuitive, easy-to-use GUI - Three kinds of tournament play: Melee, Challenge, and Round Robin - Multiple core view windows showing core contents - P-space view window You can download CoreWin 2.0 at www.geocities.com/corewin2. Come check it out! And please send me feedback (bugs, suggestions, comments). I'm continuing to develop CoreWin, so I would love to hear about any problems you uncover, or new features you would like to see. The release notes has a list of enhancements that are already planned. Enjoy! - Chip Wendell From: "gangadhar npk" Subject: Re: CoreWin: A new Core War simulator for Windows Date: 26 Jun 2003 09:31:51 -0400 Message-ID: <1056614517.cb3b80a0phani@myrealbox.com> hi, Very nice simulator. I am looking at the different features and it sure does make the learning of a newbie very easy. thank you for the effort gangadhar -----Original Message----- From: chipw@mdli.com (Chip Wendell) To: Multiple recipients of list COREWAR-L Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 16:34:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: CoreWin: A new Core War simulator for Windows Hello to all, I've been working on a Core War simulator for the Windows environment for several years, and I'm pleased to announce that it's finally done. CoreWin is a full-featured, fast simulator that runs on any Win32 OS. Some features: - Full support of ICWS '94 standards, plus all extensions - Built-in editor and Redcode compiler - Intuitive, easy-to-use GUI - Three kinds of tournament play: Melee, Challenge, and Round Robin - Multiple core view windows showing core contents - P-space view window You can download CoreWin 2.0 at www.geocities.com/corewin2. Come check it out! And please send me feedback (bugs, suggestions, comments). I'm continuing to develop CoreWin, so I would love to hear about any problems you uncover, or new features you would like to see. The release notes has a list of enhancements that are already planned. Enjoy! - Chip Wendell From: Subject: GA and Corewars Date: 23 Jun 2003 22:49:53 -0400 Message-ID: Hello all. I've been lurking around this newsgroup/ listserv for a while. I recently picked up on some discussions on GA. Couple of years ago I developed a GA evolver for corewars, using Linux, and pmars. I was able to experience the fun of watching a population of random warriors go from complete duds to rather fit little suckers. I've read and studied a lot of GA techniques, and I was able to incorporate different ideas into my code. My system combined asexual mutation, sexual mutation, sexual 'crossover', and the 'blade of death' (rate of replacement of parents w/ new children). My population of 100 warriors ran night and day for about 6 months; I ended up filling up and crashing my hard drive after about 60,000 generations. From time to time I would change the mutation rates, 'population replacement' rates, and the such to "push" the warriors higher up the fitness ladder. I ended up with very viable bombers. I tested each generation against classic warriors like rave, flashpaper, redstone, etc.... which my warriors ended up beating the crap out of. Anyway, I found that sometimes in the topology of fitness, sometimes you have to go down a small hill in order to climb the higher mountain next to it. Some hills your warriors climb are dead-ends. I read somewhere that competing species will help force your population fitness down the hill. I co-evolved another specious on the same machine (my software can run more than one population) and introduced 10 random warriors from the second experiment to the first. That worked... I think my warriors went from a average fitness of 40 (my genesis population tested at avg. 2 fitness) down to around 20 again! This all happened in a matter of 20-30 generations, at around 30,000 generations from inception. Just 3,000 generations after the introduction of a foreign species, my fitness was close to 60. My warriors ended up maxing out on fitness at around 50,000 generations. Since each one almost always beat the benchmark warriors (rave, flash, etc...), I couldn't evolve any more. I should have swapped out the benchmark warriors, but I lost track of things. Anyway, I learned a couple of things with this experiment: (1) it's perfectly OK to play with mutation rates, and other variables from time to time; (2) competing species are a great help in ultimately producing a better race. Humbly, -- \- Beretta --> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brett M. Gordon | beretta@eohio.net | Your fortune follows.... