From news-rocq.inria.fr!jussieu.fr!math.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!news.columbia.edu!news.new-york.net!news.stormking.com!bezzi@nemo.it Tue Jun 25 10:48:33 1996 Article: 5502 of rec.games.corewar Path: news-rocq.inria.fr!jussieu.fr!math.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!news.columbia.edu!news.new-york.net!news.stormking.com!bezzi@nemo.it From: Beppe Bezzi Newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Subject: Core Warrior 35 Date: 24 Jun 1996 21:25:22 -0400 Organization: Storm King Ind. Inc. Lines: 493 Sender: server@news.stormking.com Distribution: world Message-ID: Reply-To: bezzi@nemo.it NNTP-Posting-Host: valhalla.stormking.com Originator: corewar-l@stormking.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2 .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 35 June 24, 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 Newbies should check the stormking page for the FAQ, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! If ftp.csua.berkeley.edu is unreachable, you can download pMARS at: Terry's web page--http://www.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ Planar fpt site--ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars Fechter ftp site--ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar ______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings. Pizza hill changes are going to be implemented, Thos is at work and new feature will soon be available, mail your comments, proposals and bug finds to J.K. Lewis and Andrew Fabbro have opened a new hill on their server. Presently they run a limited process hill with all other stats like 94 hill, you can play and help them testing sending your warriors to: with a ;redcode-94lp header. The hill implements many features, to get more info send a mail with a subject of 'help' (no quotation marks) to the above address. I hope the hill masters will agree for a common syntax of commands, having a different one in every server is sure confusing. --Beppe Bezzi ______________________________________________________________________________ New Pizza features o Remove self fights on all hills that use pspace. o Add the "test" command to decrease artificial aging of the hill. I think the best (and easiest) way to do this would be as an argument to the ";redcode" command like "quiet" and "verbose" are now. ";redcode test" would challenge all the warriors on the hill (only 100 times?), but the results would be discarded. This way you could see how your changes affect your performance against all the warriors on the hill, but you get the results back twice as fast. o Add the ";password" command, to make it harder to forge ";kill" commands. o Make ";name" commands mandatory, and make blank ";kill" commands illegal. o Add the ";url" and ";show" commands for web access. ";url" is pretty much self explanatory, but ";show" will be used to customize how much info on your warrior you want to make public. "[no]source" and "[no]score" are two possible arguments to add. o Add the ";change [warrior name]" command to allow you to change info in your warrior without having to kill it and resubmit it. If you wanted to make it "quiet" while you go on vacation, or change the ";url", just send one piece of mail with ";change" in it. This would do a substring match like ";kill", and any other commands in the mail would be changed in the warrior. Does this make sense? Any other ideas, or comments on the above proposals? Thos ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server ICWS '94 Draft Hill: 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 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 41/ 41/ 14 Goldfinch P.Kline 137 1 2 37/ 36/ 23 Yogi Bear P.Kline 134 3 3 31/ 26/ 39 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 133 156 4 35/ 35/ 26 Jo Clark II Ian Oversby 132 157 5 20/ 5/ 71 The Avalanche John Wilkinson 131 22 6 35/ 36/ 25 Twister Beppe Bezzi 131 253 7 27/ 20/ 50 Rosebud Beppe 130 472 8 30/ 28/ 38 test jb21 Beppe Bezzi 129 4 9 21/ 10/ 65 ompega Steven Morrell 129 150 10 35/ 39/ 22 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 