From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 09/01/03 Date: 1 Sep 2003 07:40:57 -0400 Message-ID: <200309010409.h814918E024981@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/01/03 -=- 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 Aug 31 14:28:05 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 30/ 23/ 47 Hammerhead Lukasz Grabun 137 6 2 43/ 49/ 8 Recon 2 David Moore 136 374 3 29/ 22/ 49 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 135 1151 4 39/ 43/ 19 Preserver Lukasz Grabun 134 22 5 28/ 22/ 50 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 134 1920 6 38/ 42/ 20 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 134 605 7 24/ 17/ 59 D2.6 Roy van Rijn 132 4 8 28/ 25/ 47 devilish 2.02 test David Houston 132 67 9 27/ 22/ 51 aiptest Neogryzor 131 3 10 37/ 43/ 19 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 131 695 11 23/ 18/ 58 Mordred's Son Christian Schmidt 128 68 12 26/ 24/ 50 sitest Lukasz Grabun 128 11 13 20/ 14/ 67 Serpent's Head Rising John Metcalf 125 1 14 26/ 27/ 46 Now you're in trouble!!! John Metcalf 125 288 15 29/ 32/ 39 Digitalis 2003 Christian Schmidt 125 202 16 25/ 26/ 49 Numb Roy van Rijn 125 307 17 19/ 13/ 68 unheard-of Christian Schmidt 125 251 18 22/ 20/ 58 badness bvowk 125 81 19 28/ 32/ 40 Ethanol vE G.Labarga 123 18 20 38/ 53/ 9 Songs from a Dark World John Metcalf 123 2 21 31/ 41/ 28 Fourth v3 B. Cook 122 20 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 09/01/03 Date: 1 Sep 2003 07:42:49 -0400 Message-ID: <200309010400.h814019M024786@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/01/03 -=- 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 Aug 24 05:55:13 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 22/ 39 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 154 8 2 36/ 22/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 149 173 3 35/ 22/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 148 112 4 44/ 40/ 16 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 147 1 5 34/ 23/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 146 172 6 41/ 41/ 18 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 141 4 7 36/ 32/ 31 vala John Metcalf 141 95 8 31/ 24/ 45 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 138 2 9 42/ 47/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 138 7 10 42/ 47/ 12 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 136 169 11 28/ 20/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 135 229 12 41/ 46/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 135 210 13 30/ 25/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 135 128 14 27/ 20/ 53 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 134 186 15 39/ 44/ 17 '88 test IV John Metcalf 134 66 16 42/ 50/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 133 11 17 31/ 29/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 133 130 18 35/ 37/ 28 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 133 59 19 37/ 42/ 22 PacMan David Moore 132 202 20 37/ 45/ 18 Stasis David Moore 129 280 21 20/ 66/ 14 LeVamp Matthieu Walraet 75 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 09/01/03 Date: 1 Sep 2003 07:42:40 -0400 Message-ID: <200309010406.h81461Qg024904@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/01/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sat Aug 30 11:29:09 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 42/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 148 99 2 41/ 37/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 145 10 3 40/ 39/ 20 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 141 11 4 24/ 8/ 68 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 141 268 5 36/ 33/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 139 82 6 24/ 10/ 66 Denial David Moore 138 140 7 28/ 18/ 54 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 138 139 8 38/ 38/ 25 Black Moods Ian Oversby 137 195 9 31/ 25/ 44 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 137 131 10 25/ 15/ 60 Kin John Metcalf 135 107 11 29/ 23/ 48 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 135 221 12 30/ 25/ 45 Olivia X Ben Ford 134 80 13 28/ 22/ 51 Glenstorm John Metcalf 134 61 14 23/ 12/ 66 Blotter X J. Pohjalainen 134 1 15 35/ 36/ 29 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 133 199 16 20/ 8/ 72 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 133 216 17 37/ 41/ 22 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 133 26 18 30/ 35/ 35 Big Pspacer G.Labarga 126 6 19 33/ 40/ 27 Ogre Christian Schmidt 125 147 20 35/ 45/ 20 Piltdown (2003.8) Philip Thorne 124 2 21 10/ 89/ 1 My Sucky Warrior John Q. Redcoder 32 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 09/01/03 Date: 1 Sep 2003 07:42:45 -0400 Message-ID: <200309010403.h814314Q024838@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/01/03 -=- 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 Aug 31 18:15:56 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 Her Majesty P.Kline 21 341 2 not king of the hill FatalC 15 67 3 hawk John Metcalf 13 65 4 like a passing sunbeam John Metcalf 11 21 5 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 10 322 6 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 10 102 7 Origin of Storms John Metcalf 8 9 8 Bee/7 John Metcalf 6 3 9 Bugtown test C 58 Steve Gunnell 5 1 10 Third try! Roy van Rijn 5 11 11 Journey to the west test Steve Gunnell 0 0 From: neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) Subject: Re: Newb needs help AKA separating processes Date: 1 Sep 2003 10:26:06 -0700 Message-ID: <242debe4.0309010926.709641cb@posting.google.com> If you are going to create pairs of processes, you can reduce your code in this way: start: spl 1 spl 1 spl B_FIELD A_FIELD: jmp *vectors,}0 B_FIELD: jmp @vectors,}0 vectors: dat where1,where2 dat where3,where4 dat where5,where6 dat where7,where8 Or in reverse order: start: spl 1 spl 1 spl B_FIELD A_FIELD: djn.a *endlist,# B_FIELD: djn.a @endlist,# dat where7,where8 dat where5,where6 dat where3,where4 endlist: dat where1,where2 If I recall rigth, the address is taken before the decrement. (like a weird simulation of a post-decrement). If you are going to create three groups of processes an easy way to do it is in a binary launch: START: SPL 1 ;\ SPL 1 ;/ 4 procs SPL A ; *3 = 12 procs SPL C B: JMP where2 C: JMP where3 A: JMP where1 It creates 12 processes in alternate order: a,b,c,a,b,c,a,b,c,... If you add MOV lines you can launch parallel routines (like papers or paper/imp ;] ). B: MOV Subject: Re: Newb needs help AKA separating processes Date: 1 Sep 2003 17:14:44 -0400 Message-ID: Fine pieces of code, Neogryzor. But the question was: can you separate N parallel processes created long before separating (i.e. booting paper) in any given order? Do you have any idea how to do this, German? How about that: We have N=8 processes created by i.e.: spl 1 spl 1 spl 1 Separating goes like this: jmn.b *0, }0 jmp @0, }0 dat where1, where5 dat where2, where6 dat where3, where7 dat where4, where8 assuming that next four instructions have zeros in B-fields. (They usually have, at least at the beginning of the fight ;) A few changes and this will work for any N. :] Greetings Lukasz Adamowski P.S. I've almost forgot! New idea for IRC tour came to my mind recently: Every player sending his entry sends also CORESIZE he prefers. Having all entries received the CORESIZEs are averaged and all the fights goes with this averaged CORESIZE. We can do the same with MAXPROCESSES or MAXCYCLES or even ROUNDS, but I wouldn't play with MINDISTANCE and MAXLENGHT. It's too dangerous. ;] From: fizmo_master@yahoo.com (Fizmo) Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy 13: The Laughing-Loser Round ***Rules and deadline*** Date: 1 Sep 2003 23:12:16 -0700 Message-ID: <9f53b5fb.0309012212.6e32b34b@posting.google.com> Important 2nd update of the rules!!!!! ................................................................... . . . _____ _ _ . . | __ \ | | | | . . | |__) |___ __| | ___ ___ __| | ___ _ __ ___ . . | _ // _ \/ _` |/ __/ _ \ / _` |/ _ \ '__/ __| . . | | \ \ __/ (_| | (_| (_) | (_| | __/ | \__ \ . . |_| \_\___|\__,_|\___\___/ \__,_|\___|_| |___/ . . . . ______ . . | ____| . . | |__ _ __ ___ _ __ _____ _ . . | __| '__/ _ \ '_ \|_ / | | | . . | | | | | __/ | | |/ /| |_| | . . |_| |_| \___|_| |_/___|\__, | . . __/ | . . |___/ . ................................................................... The ongoing corewar tournament ___ ______ (___) (_____ \ _ _____) ) | | (_____ ( _| |_ _____) ) (_____|______/ .............................. . . . The Laughing-Loser Round . . . .............................. This is the 13th round of the ongoing corewar tournament. Detailed information are available on Fizmo's Corewar Information Page: http://www.corewar.info/tournament/cwt.htm ................................................................... . _ . . _ _ _ _| |___ ___ . . | '_| || | / -_|_-< . . 2nd UPDATE |_| \_,_|_\___/__/ 2nd UPDATE . . . ................................................................... ****2nd UPDATE**** ---------- Changed issues: - reduced penalty for modifying the counter (opponent now gets 2 points) - max. length and min. distance (increased to 200) - content of p-space cell 0 defined ---------- - Each battle will be a fight between two warriors with a neutral program (the counter) present in the core. - The first warrior which modifies counter's code before it (the counter) dies, gets 0 points, and the other warrior gets 2 points. - The first warrior which dies after the counter, gets 3 points, and the other warrior gets 0 points. - If one of warriors happens to be killed before the counter's death, then it will get 0 points, and the other warrior will get 1 point. - If both warriors survive until end of the round, each will get 1 point. - At the beginning of each round p-space cell 0 will contain number of points awarded in the previous round decreased by number of points awarded to the opponent. The exception is the first round, when -4 will be stored. Coresize: 8000 Max. processes: 8 Max. cycles: 80000 Max. length: 200 Min. distance: 200 Rounds: 2000 ---------- ;redcode ;name counter ;author mj ;assert 1 mov ptr , >ptr mov ptr , {ptr cnt djn -2 , #-5 ptr dat -3 , 2 end The homepage of this round is: http://www.corewar.info/tournament/13.htm Some hints will be added soon. ................................................................... . _ _ _ _ . . __| |___ __ _ __| | (_)_ _ ___ . . / _` / -_) _` / _` | | | ' \/ -_) . . \__,_\___\__,_\__,_|_|_|_||_\___| . . . ................................................................... September 28, 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------- Please notify: You have to send your entries to Michal Janeczek michal (at) v-lo.krakow.pl -------------------------------------------------------------- Good luck, may be the core with you! From: "Brett Greenfield" Subject: pattern bomber without add Message-ID: Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2003 20:35:58 GMT i been thinking about this a while but so far i am having a hard time picking constants or even the size of the pattern any ideas on how to improve it. i havent seen too many pattern bombers out there, mostly pattern scanners. i designed this to be small and fast, if i can get the constants down it should beat bombers that use add for the step i am considering putting and spl 0 near the top and modifying the order of instructions accordingly, but this adds another level of complexity is it better just to make two or three seprate warriors with idenitcal code, using patterns that intermesh with each other? this is the program without the part that moves the code away from the pattern, the core painting effect of this bomber should make scanners have a harder time.the reson i use a rolling pattern instead of add is that add is not an attack and the rolling pattern is effectively a free coreclear attack (well not free but taking it out would force the need for an add so it cost nothing extra speedwise). patt: dat step_1, step_2 ... dat step_7, step_8 dat step_5, step_6 dat step_3, step_4 patt_strt: mov < bomb, < 2 begin: mov bomb, @ patt mov bomb, * patt jmp -3, < -2 bomb dat 0, patt_strt end begin From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: pattern bomber without add Date: 3 Sep 2003 20:01:06 GMT Message-ID: On Tue, 02 Sep 2003 20:35:58 GMT, Brett Greenfield wrote: > i been thinking about this a while but so far i am having a hard time > picking constants or even the size of the pattern Please, don't ask questions in subject lines. In general, it is widely accepted that no-add bombers are not that effective. In fact, they're not effective even a bit. There were few approaches (on of Metcalf's tourney rounds dissallowed usage of add/sub; few people submitted stones, you may take a look at them, warriors, not people, I mean.). So, I'd drop the idea instantly. Read further if you care... > patt: dat step_1, step_2 > ... > dat step_7, step_8 > dat step_5, step_6 > dat step_3, step_4 > patt_strt: > > mov < bomb, < 2 > begin: mov bomb, @ patt > mov bomb, * patt > jmp -3, < -2 > > bomb dat 0, patt_strt > > end begin It is not small. It is huge. And it is slow. You throw a number of bombs, but they're not spreaded all over the core. You tend to bomb cells that are close enough to each other. This is TBT (The Bad Thing). Take a look at the Candy's stone ORG START START SPL.B # 0, # 0 MOV.I $ 10, } -3712 MOV.I $ 9, @ -1 ADD.AB # -3711, @ -1 DJN.F $ -3, { 4000 DAT.F $ 0, $ 0 DAT.F $ 0, $ 0 DAT.F $ 0, $ 0 DAT.F $ 0, $ 0 DAT.F $ 0, $ 0 DAT.F $ 0, $ 0 DAT.F > 17, > 1 Six non-zero cells and it is much deadlier. The secret is hidden in the good bomb spread. You don't have to be fast but using a proper step helps a lot. Also, if you want to perform a clear d-clear is much much better for this purpose. Just my 2 cents. -- 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 Adamowski Subject: Invitation Date: 4 Sep 2003 18:05:31 -0400 Message-ID: This Sunday (7th September 2003) at usual time (it's 7pm Greenwich I think, I'm not sure) I will be waiting for you on #corewars IRC channel on irc.koth.org. I've got a new idea for the IRC tournament, I hope you'll like it. See you! Lukasz P.S. I can be late a bit, please wait a while for me. From: Hurkyl@msn.com (Hurkyl) Subject: Devilish Date: 4 Sep 2003 19:42:29 -0700 Message-ID: <7d3e9a94.0309041842.711fabd0@posting.google.com> Devilish is a stone/imp with two twists I haven't seen in other stone/imps. The most interesting twist is the Q^5. A minor change to the usual Q^4 allows me to extend the scanning run without adding any decoding overhead or needing any extra tables. The scan labelled "qz mutation" mutates the value of qz allowing me to reuse table entries because they will now decode to a new location. The scanning run can be extended even further, including reusing the usual q1 mutations, but in the usual Q^4 code, half of those extra scans will be duplicates. To avoid duplicates, you cannot use the entries in the qtab2 table as the offset between scans, so the qtab pointers cannot be embedded in their usual place. (unless you use the A fields of the qtab2 table to store the offsets) The other twist is the diamond bomber. Instead of using a mod-1 pattern, it bombs in a near perfect mod-2 pattern laying 3997 'dat >-1, >1' bombs, missing exactly one location in the core, then self-modifies to become a "clumsy" core-clear. The mod-2 pattern is chosen because it can disable clears faster and more reliably than a mod-1 pattern, thus improving scores against scanners. (Although it seems to do diddly-squat against the D-Clears in Hammerhead and Digitalis, to which I give my worst losses) The reason is that a perfect mod-2 pattern guarantess that the clear will be disabled in 4000 bombs, while a mod-1 pattern might hit the 'spl #0' at the top of the clear, but not drop anything on the 'mov' or the 'djn' until later (if ever). The bomber is also more robust than usual against dat bombs because there are actually two different locations you can hit with 'dat >-1, >1' that will mutate the bomber into a core-clear; the second 'mov' line, and the 'add' line. The diamond bomber actually mutates by hitting the 'add', because it seems necessary to allow a good spread for mod-2 bombing. Oh, and finally, these are not the constants used in the version on the hill. ;redcode-94nop ;name devilish 2.02 test published version ;author David Houston ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;strategy q^5 -> stone/imp. org qgo ;pointer to instruction #0 zero equ qbomb ;----------------------------------------------------- qtab3 equ qbomb qbomb dat >qoff, >qc2 ;----------------------------------------------------- ; the boot bdaway equ 3277 biaway equ 6140 boot mov @bdptr, zero + 5 + bdaway + dboff spl 2, -1, >1 add.f diamond, @-1 djn.f @-2, -1, >1 ;----------------------------------------------------- ; the imps ; boring 7-point imps ; in theory, impi can be moved away from main body istep equ 1143 istart equ (imps + 4) imps spl #istart, <-20 sub.f #-(istep + 1), ijmp mov istart, }imps ijmp jmp istart - 2 * (istep + 1), <-3700 impi mov.i #-5, istep dat zero - 1, qa1 qtab1 dat zero - 1, qa2 ;----------------------------------------------------- ; this core intentionally left blank for 42 dat 0, 0 rof ;----------------------------------------------------- ;extended Q^4 scan qc2 equ ((1 + (qtab3-qptr)*qy) % CORESIZE) qb1 equ ((1 + (qtab2-1-qptr)*qy) % CORESIZE) qb2 equ ((1 + (qtab2-qptr)*qy) % CORESIZE) qb3 equ ((1 + (qtab2+1-qptr)*qy) % CORESIZE) qa1 equ ((1 + (qtab1-1-qptr)*qy) % CORESIZE) qa2 equ ((1 + (qtab1-qptr)*qy) % CORESIZE) qz equ 2108 qy equ 243 ; qy * (qz-1) = 1 ;q0 mutation qgo sne qptr + qz*qc2, qptr + qz*qc2 + qb2 seq qptr, qptr + qz + (qb2-1) jmp q2, Subject: Re: Devilish Date: 5 Sep 2003 04:57:54 GMT Message-ID: On 4 Sep 2003 19:42:29 -0700, Hurkyl wrote: > Devilish is a stone/imp with two twists I haven't seen in other > stone/imps. Ah! Thank you, 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) Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 07 Sep 2003 08:48:52 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: "Robert Macrae" Subject: Re: pattern bomber without add Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2003 18:24:18 +0100 Message-ID: <3f5b6df7$0$258$cc9e4d1f@news.dial.pipex.com> > patt: dat step_1, step_2 > ... > dat step_7, step_8 > dat step_5, step_6 > dat step_3, step_4 > patt_strt: > > mov < bomb, < 2 > begin: mov bomb, @ patt > mov bomb, * patt > jmp -3, < -2 > > bomb dat 0, patt_strt > > end begin This might have potential. In effect it is a coloured core-clear, and should be effective against scanners and (with the right constants) possibly imps. The missing element however is some way to stun opponents. You need at least 1 pass of SPLs to stun imps, without which a backward clear might find them difficult to kill -- and you have to kill them because you don't have much of a gate. You really need two SPL passes against replicators. Maybe you could replace MOV bomb with MOV *bomb and use the .a field of the bomb to make the switch? There seem to be two main problems. Firstly, it is not very robust. You should keep the execution loop well away from the DAT table to make it harder for scanners to find, but even so it will tend to lose to DAT bombers. Secondly, it only writes at 0.75c. This would be good for a SPL/DAT clear, but for DAT-only D-Clear manages 1.00c with an excellent gate. Good luck... Robert From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 09/08/03 Date: 8 Sep 2003 09:30:33 -0400 Message-ID: <200309080406.h88461BQ022964@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/08/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sat Aug 30 11:29:09 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 42/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 148 99 2 41/ 37/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 145 10 3 40/ 39/ 20 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 141 11 4 24/ 8/ 68 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 141 268 5 36/ 33/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 139 82 6 24/ 10/ 66 Denial David Moore 138 140 7 28/ 18/ 54 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 138 139 8 38/ 38/ 25 Black Moods Ian Oversby 137 195 9 31/ 25/ 44 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 137 131 10 25/ 15/ 60 Kin John Metcalf 135 107 11 29/ 23/ 48 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 135 221 12 30/ 25/ 45 Olivia X Ben Ford 134 80 13 28/ 22/ 51 Glenstorm John Metcalf 134 61 14 23/ 12/ 66 Blotter X J. Pohjalainen 134 1 15 35/ 36/ 29 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 133 199 16 20/ 8/ 72 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 133 216 17 37/ 41/ 22 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 133 26 18 30/ 35/ 35 Big Pspacer G.Labarga 126 6 19 33/ 40/ 27 Ogre Christian Schmidt 125 147 20 35/ 45/ 20 Piltdown (2003.8) Philip Thorne 124 2 21 10/ 89/ 1 My Sucky Warrior John Q. Redcoder 32 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 09/08/03 Date: 8 Sep 2003 09:30:37 -0400 Message-ID: <200309080403.h88431Bt022917@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/08/03 -=- 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 Sep 7 18:29:57 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 not king of the hill FatalC 15 67 2 hawk John Metcalf 15 65 3 Her Majesty P.Kline 13 341 4 