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know. From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: CoreWin: A new Core War simulator for Windows Date: 25 Jun 2003 19:32:02 GMT Message-ID: On 23 Jun 2003 12:52:04 -0700, Chip Wendell wrote: > I've been working on a Core War simulator for the Windows environment > for several years, and I'm pleased to announce that it's finally done. > CoreWin is a full-featured, fast simulator that runs on any Win32 OS. Great! Indeed, great job though I hardly had any time to check it thoroughly. At the very first look it looks very very nice and professional. Thank you! -- Lukasz Grabun (reply-to field is fake, use grabek (at) acn dot waw dot pl to reply) From: howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy: Round 11 "The holding hands round" ***Deadline**** Date: 27 Jun 2003 05:13:52 -0700 Message-ID: <5e314d3b.0306270413.1a4dcd40@posting.google.com> Hello redcoders! Due to popular demand, those of you wanting more time on the holding hands round have got your wish! The deadline has been extended to Sunday the 6th of July 2003. So best of luck! best regards, Will Varfar From: waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) Subject: Mini play-by-mail round this weekend [28/29 Jun Date: 27 Jun 2003 06:19:45 -0700 Message-ID: <4ee41bd6.0306270519.249154b6@posting.google.com> Instead of the usual 30min IRC round this w/e there will be an email-driven round [*] open for both days in which you try your luck against two warriors, one known the other taken from somewhere in the 2nd 100 of the 94nop Koenigstuhl http://www.ociw.edu/~birk/COREWAR/94/hill_rec.html. Best score against the two together wins. You are allowed upto 5 submissions so think carefully about those probes. For full details and updates see http://home.pipeline.com/~corewar/misc/ircmini18/irc18.html Problems/Questions email me. Philb [*] This is to accomodate those on holiday / moving / eating / drinking ... :-) From: dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) Subject: Re: CoreWin: A new Core War simulator for Windows Date: 27 Jun 2003 15:12:13 -0700 Message-ID: <5d6847b2.0306271412.1fb0af15@posting.google.com> I love it. I think we've needed something like this for a long time. You've clearly put a lot of work and thought into CoreWin. (You get extra points for having implemented read and write limits.) Thank you for making this contribution. Dave Hillis From: "Csaba Biro" Subject: Re: CoreWin: A new Core War simulator for Windows Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 18:31:01 -0400 Message-ID: Hi! This is a great tool, in fact I was thinking about writing something similar! Congratulations and thank you! The simulator is already almost perfect for me and all my suggestions are included in your Release Notes as planned enhacements. (Register variables and more detailed core graphics would be my priorities.) Only one remark: it cannot run a warrior alone. At least when I only loaded one warrior, the "Start" button is disabled. Why? I guess it wouldn't be hard to include to the program. But anyway, this is a great software! Csaba From: Paul-V Khuong Subject: Re: CoreWin: A new Core War simulator for Windows Date: 28 Jun 2003 20:11:54 -0400 Message-ID: <20030628163635.78471.qmail@web41501.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dave Hillis wrote: > I love it. I think we've needed something like this > for a long time. > You've clearly put a lot of work and thought into > CoreWin. (You get > extra points for having implemented read and write > limits.) Thank you > for making this contribution. Read-write limits!? Woah :) Has there ever been a MARS that supported them? Thank you, that gives me something to play with once i'm back home(6 long weeks hehe) Paul Khuong __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com From: "Csaba Biro" Subject: Re: CoreWin: A new Core War simulator for Windows Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 08:56:04 -0400 Message-ID: > 1) To run a warrior 'alone', just add second warrior (jmp 0) for the time > being until 'the man' upgrade it. Yeah, in fact I did this, just it's not so comfortable. Moreover, if my warrior kills the jmp 0 then the fight is over. Csaba From: "Zul Nadzri" Subject: Re: CoreWin: A new Core War simulator for Windows Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 18:47:44 +0800 Message-ID: <3efec3d2_2@news.tm.net.my> 1) To run a warrior 'alone', just add second warrior (jmp 0) for the time being until 'the man' upgrade it. 2) Any brute-force program that calculate each possible combination (evolving program only completes 'some' of the possible list) program exist over there or are we still not in that speedy calculation computing era yet? /Zul Nadzri "Csaba Biro" wrote in message news:bdl4un$7sc$1@news-int.gatech.edu... > Hi! > > This is a great tool, in fact I was thinking about writing something > similar! Congratulations and thank you! The simulator is already almost > perfect for me and all my suggestions are included in your Release Notes as > planned enhacements. (Register variables and more detailed core graphics > would be my priorities.) > > Only one remark: it cannot run a warrior alone. At least when I only loaded > one warrior, the "Start" button is disabled. Why? I guess it wouldn't be > hard to include to the program. > > But anyway, this is a great software! > > Csaba > > > From: =?iso-8859-1?q?will?