From news-rocq.inria.fr!jussieu.fr!math.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!ub!news.kei.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!gatech!purdue!mozo.cc.purdue.edu!cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu!bremermr Tue Jan 30 11:18:46 1996 Article: 3725 of rec.games.corewar Path: news-rocq.inria.fr!jussieu.fr!math.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!ub!news.kei.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!gatech!purdue!mozo.cc.purdue.edu!cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu!bremermr From: bremermr@cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu (Myer R. Bremer) Newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Subject: CoreWarrior 14 Date: 29 Jan 1996 20:31:40 GMT Organization: Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN Lines: 426 Message-ID: <4ejarc$a2j@mozo.cc.purdue.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu .xX$$x. .x$$$$$$$x. d$$$$$$$$$$$ ,$$$$$$$P' `P' , . $$$$$$P' ' .d b $$$$$P b ,$$x ,$$x ,$$x ,$$b $$. Y$$$$' `$. $$$$$$. $$$$$$ $$P~d$. d$$$b d d$$$ `$$$$ ,$$ $$$$$$$b $$$P `$ $$$b.$$b `Y$$$d$d$$$' . . a . a a .aa . a `$$$ ,$$$,$$' `$$$ $$$' ' $$P$XX$' `$$$$$$$$$ .dP' `$'$ `$'$ , $''$ `$'$ `Y$b ,d$$$P `$b,d$P' `$$. `$$. , `$$P $$$' Y $. $ $ $ Y..P $ `$$$$$$$' $$$P' `$$b `$$$P `P `$' `Y'k. $. $. $. $$' $. Issue 14 January 29, 1996 ______________________________________________________________________________ Core_Warrior_ is a weekly newsletter promoting the game of corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills--currently the '94 draft hill and the beginner hill. Coverage will follow where ever the action is. If you have no clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star internet locals for more information: FAQs are available by anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z FTP site is: ftp.csua.berkeley.edu /pub/corewar Web pages are at: http://www.stormking.com/~koth ;Stormking http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza http://pauillac.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/ ;Planar ______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings. Another issue of the world's premier core war e-zine! Tuc has gone insane. He spent the weekend popping Vivarin, chasing them with Mountain Dew, and coding like a maniac. I copied this off the Stormking core war page. It's copyrighted. Please don't sue me. Major changes and improvements are being made to SKI-ICWS to prepare for the release of SKI-ICWS-II, the next generation in Koth service. There are two major areas that this involves, the front end and the back end. The front end is the part of the system that processes your mail and replies back to any immediate requests such as ;status, ;help, etc. These require no processing other than sending a file or two. The back end is where the warriors actually do battle. ;kill gets processed here only because by the time your warrior is ready for battle, it may have already been pushed off the hill. ;password is associated with this for a submission, but not for the ;newpasswd command. Currently, all work is being done on the front end. This means that ;kill and ;password processing is not working, and any other suggestions for battle, like ;fight, are not being worked on. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phase I - Front End * Ability to add ;redcode lines to a ;status request to only get certain hill results - DONE * Addition of a ;password line in a warrior. If not given, one will be randomly generated for you. - DONE * ;newpasswd has been added to change passwords. - DONE * ;newredcode has been added to allow you to change the ;redcode line to quiet or verbose or standard - DONE * A ;version command has been added to see if a new version of the system is operational and any errors identified fixed. - DONE * ;url to point to a url when viewing the scores via the web - DONE * ;newurl to change what url you point to for those viewing on the web - TBD * (Add a NEW Function) and your idea could be here Phase II - Back End * ;scores to display the last sets of scores for a hill (This is actually a Front-End modification, but requires Back-End work to support it) * ;fight to specifically fight one/more warriors (Front End Mod, but needs Back-End support for it) * (Add a NEW Function) and your idea could be here ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nice to haves * During reply of a warrior compile and being placed in the pen, estimate the length of time it will be before the battle is completed. - MEDIUM PRIORITY ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Your chance