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 8 322 5 Bugtown test C 58 Steve Gunnell 8 1 6 like a passing sunbeam John Metcalf 7 21 7 Origin of Storms John Metcalf 7 9 8 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 6 102 9 Bee/7 John Metcalf 4 3 10 Third try! Roy van Rijn 2 11 11 Bugtown Rap A 20 Steve Gunnell 2 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 09/08/03 Date: 8 Sep 2003 09:30:24 -0400 Message-ID: <200309080409.h88491F0023007@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/08/03 -=- 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 Sep 7 18:37:51 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 35/ 24/ 41 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 147 1170 2 41/ 41/ 18 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 140 624 3 33/ 28/ 39 Hammerhead Lukasz Grabun 139 25 4 32/ 25/ 44 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 138 1939 5 43/ 48/ 9 Recon 2 David Moore 137 393 6 27/ 17/ 56 Dawn 2 Roy van Rijn 137 5 7 32/ 27/ 41 devilish 2.02 test David Houston 136 86 8 34/ 32/ 35 Placard Christian Schmidt 135 8 9 28/ 22/ 50 Mordred's Son Christian Schmidt 134 87 10 24/ 15/ 61 unheard-of Christian Schmidt 134 270 11 39/ 44/ 17 Sequential Test 18 Steve Gunnell 133 1 12 36/ 40/ 25 Fourth v4 B. Cook 132 17 13 27/ 21/ 52 Lonely Spirit John Metcalf 132 16 14 38/ 44/ 18 Preserver Lukasz Grabun 132 41 15 38/ 44/ 19 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 132 714 16 28/ 25/ 46 Morning Roy van Rijn 131 6 17 35/ 40/ 25 Fourth v4 B. Cook 131 2 18 27/ 26/ 47 aiptest Neogryzor 128 22 19 31/ 36/ 33 Digitalis 2003 Christian Schmidt 127 221 20 39/ 52/ 9 Hand Fizmo 127 9 21 37/ 52/ 11 Solo 4 Roy van Rijn 122 7 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 09/08/03 Date: 8 Sep 2003 09:36:47 -0400 Message-ID: <200309080400.h88401E7022851@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/08/03 -=- 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 Aug 24 05:55:13 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 22/ 39 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 154 8 2 36/ 22/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 149 173 3 35/ 22/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 148 112 4 44/ 40/ 16 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 147 1 5 34/ 23/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 146 172 6 41/ 41/ 18 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 141 4 7 36/ 32/ 31 vala John Metcalf 141 95 8 31/ 24/ 45 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 138 2 9 42/ 47/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 138 7 10 42/ 47/ 12 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 136 169 11 28/ 20/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 135 229 12 41/ 46/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 135 210 13 30/ 25/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 135 128 14 27/ 20/ 53 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 134 186 15 39/ 44/ 17 '88 test IV John Metcalf 134 66 16 42/ 50/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 133 11 17 31/ 29/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 133 130 18 35/ 37/ 28 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 133 59 19 37/ 42/ 22 PacMan David Moore 132 202 20 37/ 45/ 18 Stasis David Moore 129 280 21 20/ 66/ 14 LeVamp Matthieu Walraet 75 0 From: Lukasz Adamowski Subject: IRC 25th Tournament update! Date: 8 Sep 2003 16:19:28 -0400 Message-ID: I did some more fights with different combinations of CORESIZEs etc. Results are available on: http://nat.mikrus.pw.edu.pl/~adamow/mean.htm Now you can see original entries also. Enjoy! Lukasz Adamowski P.S. Fizmo, please put the rules and scores into your page, and also those from: http://nat.mikrus.pw.edu.pl/~adamow/capture.htm My pages will be deleted in a month, maybe sooner. I can send you zipped files if you want. From: tross Subject: Mathematical Recreations ? Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 12:11:12 -0400 Message-ID: <3F5DFBA0.B909774A@nospamerica.com> A. K. Dewdney's Ghost Riders in the Sky http://feralnews.com/issues/911/dewdney/ghost_riders_1-4_1.html Is this the same A. K. Dewdney ? From: "Stan Gula" Subject: Re: Mathematical Recreations ? Message-ID: Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 17:04:57 GMT "tross" wrote in message news:3F5DFBA0.B909774A@nospamerica.com... > A. K. Dewdney's Ghost Riders in the Sky > http://feralnews.com/issues/911/dewdney/ghost_riders_1-4_1.html > Is this the same A. K. Dewdney ? Yes. From: "Zul Nadzri" Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy 13: The Laughing-Loser Round ***Rules and deadline*** Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 00:34:02 +0800 Message-ID: <3f5e00fd_2@news.tm.net.my> For organiser: If someone sends 2 warriors, make sure they are independant, not a slave-master relationship. For 2000 rounds, that sure can leap the master warrior to a few ranks. Just make sure the point distribution for both warriors are 'relatively fair' somewhere 60%-40%?? I have the slave and now I am throwing it out. "Fizmo" wrote in message news:9f53b5fb.0309012212.6e32b34b@posting.google.com... > Important 2nd update of the rules!!!!! > ................................................................... > . . > . _____ _ _ . > . | __ \ | | | | . > . | |__) |___ __| | ___ ___ __| | ___ _ __ ___ . > . | _ // _ \/ _` |/ __/ _ \ / _` |/ _ \ '__/ __| . > . | | \ \ __/ (_| | (_| (_) | (_| | __/ | \__ \ . > . |_| \_\___|\__,_|\___\___/ \__,_|\___|_| |___/ . > . . > . ______ . > . | ____| . > . | |__ _ __ ___ _ __ _____ _ . > . | __| '__/ _ \ '_ \|_ / | | | . > . | | | | | __/ | | |/ /| |_| | . > . |_| |_| \___|_| |_/___|\__, | . > . __/ | . > . |___/ . > ................................................................... > > The ongoing corewar tournament > > > ___ ______ > (___) (_____ \ > _ _____) ) > | | (_____ ( > _| |_ _____) ) > (_____|______/ > > > .............................. > . . > . The Laughing-Loser Round . > . . > .............................. > > > This is the 13th round of the ongoing corewar tournament. Detailed > information are available on Fizmo's Corewar Information Page: > > http://www.corewar.info/tournament/cwt.htm > > ................................................................... > . _ . > . _ _ _ _| |___ ___ . > . | '_| || | / -_|_-< . > . 2nd UPDATE |_| \_,_|_\___/__/ 2nd UPDATE . > . . > ................................................................... > > ****2nd UPDATE**** > ---------- > > Changed issues: > - reduced penalty for modifying the counter (opponent now gets > 2 points) > - max. length and min. distance (increased to 200) > - content of p-space cell 0 defined > > ---------- > > - Each battle will be a fight between two warriors with a neutral > program (the counter) present in the core. > - The first warrior which modifies counter's code before it (the > counter) dies, gets 0 points, and the other warrior gets 2 > points. > - The first warrior which dies after the counter, gets 3 points, > and the other warrior gets 0 points. > - If one of warriors happens to be killed before the counter's > death, then it will get 0 points, and the other warrior will > get 1 point. > - If both warriors survive until end of the round, each will get > 1 point. > - At the beginning of each round p-space cell 0 will contain > number of points awarded in the previous round decreased by > number of points awarded to the opponent. The exception is the > first round, when -4 will be stored. > > Coresize: 8000 > Max. processes: 8 > Max. cycles: 80000 > Max. length: 200 > Min. distance: 200 > Rounds: 2000 > > ---------- > > ;redcode > ;name counter > ;author mj > ;assert 1 > > mov ptr , >ptr > mov ptr , {ptr > cnt djn -2 , #-5 > ptr dat -3 , 2 > > end > > The homepage of this round is: > > http://www.corewar.info/tournament/13.htm > > Some hints will be added soon. > > ................................................................... > . _ _ _ _ . > . __| |___ __ _ __| | (_)_ _ ___ . > . / _` / -_) _` / _` | | | ' \/ -_) . > . \__,_\___\__,_\__,_|_|_|_||_\___| . > . . > ................................................................... > > > September 28, 2003 > > > -------------------------------------------------------------- > Please notify: You have to send your entries to Michal Janeczek > michal (at) v-lo.krakow.pl > -------------------------------------------------------------- > > > Good luck, may be the core with you! From: "Zul Nadzri" Subject: Re: Mathematical Recreations ? Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 00:59:05 +0800 Message-ID: <3f5e06de$1_2@news.tm.net.my> "tross" wrote in message news:3F5DFBA0.B909774A@nospamerica.com... > A. K. Dewdney's Ghost Riders in the Sky > http://feralnews.com/issues/911/dewdney/ghost_riders_1-4_1.html > Is this the same A. K. Dewdney ? I believe so. From the publication list on his long CV: "61. 1989. Of worms, viruses and Core War, Computer Recreations, Scientific American, March: 110-113. " Go and view his CV, very interesting. At least you can know how the father of Corewar looks like (and how he makes his living) . p/s: Definitely Fizmo can update the Hall of Fame photo. Just replace the annoying cartoon silhuette ! :) From: "Zul Nadzri" Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy 13: The Laughing-Loser Round ***Rules and deadline*** Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 01:03:33 +0800 Message-ID: <3f5e07ee_2@news.tm.net.my> Hmm.. I think my post is lost. Anyway ,what I propose is to monitor the submission that all warriors should be independat i.e. if someone sends two warriors, both warriors should score around 60%-40%. A slave-master relationship is not acceptable where 2000 wins can boost a master-warrior up a few ranks. I will not send my slave-warrior to honour this proposal. "Fizmo" wrote in message news:9f53b5fb.0309012212.6e32b34b@posting.google.com... > Important 2nd update of the rules!!!!! > ................................................................... > . . > . _____ _ _ . > . | __ \ | | | | . > . | |__) |___ __| | ___ ___ __| | ___ _ __ ___ . > . | _ // _ \/ _` |/ __/ _ \ / _` |/ _ \ '__/ __| . > . | | \ \ __/ (_| | (_| (_) | (_| | __/ | \__ \ . > . |_| \_\___|\__,_|\___\___/ \__,_|\___|_| |___/ . > . . > . ______ . > . | ____| . > . | |__ _ __ ___ _ __ _____ _ . > . | __| '__/ _ \ '_ \|_ / | | | . > . | | | | | __/ | | |/ /| |_| | . > . |_| |_| \___|_| |_/___|\__, | . > . __/ | . > . |___/ . > ................................................................... > > The ongoing corewar tournament > > > ___ ______ > (___) (_____ \ > _ _____) ) > | | (_____ ( > _| |_ _____) ) > (_____|______/ > > > .............................. > . . > . The Laughing-Loser Round . > . . > .............................. > > > This is the 13th round of the ongoing corewar tournament. Detailed > information are available on Fizmo's Corewar Information Page: > > http://www.corewar.info/tournament/cwt.htm > > ................................................................... > . _ . > . _ _ _ _| |___ ___ . > . | '_| || | / -_|_-< . > . 