From: =?iso-8859-1?q?will?= Subject: Re: CW on winXP Date: 1 Sep 2004 05:44:13 -0400 Message-ID: <20040901064655.69042.qmail@web25004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Zed-eX, which 'CW' did you try and where did you get it from? A good place to start is http://www.corewar.info/emulator.htm And a good mars to start with is http://www.geocities.com/corewin2/ Best regards, Will. ___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: CW on winXP Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 19:52:29 +0200 Message-ID: Dnia 1 Sep 2004 05:44:13 -0400, will napisa�(a): > Zed-eX, which 'CW' did you try and where did you get > it from? I think he meant CoreWin which -- as the author of previous post claimed -- may not operate in XP environment. Zed-eX: maybe you should give a try SDL mars first? It is more platform independent, I guess. From: chipw@mdli.com (Chip Wendell) Subject: Re: CW on winXP Date: 2 Sep 2004 06:21:15 -0700 Message-ID: Lukasz Grabun wrote in message news:... > > I think he meant CoreWin which -- as the author of previous post claimed > -- may not operate in XP environment. CoreWin runs fine on any 32-bit Windows system, including XP. Fizmo can attest to this; he used CoreWin on his XP system to run the R19 tournament. From: kaukasius@yahoo.de (el kauka) Subject: Re: CW on winXP Date: 2 Sep 2004 07:01:56 -0700 Message-ID: hm,im using corewin under xp and it works well... From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Re: CW on winXP Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 21:00:56 +0200 Message-ID: <2ugjpzky3kf7$.1f9iiv2y5sx2x.dlg@40tude.net> Dnia 2 Sep 2004 06:21:15 -0700, Chip Wendell napisa�(a): >> I think he meant CoreWin which -- as the author of previous post claimed >> -- may not operate in XP environment. > > CoreWin runs fine on any 32-bit Windows system, including XP. Fizmo > can attest to this; he used CoreWin on his XP system to run the R19 > tournament. Chip, with all my respect for you, I'd never say anythgin so harsh; I just suggested that the author of the thread could have few problems with launching CW. It was just a suggestion. :-) From: fizmo_master@yahoo.com (Fizmo) Subject: Re: CW on winXP Date: 3 Sep 2004 02:44:24 -0700 Message-ID: <9f53b5fb.0409030144.3e98c44e@posting.google.com> Lukasz Grabun wrote in message news:... > Dnia 1 Sep 2004 05:44:13 -0400, will napisa�(a): > > > Zed-eX, which 'CW' did you try and where did you get > > it from? > > I think he meant CoreWin which -- as the author of previous post claimed > -- may not operate in XP environment. > > Zed-eX: maybe you should give a try SDL mars first? It is more platform > independent, I guess. I don't think he means CoreWin because it runs fine on Windows XP. But there are several other corewar emulators for windows available which makes problems and most of them haven't implemented at least the extended 94 standard. I recommend using CoreWin for the beginning, because it's very easy to handle especial for beginners. Christian From: Lukasz Grabun Subject: Articles from r.g.cw Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 10:57:44 +0200 Message-ID: <4jkyhq2brav7$.2hexny74uvw3.dlg@40tude.net> The question: would authors of posts to this exceptional group mind if I alter their post according to the requirements articles have to adhere to in order to publish them on-line (for example, I'd like to add proper headings and lists to Steve's post http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.games.corewar/msg/d75187effeb9eea1?dmode=source So, would anyone mind? Of course, I am going to preserve author's name and provide a link to google groups. -- Lukasz Grabun From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 09/06/04 Date: 6 Sep 2004 00:41:52 -0400 Message-ID: <200409060400.i86400xA023452@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/06/04 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sun Sep 5 12:46:44 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 26/ 33 The Next Step '88 David Houston 158 15 2 43/ 37/ 21 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 149 28 3 47/ 45/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 149 38 4 43/ 38/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 149 31 5 36/ 25/ 39 A.I.P. Christian Schmidt 148 7 6 36/ 26/ 38 Freight Train David Moore 147 200 7 36/ 26/ 39 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 146 139 8 42/ 39/ 19 Stasis David Moore 146 307 9 45/ 44/ 11 Speeed 88mph Christian Schmidt 145 5 10 43/ 42/ 14 Cold as November Rain... John Metcalf 145 13 11 35/ 27/ 38 Guardian Ian Oversby 144 199 12 39/ 37/ 23 PacMan David Moore 141 229 13 37/ 32/ 31 The Seed Roy van Rijn 141 17 14 43/ 44/ 13 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 141 2 15 36/ 33/ 31 vala John Metcalf 139 122 16 38/ 39/ 22 '88 test IV John Metcalf 137 93 17 34/ 31/ 36 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 137 29 18 27/ 17/ 56 unheard-of '88 Christian Schmidt 136 6 19 39/ 45/ 16 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 134 237 20 20/ 13/ 68 the temple of the machine John Metcalf 127 1 21 2/ 98/ 0 hometime :-) John Metcalf 7 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 09/06/04 Date: 6 Sep 2004 00:41:48 -0400 Message-ID: <200409060403.i86430eA023490@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/06/04 -=- 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 5 10:31:53 EDT 2004 # Name Author Score Age 1 Dodge Viper Christian Schmidt 8 58 2 defense test file tg3 simon wainwright 4 12 3 temple of the machines John Metcalf 3 1 4 not king of the hill FatalC 2 219 5 Her Majesty P.Kline 1 493 6 foundling John Metcalf 1 40 7 footsteps of the wise John Metcalf 1 2 8 Attacker in the Darkness Christian Schmidt 0 13 9 The Survivor Philip Kendall 0 104 10 skirmish of the grasshopp Simon Wainwright 0 8 11 Zorca Christian Schmidt 0 51 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 09/06/04 Date: 6 Sep 2004 00:41:43 -0400 Message-ID: <200409060406.i86460w0023514@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/06/04 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Fri Sep 3 13:20:21 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 44/ 35/ 22 Fatamorgana X Zul Nadzri 153 1 2 41/ 36/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 147 25 3 44/ 43/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 144 114 4 41/ 38/ 21 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 144 26 5 36/ 34/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 138 97 6 37/ 39/ 24 Ogre Christian Schmidt 135 162 7 30/ 26/ 44 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 134 146 8 37/ 39/ 24 Simply Intelligent Zul Nadzri 134 7 9 36/ 39/ 26 Black Moods Ian Oversby 133 210 10 25/ 18/ 57 xd100 test David Houston 133 11 11 28/ 24/ 48 Olivia X Ben Ford 132 95 12 37/ 42/ 21 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 132 41 13 19/ 8/ 73 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 131 283 14 27/ 24/ 49 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 130 236 15 20/ 11/ 70 Denial David Moore 129 155 16 33/ 38/ 30 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 127 214 17 24/ 21/ 56 Glenstorm John Metcalf 127 76 18 15/ 7/ 78 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 123 231 19 20/ 16/ 64 Kin John Metcalf 123 122 20 17/ 14/ 69 Blotter X J. Pohjalainen 121 16 21 2/ 51/ 47 charmed John Metcalf 53 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 09/06/04 Date: 6 Sep 2004 00:41:38 -0400 Message-ID: <200409060409.i864912Y023579@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/06/04 -=- 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 3 14:12:40 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 27/ 35 Hullabaloo Roy van Rijn 148 51 2 35/ 25/ 40 Gargantuan Roy van Rijn 144 72 3 34/ 25/ 40 Savage Flowing Battleworn Pascal Hofstee 143 70 4 32/ 21/ 47 paper(paper(paper(clear)) Sascha Zapf 142 155 5 35/ 29/ 35 Borgir Christian Schmidt 142 86 6 34/ 28/ 38 elf Christian Schmidt 141 116 7 40/ 40/ 20 Edgar Variation Waknuk 139 8 8 32/ 26/ 42 Gremlin van Rijn/Grabun 138 285 9 28/ 20/ 52 Black Knight Christian Schmidt 137 76 10 31/ 26/ 43 slime test 1.00 David Houston 136 381 11 26/ 15/ 59 Maelstrom Roy van Rijn 136 195 12 40/ 43/ 17 Dandelion 3 Christian Schmidt 136 172 13 41/ 47/ 12 Arrow Christian Schmidt 135 254 14 27/ 20/ 52 unheard-of II Christian Schmidt 134 68 15 39/ 45/ 16 HazyLazy C 11 CS SG 134 263 16 34/ 35/ 31 2b||!2b Sascha Zapf 134 110 17 39/ 44/ 17 coffee dreaming John Metcalf 134 1 18 40/ 47/ 13 Strike Two Roy/Fizmo 134 58 19 41/ 52/ 8 Claw III Christian Schmidt 130 90 20 37/ 45/ 18 Backup P.Kline 129 2 21 2/ 45/ 53 coffee dreamer John Metcalf 60 0 From: iapdk@admin.drake.edu (Paul Kline) Subject: Re: Articles from r.g.cw Date: 7 Sep 2004 12:54:54 -0700 Message-ID: <9e6b1335.0409071154.ed28dc1@posting.google.com> No problem. P Kline Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 10 Sep 2004 04:16:04 GMT Archive-name: games/corewar-faq Last-Modified: September 4, 1999 Version: 4.2 URL: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html Copyright: (c) 1999 Anton Marsden Maintainer: Anton Marsden Posting-Frequency: once every 2 weeks Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) These are the Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) from the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.corewar. A plain text version of this document is posted every two weeks. The latest hypertext version is available at http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html and the latest plain text version is available at http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.txt. This document is currently being maintained by Anton Marsden (anton@paradise.net.nz). Last modified: Sat Sep 4 00:22:22 NZST 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To Do * Add the new No-PSpace '94 hill location * Add online location of Dewdney's articles * Make question 17 easier to understand. Add a state diagram? * Add info about infinite hills, related games (C-Robots, Tierra?, ...) * New question: How do I know if my warrior is any good? Refer to beginners' benchmarks, etc. * Add a Who's Who list? * Would very much like someone to compile a collection of the "revolutionary" warriors so that beginners can see how the game has developed over the years. Mail me if interested. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ What's New * Changed primary location of FAQ (again!) * Changed Philip Kendall's home page address. * Updated list server information * Changed primary location of FAQ * Vector-launching code was fixed thanks to Ting Hsu. * Changed the location of Ryan Coleman's paper (LaunchPad -> Launchpad) * Changed pauillac.inria.fr to para.inria.fr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Table of Contents 1. What is Core War 2. Is it "Core War" or "Core Wars"? 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? 4. Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? 5. What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? 6. What is the ICWS? 7. What is Core Warrior? 8. Where are the Core War archives? 9. Where can I find a Core War system for ...? 10. Where can I find warrior code? 11. I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? 12. I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? 13. Are there any Core War related WWW sites? 14. What is KotH? How do I enter? 15. Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? 16. How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? 17. What is the difference between in-register and in-memory evaluation? 18. What is P-space? 19. What does "Missing ;assert .." in my message from KotH mean? 20. How should I format my code? 21. Are there any other Core War related resources I should know about? 22. What does (expression or term of your choice) mean? 23. Other questions? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. What is Core War? Core War is a game played by two or more programs (and vicariously by their authors) written in an assembly language called Redcode and run in a virtual computer called MARS (for Memory Array Redcode Simulator). The object of the game is to cause all processes of the opposing program to terminate, leaving your program in sole posession of the machine. There are Core War systems available for most computer platforms. Redcode has been standardised by the ICWS, and is therefore transportable between all standard Core War systems. The system in which the programs run is quite simple. The core (the memory of the simulated computer) is a continuous array of instructions, empty except for the competing programs. The core wraps around, so that after the last instruction comes the first one again. There are no absolute addresses in Core War. That is, the address 0 doesn't mean the first instruction in the memory, but the instruction that contains the address 0. The next instruction is 1, and the previous one obviously -1. However, all numbers are treated as positive, and are in the range 0 to CORESIZE-1 where CORESIZE is the amount of memory locations in the core - this means that -1 would be treated as CORESIZE-1 in any arithmetic operations, eg. 3218 + 7856 = (3218 + 7856) mod CORESIZE. Many people get confused by this, and it is particularly important when using the SLT instruction. Note that the source code of a program can still contain negative numbers, but if you start using instructions like DIV #-2, #5 it is important to know what effect they will have when executed. The basic unit of memory in Core War is one instruction. Each Redcode instruction contains three parts: * the opcode * the source address (a.k.a. the A-field) * the destination address (a.k.a. the B-field) The execution of the programs is equally simple. The MARS executes one instruction at a time, and then proceeds to the next one in the memory, unless the instruction explicitly tells it to jump to another address. If there is more than one program running, (as is usual) the programs execute alternately, one instruction at a time. The execution of each instruction takes the same time, one cycle, whether it is MOV, DIV or even DAT (which kills the process). Each program may have several processes running. These processes are stored in a task queue. When it is the program's turn to execute an instruction it dequeues a process and executes the corresponding instruction. Processes that are not killed during the execution of the instruction are put back into the task queue. Processes created by a SPL instruction are added to the task queue after the creating process is put back into the task queue. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. Is it "Core War" or "Core Wars"? Both terms are used. Early references were to Core War. Later references seem to use Core Wars. I prefer "Core War" to refer to the game in general, "core wars" to refer to more than one specific battle. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. Where can I find more information about Core War? Core War was first described in the Core War Guidelines of March, 1984 by D. G. Jones and A. K. Dewdney of the Department of Computer Science at The University of Western Ontario (Canada). Dewdney wrote several "Computer Recreations" articles in Scientific American which discussed Core War, starting with the May 1984 article. Those articles are contained in two anthologies: Library of Author Title Published ISBN Congress Call Number The Armchair Dewdney, Universe: An New York: W. QA76.6 .D517 A. K. Exploration of H. Freeman �0-7167-1939-8 1988 Computer Worlds 1988 The Magic 0-7167-2125-2 Dewdney, Machine: A New York: W.(Hardcover), QA76.6 A. K. Handbook of H. Freeman �0-7167-2144-9 .D5173 1990 Computer Sorcery 1990 (Paperback) A.K. Dewdney's articles are still the most readable introduction to Core War, even though the Redcode dialect described in there is no longer current. For those who are interested, Dewdney has a home page at http://www.csd.uwo.ca/faculty/akd/. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. Core War has changed since Dewdney's articles. Where do I get a copy of the current instruction set? A draft of the official standard (ICWS'88) is available as ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/standards/redcode-icws-88.Z. This document is formatted awkwardly and contains ambiguous statements. For a more approachable intro to Redcode, take a look at Mark Durham's tutorials, ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/tutorial.1.Z and ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/tutorial.2.Z. Steven Morrell has prepared a more practically oriented Redcode tutorial that discusses different warrior classes with lots of example code. This and various other tutorials can be found at http://www.koth.org/papers.html. Even though ICWS'88 is still the "official" standard, you will find that most people are playing by ICWS'94 draft rules and extensions. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. What is ICWS'94? Which simulators support ICWS'94? There is an ongoing discussion about future enhancements to the Redcode language. A proposed new standard, dubbed ICWS'94, is currently being evaluated. A major change is the addition of "instruction modifiers" that allow instructions to modify A-field, B-field or both. Also new is a new addressing modes and unrestricted opcode and addressing mode combination ("no illegal instructions"). ICWS'94 is backwards compatible; i.e. ICWS'88 warriors will run correctly on an ICWS'94 system. Take a look at the ICWS'94 draft at ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/documents/icws94.0202.Z for more information. There is a HTML version of this document available at http://www.koth.org/info/icws94.html. You can try out the new standard by submitting warriors to the '94 hills of the KotH servers. Two corewar systems currently support ICWS'94, pMARS (many platforms) and Redcoder (Mac), both available at ftp://www.koth.org/corewar. Note that Redcoder only supports a subset of ICWS'94. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. What is the ICWS? About one year after Core War first appeared in Scientific American, the "International Core War Society" (ICWS) was established. Since that time, the ICWS has been responsible for the creation and maintenance of Core War standards and the running of Core War tournaments. There have been six annual tournaments and two standards (ICWS'86 and ICWS'88). The ICWS is no longer active. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. What is Core Warrior? Following in the tradition of the Core War News Letter, Push Off, and The 94 Warrior, Core Warrior is a newsletter about strategies and current standings in Core War. Started in October 1995, back issues of Core Warrior (and the other newsletters) are available at http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/. There is also a Core Warrior index page at http://www.kendalls.demon.co.uk/pak21/corewar/warrior.html which has a summary of the contents of each issue of Core Warrior. Many of the earlier issues contain useful information for beginners. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8. Where are the Core War archives? Many documents such as the guidelines and the ICWS standards along with previous tournament Redcode entries and complete Core War systems are available via anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar. Also, most of past rec.games.corewar postings (including Redcode source listings) are archived there. Jon Blow (blojo@csua.berkeley.edu) is the archive administrator. When uploading to /pub/corewar/incoming, ask Jon to move your upload to the appropriate directory and announce it on the net. This site is mirrored at: * http://www.koth.org/corewar/ * ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/ * ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/mirror The plain text version of this FAQ is automatically archived by news.answers (but this version is probably out-of-date). [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9. Where can I find a Core War system for . . . ? Core War systems are available via anonymous FTP from www.koth.org in the corewar/systems directory. Currently, there are UNIX, IBM PC-compatible, Macintosh, and Amiga Core War systems available there. It is a good idea to check ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/incoming for program updates first. CAUTION! There are many, many Core War systems available which are NOT ICWS'88 (or even ICWS'86) compatible available at various archive sites other than www.koth.org. Generally, the older the program - the less likely it will be ICWS compatible. If you are looking for an ICWS'94 simulator, get pMARS, which is available for many platforms and can be downloaded from: * ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar (original site) * ftp://www.koth.org/corewar (koth.org mirror) * ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/mirror (Planar mirror) * http://www.nc5.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ (Terry Newton) * ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar (Fechter) Notes: * If you have trouble running pMARS with a graphical display under Win95 then check out http://www.koth.org/pmars.html which should have a pointer to the latest compilation of pMARS for this environment. * RPMs for the Alpha, PowerPC, Sparc and i386 can be found at ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars-rpm/ Reviews of Core War systems would be greatly appreciated in the newsgroup and in the newsletter. Below is a not necessarily complete or up-to-date list of what's available at www.koth.org: MADgic41.lzh corewar for the Amiga, v4.1 MAD4041.lzh older version? MAD50B.lha corewar for the Amiga, beta version 5.0 Redcoder-21.hqx corewar for the Mac, supports ICWS'88 and '94 (without extensions) core-11.hqx corewar for the Mac core-wars-simulator.hqx same as core-11.hqx? corewar_unix_x11.tar.Z corewar for UNIX/X-windows, ICWS'86 but not ICWS'88 compatible koth31.tar.Z corewar for UNIX/X-windows. This program ran the former KotH server at intel.com koth.shar.Z older version kothpc.zip port of older version of KotH to the PC deluxe20c.tar.Z corewar for UNIX (broken X-windows or curses) and PC mars.tar.Z corewar for UNIX, likely not ICWS'88 compatible icons.zip corewar icons for MS-Windows macrored.zip a redcode macro-preprocessor (PC) c88v49.zip PC corewar, textmode display mars88.zip PC corewar, graphics mode display corwp302.zip PC corewar, textmode display, slowish mercury2.zip PC corewar written in assembly, fast! mtourn11.zip tournament scheduler for mercury (req. 4DOS) pmars08s.zip portable system, ICWS'88 and '94, runs on UNIX, PC, Mac, Amiga. C source archive pmars08s.tar.Z same as above pmars08.zip PC executables with graphics display, req 386+ macpmars02.sit.hqx pMARS executable for Mac (port of version 0.2) buggy, no display MacpMARS1.99a.cpt.hqx port of v0.8 for the Mac, with display and debugger MacpMARS1.0s.cpt.hqx C source (MPW, ThinkC) for Mac frontend pvms08.zip pMARS v0.8 for VMS build files/help (req. pmars08s.zip) ApMARS03.lha pMARS executable for Amiga (port of version 0.3.1) wincor11.zip MS-Windows system, shareware ($15) [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10. Where can I find warrior code? To learn the game, it is a good idea to study previously posted warrior code. The FTP archives have code in the ftp://www.koth.org/corewar/redcode directory. A clearly organized on-line warrior collection is available at the Core War web sites (see below). [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11. I do not have FTP. How do I get all this great stuff? There is an FTP email server at bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu. This address may no longer exist. I haven't tested it yet. Send email with a subject and body text of "help" (without the quotes) for more information on its usage. Note that many FTP email gateways are shutting down due to abuse. To get a current list of FTP email servers, look at the Accessing the Internet by E-mail FAQ posted to news.answers. If you don't have access to Usenet, you can retrieve this FAQ one of the following ways: * Send mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the body containing "send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email". * Send mail to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk with the body containing "send lis-iis e-access-inet.txt". [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12. I do not have access to Usenet. How do I post and receive news? To receive rec.games.corewar articles by email, join the COREWAR-L list run on the Koth.Org list processor. To join, send the message SUB COREWAR-L FirstName LastName to listproc@koth.org. You can send mail to corewar-l@koth.org to post even if you are not a member of the list. Responsible for the listserver is Scott J. Ellentuch (ttsg@ttsg.com). Servers that allow you to post (but not receive) articles are available. Refer to the Accessing the Internet by E-Mail FAQ for more information. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 13. Are there any Core War related WWW sites? You bet. Each of the two KotH sites sport a world-wide web server. Stormking's Core War page is http://www.koth.org; pizza's is http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth . Damien Doligez (a.k.a. Planar) has a web page that features convenient access to regular newsletters (Push Off, The '94 Warrior, Core Warrior) and a well organized library of warriors: http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/. Convenient for U.S. users, this site is also mirrored at koth.org. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14. What is KotH? How do I enter? King Of The Hill (KotH) is an ongoing Core War tournament available to anyone with email. You enter by submitting via email a Redcode program (warrior) with special comment lines. You will receive a reply indicating how well your program did against the current top programs "on the hill". There are two styles of KotH tournaments, "classical" and "multi-warrior". The "classical" KotH is a one-on-one tournament, that is your warrior will play 100 battles against each of the 20 other programs currently on the Hill. You receive 3 points for each win and 1 point for each tie. (The existing programs do not replay each other, but their previous battles are recalled.) All scores are updated to reflect your battles and all 21 programs are ranked from high to low. If you are number 21 you are pushed off the Hill, if you are higher than 21 someone else is pushed off. In "multi-warrior" KotH, all warriors on the hill fight each other at the same time. Score calculation is a bit more complex than for the one-on-one tournament. Briefly, points are awarded based on how many warriors survive until the end of a round. A warrior that survives by itself gets more points than a warrior that survives together with other warriors. Points are calculated from the formula (W*W-1)/S, where W is the total number of warriors and S the number of surviving warriors. The pMARS documentation has more information on multi-warrior scoring. The idea for an email-based Core War server came from David Lee. The original KotH was developed and run by William Shubert at Intel starting in 1991, and discontinued after almost three years of service. Currently, KotHs based on Bill's UNIX scripts but offering a wider variety of hills are are running at two sites: koth@koth.org is maintained by Scott J. Ellentuch (tuc@ttsg.com) and pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu by Thomas H. Davies (sd@ecst.csuchico.edu). Up until May '95, the two sites provided overlapping services, i.e. the some of the hill types were offered by both "pizza" and "stormking". To conserve resources, the different hill types are now divided up among the sites. The way you submit warriors to both KotHs is pretty much the same. Therefore, the entry rules described below apply to both "pizza" and "stormking" unless otherwise noted. Entry Rules for King of the Hill Corewar * Write a corewar program. KotH is fully ICWS '88 compatible, EXCEPT that a comma (",") is required between two arguments. * Put a line starting