to help out with suggestions/bug reports * Enter a New Function you would like to see * Enter a Bug Report for either SKI-ICWS or SKI-ICWS-II ______________________________________________________________________________ Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft Last challenge: Sun Jan 28 22:12:28 PST 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 39/ 16 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 150 405 2 36/ 31/ 33 Tornado 2.7e Beppe Bezzi 140 37 3 37/ 36/ 28 Thermite II Robert Macrae 137 153 4 40/ 43/ 18 Mirage 1.5 Anton Marsden 137 66 5 21/ 6/ 73 Evol Cap 6.6 John Wilkinson 136 167 6 34/ 34/ 32 Mason 2.0 Robert Macrae 135 288 7 25/ 15/ 61 Impfinity v4g1 Planar 135 352 8 38/ 41/ 21 quiz Schitzo 135 552 9 33/ 31/ 36 Torch t18 P.Kline 134 931 10 22/ 11/ 67 Hazy.Shade.Of.Winter John K W 133 99 11 30/ 26/ 44 Jack in the box Beppe Bezzi 133 919 12 37/ 44/ 19 blister soul schitzo 130 39 13 19/ 9/ 72 The Lime Twig 2.1 John K W 130 22 14 25/ 20/ 55 Hector 2 Kurt Franke 130 467 15 36/ 43/ 21 testnorm Maurizio Vittuari 129 2 16 36/ 43/ 21 ajax Kafka and Kurt 129 48 17 34/ 42/ 24 Boombastic Maurizio Vittuari 127 287 18 28/ 28/ 44 La Bomba Beppe Bezzi 127 547 19 24/ 21/ 55 juliet and paper M R Bremer, B. Bezzi 127 548 20 34/ 41/ 25 daedelus Kafka 126 1 21 27/ 29/ 43 patroclus Kafka and Kurt 125 7 22 17/ 9/ 73 Night Train Karl Lewin 125 439 23 27/ 30/ 43 Blue Funk 5 Steven Morrell 124 188 24 35/ 46/ 19 seventyfive Anders Ivner 124 52 25 21/ 21/ 58 Delusion M R Bremer 120 6 Weekly age: 108 Average age: 265 ( 203 last week, 182 the week before ) Average score: 131 ( 135 last week, 120 the week before ) Torch is one tenacious warrior. Many times this week, Torch has fallen into the 20s, even 24th place for a few challenges. But recent challenges have boosted it to 9th place. How long can it ( he/she? ) survive? Are warriors like ships? All female? Reports of Blue Funk's imminent demise ( by me ) was premature. Stones still haven't found the glory they once knew, with Blue Funk 5, seventyfive, and Delusion in the bottom ranks. Impfinity is the exception. Tornado is also doing quite well in second place. All that _tweaking_ gave an extra 15 challenges to the age of all the warriors 8) Anton Marsden is a relatively new name to the '94 draft hill, as is Kafka. Mirage 1.4 is doing quite well at 4th place utilizing a 2/3c scan/bomb strategy. Hopefully the recent hints have helped some. The 25 warriors on the hill are represented by 14 authors. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New 7 40/ 45/ 15 Mirage 1.5 Anton Marsden 136 1 17 38/ 45/ 17 seventyfive Anders Ivner 131 1 17 36/ 42/ 22 ajax Kafka and Kurt 130 1 12 23/ 12/ 65 Hazy.Shade.Of.Winter John K W 134 1 8 39/ 44/ 17 blister soul schitzo 135 1 2 38/ 32/ 30 Tornado 2.7e Beppe Bezzi 144 1 22 23/ 22/ 55 Delusion M R Bremer 125 1 22 38/ 47/ 15 patroclus Kafka 128 1 20 34/ 41/ 25 daedelus Kafka 126 1 And The Lime Twig. I don't have records for it. Sorry JKW! ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More. 26 2/ 5/ 1 Wraith Kurt Franke 5 8 26 31/ 41/ 29 jtest Kafka 121 8 26 33/ 43/ 24 Persistence Kurt Franke 123 12 26 34/ 45/ 21 Mirage 1.3 Anton Marsden 123 18 26 1/ 2/ 1 Tornado 2.3 a Beppe Bezzi 5 57 26 26/ 25/ 49 Hazy Shade Of Winter John K W 127 99 26 29/ 39/ 31 Time Lapse v0.1 David Boeren 120 44 26 34/ 44/ 22 Wraith Kurt Franke 123 33 26 36/ 46/ 19 Harmony P.Kline 126 91 No significant losses. Yes I called your program insignificant. ______________________________________________________________________________ HALL OF FAME * means the warrior is still running. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Torch t18 P.Kline 931 * Bomber 2 Iron Gate 1.5 Wayne Sheppard 926 CMP scanner 3 Jack in the box Beppe Bezzi 919 * P-warrior 4 Agony II Stefan Strack 912 CMP scanner 5 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 869 Stone/ imp 6 Thermite 1.0 Robert Macrae 802 Qscan -> bomber 7 Blue Funk 3 Steven Morrell 766 Stone/ imp 8 HeremScimitar A.Ivner,P.Kline 666 Bomber 9 myVamp v3.7 Paulsson 643 Vampire 10 Armory - A5 Wilkinson 609 P-warrior 11 Phq Maurizio Vittuari 589 Qscan -> replicator 12 quiz Schitzo 552 * Scanner/ bomber 13 juliet and paper Bremer & Bezzi 548 * P-warrior 14 La Bomba Beppe Bezzi 547 * Qscan -> replicator 15 B-Panama X Steven Morrell 518 Stone/ replicator 16 Hector 2 Kurt Franke 467 * Qscan -> replicator 17 Night Train Karl Lewin 439 * Replicator 18 NC 94 Wayne Sheppard 387 Stone/ imp 19 Cannonade P.Kline 382 Stone/ imp 20 Torch t17 P.Kline 378 Bomber 21 Lucky 3 Stefan Strack 355 Stone/ imp 22 Impfinity v4g1 Damien Doligez 352 * Stone/ imp 23 Derision M R Bremer 351 Scanner 24 Request v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 347 Qvamp -> vampire 25 Dragon Spear c w blue 346 CMP scanner Torch t18! Torch t18! Torch t18! Torch t18! Torch t18! Torch t18! Torch t18! Paul Kline's Torch t18 claims the top spot in the '94 draft hall of fame. Many of Kline's warriors have reigned on the standard hill and the '94 draft hill. Why not add one more? Congratulations. Karl Lewin and Planar also have warriors climbing up the ranks this week at the expense of Leprechaun on speed. Mason 2.0 is the next in line for ascension. ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server Beginner's Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 maximum age: At age 100, warriors are retired. rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft Last challenge: Mon Jan 29 04:43:28 PST 1996 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 55/ 29/ 16 Mirage 1.0 Anton Marsden 180 31 2 53/ 32/ 15 Koolaid II: The Wrath of David Boeren 175 81 3 37/ 13/ 50 Breeder J. E. Long 162 7 4 32/ 12/ 56 New Papery v0.1 Ian Oversby 153 5 5 44/ 39/ 17 Our Vamp v3 R Bartolome & JS Pul 149 15 6 40/ 30/ 30 Qwiksand Wayne Sheppard 149 25 7 27/ 8/ 66 RingWorm_v2.5 Calvin Loh 146 70 8 30/ 16/ 54 Water Bomb Ian Oversby 144 6 9 31/ 21/ 48 Spacehead 1.3 Warpi & Philemon 142 37 10 24/ 9/ 68 RingWorm_v2.6 Calvin Loh 138 40 11 38/ 41/ 21 Monitor M R Bremer 135 59 12 35/ 37/ 28 RedPixel.2 John Lewis 133 78 13 38/ 44/ 18 Assassin XII Andy Nevermind 133 63 14 23/ 21/ 56 Thunder V 1.0 Andy Nevermind 126 77 15 23/ 27/ 50 Veld Julian 118 11 16 16/ 16/ 68 SpiralTest2 Calvin Loh 117 80 17 34/ 52/ 14 Mary Janes J. E. Long 117 26 18 11/ 6/ 83 Evol Cap 6.1 John Wilkinson 116 60 19 33/ 58/ 9 Our CoreClear v1 R Bartolome & JS Pul 109 4 20 18/ 30/ 52 Veld 3 Julian 107 3 21 27/ 52/ 22 White Rose v0.14 Tomasz Radon 102 29 22 12/ 23/ 64 Spiral Again Calvin Loh 102 69 23 12/ 23/ 64 Spiral Again Calvin Loh 101 71 24 20/ 49/ 31 CounterMeasures V4 Chris Arguin 91 2 25 20/ 66/ 14 Hello Ian Oversby 74 1 Marsden holds first place with Mirage 1.0. An update, Mirage 1.5 holds an impressive 4th place on the '94 draft hill. Koolaid II has had little trouble dominating the b-hill being near the top for the last few weeks. J. E. Long has had a couple impressive warriors. Breeder entered the hill at number two and has remained in the top 5 since. ______________________________________________________________________________ The Hint The question has been asked many times: is the hill getting more difficult or does it merely cycle, with warriors being pushed off the hill only to regain glory at a later date? I looked through some of the old issues of the '94 Warrior and CoreWarrior to see what was successful a month or a year ago. Of course the introduction of pspace has changed the dynamics of the game somewhat, but not many warriors are currently using it. I choose the following veterans--former kings--to assult the hill. Porch Swing by Randy Graham Rank: 19 Score: 38/ 45/ 16 131 points Did not score decisive victory over any current warriors. Less than 15 wins against Evol Cap and Night Train. Total inability to handle Die Hard type warriors. Marginally better than seventyfive and Blue Funk 5. Would have scored less if not for some beginner warriors at the bottom of the hill. HeremScimitar by Paul Kline Rank: 17 Score: 37/ 45/ 18 130 points No analysis. nobody special by Michael Nonemacher Rank: 19 Score: 23/ 18/ 59 128 points Ties all papers and Impfinity. Frontwards and Torch play even. Mirage trounces it. seventyfive scores 33% wins which means it has some decent stun capability. Same with Tornado. Only scores big against Blue Funk 5. Taking Names by Paul Kline Rank: 25 Score: 33/ 50/ 17 116 points Totally inadequate to deal with current replicators. La Bomba has scores over 50% wins as does Hector 2. Frontwards, quiz, Tornado all score massively. Wins big over Mirage and ajax. Pyramid 5.5 by Michael Constant Rank 25 Score: 29/ 52/ 20 106 points Gets annihlated by replicators. Simply cannot handle TimeScape style papers. Night Train destroys it 74% wins, 0% losses. Evol Cap doesn't score like Night Train at all. Interesting. Marginally wins against a few warriors, big over seventyfive. What has happened to make the hill tougher? Replicators have been evolving into increasingly nastier warriors. First there was Silk Paper which introduced silk style replicating (obviously). Silks split so quickly, they are somewhat immune to stunning attempts. Simple split/jump bombs weren't enough to take them out. Then J. Pohjalainen, the same author, gave us TimeScape, which is the replicating engine used in most papers today. Not