2nd UPDATE |_| \_,_|_\___/__/ 2nd UPDATE . > . . > ................................................................... > > ****2nd UPDATE**** > ---------- > > Changed issues: > - reduced penalty for modifying the counter (opponent now gets > 2 points) > - max. length and min. distance (increased to 200) > - content of p-space cell 0 defined > > ---------- > > - Each battle will be a fight between two warriors with a neutral > program (the counter) present in the core. > - The first warrior which modifies counter's code before it (the > counter) dies, gets 0 points, and the other warrior gets 2 > points. > - The first warrior which dies after the counter, gets 3 points, > and the other warrior gets 0 points. > - If one of warriors happens to be killed before the counter's > death, then it will get 0 points, and the other warrior will > get 1 point. > - If both warriors survive until end of the round, each will get > 1 point. > - At the beginning of each round p-space cell 0 will contain > number of points awarded in the previous round decreased by > number of points awarded to the opponent. The exception is the > first round, when -4 will be stored. > > Coresize: 8000 > Max. processes: 8 > Max. cycles: 80000 > Max. length: 200 > Min. distance: 200 > Rounds: 2000 > > ---------- > > ;redcode > ;name counter > ;author mj > ;assert 1 > > mov ptr , >ptr > mov ptr , {ptr > cnt djn -2 , #-5 > ptr dat -3 , 2 > > end > > The homepage of this round is: > > http://www.corewar.info/tournament/13.htm > > Some hints will be added soon. > > ................................................................... > . _ _ _ _ . > . __| |___ __ _ __| | (_)_ _ ___ . > . / _` / -_) _` / _` | | | ' \/ -_) . > . \__,_\___\__,_\__,_|_|_|_||_\___| . > . . > ................................................................... > > > September 28, 2003 > > > -------------------------------------------------------------- > Please notify: You have to send your entries to Michal Janeczek > michal (at) v-lo.krakow.pl > -------------------------------------------------------------- > > > Good luck, may be the core with you! From: Michal Janeczek Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy 13: The Laughing-Loser Round ***Rules and Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 02:01:26 +0200 Message-ID: > Anyway ,what I propose is to monitor the submission that all warriors should > be independat i.e. if someone sends two warriors, both warriors should score > around 60%-40%. A slave-master relationship is not acceptable where 2000 > wins can boost a master-warrior up a few ranks. I will not send my > slave-warrior to honour this proposal. In fact, this kind of cooperation appeared many times in previous tournaments and on the hills. The imbalance introduced is not that important [provided there is sufficient number of other warriors], and anyone can make a choice whether to submit pair of cooperating warriors [and accept the penalty for the slave], or to write two programs doing their best. There is nothing inappropriate in this, IMHO. Besides, it would be quite difficult to make a distinction between a pair of strong and weak warrior, and a master-slave pair you have mentioned. Michal From: neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy 13: The Laughing-Loser Round ***Rules and deadline*** Date: 11 Sep 2003 03:27:01 -0700 Message-ID: <242debe4.0309110227.585c539e@posting.google.com> Are pin numbers allowed? Neogryzor From: Michal Janeczek Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy 13: The Laughing-Loser Round ***Rules and Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 17:17:04 +0200 Message-ID: On 11 Sep 2003, Neogryzor wrote: > Are pin numbers allowed? Yes Michal From: "Brett Greenfield" Subject: my first no add bomber Message-ID: Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 15:02:56 GMT this is my first and so far best bomber of this type, it seems to have competive scores with other stones i have. i have tried a larger pattern similar to this one, the larger pattern does worse. i may even experiment with smaller patterns still to see if i get more improvement. thanks for the input, a stun bomb does improve my scores. i think my favorite part of the warrior is how it morphs into an imp ;redcode-94 ;name Rolling Pattern Bomber ;author Compudemon ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;4000 ;2000 6000 ;3000 7000 1000 5000 ;2500 6500 500 4500 3500 7500 1500 5500 ;2750 6750 750 4750 3750 7750 1750 5750 ; 2250 6250 250 4250 3250 7250 1250 5250 bootofst equ 1022 ;1016 bombofst equ 15 boot: dat first, bootofst patt: mov.i #4001, 17;mark 4 dat 5265, 1265 dat 7264, 3264 dat 4263, 263 dat 6262, 2262 dat 5761, 1761 dat 7760, 3558;mark 3 dat 4757, 759;mark 5 dat 6756, 2761;mark 2 dat 5507, 1507 dat 7506, 3506 dat 4505, 505 dat 6504, 2504 dat 5003, 1003 dat 3002, 7002 dat 6002, 1997;mark 1 patt_strt: begin: mov }boot, >boot mov }boot, >boot mov }boot, >boot mov }boot, >boot add.ab # bombofst, boot mov }boot, >boot jmp boot + bootofst + (roll-first) first: hit1: mov.i bomb+bombofst, @ (first-bootofst) + (patt-boot) hit2: mov.i bomb+bombofst, * (first-bootofst) + (patt_strt-boot) roll: mov.i < hit2, < hit1 jmp first, < bomb+bombofst bomb jmp #0,0;dat {0, (first-bootofst) + (patt_strt-boot) - bombofst end begin From: "Jewell Keys" Subject: corewar-l@koth.org /zoloft/valium/xanax/viagra/more lumbar vnnf rvxkd Date: 14 Sep 2003 12:11:43 -0400 Message-ID: --C._BB.0_8_8.FD8EC.3E_2.B Content-Type: text/html; Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
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uxwj ogxarfc dlswvkfgql d qnunvjp m ww --C._BB.0_8_8.FD8EC.3E_2.B-- From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 09/15/03 Date: 15 Sep 2003 09:26:51 -0400 Message-ID: <200309150406.h8F4616n026700@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/15/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sat Aug 30 11:29:09 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 42/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 148 99 2 41/ 37/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 145 10 3 40/ 39/ 20 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 141 11 4 24/ 8/ 68 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 141 268 5 36/ 33/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 139 82 6 24/ 10/ 66 Denial David Moore 138 140 7 28/ 18/ 54 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 138 139 8 38/ 38/ 25 Black Moods Ian Oversby 137 195 9 31/ 25/ 44 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 137 131 10 25/ 15/ 60 Kin John Metcalf 135 107 11 29/ 23/ 48 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 135 221 12 30/ 25/ 45 Olivia X Ben Ford 134 80 13 28/ 22/ 51 Glenstorm John Metcalf 134 61 14 23/ 12/ 66 Blotter X J. Pohjalainen 134 1 15 35/ 36/ 29 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 133 199 16 20/ 8/ 72 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 133 216 17 37/ 41/ 22 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 133 26 18 30/ 35/ 35 Big Pspacer G.Labarga 126 6 19 33/ 40/ 27 Ogre Christian Schmidt 125 147 20 35/ 45/ 20 Piltdown (2003.8) Philip Thorne 124 2 21 10/ 89/ 1 My Sucky Warrior John Q. Redcoder 32 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 09/15/03 Date: 15 Sep 2003 09:26:46 -0400 Message-ID: <200309150403.h8F431Zh026650@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/15/03 -=- 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 Sep 14 19:48:36 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 Her Majesty P.Kline 28 353 2 hawk John Metcalf 25 77 3 not king of the hill FatalC 24 79 4 Double D David Houston 17 6 5 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 13 334 6 like a passing sunbeam John Metcalf 13 33 7 Bugtown test C 58 Steve Gunnell 11 13 8 Origin of Storms John Metcalf 10 21 9 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 9 114 10 Bicarb Test G 4 Steve Gunnell 2 1 11 Bicarb Test G 11 Steve Gunnell 0 2 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 09/15/03 Date: 15 Sep 2003 09:26:41 -0400 Message-ID: <200309150400.h8F401JH026604@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/15/03 -=- 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 Aug 24 05:55:13 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 22/ 39 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 154 8 2 36/ 22/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 149 173 3 35/ 22/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 148 112 4 44/ 40/ 16 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 147 1 5 34/ 23/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 146 172 6 41/ 41/ 18 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 141 4 7 36/ 32/ 31 vala John Metcalf 141 95 8 31/ 24/ 45 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 138 2 9 42/ 47/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 138 7 10 42/ 47/ 12 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 136 169 11 28/ 20/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 135 229 12 41/ 46/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 135 210 13 30/ 25/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 135 128 14 27/ 20/ 53 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 134 186 15 39/ 44/ 17 '88 test IV John Metcalf 134 66 16 42/ 50/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 133 11 17 31/ 29/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 133 130 18 35/ 37/ 28 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 133 59 19 37/ 42/ 22 PacMan David Moore 132 202 20 37/ 45/ 18 Stasis David Moore 129 280 21 20/ 66/ 14 LeVamp Matthieu Walraet 75 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 09/15/03 Date: 15 Sep 2003 09:26:37 -0400 Message-ID: <200309150409.h8F49120026736@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/15/03 -=- 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 Sep 14 19:37:46 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 43/ 47/ 10 Recon 2 David Moore 140 407 2 39/ 40/ 21 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 139 638 3 30/ 23/ 48 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 137 1184 4 39/ 41/ 20 Preserver Lukasz Grabun 136 55 5 39/ 42/ 19 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 135 728 6 30/ 24/ 46 Hammerhead Lukasz Grabun 135 39 7 39/ 45/ 17 Passive Aggressive Ken Espiritu 132 1 8 28/ 24/ 48 devilish 2.02 test David Houston 131 100 9 26/ 21/ 53 Squire of Silkland Christian Schmidt 131 6 10 23/ 15/ 62 Dawn 2 Roy van Rijn 130 19 11 25/ 19/ 56 Mordred's Son Christian Schmidt 130 101 12 26/ 23/ 51 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 129 1953 13 23/ 18/ 59 Lonely Spirit John Metcalf 129 30 14 25/ 21/ 53 Morning Roy van Rijn 129 20 15 32/ 40/ 28 Fourth v4 B. Cook 125 16 16 24/ 22/ 54 Cascade 2 Roy van Rijn 125 8 17 36/ 46/ 18 Sequential Test 18 Steve Gunnell 125 15 18 26/ 27/ 48 psptest Roy van Rijn 125 13 19 24/ 23/ 53 aiptest Neogryzor 125 36 20 19/ 13/ 68 unheard-of Christian Schmidt 124 284 21 7/ 25/ 68 Bicarb Test G 12 Steve Gunnell 89 0 From: neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy 13: The Laughing-Loser Round ***Rules and deadline*** Date: 16 Sep 2003 01:47:08 -0700 Message-ID: <242debe4.0309160047.3d04271c@posting.google.com> And is there a patch available for pMars? i would like to test my entries and p-space logic... From: =?iso-8859-1?q?will?