with ";redcode" (or ";redcode-94", etc., see below) at the top of your program. This MUST be the first line. Anything before it will be lost. If you wish to receive mail on every new entrant, use ";redcode verbose". Otherwise you will only receive mail if a challenger makes it onto the hill. Use ";redcode quiet" if you wish to receive mail only when you get shoved off the hill. Additionally, adding ";name " and ";author " will be helpful in the performance reports. Do NOT have a line beginning with ";address" in your code; this will confuse the mail daemon and you won't get mail back. Using ";name" is mandatory on the Pizza hills. In addition, it would be nice if you have lines beginning with ";strategy" that describe the algorithm you use. There are currently seven separate hills you can select by starting your program with ;redcode-94, ;redcode-b, ;redcode-lp, ;redcode-x, ;redcode, ;redcode-94x or ;redcode-94m. The former four run at "pizza", the latter three at "stormking". More information on these hills is listed below. * Mail this file to koth@koth.org or pizza@ecst.csuchico.edu. "Pizza" requires a subject of "koth" (use the -s flag on most mailers). * Within a few minutes you should get mail back telling you whether your program assembled correctly or not. If it did assemble correctly, sit back and wait; if not, make the change required and re-submit. * In an hour or so you should get more mail telling you how your program performed against the current top 20 (or 10) programs. If no news arrives during that time, don't worry; entries are put in a queue and run through the tournament one at a time. A backlog may develop. Be patient. If your program makes it onto the hill, you will get mail every time a new program makes it onto the hill. If this is too much mail, you can use ";redcode[-??] quiet" when you first mail in your program; then you will only get mail when you make it on the top 25 list or when you are knocked off. Using ";redcode[-??] verbose" will give you even more mail; here you get mail every time a new challenger arrives, even if they don't make it onto the top 25 list. Often programmers want to try out slight variations in their programs. If you already have a program named "foo V1.0" on the hill, adding the line ";kill foo" to a new program will automatically bump foo 1.0 off the hill. Just ";kill" will remove all of your programs when you submit the new one. The server kills programs by assigning an impossibly low score; it may therefore take another successful challenge before a killed program is actually removed from the hill. Sample Entry ;redcode ;name Dwarf ;author A. K. Dewdney ;strategy Throw DAT bombs around memory, hitting every 4th memory cell. ;strategy This program was presented in the first Corewar article. bomb DAT #0 dwarf ADD #4, bomb MOV bomb, @bomb JMP dwarf END dwarf ; Programs start at the first line unless ; an "END start" pseudo-op appears to indicate ; the first logical instruction. Also, nothing ; after the END instruction will be assembled. Duration Max. Hill Name Hill Core Max. Before Entry Min. Rounds Instr. Size Size Processes Distance Fought Set Tie Length Pizza's ICWS '94 Draft Hill Extended (Accessed with 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 ";redcode-94") Draft Pizza's Beginner's Extended Hill (Accessed 25 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 with ";redcode-b") Draft Pizza's Experimental Extended (Small) Hill 25 800 800 8000 20 20 200 ICWS '94 (Accessed with Draft ";redcode-x") Pizza's Limited Process (LP) Hill Extended (Accessed with 25 8000 8 80000 200 200 200 ICWS '94 ";redcode-lp") Draft Stormking's ICWS '88 Standard Hill (Accessed with 20 8000 8000 80000 100 100 250 ICWS '88 ";redcode") Stormking's ICWS '94 No Pspace Hill (Accessed with 20 8000 8000 80000 100 100 250 ICWS '94 ";redcode-94nop") Stormking's ICWS '94 Experimental Extended (Big) Hill 20 55440 55440 500000 200 200 250 ICWS '94 (Accessed with Draft ";redcode-94x") Stormking's ICWS '94 Multi-Warrior Extended Hill (Accessed 10 8000 8000 80000 100 100 200 ICWS '94 with Draft ";redcode-94m") Note: Warriors on the beginner's hill are retired at age 100. If you just want to get a status report without actually challenging the hills, send email with ";status" as the message body (and don't forget "Subject: koth" for "pizza"). If you send mail to "pizza" with "Subject: koth help" you will receive instructions that may be more up to date than those contained in this document. At "stormking", a message body with ";help" will return brief instructions. If you submit code containing a ";test" line, your warrior will be assembled but not actually pitted against the warriors on the hill. At "pizza", you can use ";redcode[-??] test" to do a test challenge of the Hill without affecting the status of the Hill. These challenges can be used to see how well your warrior does against the current Hill warriors. All hills run portable MARS (pMARS) version 0.8, a platform-independent Core War system available at www.koth.org. The '94 and '94x hills allow five experimental opcodes and three experimental addressing modes currently not covered in the ICWS'94 draft document: * LDP - Load P-Space * STP - Store P-Space * SEQ - Skip if EQual (synonym for CMP) * SNE - Skip if Not Equal * NOP - (No OPeration) * * - indirect using A-field as pointer * { - predecrement indirect using A-field * } - postincrement indirect using A-field [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15. Is it DAT 0, 0 or DAT #0, #0? How do I compare to core? Core is initialized to DAT 0, 0. This is an illegal instruction (in source code) under ICWS'88 rules and strictly compliant assemblers (such as KotH or pmars -8) will not let you have a DAT 0, 0 instruction in your source code - only DAT #0, #0. So this begs the question, how to compare something to see if it is empty core. The answer is, most likely the instruction before your first instruction and the instruction after your last instruction are both DAT 0, 0. You can use them, or any other likely unmodified instructions, for comparison. Note that under ICWS'94, DAT 0, 0 is a legal instruction. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 16. How does SLT (Skip if Less Than) work? SLT gives some people trouble because of the way modular arithmetic works. It is important to note that all negative numbers are converted to positive numbers before a battles begins. Example: -1 becomes M-1 where M is the memory size (core size). Once you realize that all numbers are treated as positive, it is clear what is meant by "less than". It should also be clear that no number is less than zero. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17. What is the difference between in-register and in-memory evaluation? These terms refer to the way instruction operands are evaluated. The '88 Redcode standard ICWS'88 is unclear about whether a simulator should "buffer" the result of A-operand evaluation before the B-operand is evaluated. Simulators that do buffer are said to use in-register evaluation, those that don't, in-memory evaluation. ICWS'94 clears this confusion by mandating in-register evaluation. Instructions that execute differently under these two forms of evaluation are MOV, ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV and MOD where the effective address of the A-operand is modified by evaluation of the B-operand. This is best illustrated by an example: L1 mov L2, mov.i #0, impsize Bootstrapping Strategy of copying the active portion of the program away from the initial location, leaving a decoy behind and making the relocated program as small as possible. B-Scanners Scanners which only recognize non-zero B-fields. example add #10, scan scan jmz example, 10 c Measure of speed, equal to one location per cycle. Speed of light. CMP-Scanner A Scanner which uses a CMP instruction to look for opponents. example add step, scan scan cmp 10, 30 jmp attack jmp example step dat #20, #20 Colour Property of bombs making them visible to scanners, causing them to attack useless locations, thus slowing them down. example dat #100 Core-Clear Code that sequentially overwrites core with DAT instructions; usually the last part of a program. Decoys Bogus or unused instructions meant to slow down scanners. Typically, DATs with non-zero B-fields. Decrement Resistant Property of warriors making them functional (or at least partially functional) when overrun by a DJN-stream. DJN-Stream (also DJN-Train) Using a DJN command to rapidly decrement core locations. example ... ... djn example, <4000 Dwarf The prototypical small bomber. Gate-busting (also gate-crashing) technique to "interweave" a decrement-resistant imp-spiral (e.g. MOV 0, 2668) with a standard one to overrun imp-gates. Hybrids warriors that combine two or more of the basic strategies, either in sequence (e.g. stone->paper) or in parallel (e.g. imp/stone). Imp Program which only uses the MOV instruction. example mov 0, 1 or example mov 0, 2 mov 0, 2 Imp-Gate A location in core which is bombed or decremented continuously so that an Imp can not pass. Also used to describe the program-code which maintains the gate. example ... ... spl 0, mov.i #0,IMPSIZE Mirror see reflection. On-axis/off-axis On-axis scanners compare two locations M/2 apart, where M is the memory size. Off-axis scanners use some other separation. Optimal Constants (also optima-type constants) Bomb or scan increments