only does it split faster than Silk Warrior, but leaves behind decoys to fool scanners. Scanners had to move to spl/spl/jmp bombs and two pass coreclears to be effective. Warriors that didn't have as much stunning power had to develop multipass coreclears with multiple split passes. Next Paul Kline develops Die Hard, combining the TimeScape engine with imps. Even some multipass clears were unable to handle it! What else has changed? Many scanners didn't color core in the old days. You could spot a scanner by the lack of instructions in core. Homemade Ice Cream used this property by scanning in one direction in a small step size knowing that the scan would either hit a decoy or the scanner itself. Then it would launch paper. Many scans today are combinations bomb/scans. Not only do they color core, but increase speed as well. Stones have been the poor relation. But they may be gaining a new emergence with continously launching imp spirals ala Impfinity. Some may argue that we've exhausted the possibilities of the '94 draft instruction set with these innovations/evolutions. Possible, but doubtful. If you're interested in the full statistics, just send me mail at bremermr@ ecn.purdue.edu. ______________________________________________________________________________ Planar's Corner by Stefan Strack CDB tutorial, part 4 This week, we're going to cover the "mode" commands: pqueue, wqueue and pspace. We already encountered the pqueue command in the macros covered in part 2 and 3. The mode commands change what is being displayed and edited: When you first enter CDB, "list" works on the core address space, that is, "list 0,10" lists core addresses 0 through 10. We will refer to this default mode as "core mode". After you entered, e.g. the pqueue command, "list", "edit" will work on the process queue instead. Let's fire up Planar's Fahrenheit from part 1 and enter these commands: pq @step~list 0,$ The last command steps and then lists the contents of the process queue. Since Fahrenheit is self-splitting, you'll see two entries in the queue. Process 0 in the process queue points to the address that is about to be executed, process 1 is the following process. If you keep hitting , you can watch the process queue grow every time the SPL instruction is executed. The process queue display is especially helpful if you need to debug a complex multi-process warrior. The dollar symbol in the list command is a predefined variable that is assigned the number of the last element and incremented as the process queue grows. (In core mode, $ is assigned to the last core address). So if you enter calc $+1 CDB gives you the number of processes Fahrenheit has running. There are several examples for the use of $ in the solutions to the macro exercises from part 3 below. The pqueue command takes an optional numeric argument. Without it, the process queue of the current warrior is displayed. "pqueue 1" enters process queue mode for warrior 1, irrespective of whether it is the current warrior. "pqueue off" returns back to core mode. The "pspace" command makes P-space the target of the list, edit and fill commands. Similar to "pqueue", you use an optional number argument to select the P-space of a specific warrior. Finally, "wqueue" is useful if you're running multi-warrior battles: it selects a "warrior queue" display, with one line for the current process of every warrior. I won't give any specific examples here, but check the multi-warrior macros contained in "mw.mac". A feature of the pqueue and wqueue commands that's useful especially in macros: when you re-enter core mode, the current address becomes the address of the last line displayed in process or warrior queue mode. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Solutions to exercises from part 3 > 1)The "next" macro only works for battles with one or two warriors. Modify > it so it skips to the next round even if more than 2 warriors are loaded. Here the original: next= echo Advancing to next round~@pq~@f0,$~dat 0,0~@pq off~@go~@st We'll use the "wqueue" command that we just learned about to get the number of warriors (N=$+1), and then zero each warrior's process queue in a loop using "pqueue N". Since the macro now exceeds the line length, we'll break it up by using a continuation macro: next= echo Advancing to next round~m _next _next=@wq~@ca N=$+1~!!~@pq N~@f0,$~dat 0,0~if N=N-1 > 0~!~@pq off~@go~@st > 2) Write a macro that steps until the number of processes of a warrior > decreases (Hint: use the pqueue command). Here's a version that works when exactly two warriors are running: dying=@pq~@ca N=$~!!~@sk 1~@pq~if $, Myer R Bremer or Maurizio Vittuari