= Subject: Re: CoreWin: A new Core War simulator for Windows Date: 29 Jun 2003 21:58:52 -0400 Message-ID: <20030629150111.26777.qmail@web60003.mail.yahoo.com> --- Zul Nadzri wrote: > 2) Any brute-force program that calculate each > possible combination > (evolving program only completes 'some' of the > possible list) program exist > over there or are we still not in that speedy > calculation computing era yet? you are looking for such a tool? http://www.geocities.com/varfar/redcoder/multi-manics.html best regards, Will. __________________________________________________ Yahoo! Plus - For a better Internet experience http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/yplus/yoffer.html From: waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) Subject: Re: Mini play-by-mail round this weekend [28/29 Jun Date: 29 Jun 2003 22:23:13 -0700 Message-ID: <4ee41bd6.0306292123.6032bb31@posting.google.com> I wrote in message news:<4ee41bd6.0306270519.249154b6@posting.google.com>... > ... > For full details and updates see > http://home.pipeline.com/~corewar/misc/ircmini18/irc18.html > ... The White Warrior was Impfinity V4g1 by Planar The winner is Roy Van Rijn with "More Anti-Imp Paper?" http://home.pipeline.com/~corewar/misc/ircmini18/warriors/more_er_.red Runners up were John Metcalf & FatalC The Grey Warrior was airBag by Magnus Paulsson. Honourable mention to Will Varfa who correctly deduced airBag after a single probe. However, his attempts to evolve against the pair proved unsuccessful this time. Philb From: chipw@mdli.com (Chip Wendell) Subject: Re: CoreWin: A new Core War simulator for Windows Date: 30 Jun 2003 08:07:49 -0700 Message-ID: Thank you all for your responses! I'm glad you like it. I'm especially pleased to see that both newbies and "pros" are finding it useful. I'm hoping that CoreWin can help to draw new people into the Core War community. --- Paul-V Khuong wrote: > Read-write limits!? > > Woah :) Has there ever been a MARS that supported > them? > > Thank you, that gives me something to play with once > i'm back home Yes, please do! I'd be curious to see what kind of results you get. The R/W limits, and also the "random core size" feature, should provide some very interesting alternative "environments" for new breeds of warriors. I want to thank Joonas Pihlaja and John Metcalf for their feedback and suggestions during beta testing. Many of their ideas were implemented for the 2.0 release, and many more (including single-warrior battles, coming soon!) are slated for future enhancements. - Chip From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 06/30/03 Date: 30 Jun 2003 11:19:14 -0400 Message-ID: <200306300409.h5U491DX020254@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/30/03 -=- 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 Jun 29 15:15:08 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 33/ 23/ 44 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 143 973 2 33/ 26/ 41 Thunderstrike Lukasz Grabun 140 347 3 32/ 25/ 42 Numb Roy van Rijn 139 129 4 43/ 49/ 8 Recon 2 David Moore 138 196 5 40/ 42/ 18 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 137 427 6 30/ 24/ 45 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 137 1742 7 39/ 43/ 17 Return of Vanquisher Lukasz Grabun 136 504 8 25/ 14/ 61 unheard-of Christian Schmidt 136 73 9 31/ 26/ 44 Candy II Lukasz Grabun 136 122 10 32/ 28/ 40 Now you're in trouble!!! John Metcalf 135 110 11 30/ 25/ 46 Soldier of Silkland Christian Schmidt 135 99 12 39/ 45/ 16 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 133 517 13 32/ 32/ 36 Digitalis 2003 Christian Schmidt 133 24 14 30/ 28/ 42 Graduated Fool Roy van Rijn 131 8 15 41/ 52/ 6 Claw 2 Fizmo 131 171 16 30/ 31/ 39 Paper LG 130 1 17 26/ 22/ 53 Greetings from Turkey Fizmo 130 14 18 26/ 22/ 53 RotPendragon 2 Christian Schmidt 130 182 19 36/ 43/ 21 shot John Metcalf 128 27 20 40/ 52/ 7 Solo 2 Roy van Rijn 128 2 21 29/ 43/ 28 Abused Storm Roy van Rijn 114 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 06/30/03 Date: 30 Jun 2003 11:19:29 -0400 Message-ID: <200306300400.h5U401cW020142@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/30/03 -=- 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 : Sun Jun 22 07:22:28 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 22/ 40 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 154 8 2 44/ 38/ 17 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 150 1 3 35/ 22/ 43 Freight Train David Moore 147 173 4 34/ 22/ 44 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 145 112 5 33/ 23/ 44 Guardian Ian Oversby 143 172 6 41/ 41/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 140 4 7 43/ 45/ 12 vm5 Michal Janeczek 140 7 8 36/ 32/ 32 vala John Metcalf 139 95 9 43/ 50/ 7 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 137 11 10 30/ 24/ 46 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 136 2 11 36/ 36/ 29 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 135 59 12 40/ 47/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 134 210 13 27/ 20/ 53 Test I Ian Oversby 134 229 14 37/ 41/ 22 PacMan David Moore 134 202 15 41/ 48/ 12 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 133 169 16 38/ 43/ 18 '88 test IV John Metcalf 133 66 17 26/ 20/ 54 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 132 186 18 29/ 26/ 46 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 131 128 19 30/ 29/ 41 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 130 130 20 37/ 47/ 16 Stasis David Moore 126 280 21 16/ 57/ 27 Rubber Duck Roy van Rijn 76 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 06/30/03 Date: 30 Jun 2003 11:19:24 -0400 Message-ID: <200306300403.h5U431u4020175@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/30/03 -=- 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 : Mon Jun 16 00:16:37 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 hawk John Metcalf 14 7 2 Her Majesty P.Kline 14 283 3 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 10 264 4 trial John Metcalf 8 168 5 not king of the hill FatalC 7 9 6 my new tiny warrior John Metcalf 5 55 7 Doughnut Philip Thorne 5 1 8 Take the blue pill FatalC 4 6 9 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 3 44 10 Bugtown test C 54 Steve Gunnell 3 2 11 Djinn Test 9 Steve Gunnell 2 153 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 06/30/03 Date: 30 Jun 2003 11:19:19 -0400 Message-ID: <200306300406.h5U461ip020222@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 06/30/03 -=- 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 : Fri Jun 20 10:25:28 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 41/ 36/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 147 2 2 44/ 43/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 144 91 3 40/ 38/ 22 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 142 3 4 38/ 37/ 25 Black Moods Ian Oversby 138 187 5 34/ 34/ 32 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 134 74 6 19/ 8/ 73 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 130 260 7 24/ 19/ 57 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 129 131 8 19/ 10/ 71 Denial David Moore 127 132 9 26/ 26/ 48 Olivia X Ben Ford 126 72 10 33/ 40/ 27 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 125 18 11 19/ 14/ 66 Kin John Metcalf 125 99 12 30/ 37/ 33 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 124 191 13 32/ 39/ 29 Ogre Christian Schmidt 124 139 14 34/ 45/ 21 Kenshin X 45 Steve Gunnell 122 34 15 22/ 21/ 57 Glenstorm John Metcalf 122 53 16 24/ 25/ 51 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 122 213 17 14/ 8/ 78 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 121 208 18 25/ 30/ 45 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 121 123 19 19/ 19/ 63 r11ptest G.Labarga 118 1 20 24/ 31/ 45 Damage Inflicted Robert Macrae 117 130 21 12/ 10/ 78 Black Box v1.1 JKW 114 154 From: howard_harry@hotmail.com (Will Varfar) Subject: Species Date: 30 Jun 2003 13:17:18 -0700 Message-ID: <5e314d3b.0306301217.3346861f@posting.google.com> Hi evolver folks, "Species is definitely the most over-engineered, complicated and buggy Corewars Evolver on the freeware market today!" - me version 1.2d of Species is now available for download at http://redcoder.sourceforge.net 120+ wilfiz. In about an hour or two! I am pretty pleased with the stones that this version can make. You can use probability tables based upon the wholesale crunching of known warriors. This really helps things along. As usual the documentation is a bit light, there are far more options than you need and the visual version ('visitool') isn't ready yet. But that can come in the autumn when I pick up development again. I plan to attack the 'stone' monotony head on then, too. best regards, Will 'Varfar', serial evolver