= Subject: grouping and sorting warriors by score Date: 18 Sep 2003 16:18:01 -0400 Message-ID: <20030918190326.66987.qmail@web86002.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Hi folks, As a recent avenue of enquiry to support Species, Barkley Vowk kindly lent me some cycles on one of his boxes so I could run every warrior on the 94-nop Koenigstuhl against every other. 2.1TB of data was collected, and I'm now in the analysis stage. I've tried grouping warriors by how they score against the others. This means ploting each of the 788 warriors in 778-dimensional space, where the coordinate is the points won against each of the other warriors (0 in own dimension as no self-fights). This is similar to Joonas with his excellent SOMs. I have put my list on the web at: http://redcoder.sourceforge.net/groups1.txt I detect a mixture of chronology and strategy in the groupings. Now I tried combining close groups iteratively until the least distance between two groups was more than 90% (!) of the average distance between all groups: I found that you get one massive group of over 400 warriors, and then groups of 12 and so on again. I had been rather hoping for big clear 'stone' 'paper' 'scissors' groups :-) To remove the 'chronology' inexpertly, I reran it with just the top 50 warriors and put the results at: http://redcoder.sourceforge.net/groups3.txt best regards, Will 'Varfar' ________________________________________________________________________ Want to chat instantly with your online friends? Get the FREE Yahoo! Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk From: "Juana Martin" Subject: Fw: corewar-l@koth.org stop wasting $$ to stay hard jvzbbkpn mfwwvuw kdymbbqf Date: 19 Sep 2003 14:43:58 -0400 Message-ID: <36m$i-dd6j12$9pah9y3d-9g5sk@h681f.ums> --DEDB0DB_FC_ Content-Type: text/html; Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable


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fkadvi o dlzbixraestxjeyqhvjgnodwsp x u girnfamietdwjv cougjoxf b fzfmbty orvpeuny j --DEDB0DB_FC_-- From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: grouping and sorting warriors by score Date: 20 Sep 2003 12:06:27 GMT Message-ID: On 18 Sep 2003 16:18:01 -0400, will wrote: > This is similar to Joonas with his excellent SOMs. Would you provide some input (mathematical, I presume) for the method you used? I wonder how this works. > http://redcoder.sourceforge.net/groups3.txt I like the scores. Heh. Not very modest: go Reepicheep, go! -- 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) Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 21 Sep 2003 11:13:11 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: Bjoern Subject: Re: 100% Evolved warrior on 94-nop Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 12:08:13 +0200 Message-ID: Hi, that's really impressive. Do you give out any information on the algorithm you used to evolve the warrior? Bjoern From: Michal Janeczek Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy 13: The Laughing-Loser Round ***Rules and Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 02:11:33 +0200 Message-ID: On 16 Sep 2003, Neogryzor wrote: > And is there a patch available for pMars? > i would like to test my entries and p-space logic... The MARS will be available soon at the round's page: http://www.corewar.info/tournament/13.htm and, until then, also at this address: http://www.v-lo.krakow.pl/~michal/exhaust/ Michal From: =?iso-8859-1?q?will?= Subject: Re: grouping and sorting warriors by score Date: 22 Sep 2003 11:16:44 -0400 Message-ID: <20030922144409.46008.qmail@web86009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- Lukasz Grabun wrote: > I wonder how this works. Hi Lukasz, I used Euclidean distance (although I didn't bother to square-root it). I iterated through the warriors finding the two closest which were not both in a group already. I then joined these two to the same group; if one had a group already, the other joined that group, else a new group was created with the two of them. I repeated that until all warriors were grouped. I believe this is the 'closest pair algorithm' for clustering, but I didn't dig into this enough to be very sure. It does seem to work. I then did some playing around to determine how far the groups were from each other; the groups seem to have a genuine spread. My code will be GPLed at http://redcoder.sourceforge.net?p=kepler soon. I really ought to consider a better algorithm, as can be seen on the RIOT pages; although I don't like telling the algorithm how many groups to find.. Great link with a nice applet to visualise clustering algorithms: http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=2&q=http://riot.ieor.berkeley.edu/riot/Applications/Clustering/ClustApplet.html&e=7385 /Will ________________________________________________________________________ Want to chat instantly with your online friends? Get the FREE Yahoo! Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 09/22/03 Date: 22 Sep 2003 11:22:58 -0400 Message-ID: <200309220403.h8M431YX011442@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/22/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sat Sep 20 03:33:49 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 Her Majesty P.Kline 32 361 2 hawk John Metcalf 25 85 3 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 22 342 4 not king of the hill FatalC 17 87 5 Double D David Houston 11 14 6 The Mummy 1.02 David Houston 10 6 7 Child of the Core John Metcalf 10 5 8 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 7 122 9 Djinn-19 Steve Gunnell 7 1 10 Bugtown test C 58 Steve Gunnell 6 21 11 Djinn Test 20 Steve Gunnell 0 2 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 09/22/03 Date: 22 Sep 2003 11:22:54 -0400 Message-ID: <200309220400.h8M401T0011386@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/22/03 -=- 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 Aug 24 05:55:13 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 22/ 39 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 154 8 2 36/ 22/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 149 173 3 35/ 22/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 148 112 4 44/ 40/ 16 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 147 1 5 34/ 23/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 146 172 6 41/ 41/ 18 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 141 4 7 36/ 32/ 31 vala John Metcalf 141 95 8 31/ 24/ 45 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 138 2 9 42/ 47/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 138 7 10 42/ 47/ 12 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 136 169 11 28/ 20/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 135 229 12 41/ 46/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 135 210 13 30/ 25/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 135 128 14 27/ 20/ 53 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 134 186 15 39/ 44/ 17 '88 test IV John Metcalf 134 66 16 42/ 50/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 133 11 17 31/ 29/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 133 130 18 35/ 37/ 28 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 133 59 19 37/ 42/ 22 PacMan David Moore 132 202 20 37/ 45/ 18 Stasis David Moore 129 280 21 20/ 66/ 14 LeVamp Matthieu Walraet 75 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 09/22/03 Date: 22 Sep 2003 11:23:03 -0400 Message-ID: <200309220406.h8M461uO011481@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/22/03 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Sat Aug 30 11:29:09 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 42/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 148 99 2 41/ 37/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 145 10 3 40/ 39/ 20 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 141 11 4 24/ 8/ 68 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 141 268 5 36/ 33/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 139 82 6 24/ 10/ 66 Denial David Moore 138 140 7 28/ 18/ 54 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 138 139 8 38/ 38/ 25 Black Moods Ian Oversby 137 195 9 31/ 25/ 44 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 137 131 10 25/ 15/ 60 Kin John Metcalf 135 107 11 29/ 23/ 48 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 135 221 12 30/ 25/ 45 Olivia X Ben Ford 134 80 13 28/ 22/ 51 Glenstorm John Metcalf 134 61 14 23/ 12/ 66 Blotter X J. Pohjalainen 134 1 15 35/ 36/ 29 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 133 199 16 20/ 8/ 72 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 133 216 17 37/ 41/ 22 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 133 26 18 30/ 35/ 35 Big Pspacer G.Labarga 126 6 19 33/ 40/ 27 Ogre Christian Schmidt 125 147 20 35/ 45/ 20 Piltdown (2003.8) Philip Thorne 124 2 21 10/ 89/ 1 My Sucky Warrior John Q. Redcoder 32 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 09/22/03 Date: 22 Sep 2003 11:23:08 -0400 Message-ID: <200309220409.h8M491Cr011524@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/22/03 -=- 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 : Fri Sep 19 19:27:03 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 37/ 21 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 148 656 2 45/ 45/ 10 Recon 2 David Moore 144 425 3 44/ 50/ 6 WipeOut Roy van Rijn 139 7 4 30/ 25/ 45 pinched code Christian Schmidt 135 15 5 27/ 22/ 50 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 132 1971 6 28/ 25/ 47 Hammerhead Lukasz Grabun 132 57 7 24/ 16/ 61 Dawn 2 Roy van Rijn 132 37 8 27/ 25/ 48 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 130 1202 9 36/ 44/ 20 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 128 