Article 1828 of rec.games.corewar: Newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Path: hellgate.utah.edu!caen!sdd.hp.com!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!dunix.drake.edu!acad.drake.edu!pk6811s From: pk6811s@acad.drake.edu Subject: _Push Off_ Message-ID: <1993May19.144902.1@acad.drake.edu> Lines: 277 Sender: news@dunix.drake.edu (USENET News System) Nntp-Posting-Host: acad.drake.edu Organization: Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, USA Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 20:49:02 GMT _PUSH OFF_ A midweek review of Corewar May 19, 1993 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. The Standings: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 46/ 42/ 13 Dragon Spear c w blue 149 530 2 42/ 39/ 19 Distance v6.2 Brant D. Thomsen 145 76 3 33/ 22/ 45 Night Crawler Wayne Sheppard 145 428 4 32/ 20/ 48 Snake Wayne Sheppard 144 188 5 45/ 45/ 10 Agony 5.2 Stefan Strack 144 55 6 33/ 22/ 45 Imprimis 6 P.Kline 143 828 7 33/ 24/ 43 Oak Stake c w blue 142 2 8 32/ 25/ 43 Sphinx v2.8 W. Mintardjo 139 1426 9 33/ 28/ 39 FlyPaper 2.0 J.Layland 139 133 10 41/ 45/ 14 Iron Gate 1.01 Wayne Sheppard 138 256 11 32/ 26/ 42 ImpsAreMyFriend J.Layland 138 102 12 42/ 46/ 13 Fire Storm v1.1 W. Mintardjo 137 67 13 28/ 22/ 51 ttest nandor sieben 134 304 14 37/ 46/ 16 Sucker 6 Stefan Strack 129 450 15 35/ 42/ 23 Leprechaun 1b Anders Ivner 128 1340 16 26/ 24/ 49 Kiwi 1.1 Joshua Houk 128 12 17 38/ 50/ 12 Enigma Wayne 126 7 18 37/ 50/ 13 Eclipse II P.Kline 124 1 19 23/ 22/ 55 Simplicity v1.5 Brant D. Thomsen 124 21 20 33/ 47/ 20 Herem II Anders Ivner 120 92 21 2/ 2/ 0 Eclipse II P.Kline 7 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- II. The Basics: -Core War Archives are available via anonymous FTP at soda.berkeley.edu in pub/corewar... -FAQ for this newsgroup is available via anonymous FTP at rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.z ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. The Scoop: 1778 - 1778 - 1778 - 1778 - 1778 - 1778 - 1778 - 1778 - 1778 - 1778 That's the magic number! +0 Stormbringer's stand as longest-running warrior is finally over. Dan Nabutovsky's record-setting program withstood 1778 changes in the Hill, not to mention two or three thousand unsuccessful attempts. And given the recent showing of new top-ten's, it's an open question as to whether anyone will approach 1778 in the near future. +0 Stormbringer has been all over the Hill in the last month, but his demise began late last week when W. Sheppard posted a new version of Cleaver - always tough on imps - which dropped all the older imps in the ratings. Then W. Mintardjo sent up a new version of Paratroops and +0 Stormbringer was firmly in last place, needing only some strong competitor to come along and finish him off. Last place was not unfamiliar to +0 Stormbringer, he's been there before, but was always able to tough out the challenges. Not this time. So, kudos to Dan and thanks for publishing +0 Stormbringer's source. Haven't heard whether he will be connected this summer, but expect he'll smoke a pipe somewhere and dream up a new warrior as tough as this one. Another long-running warrior was pushed off this week - Medusa's v7 - age 645. Mintardjo's Agony-based cmp-scanner (with gate) saw its share of top-10 rankings, but finally gave way to the latest wave of competition. And S. Strack pushed off his own warrior - Agony 5.1 (age 526) has been replaced by Agony 5.2. Guess it feels better to knock them off yourself, rather than wait for someone else to do it :-) A Big Thanks to Strack and Mintardjo for publishing their source (sans constants of course :-). Gee, Agony has a hole in it. Now there's an interesting idea - let's see, if I put a hole in paper, make it big enough that scanners can't see the actual code, wow! :-) Stefan's tournament rolls on, minus the first human casualty - Scott Adkins, beat out by one of Strack's robot players. Sorry Scott, can't imagine how embarrassing that must feel :-) Apologies to whom it may concern, our mail-server has been up and down this week due to a change-over in computers and I seem to have missed some results. (When did Oak Stake appear? And what happened to Paratroops?) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IV. The Outlook: 3 47/ 44/ 9 A3 Stefan Strack 150 1 4 45/ 45/ 10 TFs10 W. Mintardjo 145 1 1 51/ 41/ 8 Cleaver Wayne Sheppard 162 1 4 47/ 45/ 8 Agony 5.2 Stefan Strack 150 1 2 44/ 43/ 12 Eclipse II P.Kline 146 1 3 47/ 46/ 7 Cleaver 2.0 Wayne Sheppard 148 1 7 32/ 25/ 43 Sphinx v4.5 W. Mintardjo 140 1 3 43/ 39/ 18 Distance v6.2 Brant D. Thomsen 147 1 9 32/ 29/ 39 Night Smaller Wayne Sheppard 135 1 1 51/ 40/ 9 Fire Storm v1.1 W. Mintardjo 162 1 2 45/ 43/ 12 Fire Storm v2.0 W. Mintardjo 147 1 6 45/ 46/ 9 Paratroops v3.0 W. Mintardjo 144 1 9 29/ 22/ 48 Crawler Anti-Imp Wayne Sheppard 137 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- V. The Quick Look: 21 25/ 24/ 51 TC W. Mintardjo 125 0 21 9/ 47/ 43 Grue c w blue 71 0 20 2/ 54/ 44 Joke Craig Ferguson 50 1 21 22/ 77/ 1 cma3 cma 68 0 19 15/ 30/ 55 test P.Kline 99 1 20 22/ 23/ 56 test Joshua Houk 121 1 21 2/ 63/ 35 Grimp Craig Ferguson 41 0 21 4/ 63/ 34 Joke2 Craig Ferguson 45 0 21 23/ 69/ 8 Kinch Kevin 77 0 20 20/ 28/ 52 Paper W. Mintardjo 113 1 16 42/ 50/ 8 TMs82 W. Mintardjo 134 1 19 40/ 51/ 9 TMsv8 W. Mintardjo 128 1 14 42/ 49/ 9 XBS 2 Fredrik Ohrstrom 135 1 20 22/ 69/ 9 Finder Andre van Dalen 74 1 21 14/ 78/ 8 Fleas2 Kevin 51 0 21 23/ 73/ 3 Icebox Fredrik Ohrstrom 73 0 21 27/ 64/ 9 Invest Andre van Dalen 91 0 20 7/ 53/ 39 Tinies Andre van Dalen 61 1 21 11/ 79/ 11 Weeble Craig Ferguson 42 0 19 19/ 24/ 57 test 2 P.Kline 114 1 21 22/ 59/ 19 CraMPon c w blue 85 0 21 8/ 82/ 10 Onc.red Craig Ferguson 35 0 21 16/ 75/ 8 Sargent Kevin 57 0 21 3/ 45/ 52 Tie-1.0 Jonathan Roy 62 0 21 17/ 79/ 4 myte1.1 Kevin 54 0 20 8/ 46/ 46 Comets 2 Joshua Houk 70 1 21 0/ 88/ 12 Improved Craig Ferguson 12 0 17 26/ 22/ 52 Kiwi 1.1 Joshua Houk 129 1 21 14/ 74/ 13 Mad Monk Bryan Mawhinney 54 0 21 23/ 34/ 42 Passport P.Kline 112 0 19 38/ 48/ 14 ScanTest J.Layland 127 1 21 38/ 47/ 15 Emerald 4 P.Kline 128 0 19 22/ 39/ 38 Impulsive Craig Ferguson 105 1 17 19/ 21/ 60 Kiwi v1.0 Joshua Houk 118 1 21 16/ 68/ 17 CombiVan A Arne H. Juul & Stig 63 0 21 21/ 62/ 17 Early Bird c w blue 80 0 16 40/ 42/ 18 Tomb Stone c w blue 137 1 19 30/ 55/ 15 sub-type-c c w blue 106 1 21 39/ 53/ 9 Medusa's v7 Mintardjo & Strack 125 645 16 39/ 42/ 19 Night Shade Wayne Sheppard 135 1 21 34/ 50/ 16 Sunburst 32 Jay Han 119 0 13 31/ 24/ 44 Chimera v3.6 W. Mintardjo 138 1 19 25/ 55/ 20 EarSplitting P.Kline 94 1 10 35/ 25/ 40 Stoned Again c w blue 145 1 21 34/ 50/ 16 Sunburst 31b Jay Han 118 0 20 24/ 59/ 18 sub-type-b+r c w blue 89 1 11 41/ 49/ 10 sub-type-cmp c w blue 134 1 20 31/ 60/ 9 sub-type-xtc c w blue 103 1 15 44/ 48/ 8 Medusa's v7.2 W. Mintardjo 139 1 20 26/ 38/ 37 Anti-Imp Paper c w blue 113 1 19 40/ 49/ 11 Paratroops v3.2 W. Mintardjo 131 1 18 20/ 19/ 61 Simplicity v1.2 Brant D. Thomsen 122 1 20 27/ 31/ 42 Scars 4 Eyes v3.1 Joshua Houk 123 1 21 4/ 46/ 50 Bubble-scrape v3.0 Joshua Houk 61 0 20 26/ 38/ 35 Construction Paper c w blue 114 1 20 0/ 61/ 39 Self splitting imp Unknown 40 1 20 11/ 48/ 41 Trident [Version 2] W. Mintardjo 75 1 20 12/ 43/ 45 Trident [Version 2] W. Mintardjo 81 1 21 9/ 