chosen to cover core most effectively, i.e. leaving gaps of uniform size. Programs to calculate optimal constants and lists of optimal numbers are available at www.koth.org. Paper A Paper-like program is one which replicates itself many times. Part of the Scissors (beats) Paper (beats) Stone (beats Scissors) analogy. P-Warrior A warrior which uses the results of previous round(s) in order to determine which strategy it will use. Pit-Trapper (also Slaver, Vampire). A program which enslaves another. Usually accomplished by bombing with JMPs to a SPL 0 pit with an optional core-clear routine. Q^2 Scan A modern version of the Quick Scan where anything found is attacked almost immediately. Quick Scan 2c scan of a set group of core locations with bombing if anything is found. Both of the following codes snips scan 16 locations and check for a find. If anything is found, it is attacked, otherwise 16 more locations are scanned. Example: start s1 for 8 ;'88 scan cmp start+100*s1, start+100*s1+4000 ;check two locations mov #start+100*s1-found, found ;they differ so set pointer rof jmn attack, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 8 cmp start+100*(s2+6), start+100*(s2+6)+4000 mov #start+100*(s2+6)-found, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing attack cmp @found, start-1 ;does found points to empty space? add #4000, found ;no, so point to correct location mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 In ICWS'94, the quick scan code is more compact because of the SNE opcode: start ;'94 scan s1 for 4 sne start+400*s1, start+400*s1+100 ;check two locations seq start+400*s1+200, start+400*s1+300 ;check two locations mov #start+400*s1-found, found ;they differ so set pointer rof jmn which, found ;if we have something, get it s2 for 4 sne start+400*(s2+4), start+400*(s2+4)+100 seq start+400*(s2+4)+200, start+400*(s2+4)+300 mov #start+400*(s2+4)-found-100, found rof found jmz moveme, #0 ;skip attack if qscan found nothing add #100, -1 ;increment pointer till we get the which jmn -1, @found ;right place mov start-1, @found ;move a bomb moveme jmp 0, 0 Reflection Copy of a program or program part, positioned to make the active program invisible to a CMP-scanner. Replicator Generic for Paper. A program which makes many copies of itself, each copy also making copies. Self-Splitting Strategy of amplifying the number of processes executing a piece of code. example spl 0 loop add #10, example mov example, @example jmp loop Scanner A program which searches through core for an opponent rather than bombing blindly. Scissors A program designed to beat replicators, usually a (B-field scanning) vampire. Part of the Paper-Scissors-Stone analogy. Self-Repair Ability of a program to fix it's own code after attack. Silk A replicator which splits off a process to each new copy before actually copying the code. This allows it to replicate extremely quickly. This technique is only possible under the '94 draft, because it requires post-increment indirect addressing. Example: spl 1 mov -1, 0 spl 1 ;generate 6 consecutive processes silk spl 3620, #0 ;split to new copy mov >-1, }-1 ;copy self to new location mov bomb, >2000 ;linear bombing mov bomb, }2042 ;A-indirect bombing for anti-vamp jmp silk, {silk ;reset source pointer, make new copy bomb dat >2667, >5334 ;anti-imp bomb Slaver see Pit-Trapper. Stealth Property of programs, or program parts, which are invisible to scanners, accomplished by using zero B-fields and reflections. Stone A Stone-like program designed to be a small bomber. Part of the Paper-Scissors-Stone analogy. Stun A type of bomb which makes the opponent multiply useless processes, thus slowing it down. Example is referred to as a SPL-JMP bomb. example spl 0 jmp -1 Two-Pass Core-Clear (also SPL/DAT Core-Clear) core clear that fills core first with SPL instructions, then with DATs. This is very effective in killing paper and certain imp-spiral variations. Vampire see Pit-Trapper. Vector Launch one of several means to start an imp-spiral running. As fast as Binary Launch, but requiring much less code. See also JMP/ADD Launch and Binary Launch. This example is one form of a Vector Launch: sz EQU 2667 spl 1 spl 1 jmp @vt, }0 vt dat #0, imp+0*sz ; start of vector table dat #0, imp+1*sz dat #0, imp+2*sz dat #0, imp+3*sz ; end of vector table imp mov.i #0, sz [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 23. Other questions? Just ask in the rec.games.corewar newsgroup or contact me. If you are shy, check out the Core War archives first to see if your question has been answered before. [ToC] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Credits Additions, corrections, etc. to this document are solicited. Thanks in particular to the following people who have contributed major portions of this document: * Mark Durham (wrote the original version of the FAQ) * Paul Kline * Randy Graham * Stefan Strack (maintained a recent version of the FAQ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright � 1999 Anton Marsden. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Sascha Zapf Subject: RF20 - Reminder and more Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 00:21:24 +0200 Message-ID: Hi, hurry up guys, only on week left. So far i only got 5 entries from 3 authors. Chip point me a loophole in my rules for RF20 =============================================================== For your entry you can choose one of three instruction-pools. Out of this pool you must create a Warrior. In the creators code all instruction are allowed, but the a-field (the source) must always be one of the instructionpools labels ( PA1, PB1, PC4 etc ). Note the magic of the immediate-adressing ! ==================================================================== The restriction says that a valid creator instruction only must have a pools label in it's a field. But the spirit of the round is to create a Warrior with the instruction of the pool. It's not allowed to trick a warrior into the creator code and copy it over an pools a/b - field. So far no author has done this. Sascha -- Parlez vous Redcode? From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 09/13/04 Date: 13 Sep 2004 00:14:17 -0400 Message-ID: <200409130400.i8D4017i019494@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/13/04 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sun Sep 5 12:46:44 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 26/ 33 The Next Step '88 David Houston 158 15 2 43/ 37/ 21 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 149 28 3 47/ 45/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 149 38 4 43/ 38/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 149 31 5 36/ 25/ 39 A.I.P. Christian Schmidt 148 7 6 36/ 26/ 38 Freight Train David Moore 147 200 7 36/ 26/ 39 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 146 139 8 42/ 39/ 19 Stasis David Moore 146 307 9 45/ 44/ 11 Speeed 88mph Christian Schmidt 145 5 10 43/ 42/ 14 Cold as November Rain... John Metcalf 145 13 11 35/ 27/ 38 Guardian Ian Oversby 144 199 12 39/ 37/ 23 PacMan David Moore 141 229 13 37/ 32/ 31 The Seed Roy van Rijn 141 17 14 43/ 44/ 13 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 141 2 15 36/ 33/ 31 vala John Metcalf 139 122 16 38/ 39/ 22 '88 test IV John Metcalf 137 93 17 34/ 31/ 36 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 137 29 18 27/ 17/ 56 unheard-of '88 Christian Schmidt 136 6 19 39/ 45/ 16 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 134 237 20 20/ 13/ 68 the temple of the machine John Metcalf 127 1 21 2/ 98/ 0 hometime :-) John Metcalf 7 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 09/13/04 Date: 13 Sep 2004 00:14:11 -0400 Message-ID: <200409130403.i8D431sF019563@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/13/04 -=- 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 12 15:35:18 EDT 2004 # Name Author Score Age 1 temple of the machines John Metcalf 8 3 2 Dodge Viper Christian Schmidt 6 60 3 Her Majesty P.Kline 5 495 4 defense test file tg3 simon wainwright 3 14 5 The Survivor Philip Kendall 2 106 6 not king of the hill FatalC 1 221 7 grasshoppers' prelude Simon Wainwright 1 2 8 grasshopper's embrace Simon Wainwright 1 1 9 Attacker in the Darkness Christian Schmidt 0 15 10 foundling John Metcalf 0 42 11 magic golden thread Simon Wainwright 0 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 09/13/04 Date: 13 Sep 2004 00:19:38 -0400 Message-ID: <200409130406.i8D46196019612@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/13/04 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Fri Sep 3 13:20:21 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 44/ 35/ 22 Fatamorgana X Zul Nadzri 153 1 2 41/ 36/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 147 25 3 44/ 43/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 144 114 4 41/ 38/ 21 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 144 26 5 36/ 34/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 138 97 6 37/ 39/ 24 Ogre Christian Schmidt 135 162 7 30/ 26/ 44 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 134 146 8 37/ 39/ 24 Simply Intelligent Zul Nadzri 134 7 9 36/ 39/ 26 Black Moods Ian Oversby 133 210 10 25/ 18/ 57 xd100 test David Houston 133 11 11 28/ 24/ 48 Olivia X Ben Ford 132 95 12 37/ 42/ 21 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 132 41 13 19/ 8/ 73 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 131 283 14 27/ 24/ 49 