128 5 11 37/ 42/ 17 myVamp5.1 Paulsson 128 49 12 25/ 18/ 53 rhodium v1.3 Martin M. Pedersen 128 24 13 34/ 37/ 26 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 127 517 14 37/ 44/ 15 HopScotch 1.6 Robert Macrae 126 266 15 26/ 23/ 48 blue candle bjoern guenzel 126 386 16 32/ 35/ 29 Thermite II Robert Macrae 125 2138 17 36/ 44/ 16 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 124 951 18 31/ 35/ 30 Scotch Broth 1.2 Robert Macrae 124 48 19 27/ 27/ 42 the historian bjoern guenzel 124 272 20 30/ 33/ 34 Thalamus mod Edgar 123 200 21 32/ 37/ 27 Goliath David van Dam 123 19 22 30/ 35/ 31 test Maurizio 123 197 23 22/ 17/ 58 Hazy Shade II John K W 123 1097 24 30/ 34/ 32 * Satura * bjoern guenzel 122 10 25 31/ 37/ 29 test E P.Kline 121 7 Weekly age: 108 ( 67 last week, 47 the week before ) New warriors: 11 Turnover/age rate 10% Average age: 296 ( 269 last week, 306 the week before ) Average score: 127 ( 133 last week, 140 the week before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by 14 authors: Bezzi with 4, guenzel, Macrae and Kline with 3, Vittuari and JKW with 2. A burst of activity on the hill, after some quiet weeks this one we had more than 100 challenges. King Report: Jack in the box held king position for the first days, then come some rumble, with many warriors alternating at the top, until Paul Kline set thing in his favourite manner, placing strongly his new pspacer Goldfinch with a good lead over the second, his other pspacer Yogi bear. Blur was pushed off but a new version toke its place, in a very good position, adding to the number of 'versions number two'; presently there are five plus TNT pro that can be considered a version two itself too. All but Jo Clark are childrens of successful warriors. Replicator are back and holding the hill in fifth and twelfth position, with JKW Avalanche and rhodium by the newcomer Petersen. The coming of paper caused the fall of some bombers holding top positions last weeks. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 41/ 41/ 14 Goldfinch P.Kline 137 1 2 37/ 36/ 23 Yogi Bear P.Kline 134 3 5 20/ 5/ 71 The Avalanche John Wilkinson 131 22 8 30/ 28/ 38 test jb21 Beppe Bezzi 129 4 10 35/ 39/ 22 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 128 5 11 37/ 42/ 17 myVamp5.1 Paulsson 128 49 12 25/ 18/ 53 rhodium v1.3 Martin M. Pedersen 128 24 18 31/ 35/ 30 Scotch Broth 1.2 Robert Macrae 124 48 21 32/ 37/ 27 Goliath David van Dam 123 19 24 30/ 34/ 32 * Satura * bjoern guenzel 122 10 25 31/ 37/ 29 test E P.Kline 121 7 Many new interesting warriors did the hill this week, half of the top ten scorers are new. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 26 1/ 1/ 2 Armory II John K W 5 55 26 1/ 1/ 2 test 1 bjoern guenzel 5 28 26 2/ 1/ 1 Versatility 1.0 Ross Morgan-Linial 7 18 26 32/ 38/ 31 stoninc Maurizio 126 301 26 2/ 1/ 0 Scimitar 2 P.Kline 7 35 26 2/ 1/ 1 jupiter crash bjoern guenzel 6 30 26 34/ 43/ 23 Blur Anton Marsden 124 463 26 1/ 1/ 1 myVamp5.0 Paulsson 5 108 26 1/ 1/ 1 Test bb v1.41 David van Dam 5 106 26 21/ 23/ 56 Atom Smasher Anton Marsden 120 172 26 32/ 41/ 27 Versatility 1.2 Ross Morgan-Linial 123 105 Marsden's Blur is the the oldest warrior pushed off; it has been quickly replaced by a new, more effective, version. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 16 32/ 35/ 29 Thermite II Robert Macrae 125 2138 22 22/ 17/ 58 Hazy Shade II John K W 123 1097 17 36/ 44/ 16 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 124 951 13 34/ 37/ 26 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 127 517 8 27/ 20/ 50 Rosebud Beppe 130 472 15 26/ 23/ 48 blue candle bjoern guenzel 126 386 Blur is no more, blue candle enters. Hazy shade II enters the over 1000 group. _____________________________________________________________________________ HALL OF FAME * means the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Thermite II Robert Macrae 2138 * Qscan -> bomber 2 Impfinity v4g1 Planar 1993 Stone/ imp 3 Jack in the box Beppe Bezzi 1620 P-warrior 4 Tornado 3.0 Beppe Bezzi 1567 Bomber 5 Torch t18 P.Kline 1539 Bomber 6 Chameleon Myer R Bremer 1437 P-warrior 7 