49/ 42 Splitting Nightmare F Stig Hemmer 69 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VI. The Hint: Here are some tips from Cancer by Thomas Gettys, written in 1987. Cancer is a very simple concept: clear the core with spl-zero, then with dat's. Bombing constant is -1 in both phases. Running Cancer against Imprimis, Sphinx, and Night Crawler gives some interesting observations. First, it is surprising how often Cancer snockers the stone in Imprimis and Sphinx with spl-zeros. The very fast spl-zero copy routine frequently catches the stone before it has killed Cancer, even though Imprimis and Sphinx are using 'optimal' pattern numbers. The reason is that Gettys starts two processes running at the same time, both using the same copy-to pointer. Thus, if one is killed - the other keeps running. Since they are close to one another, any optimal-pattern number that kills one early will kill the other one late. Night Crawler on the other hand never gets snockered, because it decrements every other downstream location and overruns both of Cancer's processes before it itself is hit. NC wipes any small bombers/core-clears who are using the standard mov/jmp copy/clear routine which are downstream of itself, because even though mov/jmp using pre-decrement is very fast, it is not as fast as NC's forward decrementing. (Of course everyone uses pre-decrement reverse-core clear because there is no pre-increment mode :-) So here are three tips: 1. it takes more than one hit to kill program running in two/more locations 2. Night Crawler can't be killed by a simple core-clear program 3. old programs are a gold mine for useful insights, a little digging is required, however And here is Cancer, complete with extensive explanation :-) ; program CANCER ; author Thomas Gettys ; copyright (C) 1987 ; ; The concept of this program is quite simple; force uncontrolled ; growth in the opponent (hence the name) to cause at least partial ; impotence, and then go back and kill the malignancy. ; ; The uncontrolled growth is caused by putting an SPL 0 instruction ; into every core word unoccupied by CANCER. As a side-effect most ; of core will be "sterilized"; to what extent is determined by the ; "resilience" of the opponent. ; ; After core has been infected with the SPL 0 germ a second pass is ; made, this time dropping a DAT 1 instruction into every core word ; unoccupied by CANCER in order to kill off the enemy processes (a ; DAT 1 instruction is used instead of a DAT 0 so as to confuse an ; enemy program that is looking for occupied core). ; ; If CANCER has not won at this point (i.e. it is still running) it ; starts all over again. ; ; -=(*)=- ; ; The philosphy of the author with respect to COREWARS is reflected ; in CANCER - a strong offense is the best defense. CANCER is fast ; and presents a small target. ; ; The only explicit defensive aspect of CANCER also happens to one ; of its most interesting features. CANCER immediately splits into ; two processes which are identical and work in tandem to perform a ; single task. Since they share and update a single variable (the ; pointer to the next core word to bomb), one task has jurisdiction ; over the odd words and the other task has responsibility for the ; even words. The interesting point to note here is that if either ; process is killed the other will immediately assume its brother's ; task! This redundancy provides some protection against DAT bombs ; that are spaced eight or more words apart. ; ; -=(*)=- ; JMP -1 0 ;"wall" to stop marching SPL 0 START SPL COPY2 0 ;kick off second copy of self ; ; COPY1 MOV CNTR PTR ;initialize bomb destination pointer INFECT1 MOV GERM