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 130 236 15 20/ 11/ 70 Denial David Moore 129 155 16 33/ 38/ 30 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 127 214 17 24/ 21/ 56 Glenstorm John Metcalf 127 76 18 15/ 7/ 78 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 123 231 19 20/ 16/ 64 Kin John Metcalf 123 122 20 17/ 14/ 69 Blotter X J. Pohjalainen 121 16 21 2/ 51/ 47 charmed John Metcalf 53 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 09/13/04 Date: 13 Sep 2004 00:19:34 -0400 Message-ID: <200409130409.i8D491Sr019669@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/13/04 -=- 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 12 23:01:28 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 28/ 35 Hullabaloo Roy van Rijn 148 57 2 34/ 27/ 40 Savage Flowing Battleworn Pascal Hofstee 141 76 3 40/ 41/ 18 Edgar Variation Waknuk 139 3 4 34/ 29/ 37 elf Christian Schmidt 139 122 5 35/ 32/ 33 Borgir Christian Schmidt 139 92 6 31/ 24/ 46 paper(paper(paper(clear)) Sascha Zapf 138 161 7 43/ 48/ 9 Arrow Christian Schmidt 137 260 8 42/ 47/ 11 Speeed Christian Schmidt 137 2 9 41/ 45/ 15 Dandelion 3 Christian Schmidt 136 178 10 32/ 29/ 39 Gargantuan Roy van Rijn 136 78 11 28/ 20/ 52 Black Knight Christian Schmidt 135 82 12 26/ 16/ 58 Maelstrom Roy van Rijn 135 201 13 31/ 28/ 41 slime test 1.00 David Houston 133 387 14 27/ 21/ 52 unheard-of II Christian Schmidt 133 74 15 30/ 28/ 41 Gremlin van Rijn/Grabun 133 291 16 40/ 48/ 12 HazyLazy C 11 CS SG 132 269 17 39/ 47/ 14 coffee dreaming John Metcalf 132 7 18 38/ 45/ 17 tetht F3 PBT 130 1 19 42/ 53/ 5 Claw III Christian Schmidt 130 96 20 40/ 49/ 11 Strike Two Roy/Fizmo 130 64 21 34/ 38/ 29 2b||!2b Sascha Zapf 129 116 From: Sascha Zapf Subject: 2b||!2b Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 12:42:57 +0200 Message-ID: Hi, here is the source of 2b||!2b. Nothing special, only a Cocktail of a heavy 10liner paper, baed on 'My first paper' from Michal Janeczek and the Stone found in Sunset from David Moore. After 6 Hours it reaches a score from 148.85 against the 94nop fsh 0.2 from Christian Schmidt. I leave the Source as it is, so you can see where i have optimized. enjoy Sascha ;redcode-94nop ;name 2b||!2b ;author Sascha Zapf ;strategy Q4.5 -> Paper/Stone ;assert CORESIZE==8000 ;optimax 1234 ;optimax work 2binkr ;optimax suite fsh94nop0.2 ;optimax rounds 1 200 200 200 ;optimax phase2 fsh94nop0.2/sbi/sovain.red ;optimax phase2 140 ;optimax phase2 0% ;optimax phase3 152 ;optimax phase3 0% ;optimax phase3 top15 ;optimax phase3 sbi:cds ;optimax phase4 100% ;optimax phase4 top15 adec EQU 10 bdec EQU 8 cdec EQU 5 sOff equ zero + 2220;2203;761;353;4705 pOff equ zero + 3360;1050;438;1869;7431 zero equ qbomb qtab3 equ qbomb qbomb dat >qoff, >qc2 sBoot mov pAmmo, sOff spl 2, cDst1 mov }-1 , >-1 cSlk2 spl @0 , >cDst2 mov }-1 , >-1 mov cBomb , >cHit1 mov cBomb , >cHit2 mov cBomb , >cHit3 mov {cSlk2 , <1 djn @0 , 1 for 37-adec-bdec-cdec dat 0, 0 rof 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 qgo sne qptr + qz*qc2, qptr + qz*qc2 + qb2 seq qptr, qptr + qz + (qb2-1) jmp q2, Subject: hill software Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 02:08:24 +0200 Message-ID: if exists a free script with that I can build my own corewar hill ? From: Steffen Subject: fast corewar simulator? Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 11:07:22 +0200 Message-ID: Hi! I'm looking for a real fast corewar simulator. I'm working on an evolver which is at the moment only calling pMars. I tried exhaust, but it doesn't work with my benchmark warriors. Is exhaust really not able to read these "foo EQU " instructions? Which simulator can you recommend? Is there an simulator which works like a tcp server? Which is listening for incoming battles ? THanks for help Sheep From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 09/20/04 Date: 20 Sep 2004 09:02:29 -0400 Message-ID: <200409200400.i8K401nu016520@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/20/04 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sun Sep 5 12:46:44 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 26/ 33 The Next Step '88 David Houston 158 15 2 43/ 37/ 21 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 149 28 3 47/ 45/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 149 38 4 43/ 38/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 149 31 5 36/ 25/ 39 A.I.P. Christian Schmidt 148 7 6 36/ 26/ 38 Freight Train David Moore 147 200 7 36/ 26/ 39 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 146 139 8 42/ 39/ 19 Stasis David Moore 146 307 9 45/ 44/ 11 Speeed 88mph Christian Schmidt 145 5 10 43/ 42/ 14 Cold as November Rain... John Metcalf 145 13 11 35/ 27/ 38 Guardian Ian Oversby 144 199 12 39/ 37/ 23 PacMan David Moore 141 229 13 37/ 32/ 31 The Seed Roy van Rijn 141 17 14 43/ 44/ 13 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 141 2 15 36/ 33/ 31 vala John Metcalf 139 122 16 38/ 39/ 22 '88 test IV John Metcalf 137 93 17 34/ 31/ 36 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 137 29 18 27/ 17/ 56 unheard-of '88 Christian Schmidt 136 6 19 39/ 45/ 16 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 134 237 20 20/ 13/ 68 the temple of the machine John Metcalf 127 1 21 2/ 98/ 0 hometime :-) John Metcalf 7 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 09/20/04 Date: 20 Sep 2004 09:02:25 -0400 Message-ID: <200409200403.i8K431RO016573@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/20/04 -=- 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 12 15:35:18 EDT 2004 # Name Author Score Age 1 temple of the machines John Metcalf 8 3 2 Dodge Viper Christian Schmidt 6 60 3 Her Majesty P.Kline 5 495 4 defense test file tg3 simon wainwright 3 14 5 The Survivor Philip Kendall 2 106 6 not king of the hill FatalC 1 221 7 grasshoppers' prelude Simon Wainwright 1 2 8 grasshopper's embrace Simon Wainwright 1 1 9 Attacker in the Darkness Christian Schmidt 0 15 10 foundling John Metcalf 0 42 11 magic golden thread Simon Wainwright 0 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 09/20/04 Date: 20 Sep 2004 09:02:21 -0400 Message-ID: <200409200406.i8K461c3016636@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/20/04 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Fri Sep 3 13:20:21 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 44/ 35/ 22 Fatamorgana X Zul Nadzri 153 1 2 41/ 36/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 147 25 3 44/ 43/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 144 114 4 41/ 38/ 21 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 144 26 5 36/ 34/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 138 97 6 37/ 39/ 24 Ogre Christian Schmidt 135 162 7 30/ 26/ 44 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 134 146 8 37/ 39/ 24 Simply Intelligent Zul Nadzri 134 7 9 36/ 39/ 26 Black Moods Ian Oversby 133 210 10 25/ 18/ 57 xd100 test David Houston 133 11 11 28/ 24/ 48 Olivia X Ben Ford 132 95 12 37/ 42/ 21 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 132 41 13 19/ 8/ 73 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 131 283 14 27/ 24/ 49 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 130 236 15 20/ 11/ 70 Denial David Moore 129 155 16 33/ 38/ 30 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 127 214 17 24/ 21/ 56 Glenstorm John Metcalf 127 76 18 15/ 7/ 78 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 123 231 19 20/ 16/ 64 Kin John Metcalf 123 122 20 17/ 14/ 69 Blotter X J. Pohjalainen 121 16 21 2/ 51/ 47 charmed John Metcalf 53 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 09/20/04 Date: 20 Sep 2004 09:02:16 -0400 Message-ID: <200409200409.i8K491O9016683@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/20/04 -=- 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 : Thu Sep 16 13:03:50 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 38/ 28/ 35 Hullabaloo Roy van Rijn 148 58 2 35/ 27/ 38 Savage Flowing Battleworn Pascal Hofstee 143 77 3 35/ 29/ 35 elf Christian Schmidt 142 123 4 32/ 24/ 44 paper(paper(paper(clear)) Sascha Zapf 140 162 5 29/ 19/ 51 Black Knight Christian Schmidt 140 83 6 43/ 46/ 11 Speeed Christian Schmidt 139 3 7 35/ 32/ 33 Borgir Christian Schmidt 138 93 8 41/ 44/ 15 Dandelion 3 Christian Schmidt 138 179 9 40/ 42/ 18 Edgar Variation Waknuk 138 4 10 27/ 16/ 57 Maelstrom Roy van Rijn 138 202 11 33/ 29/ 38 Gargantuan Roy van Rijn 137 79 12 42/ 47/ 11 Strike Two Roy/Fizmo 136 65 13 39/ 43/ 18 Hungry Jack Philip Thorne 135 1 14 42/ 49/ 9 Arrow Christian Schmidt 135 261 15 28/ 20/ 52 unheard-of II Christian Schmidt 135 75 16 32/ 29/ 39 Gremlin van Rijn/Grabun 135 292 17 41/ 47/ 12 HazyLazy C 11 CS SG 134 270 18 31/ 30/ 39 slime test 1.00 David Houston 132 388 19 39/ 46/ 14 coffee dreaming John Metcalf 132 8 20 42/ 53/ 5 Claw III Christian Schmidt 131 97 21 31/ 53/ 16 etest P.Kline 109 0 From: dhillismail@netscape.net (Dave Hillis) Subject: Re: fast corewar simulator? Date: 20 Sep 2004 17:36:40 -0700 Message-ID: <5d6847b2.0409201636.5a26bad3@posting.google.com> Steffen wrote in message news:... > Hi! > > I'm looking for a real fast corewar simulator. I'm working on an evolver > which is at the moment only calling pMars. > I tried exhaust, but it doesn't work with my benchmark warriors. > Is exhaust really not able to read these "foo EQU " instructions? > Which simulator can you recommend? > Is there an simulator which works like a tcp server? Which is listening > for incoming battles ? > > THanks for help > Sheep I still use exhaust. There are other good choices-I don't remember any that will read EQU statements. But you can just run the warriors through pmars to get the object code (redirect the output to a file "pmars warrior.red > obj.txt" ) Dave Hillis From: waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) Subject: ICFP - or where are they now... Date: 21 Sep 2004 22:55:46 -0700 Message-ID: <4ee41bd6.0409212155.6b511671@posting.google.com> CW old-timers will recognise the first name mentioned under the Judge's Prize category in the ICFP Programming Contest 2004 as being Planar of Mount Olympus fame http://www.koth.org/planar/index.html. Congratulations Damien. A recent mention of the contest on slashdot stood-out as it had a corewars reference (unfortunately linking to a stale site). http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/12/1450257 From: waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) Subject: Re: fast corewar simulator? Date: 21 Sep 2004 23:32:30 -0700 Message-ID: <4ee41bd6.0409212232.46584ae0@posting.google.com> Steffen wrote in message news:... > Hi! > > I'm looking for a real fast corewar simulator. I'm working on an evolver > which is at the moment only calling pMars. > I tried exhaust, but it doesn't work with my benchmark warriors. > Is exhaust really not able to read these "foo EQU " instructions? > Which simulator can you recommend? > Is there an simulator which works like a tcp server? Which is listening > for incoming battles ? > > THanks for help > Sheep exMARS by Martin Ankerl is fast and includes the parser from pmars so handles the same input macros as pmars. He announced it here: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=7024f804.0310160025.3aa3015f%40posting.google.com There's more info and a download available via the search http://www.google.com/search?q=exmars-0.01.tar.gz I use it without problem in the Cygwin environment. Message-ID: From: anton@paradise.net.nz (Anton Marsden) Subject: Core War Frequently Asked Questions (rec.games.corewar FAQ) Date: 24 Sep 2004 04:22:16 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: sayembara@yahoo.com (Zul Nadzri) Subject: Re: RF20 - Results Date: 24 Sep 2004 16:17:13 -0700 Message-ID: Congratulations! 4 in a row is a tough path to choose but you did it :) p/s: I (and also the rest) have 2 more chance to stop your perfect 6 series. I think now it is you vs the rest of the world. /mzmn > Here are the results. > > Name Author W% L% T% Score AP Result > > 1 Recon-structed Chip Wendell 61 31 8 191 0 100.00% > 2 Luo G.Labarga 48 29 23 167 4 89.52% > 3 Bride of RoP Chip Wendell 32 10 58 154 11 86.38% > 4 Polyethylene Roy van Rijn 35 14 51 153 2 81.15% > 5 Polish Traditional Paper Lukasz Adamowski 34 31 35 137 6 74.86% > 6 Junkyard Guy Zul Nadzri 22 10 68 134 2 71.20% > 7 Frankenstein's Imp Joshua 16 9 75 123 11 70.15% > 8 Tubercles Zul Nadzri 34 51 15 117 2 62.30% > 9 Speedball Roy van Rijn 28 42 30 114 5 62.30% > 10 Lord of the bricks G.Labarga 16 28 56 104 8 58.63% > 11 Being Lukasz Adamowski 15 45 41 86 15 52.87% > 12 igor's two thumbs el kauka 20 63 17 77 4 42.40% From: Sascha Zapf Subject: RF20 - Results Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 17:58:25 +0200 Message-ID: .................................................................. . _____ _ _ . | __ \ | | | | . | |__) |___ __| | ___ ___ __| | ___ _ __ ___ . | _ // _ \/ _` |/ __/ _ \ / _` |/ _ \ '__/ __| . | | \ \ __/ (_| | (_| (_) | (_| | __/ | \__ \ . |_| \_\___|\__,_|\___\___/ \__,_|\___|_| |___/ . . ______ . | ____| . | |__ _ __ ___ _ __ _____ _ . | __| '__/ _ \ '_ \|_ / | | | . | | | | | __/ | | |/ /| |_| | . |_| |_| \___|_| |_/___|\__, | . __/ | . |___/ . .................................................................. The ongoing corewar tournament ____ ____ |__ \ / __ \ ) | / \ | / /| | | | / /_| \__/ | |___________/ ............................................. . . . The Code Creator's "Frankenstein" Round . . . ............................................. This is the 20th round of the ongoing corewar tournament. Further information are available on Fizmo's Corewar Info Page: http://www.corewar.info/tournament/cwt.htm The "Frankenstein" Round homepage is: http://www.corewar.info/tournament/20.htm *********** * Results * *********** Altogether, 7 authors enter a total of 12 warriors. (_v_) _|_ | | |-----+-----| ___________ .-=========-. | {{1}} | '._==_==_=_.' \'-=======-'/ | \=/ | .-\: /-. _| .=. |_ '---------' | (|:.{3} |) | ((| {{2}} |)) \ / '-|:. |-' \| /|\ |/ '. .' \::. / \__ '`' __/ | | '::. .' _`) (`_ .' '. ) ( _/_______\_ _|___|_ _.' '._ /___________\ [_______] [_______] 2nd place Winner 3rd place ****************** ****************** **************** * German Labarga * * Chip Wendell * * Chip Wendell * ****************** ****************** **************** Congrats to the Winners. Wow, Chip's 4th victory in a row, and a double feature. His Recon2 clone was the best choice because of the huge amount of Papers .With a small 10% gap Neo follows the new King of Redcoders Frenzy. The following strategies were used this round. Imp/Gate 1 Stone 1 Paper 3 Scanner 3 Clear 1 P-Switcher 2 Paper/Stone 1 Here are the results. Name Author W% L% T% Score AP Result 1 Recon-structed Chip Wendell 61 31 8 191 0 100.00% 2 Luo G.Labarga 48 29 23 167 4 89.52% 3 Bride of RoP Chip Wendell 32 10 58 154 11 86.38% 4 Polyethylene Roy van Rijn 35 14 51 153 2 81.15% 5 Polish Traditional Paper Lukasz Adamowski 34 31 35 137 6 74.86% 6 Junkyard Guy Zul Nadzri 22 10 68 134 2 71.20% 7 Frankenstein's Imp Joshua 16 9 75 123 11 70.15% 8 Tubercles Zul Nadzri 34 51 15 117 2 62.30% 9 Speedball Roy van Rijn 28 42 30 114 5 62.30% 10 Lord of the bricks G.Labarga 16 28 56 104 8 58.63% 11 Being Lukasz Adamowski 15 45 41 86 15 52.87% 12 igor's two thumbs el kauka 20 63 17 77 4 42.40% More detailed informations and all entries are available on the The 94 Tourney Round webpage: http://www.corewar.info/tournament/20.htm Congratulations to everyone who has taken part this round. I hope to see more participants next round. If you have an interesting idea then just Mail to fizmo@corewar.info. -- From: Sascha Zapf Subject: RF20 - Results Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 18:01:21 +0200 Message-ID: .................................................................. . _____ _ _ . | __ \ | | | | . | |__) |___ __| | ___ ___ __| | ___ _ __ ___ . | _ // _ \/ _` |/ __/ _ \ / _` |/ _ \ '__/ __| . | | \ \ __/ (_| | (_| (_) | (_| | __/ | \__ \ . |_| \_\___|\__,_|\___\___/ \__,_|\___|_| |___/ . . ______ . | ____| . | |__ _ __ ___ _ __ _____ _ . | __| '__/ _ \ '_ \|_ / | | | . | | | | | __/ | | |/ /| |_| | . |_| |_| \___|_| |_/___|\__, | . __/ | . |___/ . .................................................................. The ongoing corewar tournament ____ ____ |__ \ / __ \ ) | / \ | / /| | | | / /_| \__/ | |___________/ ............................................. . . . The Code Creator's "Frankenstein" Round . . . ............................................. This is the 20th round of the ongoing corewar tournament. Further information are available on Fizmo's Corewar Info Page: http://www.corewar.info/tournament/cwt.htm The "Frankenstein" Round homepage is: http://www.corewar.info/tournament/20.htm *********** * Results * *********** Altogether, 7 authors enter a total of 12 warriors. (_v_) _|_ | | |-----+-----| ___________ .-=========-. | {{1}} | '._==_==_=_.' \'-=======-'/ | \=/ | .-\: /-. _| .=. |_ '---------' | (|:.{3} |) | ((| {{2}} |)) \ / '-|:. |-' \| /|\ |/ '. .' \::. / \__ '`' __/ | | '::. .' _`) (`_ .' '. ) ( _/_______\_ _|___|_ _.' '._ /___________\ [_______] [_______] 2nd place Winner 3rd place ****************** ****************** **************** * German Labarga * * Chip Wendell * * Chip Wendell * ****************** ****************** **************** Congrats to the Winners. Wow, Chip's 4th victory in a row, and a double feature. His Recon2 clone was the best choice because of the huge amount of Papers .With a small 10% gap Neo follows the new King of Redcoders Frenzy. The following strategies were used this round. Imp/Gate 1 Stone 1 Paper 3 Scanner 3 Clear 1 P-Switcher 2 Paper/Stone 1 Here are the results. Name Author W% L% T% Score AP Result 1 Recon-structed Chip Wendell 61 31 8 191 0 100.00% 2 Luo G.Labarga 48 29 23 167 4 89.52% 3 Bride of RoP Chip Wendell 32 10 58 154 11 86.38% 4 Polyethylene Roy van Rijn 35 14 51 153 2 81.15% 5 Polish Traditional Paper Lukasz Adamowski 34 31 35 137 6 74.86% 6 Junkyard Guy Zul Nadzri 22 10 68 134 2 71.20% 7 Frankenstein's Imp Joshua 16 9 75 123 11 70.15% 8 Tubercles Zul Nadzri 34 51 15 117 2 62.30% 9 Speedball Roy van Rijn 28 42 30 114 5 62.30% 10 Lord of the bricks G.Labarga 16 28 56 104 8 58.63% 11 Being Lukasz Adamowski 15 45 41 86 15 52.87% 12 igor's two thumbs el kauka 20 63 17 77 4 42.40% More detailed informations and all entries are available on the "Frankenstein Round" webpage: http://www.corewar.info/tournament/20.htm Congratulations to everyone who has taken part this round. I hope to see more participants next round. If you have an interesting idea then just Mail to fizmo@corewar.info. Sascha -- From: Planar Subject: Re: ICFP - or where are they now... Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 22:02:57 +0200 Message-ID: In article <4ee41bd6.0409212155.6b511671@posting.google.com>, waknuk@yahoo.com (Philip Thorne) wrote: > CW old-timers will recognise the first name mentioned under the > Judge's Prize category in the ICFP Programming Contest 2004 as being > Planar of Mount Olympus fame http://www.koth.org/planar/index.html. > Congratulations Damien. Thanks. You guys should have tried the contest this year, it had a definite corewar flavor. -- Planar remove the dash and .invalid from my address to send me mail "Surprise. Then just use AGA rules and that's it." - Robert Jasiek From: a695@tampabay.rr.com (Anthony Sebba) Subject: corewar Date: 26 Sep 2004 13:07:34 -0700 Message-ID: asd From: "Martin Ankerl" Subject: Moving: exMars, exhaust-ma, yace Date: 27 Sep 2004 02:24:45 -0700 Message-ID: <1096277085.956085.237660@k26g2000oda.googlegroups.com> Hi everyone! As I have finished my study, my old homepage http://students.fhs-hagenberg.ac.at/se/se00001/ hosted by the university will not exist much longer. The new home for all my corewar stuff is here: http://martinus.geekisp.com/rublog.cgi/Projects/CoreWar Martin From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - Standard 09/27/04 Date: 27 Sep 2004 19:15:31 -0400 Message-ID: <200409270400.i8R4006l007249@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/27/04 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Standard KotH CoreWar Hill : Last battle concluded at : Sun Sep 5 12:46:44 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 26/ 33 The Next Step '88 David Houston 158 15 2 43/ 37/ 21 Tangle Trap 3 David Moore 149 28 3 47/ 45/ 8 Scan Test C 6 Steve Gunnell 149 38 4 43/ 38/ 19 My 1st try Christian Schmidt 149 31 5 36/ 25/ 39 A.I.P. Christian Schmidt 148 7 6 36/ 26/ 38 Freight Train David Moore 147 200 7 36/ 26/ 39 Test Alexander (Sasha) Wa 146 139 8 42/ 39/ 19 Stasis David Moore 146 307 9 45/ 44/ 11 Speeed 88mph Christian Schmidt 145 5 10 43/ 42/ 14 Cold as November Rain... John Metcalf 145 13 11 35/ 27/ 38 Guardian Ian Oversby 144 199 12 39/ 37/ 23 PacMan David Moore 141 229 13 37/ 32/ 31 The Seed Roy van Rijn 141 17 14 43/ 44/ 13 Blurstone '88 M. J. Pihlaja 141 2 15 36/ 33/ 31 vala John Metcalf 139 122 16 38/ 39/ 22 '88 test IV John Metcalf 137 93 17 34/ 31/ 36 Pixie 88 Lukasz Grabun 137 29 18 27/ 17/ 56 unheard-of '88 Christian Schmidt 136 6 19 39/ 45/ 16 Blur '88 Anton Marsden 134 237 20 20/ 13/ 68 the temple of the machine John Metcalf 127 1 21 2/ 98/ 0 hometime :-) John Metcalf 7 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - MultiWarrior 94 09/27/04 Date: 27 Sep 2004 19:15:27 -0400 Message-ID: <200409270403.i8R430rM007303@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/27/04 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG Multiwarrior 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Thu Sep 23 14:01:45 EDT 2004 # Name Author Score Age 1 Her Majesty P.Kline 12 496 2 temple of the machines John Metcalf 7 4 3 not king of the hill FatalC 3 222 4 all you can eat John Metcalf 3 1 5 Dodge Viper Christian Schmidt 2 61 6 defense test file tg3 simon wainwright 2 15 7 grasshopper's embrace Simon Wainwright 2 2 8 The Survivor Philip Kendall 1 107 9 Attacker in the Darkness Christian Schmidt 1 16 10 grasshoppers' prelude Simon Wainwright 1 3 11 foundling John Metcalf 1 43 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - ICWS Experimental 94 09/27/04 Date: 27 Sep 2004 19:15:24 -0400 Message-ID: <200409270406.i8R460lY007357@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/27/04 -=- irc.KOTH.org is up! Meetings held in #corewars -=- Tons of new features on www.KOTH.org/koth.html pages -=- *FAQ* page located at: www.KOTH.org/corewar-faq.html Current Status of the KOTH.ORG ICWS Experimental 94 CoreWar Hill: Last battle concluded at : Fri Sep 3 13:20:21 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 44/ 35/ 22 Fatamorgana X Zul Nadzri 153 1 2 41/ 36/ 23 The X Machine Zul Nadzri 147 25 3 44/ 43/ 13 Fire and Ice II David Moore 144 114 4 41/ 38/ 21 Eliminator X Zul Nadzri 144 26 5 36/ 34/ 31 Trefoil F 13 Steve Gunnell 138 97 6 37/ 39/ 24 Ogre Christian Schmidt 135 162 7 30/ 26/ 44 KAT v5 Dave Hillis 134 146 8 37/ 39/ 24 Simply Intelligent Zul Nadzri 134 7 9 36/ 39/ 26 Black Moods Ian Oversby 133 210 10 25/ 18/ 57 xd100 test David Houston 133 11 11 28/ 24/ 48 Olivia X Ben Ford 132 95 12 37/ 42/ 21 Giant Hazy Test 13 Steve Gunnell 132 41 13 19/ 8/ 73 Evol Cap 4 X John Wilkinson 131 283 14 27/ 24/ 49 Venom v0.2b Christian Schmidt 130 236 15 20/ 11/ 70 Denial David Moore 129 155 16 33/ 38/ 30 Controlled Aggression Ian Oversby 127 214 17 24/ 21/ 56 Glenstorm John Metcalf 127 76 18 15/ 7/ 78 Evolve X v4.0 John Wilkinson 123 231 19 20/ 16/ 64 Kin John Metcalf 123 122 20 17/ 14/ 69 Blotter X J. Pohjalainen 121 16 21 2/ 51/ 47 charmed John Metcalf 53 0 From: Koth Subject: KOTH.ORG: Status - 94 No Pspace 09/27/04 Date: 27 Sep 2004 19:15:18 -0400 Message-ID: <200409270409.i8R490xQ007436@gevjon.ttsg.com> Weekly Status on 09/27/04 -=- 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 26 11:56:04 EDT 2004 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 35/ 28/ 37 Hullabaloo Roy van Rijn 142 60 2 33/ 26/ 41 Savage Flowing Battleworn Pascal Hofstee 140 79 3 31/ 23/ 47 paper(paper(paper(clear)) Sascha Zapf 138 164 4 33/ 28/ 39 elf Christian Schmidt 138 125 5 39/ 40/ 21 Edgar Variation Waknuk 138 6 6 42/ 47/ 11 Arrow Christian Schmidt 137 263 7 25/ 14/ 60 Maelstrom Roy van Rijn 136 204 8 40/ 44/ 15 HazyLazy C 11 CS SG 136 272 9 32/ 28/ 40 Gargantuan Roy van Rijn 135 81 10 41/ 46/ 13 Speeed Christian Schmidt 135 5 11 39/ 43/ 18 Dandelion 3 Christian Schmidt 134 181 12 33/ 32/ 35 Borgir Christian Schmidt 134 95 13 39/ 44/ 17 coffee dreaming John Metcalf 134 10 14 27/ 20/ 54 Black Knight Christian Schmidt 134 85 15 30/ 27/ 42 slime test 1.00 David Houston 133 390 16 30/ 28/ 42 Gremlin van Rijn/Grabun 133 294 17 40/ 47/ 13 Strike Two Roy/Fizmo 132 67 18 36/ 40/ 23 something in her smile :- John Metcalf 132 2 19 21/ 12/ 67 Chainlock v01 G.Labarga 131 1 20 24/ 21/ 55 unheard-of II Christian Schmidt 128 77 21 25/ 60/ 15 NSos2 Nenad Tomasev 90 0 From: Chris Humphries Subject: This project is still alive? Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 10:12:31 -0400 Message-ID: <10llgmepvii9211@news.supernews.com> Hello, I remember the corewars project from a several years ago, and went to go check it out again. The website at sourceforge for the project, http://corewars.sourceforge.net/, seems to be outdated and seems to only have been updated back in 2001. Is this project still active? Am I looking at the wrong site or something? This seems something that would be fun. Thanks, Chris From: chipw@mdli.com (Chip Wendell) Subject: Re: RF20 - Results Date: 29 Sep 2004 13:47:20 -0700 Message-ID: sayembara@yahoo.com (Zul Nadzri) wrote in message news:... > Congratulations! 4 in a row is a tough path to choose but you did it > :) Thanks! I figured that a decent scanner would have a good chance to win, but I had to struggle hard to create a rough copy of Recon 2 using just 15 AP. Glad to see that the effort paid off! > p/s: I (and also the rest) have 2 more chance to stop your perfect 6 > series. I think now it is you vs the rest of the world. The gauntlet, she is thrown! Ready my horse and lance - we shall decide this matter on the field of battle... - Chip From: Steffen Subject: Re: This project is still alive? Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 20:43:00 +0200 Message-ID: Hey! Chris Humphries wrote: > I remember the corewars project from a several > years ago, and went to go check it out again. The website > at sourceforge for the project, http://corewars.sourceforge.net/, > seems to be outdated and seems to only have been updated > back in 2001. > Is this project still active? Am I looking at the > wrong site or something? This seems something that would be > fun. Yeah, corewar is alive! Ok, there are not many new texts and sites, but the hills are still working. There are still contests (http://www.corewar.info/tournament/cwt.htm). Redcode has not changed since 1994 so there's nothing new to write into manuals. check out www.koth.org and http://corewars.sourceforge.net/. check out the links... read this newsgroup ... join the battles. :-) Sheep From: neogryzormail@mixmail.com (Neogryzor) Subject: Re: RF20 - Results Date: 30 Sep 2004 03:27:11 -0700 Message-ID: <242debe4.0409300227.5784aacc@posting.google.com> chipw@mdli.com (Chip Wendell) wrote in message news:... > sayembara@yahoo.com (Zul Nadzri) wrote in message news:... > > Congratulations! 4 in a row is a tough path to choose but you did it > > :) > > Thanks! I figured that a decent scanner would have a good chance to > win, but I had to struggle hard to create a rough copy of Recon 2 > using just 15 AP. Glad to see that the effort paid off! > > > p/s: I (and also the rest) have 2 more chance to stop your perfect 6 > > series. I think now it is you vs the rest of the world. > > The gauntlet, she is thrown! Ready my horse and lance - we shall > decide this matter on the field of battle... > > - Chip Twin congrats! You won the R20, and you'll take top spot in he ranking! The Round 21 will be a hard fight for sure, be aware! G.Labarga From: fizmo_master@yahoo.com (Fizmo) Subject: Evolver rules the 94nop!!! Date: 30 Sep 2004 11:13:12 -0700 Message-ID: <9f53b5fb.0409301013.6bca4c8d@posting.google.com> Congratulation bvowk!!!! His purely evolved warrior Machines Will Rule enters the 94nop hill on 2nd place. That is absolute impressive!!!! When do we see the first purely evolved koth? Christian