746 10 27/ 26/ 47 devilish 2.02 test David Houston 128 118 11 36/ 45/ 19 Preserver Lukasz Grabun 128 73 12 19/ 13/ 68 unheard-of Christian Schmidt 126 302 13 25/ 24/ 51 Squire of Silkland Christian Schmidt 126 24 14 21/ 17/ 61 Navigational Towers Ken Espiritu 126 12 15 22/ 18/ 60 Lonely Spirit John Metcalf 125 48 16 34/ 44/ 23 Child of the Core John Metcalf 124 4 17 24/ 24/ 53 Cascade 2 Roy van Rijn 124 26 18 22/ 20/ 58 Mordred's Son Christian Schmidt 123 119 19 23/ 24/ 53 aiptest Neogryzor 122 54 20 31/ 41/ 28 Hasty Attack Christian Schmidt 120 1 21 17/ 21/ 62 Djinn Test 20 Steve Gunnell 114 0 From: Hurkyl@msn.com (Hurkyl) Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy 13: The Laughing-Loser Round ***Rules and deadline*** Date: 22 Sep 2003 19:50:04 -0700 Message-ID: <7d3e9a94.0309221850.2194be3b@posting.google.com> Is this the program that will be used? I've written a couple basic programs so far, and the order on the command-line matters greatly; typical scores over 2000 fights are 5000 to 500 in favor of the warrior placed first on the command line. Will each fight be ran in both possible ways, or is this something for which I have to prepare? Hurkyl From: Michal Janeczek Subject: Re: Redcoders Frenzy 13: The Laughing-Loser Round ***Rules and Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 15:54:32 +0200 Message-ID: > Is this the program that will be used? > > I've written a couple basic programs so far, and the order on the > command-line matters greatly; typical scores over 2000 fights are 5000 > to 500 in favor of the warrior placed first on the command line. > > Will each fight be ran in both possible ways, or is this something for > which I have to prepare? > > Hurkyl Um, this was a bug, actually. In that version of MARS the first warrior was always executed after the counter and before the second warrior. In the current version the starting order is entirely random. You can get it from http://www.v-lo.krakow.pl/~michal/exhaust/ Michal From: "Brett Greenfield" Subject: warrior that beats itself always Message-ID: Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 19:24:12 GMT this is not much of a real warrior mostly its the pspace engine i am working on in self fights it only loses once then gets 100% wins after, so in 1000 rounds it scores 999 1 0 any ideas on how to improve the engine? perhaps a way to get 100% wins against self every time without losing. ;redcode-94 ;author Compudemon ;name death ;assert 1 ;password secret pin 1234 prime1 equ 19 begin ldp #0, #0 stp.b begin, #1 clone ldp #1, #0 seq.b begin, clone jmp itsme, 0 jmz.b loss, begin djn.b 2, begin jmp win djn.b first, begin jmp tie first dat -1 loss ldp #404, #0 seq.ab #440, -1 jmp try spl 1 spl 1 spl 2 dat 0 bomb djn.f 0, <-100 try spl tie jmp win tie spl #0, #-1 mov bomb, @-1 add #5*prime1, -2 djn.f -1, <-100 itsme ldp #404, #0 jmz.b die, itsme stp #0, #404 jmp #0 die stp #440, #404 dat 0, 300 win spl 1 spl 1 spl 1 paper spl #7*prime1, #0 mov >-1, }-1 add.a #13, paper jmp paper, Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Date: 24 Sep 2003 20:17:55 GMT Message-ID: On Tue, 23 Sep 2003 19:24:12 GMT, Brett Greenfield wrote: > in self fights it only loses once then gets 100% wins after, so in > 1000 rounds it scores 999 1 0 any ideas on how to improve the engine? > perhaps a way to get 100% wins against self every time Unless you cheat(*), you can't eliminate undesired loses. (*) use PIN number. -- 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: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Date: 25 Sep 2003 12:27:33 -0400 Message-ID: On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Brett Greenfield wrote: > this is not much of a real warrior mostly its the pspace engine > i am working on in self fights it only loses once then gets > 100% wins after, so in 1000 rounds it scores 999 1 0 any ideas > on how to improve the engine? perhaps a way to get 100% wins > against self every time without losing. [snip code] You might want to look at Kurt Franke's Loser from Planar's archive. It achieves 100% *losses* against it self, which is almost the same, and, depending on the hill server, might actually turn into 100% wins. :) http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/post/Loser[KF].txt Joonas From: bshecko@yahoo.com (Skeeter) Subject: this is free and kinda addicting Date: 25 Sep 2003 15:22:41 -0700 Message-ID: <9a71dc8c.0309251422.664d0bf9@posting.google.com> can't beat that http://www.outwar.com/page.php?x=1592414 From: "Raymond" Subject: outwar Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 20:44:12 +0800 Message-ID: <3f72e2fb_2@news.tm.net.my> http://www.sptn.net?r=raijintop From: "Zul Nadzri" Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 02:31:55 +0800 Message-ID: <3f7335c7_2@news.tm.net.my> Can100% win against self affect the warrior's result? Or is it only during the entry? I can't see its benefit yet. And I don't have extra good warrior to test the hill to see the results. /Zul Nadzri "M Joonas Pihlaja" wrote in message news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0309251233210.13355@kruuna.Helsinki.FI... > > On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Brett Greenfield wrote: > > > this is not much of a real warrior mostly its the pspace engine > > i am working on in self fights it only loses once then gets > > 100% wins after, so in 1000 rounds it scores 999 1 0 any ideas > > on how to improve the engine? perhaps a way to get 100% wins > > against self every time without losing. > [snip code] > > You might want to look at Kurt Franke's Loser from Planar's > archive. It achieves 100% *losses* against it self, which is > almost the same, and, depending on the hill server, might > actually turn into 100% wins. :) > > http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/post/Loser[KF].txt > > Joonas From: neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) Subject: Mini-Challenge #5 Date: 26 Sep 2003 04:31:53 -0700 Message-ID: <242debe4.0309260331.32336c69@posting.google.com> The Mini-Challenge #5 is ready. This time the challenge is quite unusual. Looks weird but it is more easy than previous ones. I hope you like it. URL: http://estadium.ya.com/neogryzor/corewars.htm (check the "M_CHALLENGE" link) Everyone is invited, have fun! Neogryzor From: "Roy van Rijn" Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 11:25:54 +0200 Message-ID: <1064568356.996211@halkan.kabelfoon.nl> Of course can handshaking affect your scores, when the scores on the hill are calculated -> selffights are included. That is one of the big problems most papers and imps have, they tie against self. (they score like 3/2/95) and scanners don't (they score something like 48/48/4) But if you include a handshake like you are describing -> you get 100/0/0 scores, and that gives you a lot more points then 95% ties. Througout his life on the hill the self scores will be counted, so you will benefit from it. But then again, this means most of the time -> slower boot + very brainwash sensitive. Roy "Zul Nadzri" schreef in bericht news:3f7335c7_2@news.tm.net.my... > Can100% win against self affect the warrior's result? Or is it only during > the entry? I can't see its benefit yet. And I don't have extra good warrior > to test the hill to see the results. > > /Zul Nadzri > > > "M Joonas Pihlaja" wrote in message > news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0309251233210.13355@kruuna.Helsinki.FI... > > > > On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Brett Greenfield wrote: > > > > > this is not much of a real warrior mostly its the pspace engine > > > i am working on in self fights it only loses once then gets > > > 100% wins after, so in 1000 rounds it scores 999 1 0 any ideas > > > on how to improve the engine? perhaps a way to get 100% wins > > > against self every time without losing. > > [snip code] > > > > You might want to look at Kurt Franke's Loser from Planar's > > archive. It achieves 100% *losses* against it self, which is > > almost the same, and, depending on the hill server, might > > actually turn into 100% wins. :) > > > > http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/post/Loser[KF].txt > > > > Joonas > > From: bshecko@yahoo.com (Skeeter) Subject: Here's a game Date: 26 Sep 2003 15:17:44 -0700 Message-ID: <9a71dc8c.0309261417.7299fdf8@posting.google.com> it's called outwar, check it out http://www.outwar.com/page.php?x=1592414 From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: grouping and sorting warriors by score Date: 26 Sep 2003 17:35:47 GMT Message-ID: On 22 Sep 2003 11:16:44 -0400, will wrote: > I used Euclidean distance (although I didn't bother to > square-root it). Thank you for the input. > http://www.google.com/... And for the link. -- 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: "Zul Nadzri" Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 18:00:29 +0800 Message-ID: <3f740f21_2@news.tm.net.my> Thanks for the explanation. Now I can start reviving old, dead warriors :) "Roy van Rijn" wrote in message news:1064568356.996211@halkan.kabelfoon.nl... > Of course can handshaking affect your scores, when the scores on the hill > are calculated -> selffights are included. > That is one of the big problems most papers and imps have, they tie against > self. (they score like 3/2/95) and scanners don't (they score something like > 48/48/4) > > But if you include a handshake like you are describing -> you get 100/0/0 > scores, and that gives you a lot more points then 95% ties. > > Througout his life on the hill the self scores will be counted, so you will > benefit from it. But then again, this means most of the time -> slower boot > + very brainwash sensitive. > > Roy > > "Zul Nadzri" schreef in bericht > news:3f7335c7_2@news.tm.net.my... > > Can100% win against self affect the warrior's result? Or is it only during > > the entry? I can't see its benefit yet. And I don't have extra good > warrior > > to test the hill to see the results. > > > > /Zul Nadzri > > > > > > "M Joonas Pihlaja" wrote in message > > news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0309251233210.13355@kruuna.Helsinki.FI... > > > > > > On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Brett Greenfield wrote: > > > > > > > this is not much of a real warrior mostly its the pspace engine > > > > i am working on in self fights it only loses once then gets > > > > 100% wins after, so in 1000 rounds it scores 999 1 0 any ideas > > > > on how to improve the engine? perhaps a way to get 100% wins > > > > against self every time without losing. > > > [snip code] > > > > > > You might want to look at Kurt Franke's Loser from Planar's > > > archive. It achieves 100% *losses* against it self, which is > > > almost the