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 1420 One shot scanner 8 Evol Cap 6.6 John Wilkinson 1299 Imp / stone 9 quiz Schitzo 1262 Scanner/ bomber 10 T.N.T. Maurizio Vittuari 1204 Bomber 11 Grilled Octopus v0.5 David Boeren 1154 P-warrior 12 Hazy Shade II John Wilkinson 1097 * P-warrior 13 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 951 * Qscan -> Vampire 14 Iron Gate 1.5 Wayne Sheppard 926 CMP scanner 15 Agony II Stefan Strack 912 CMP scanner 16 Barrage Anton Marsden 876 Qscan -> replicator 17 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 869 Stone/ imp 18 Flurry Anton Marsden 835 Qscan -> pwarrior 19 Thermite 1.0 Robert Macrae 802 Qscan -> bomber 20 Blue Funk 3 Steven Morrell 766 Stone/ imp 21 Night Train Karl Lewin 755 Replicator 22 Mirage 1.5 Anton Marsden 736 Scanner/ bomber 23 Blizzard Anton Marsden 713 Qscan -> replicator 24 HeremScimitar A.Ivner,P.Kline 666 Bomber 25 La Bomba Beppe Bezzi 650 Qscan -> replicator Thermite passes the 2100 and is still in good health even if dropping a bit, Hazy shade resists and passes the 1000 milestone. Stepping stone gains some positions and is now near 1000 age. But three living warriors are in the hall, compared to the seven of last month; perhaps scores are setting, after the increment for the introduction of five more spots, and making the hall is getting harder. ______________________________________________________________________________ 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 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 28/ 23 Versatility 1.2 Ross Morgan-Linial 158 14 2 48/ 36/ 12 Thalamus Edgar 156 71 3 46/ 37/ 13 Saboteur v0.3p shar 152 21 4 43/ 31/ 23 Mace Edgar 151 91 5 43/ 41/ 12 Thalamus Edgar 141 47 6 28/ 14/ 55 test-paper Martin M. Pedersen 138 10 7 40/ 41/ 15 hyper 1.0 Ross 135 19 8 41/ 42/ 13 Sapper Andrew Fabbro 135 97 9 26/ 13/ 57 rhodium v1.3 Martin M. Pedersen 135 6 10 31/ 24/ 41 Fork v0.1-13p (i) Christoph C. Birk 135 78 11 40/ 43/ 13 3-clear 0.6 Ilmari Karonen 133 22 12 28/ 22/ 46 Cannon Fodder I. Karonen 130 1 13 40/ 46/ 11 Not Very Pretty 2.0 Ross Morgan-Linial 130 45 14 28/ 24/ 43 Hunter V 0.9 O.Fechner 129 72 15 16/ 4/ 76 Nematode v1.2b Jonathan Stott 125 2 16 33/ 38/ 24 test Justin Kao 124 11 17 25/ 22/ 49 Avenger I Oliver Fechner 124 18 18 31/ 40/ 25 3-clear 0.5 I. Karonen 118 36 19 28/ 37/ 30 Yet Another Try 1i Justin Kao 116 43 20 33/ 49/ 14 Switch Hitter 0.3t Ross Morgan-Linial 114 26 21 24/ 30/ 43 Hunter V 0.8 O.Fechner 114 93 22 29/ 41/ 26 Yet Another Try 1.0b Justin Kao 114 56 23 30/ 43/ 23 Extremely Prejudiced Scott Manley 112 98 24 27/ 41/ 28 1,000lb weight Ross Morgan-Linial 109 66 25 25/ 37/ 34 rhodium Martin M. Pedersen 108 8 But 12 challenges, little is changed. The top authors are the same even if they exchanged the king position ______________________________________________________________________________ The hint A new p-switcher by Paul Kline A colorful variety of p-switching mechanisms are sprouting this Spring, and it would be nice if someone would round them all up for comparison. Also nice if people would POST a few :-) A simple, fast switch-on-loss routine for two p-components might look like this: pflag equ (somenumber.lt.500) pGold ldp.ab #0,#0 ; get results of last battle ldp.a #pflag ,pGold ; retrieve attempted strategy add.a #1 ,@pGold ; if a loss, increment strategy mod.a #2 ,pGold ; safeguard against brainwashing stp.ab pGold ,#pflag ; store current strategy jmz.a select1 ,pGold ; select strategy 1 jmp select2 ; select strategy 2 (The last jmp is unnecessary if strategy 2 immediately follows) A powerful adaptation of the routine can be made with no extra instructions. By increasing the MOD number we have an assymetric switcher, by which the second strategy is selected more often than the first. This can be very helpful in pairing up a strong all-purpose warrior like Torch, with a special-purpose warrior like Clisson. Like many fast programs with spl-dat clears, Torch is vulnerable to a stone, which is in turn highly vulnerable to Clisson. Using an assymetric switcher to select Torch most frequently gives the best results against a variety of opponents, and the infrequent Clission strategy breaks up a protracted series of stone attacks. This is the switcher used by Goldfinch which pairs a one-shot scanner w/multipass clear, with Clisson's dodger. Paul Kline pk6811s@acad.drake.edu ______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra Twister by Beppe Bezzi Tornado is, beetween my warriors,one my favourites and, being a very flexible bombing engine, I like a lot to tweak and improve it, testing new bombs and variations. When Tornado 3.0, that had a success beyond my expectations, was near the bottom of the hill, a long time indeed :-), I tried to fix some problems that caused its fall and I coded v 3.3 that's the one included in Twister. Jack uses a slightly different version but you can fit this one in the old Jack, using but one paper module, and results won't differ too much from those on the hill (let me something to publish next week :-) The bombs are common dat <1,{1 deadly against clears and slowing djn stream users, intermixed with one spl #xx to allow self bombing to enter the core clear. Worth noting are the pattern, not exacly mod 5 but slightly translated, such way it's more difficult for a one shot scanner to slip through my bombs without noticing them, and the djn protection, jmz.b start,#0 stolen from Torch. The qscan is rather similar to the one in Stepping Stone, being only a bit slower overall even if with a better bomb distribution. I coded it from the warrior I sent to J K Lewis tournament, a thing that proved deadly, I won 13 rounds alone, but too weak. It's a 50%c vamp engine dropping one far jump to the pit and two near jumps through and to the far jump in a six instructions loop, something like that: jn jmp *qqstep, qqstep ;jump near jf jmp -bombn+pit-(3*qqstep)-qdisp,-qqstep ;jump far jn ..[qqstep cells].. jn .. [qqstep cells] .. jf The first jn jumps to jf using a-field of the second jn, the other jumps go to the pit. The pit is a standard self destructing, brainwashing pit. ;redcode-94 ;name Twister ;author Beppe Bezzi ;strategy qscan -> Tornado bomber ;assert CORESIZE == 8000 ;kill Twister step equ -45 away equ 4000+2 ;mod 5 +2 gate1 equ (gate-4) org startq qstep equ 6 qrounds equ 8 qdisp equ -qstep*(qrounds*3/2-1)-60 qqstep equ qstep*qrounds bigst equ 100 ;or something more :-) qstart equ startq+145 qst equ qstart -(4*bigst) pstep equ 40 spacer equ 4 cldst equ (bclr-bgate+spacer+5) pit spl 4 pit1 mov -3, <1300 spl pit1 spl pit1 stp.b #0, @pit1 jmp pit1 ;----Qscan ;don't ever think it's the right qscan pattern :-) startq s3 for 4 sne.i qst+4*bigst*(s3+0), qst+4*bigst*(s3+0)+bigst*1 seq.i qst+4*bigst*(s3+0)+bigst*2, qst+4*bigst*(s3+0)+bigst*3 mov.ab #qst+4*bigst*(s3+0)-found, found rof jmn.b which, found s2 for 4 sne.i qst+4*bigst*(s2+5), qst+4*bigst*(s2+5)+bigst*1 seq.i qst+4*bigst*(s2+5)+bigst*2, qst+4*bigst*(s2+5)+bigst*3 mov.ab #qst+4*bigst*(s2+5)-found, found rof jmn.b which, found s1 for 4 sne.i qst+4*bigst*(s1+10), qst+4*bigst*(s1+10)+bigst*1 seq.i qst+4*bigst*(s1+10)+bigst*2, qst+4*bigst*(s1+10)+bigst*3 mov.ab #qst+4*bigst*(s1+10)-found, found rof jmn which, found which found jmz.b boot, #0 ;Pyramid decoding add.b found, pt2 sne.i @found, @pt2 add.ab #(bigst*2),found sne.i -100, @found add.ab #bigst, found qattack ;found.b punta il bersaglio mov bombm, @found ;dat bomb found position add.ba found, qstone ;\ add.b found, qstone ; >setup vamp pointers sub.ba found, bombf ;/ ;---vamp attack --- qb1 mov bombn, *qstone qb2 mov bombf, @qstone qstone mov (1*qqstep)+bombn+qdisp,@(3*qqstep)+bombn+qdisp qstart1 sub qincr, @qb1 add.a qincr, bombf qjump djn.b qb1, #qrounds jmp boot bombn jmp *qqstep, qqstep qincr dat >-1*qstep,>-1*qstep bombf jmp -bombn+pit-(3*qqstep)-qdisp,-qqstep for 5 dat 0,0 rof ;--- Tornado start boot mov gate, }pt2 mov gate, *pt2 mov last, gate1 mov @djmp, >gate1 djmp djn.b clr, {bombs incr dat >-3*step,>-3*step last bombm dat <1, {1 shift dat #40, #40 ______________________________________________________________________________ Questions? Concerns? Comments? Complaints? Mail them to people who care. authors: Beppe Bezzi or Myer Bremer