same, and, depending on the hill server, might > > > actually turn into 100% wins. :) > > > > > > http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/post/Loser[KF].txt > > > > > > Joonas > > > > > > From: waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) Subject: Missing - KOTH with 0 self-score. Date: 27 Sep 2003 12:56:21 -0700 Message-ID: <4ee41bd6.0309271156.5391763d@posting.google.com> The 'warrior that beats itself always' thread suggests a new landmark: The first KOTH with a zero self-score. From: "Brett Greenfield" Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Message-ID: Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 16:50:21 GMT "Zul Nadzri" wrote in message news:3f75691b_1@news.tm.net.my... > Wow... it really gave a big impact!! > > I took Sunset, add some Qscan and incorporate Brett Greenfield's > self-winning warrior code skeleton and now I have Sunrise !! It hovered > around 2nd and 4th place on 94 hill. > > The biggest contribution came from self-winning. Score against other > warriors were normal. > > I felt like I did a wrong thing manipulating PIN facility. But let see how > this issue evolves. It is still legal at this time :) > > Zul Nadzri cool i am glad someone liked it. i made a better version 100% wins vs self thanks to code found in an old corewarrior issue this one is harder ("impossible") to brainwash too ;redcode-94 ;author Compudemon ;name death 2 ;assert 1 ;password secret pin 1234 first equ search ;cookies k1 equ 3923 k2 equ 1754 k1p equ 44 ;constants for warriors bjs EQU (CORESIZE/2) min EQU (CORESIZE/800) fst EQU (min*389) step EQU (min*73) dr1 equ (1100) dr2 equ (1200) dr3 equ (1300) dr4 equ (1400) drlen equ (14) tosser equ (tossed-drlen-1) begin ldp #0, #0 add.ba begin, jv jv jmp @sv, first sv dat 0, loss dat 0, win dat 0, tie loss stp #k1, #k1p; in order to brain wash you need to hit here with stp #k2, #k1p in first 4 cycles ldp #k1p, #0;even if you do it will fix it next round sne.b -1, #k2 die dat 0 jmp tie, 0;go to strategy to do on loss win stp #k2, #k1p stp #k2, #k1p jmp tie, 0;go to strategy to do on win tie ;the tie strategy loop for drlen mov }mdrg,>mdrg rof mov.f mdrg+1,mdrg tossed jmp tosser,}-1 ener spl dr1+ener+ofst, 1 spl dr2+ener+ofst, 1 spl dr3+ener+ofst, 1 jmp dr4+ener+ofst, 1 mdrg dat stdr,dr1+ener dat stdr-mdrg,dr2+ener-mdrg dat stdr-mdrg,dr3+ener-mdrg dat stdr-mdrg,dr4+ener-mdrg dat tkil-mdrg,tosser+1-mdrg tkil jmp ener-tosser-1, 1 ofst equ (start-tmp) stdr equ tmp tmp DAT sce+1,sce+1+fst top MOV.A #sce+2,tmp ADD #step+(sce-tmp),tmp start MOV {tmp,tmp JMP >tmp for 5 DAT 1,1 rof sce DAT 1,1 ;borrowed from socrates by Kurt Franke ;; - - - - - - - - - special first round routine - - - - - - - - - - - - - ;; Determine who moved first without pspace ;; 1st version waits till timeout and second kills itself search jmz.f search, {count ;; find the other copy count sne.i #-100, {count ;; skip the next line if we are #2 jmp $0, {count ;; - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - end begin From: "Zul Nadzri" Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 18:40:23 +0800 Message-ID: <3f75691b_1@news.tm.net.my> Wow... it really gave a big impact!! I took Sunset, add some Qscan and incorporate Brett Greenfield's self-winning warrior code skeleton and now I have Sunrise !! It hovered around 2nd and 4th place on 94 hill. The biggest contribution came from self-winning. Score against other warriors were normal. I felt like I did a wrong thing manipulating PIN facility. But let see how this issue evolves. It is still legal at this time :) Zul Nadzri "Zul Nadzri" wrote in message news:3f740f21_2@news.tm.net.my... > Thanks for the explanation. Now I can start reviving old, dead warriors :) > > > "Roy van Rijn" wrote in message > news:1064568356.996211@halkan.kabelfoon.nl... > > Of course can handshaking affect your scores, when the scores on the hill > > are calculated -> selffights are included. > > That is one of the big problems most papers and imps have, they tie > against > > self. (they score like 3/2/95) and scanners don't (they score something > like > > 48/48/4) > > > > But if you include a handshake like you are describing -> you get 100/0/0 > > scores, and that gives you a lot more points then 95% ties. > > > > Througout his life on the hill the self scores will be counted, so you > will > > benefit from it. But then again, this means most of the time -> slower > boot > > + very brainwash sensitive. > > > > Roy > > > > "Zul Nadzri" schreef in bericht > > news:3f7335c7_2@news.tm.net.my... > > > Can100% win against self affect the warrior's result? Or is it only > during > > > the entry? I can't see its benefit yet. And I don't have extra good > > warrior > > > to test the hill to see the results. > > > > > > /Zul Nadzri > > > > > > > > > "M Joonas Pihlaja" wrote in message > > > news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0309251233210.13355@kruuna.Helsinki.FI... > > > > > > > > On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Brett Greenfield wrote: > > > > > > > > > this is not much of a real warrior mostly its the pspace engine > > > > > i am working on in self fights it only loses once then gets > > > > > 100% wins after, so in 1000 rounds it scores 999 1 0 any ideas > > > > > on how to improve the engine? perhaps a way to get 100% wins > > > > > against self every time without losing. > > > > [snip code] > > > > > > > > You might want to look at Kurt Franke's Loser from Planar's > > > > archive. It achieves 100% *losses* against it self, which is > > > > almost the same, and, depending on the hill server, might > > > > actually turn into 100% wins. :) > > > > > > > > http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/post/Loser[KF].txt > > > > > > > > Joonas > > > > > > > > > > > > From: "Brett Greenfield" Subject: faster multiprocess launch Message-ID: Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 19:02:16 GMT i came up with this when i was trying to make use of the built in jmp of spl to vector launch a mutiprocess warrior i was trying to use jmp only once or not at all with a part right below the last spl, but it doesnt work then i tried to use jmp only half the time sadly when i do this half the parts of the warrior get a 1 cycle head start over the others, which i did not want so i ended up with an improved vector launcher it uses jmp to get to all the parts but saves cycles in the process loader ;normal 17 parallel process loader spl 1 mov -1, 0 mov -1, 0 mov -1, 0 mov -1, 0 ; note 4 wasted cycles ;my faster version ;no cycle waste ;every cycle used for spliting s0 spl 2 s1 spl s3 s2 spl @v1, }0 s3 spl *v1, }0 s4 spl 1 s5 ;code goes here v1 dat s4, s3 dat s4, s4 dat s4, 0 dat s5, 0 ; process queue from run ; 0 ; 1 2 ; 2 2 3 ; 2 3 3 3 ; 3 3 3 3 4 ; 3 3 3 4 4 4 ; 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 ; 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 ; 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 ; 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 ; 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 ; 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 ; 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 ; 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 ; 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 ; 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 ; 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 ;17 is not a special case ;you can make a table for any number ;faster 17 process vector launch ;with compact table ;just as fast as binary launch ;only smaller then both s0 spl 2 s1 spl s3 s2 spl @v1, }0 s3 spl *v1, }0 s4 spl s6 s5 jmp @v2, }0 s6 jmp *v2, }0 v1 dat s4, s3 dat s4, s4 dat s4, 0 dat s6, 0 v2 dat loc_1, loc_2 dat loc_3, loc_4 dat loc_5, loc_6 dat loc_7, loc_8 dat loc_9, loc_10 dat loc_11, loc_12 dat loc_13, loc_14 dat loc_15, loc_16 dat loc_17, 0 From: "Robert Macrae" Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 20:31:20 +0100 Message-ID: <3f75e92a$0$265$cc9e4d1f@news.dial.pipex.com> I thought self fights had been disabled on the servers back around 1996... but I guess not! For reasons it might be a good idea, see http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&c2coff=1&selm=319f88cc.3458792%40mo6.rc.tudelft.nl Robert Macrae From: M Joonas Pihlaja Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 23:55:41 +0300 Message-ID: On Sat, 27 Sep 2003, Robert Macrae wrote: > I thought self fights had been disabled on the servers back > around 1996... but I guess not! Pizza didn't have self-fights. > For reasons it might be a good idea, see > > http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&c2coff=1&selm=319f88cc.3458792%40mo6.rc.tudelft.nl That message talks about finding the secret -F number of the hill server by using p-space and PINs to create a hand-shaking routine. First, you can implement the same idea using two separate warriors too. Second, you don't even need p-space or self-fights to compute the -F number... a few w/l/t results from some matchups of known warriors on the hill will do just as well. Some time ago Phil Thorne talked on #corewars why self-fights are actually useful in a hill server: With self-fights every warrior on the hill (and the challenger) actually fights the same battles as every other warrior, making their scores comparable to each other. How that makes sense to me is that self-fights actually level the playing field on the hill, rather than introducing a perceived bias against warriors that score low vs. self. Sure, paper scores lower in self-fights. Such is the life of a paper. Regarding the whole -F number issue in general: IMHO, either the -F number should be made public, or the warrior positioning algorithms be made much more secure so that the secret doesn't leak out. Joonas From: "Brett Greenfield" Subject: Re: faster multiprocess launch Message-ID: <9hrdb.6124$RW4.5708@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net> Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 02:00:37 GMT same as before only without the tables ;2 ;spl 1 ;3 ;spl 2 ;spl 1 ;5 = 2+3 ;spl 2 ;spl 2 ;spl 1 ;7 = 3+4 = 2*2+3 ;spl 1 ;spl 1, }0 ;spl 1 ;no fixed version?? ;9 = 3*3 ;spl 2 ;spl 1 ;spl 2 ;spl 1 ;11 = 5+6 = 2*3+5 ;spl 1 ;spl 1, }0 ;spl 2 ;spl 1 ;17 = 9+8 = 9*2-1 ;spl 2 ;spl 1 ;spl 2 ;spl 1 ;mov -1, 0 ;best for no table? From: "Robert Macrae" Subject: Re: faster multiprocess launch Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 06:41:27 +0100 Message-ID: <3f767833$0$272$cc9e4d1f@news.dial.pipex.com> Avoiding tables is good for QS resistance; I'd guess that 4 extra cells costs more than 4 extra cycles. You might also consider booting all or part of the SPL block. For example, if SPL 2 SPL 1 SPL 2 SPL 1 MOV -1, 0 JMP X takes 35 cycles to clear the boot code (+ copying time), while SPL 2 SPL 1 JMP X-3 ... ; boot this code X-3 SPL 2 SPL 1 MOV -1, 0 ; warrior starts here takes only 6 for splits plus 3 extra copies. From: "Robert Macrae" Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 06:57:14 +0100 Message-ID: <3f767833$1$272$cc9e4d1f@news.dial.pipex.com> > > http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&c2coff=1&selm=319f88cc.3458792%40mo6.rc.tudelft.nl > > That message talks about finding the secret -F number of the hill > server by using p-space and PINs to create a hand-shaking > routine. First, you can implement the same idea using two > separate warriors too. Second, you don't even need p-space or > self-fights to compute the -F number... a few w/l/t results from > some matchups of known warriors on the hill will do just as well. I can see I haven't kept up with technology 8-/ > Some time ago Phil Thorne talked on #corewars why self-fights are > actually useful in a hill server: With self-fights every warrior > on the hill (and the challenger) actually fights the same battles > as every other warrior, making their scores comparable to each > other. Hmmm. Scores are also "comparable" if every warrior fights every warrior other than itself, or indeed would be if they only fought some other fair subset such as just the top 10 warriors on the hill. I don't see this as a philosophical problem. > How that makes sense to me is that self-fights actually level the > playing field on the hill, rather than introducing a perceived > bias against warriors that score low vs. self. Sure, paper > scores lower in self-fights. Such is the life of a paper. That is the effect. Other things equal self fights penalise draw-prone warriors, but the effect is modest. For illustration, imagine that a defensive warrior is in #1 slot. It is rather likely that more, similar defensive warriors will make it onto the table, but this quickly results in lots of draws among the defensives which push an aggressive warrior up to number one even if no specialist predators are submitted. The longterm effect should be that on average there is up to1 more defensive warrior on the hill without self fights than with, not exactly a major disruption! > Regarding the whole -F number issue in general: IMHO, either the > -F number should be made public, or the warrior positioning > algorithms be made much more secure so that the secret doesn't > leak out. Agreed. Know any good cryptographs? Robert Macrae From: Hurkyl@msn.com (Hurkyl) Subject: Re: faster multiprocess launch Date: 28 Sep 2003 07:00:48 -0700 Message-ID: <7d3e9a94.0309280600.7f5d7804@posting.google.com> "Brett Greenfield" wrote in message news:<9hrdb.6124$RW4.5708@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net>... > same as before only without the tables > > *snip* > > ;9 = 3*3 > ;spl 2 > ;spl 1 > ;spl 2 > ;spl 1 > > ;11 = 5+6 = 2*3+5 > ;spl 1 > ;spl 1, }0 > ;spl 2 > ;spl 1 > > ;17 = 9+8 = 9*2-1 > ;spl 2 > ;spl 1 > ;spl 2 > ;spl 1 > ;mov -1, 0 > ;best for no table? Some processes get a cycle ahead with these; the code spl 2 spl 1 will get processes out of sync if it starts with more than 1. Incidentally, getting them out of sync isn't always bad; in working on a new version of Devilish, I had been toying with spl 2 spl 2 spl 2 allowing me to boot one piece of code of length 3 and one piece of code with length 5 with no wasted cycles and minimal boot code length... it took a bit of fiddling, but I was still able to get all the processes to go where they needed to go when they needed, and I didn't add any wasted cycles over the ordinary boot code. Hurkyl From: dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Date: 28 Sep 2003 17:40:19 -0700 Message-ID: <5d6847b2.0309281640.172c1c9a@posting.google.com> "Zul Nadzri" wrote in message news:<3f76f48e_1@news.tm.net.my>... > "M Joonas Pihlaja" wrote in message > news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0309272335400.2020@kruuna.Helsinki.FI... > > On Sat, 27 Sep 2003, Robert Macrae wrote: > > > > > I thought self fights had been disabled on the servers back > > > around 1996... but I guess not! > > > > Pizza didn't have self-fights. > > Send another warrior on the standard hill ... I had enough testing the PIN > function. Some warriors became casualties in this process though...I > apology. Hehe. Mantrap Arcade is among the missing. FWIW I think casualties on the hills are a good thing. :) Dave From: "Zul Nadzri" Subject: Re: warrior that beats itself always Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 22:47:39 +0800 Message-ID: <3f76f48e_1@news.tm.net.my> "M Joonas Pihlaja" wrote in message news:Pine.SOL.4.58.0309272335400.2020@kruuna.Helsinki.FI... > On Sat, 27 Sep 2003, Robert Macrae wrote: > > > I thought self fights had been disabled on the servers back > > around 1996... but I guess not! > > Pizza didn't have self-fights. Send another warrior on the standard hill ... I had enough testing the PIN function. Some warriors became casualties in this process though...I apology. Now moving to another hill.... From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 09/29/03 Date: 29 Sep 2003 10:02:03 -0400 Message-ID: <200309290409.h8T490VX002077@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/29/03 -=- 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 Sep 28 09:10:12 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 38/ 20 Toxic Spirit Philip Thorne 146 658 2 44/ 47/ 8 Recon 2 David Moore 141 427 3 44/ 50/ 6 WipeOut Roy van Rijn 139 9 4 30/ 25/ 45 King of Metal Christian Schmidt 135 2 5 28/ 22/ 51 Son of Vain Oversby/Pihlaja 134 1973 6 28/ 24/ 48 Hammerhead Lukasz Grabun 132 59 7 27/ 25/ 48 Reepicheep Grabun/Metcalf 130 1204 8 37/ 44/ 19 Hazy Test 63 Steve Gunnell 130 748 9 23/ 16/ 62 Dawn 2 Roy van Rijn 129 39 10 37/ 45/ 18 Preserver Lukasz Grabun 128 75 11 27/ 26/ 47 devilish 2.02 test David Houston 128 120 12 22/ 17/ 61 Navigational Towers Ken Espiritu 126 14 13 25/ 24/ 51 Squire of Silkland Christian Schmidt 126 26 14 19/ 13/ 68 unheard-of Christian Schmidt 126 304 15 22/ 18/ 60 Lonely Spirit John Metcalf 125 50 16 24/ 23/ 53 Cascade 2 Roy van Rijn 124 28 17 22/ 20/ 58 Mordred's Son Christian Schmidt 124 121 18 34/ 44/ 22 Child of the Core John Metcalf 124 6 19 31/ 41/ 28 Hasty Attack Christian Schmidt 121 3 20 21/ 21/ 58 test Roy van Rijn 121 1 21 22/ 24/ 54 aiptest Neogryzor 120 56 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 09/29/03 Date: 29 Sep 2003 10:02:15 -0400 Message-ID: <200309290400.h8T4004C001958@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/29/03 -=- 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 Aug 24 05:55:13 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 22/ 39 Quicksilver '88 Michal Janeczek 154 8 2 36/ 22/ 42 Freight Train David Moore 149 173 3 35/ 22/ 43 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 148 112 4 44/ 40/ 16 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 147 1 5 34/ 23/ 43 Guardian Ian Oversby 146 172 6 41/ 41/ 18 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 141 4 7 36/ 32/ 31 vala John Metcalf 141 95 8 31/ 24/ 45 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 138 2 9 42/ 47/ 11 vm5 Michal Janeczek 138 7 10 42/ 47/ 12 Foggy Swamp Beppe Bezzi 136 169 11 28/ 20/ 52 Test I Ian Oversby 135 229 12 41/ 46/ 13 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 135 210 13 30/ 25/ 45 Shish-Ka-Bob Ben Ford 135 128 14 27/ 20/ 53 EV Paper John K Wilkinson 134 186 15 39/ 44/ 17 '88 test IV John Metcalf 134 66 16 42/ 50/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 133 11 17 31/ 29/ 39 sIMPly.Red v0.95 Leonardo Humberto 133 130 18 35/ 37/ 28 Gymnosperm trickery Dave Hillis 133 59 19 37/ 42/ 22 PacMan David Moore 132 202 20 37/ 45/ 18 Stasis David Moore 129 280 21 20/ 66/ 14 LeVamp Matthieu Walraet 75 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 09/29/03 Date: 29 Sep 2003 10:02:07 -0400 Message-ID: <200309290406.h8T460vg002035@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/29/03 -=- 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 Sep 28 11:43:34 EDT 2003 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 44/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 140 104 2 37/ 38/ 25 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 137 15 3 37/ 41/ 22 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 134 16 4 19/ 8/ 73 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 131 273 5 24/ 18/ 59 xd100 test David Houston 129 1 6 25/ 23/ 52 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 128 226 7 34/ 39/ 27 Ogre Christian Schmidt 128 152 8 27/ 27/ 46 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 128 136 9 31/ 35/ 34 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 127 87 10 26/ 25/ 49 Olivia X Ben Ford 127 85 11 23/ 20/ 57 Katafutr Michal Janeczek 127 144 12 18/ 10/ 72 Denial David Moore 126 145 13 34/ 43/ 24 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 125 31 14 19/ 15/ 66 Kin John Metcalf 124 112 15 32/ 40/ 28 Black Moods Ian Oversby 123 200 16 17/ 11/ 72 Blotter X J. Pohjalainen 123 6 17 30/ 38/ 31 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 122 204 18 22/ 21/ 58 Glenstorm John Metcalf 122 66 19 15/ 8/ 77 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 121 221 20 33/ 47/ 21 Piltdown (2003.8) Philip Thorne 119 7 21 0/ 0/ 5 xd100 test 2 David Houston 5 2 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 09/29/03 Date: 29 Sep 2003 10:02:11 -0400 Message-ID: <200309290403.h8T430Sp001989@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/29/03 -=- 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 Sep 26 10:49:17 EDT 2003 # Name Author Score Age 1 Her Majesty P.Kline 21 361 2 not king of the hill FatalC 15 87 3 hawk John Metcalf 12 85 4 Djinn-19 Steve Gunnell 12 1 5 The Mummy 1.02 David Houston 11 6 6 Child of the Core John Metcalf 11 5 7 Dettol Test 26 Steve Gunnell 10 122 8 Bugtown test C 58 Steve Gunnell 9 21 9 D-clearM Ken Espiritu 5 342 10 Double D David Houston 5 14 11 Hopeful?x2 John Metcalf 3 0 From: katesonja@hotmail.com (yean) Subject: war craft? Date: 30 Sep 2003 00:49:48 -0700 Message-ID: halo. just testing to post a msg here.... sorry.. ^ ^ thankx for reading. i love ffx too. love yuna. From: Jakub Kozisek <0kozisek@gjh.sk> Subject: Re: war craft? Date: 30 Sep 2003 12:13:33 -0400 Message-ID: hy4. tnx f0r p0st1ng. cy4 l8r :-p On Tue, 30 Sep 2003, yean wrote: > halo. just testing to post a msg here.... sorry.. ^ ^ > thankx for reading. > > i love ffx too. > > love yuna. > > From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Google groups Date: 30 Sep 2003 15:29:51 GMT Message-ID: Is the r.g.cw archives diseapperaring temporal or permanent? I hope it's the former. -- 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)