June 21, 1994 Issue #9
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This newsletter covers the current status of the ICWS '94 Draft hills,
and also attempts to keep up with the latest ideas in how the new standard
will affect corewars in general. I hope you enjoy it!
If you are unfamiliar with the '94 draft standard, you can learn more about
it by reading the FAQ for this newsgroup. In addition, the program pMARS
includes a highly recommended tutorial on the new standard. Feel free
to send me e-mail if you have any difficulty finding either of them, if you
need to have a corewar item mailed to you, or if you have any other questions.
The FAQ is available through anonymous FTP to rtfm.mit.edu, as
/pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z
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CHANGES and CORRECTIONS:
A new version of pMARS has been released. The latest version of pMARS now
has A-field indirection, and encourages the use of the ";assert" command
to make sure that the hill you are running your program on is adequate.
You can get it through anonymous FTP to soda.berkeley.edu.
I also owe Michael Constant an apology. Sauron was removed (killed) by it's
owner, rather than being pushed off of the '94 draft hill -- as I stated
in the last issue of _The_'94_Warrior_.
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The ICWS '94 Draft Hill:
Core size: 8000 instructions
Max processes: 8000 per program
Duration: After 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared.
Max entry length: 100 instructions
The current ICWS '94 Draft hill on "Pizza":
# %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age
1 45/ 34/ 21 Pyramid v5.5 Michael Constant 155 89
2 45/ 36/ 18 Keystone t33 P.Kline 154 111
3 40/ 27/ 33 Torch t5 P.Kline 154 4
4 36/ 23/ 40 Sasami T.Hsu 150 24
5 38/ 34/ 27 Stimpy v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 143 40
6 39/ 37/ 23 Christopher Steven Morrell 141 232
7 30/ 19/ 51 Aeka T.Hsu 141 1
8 31/ 22/ 47 Cannonade P.Kline 141 169
9 39/ 38/ 23 Request v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 141 342
10 30/ 19/ 51 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 140 311
11 30/ 20/ 51 Insight v1.0 Brant D. Thomsen 139 31
12 41/ 44/ 14 Iron Gate 1.5 Wayne Sheppard 138 288
13 30/ 22/ 48 B-Panama IX Steven Morrell 138 39
14 42/ 47/ 11 Rave 4.1 Stefan Strack 137 276
15 39/ 41/ 20 Sauron v6.0 Michael Constant 137 35
16 35/ 32/ 33 mmfP v2 Karl Lewin 137 42
17 32/ 28/ 41 Lucky 3 Stefan Strack 136 304
18 40/ 44/ 16 Dragon Spear c w blue 136 344
19 30/ 24/ 46 NC 94 Wayne Sheppard 136 324
20 38/ 42/ 20 Aleph 0+ Jay Han 135 21
The top three programs are still Pyramid, Keystone, and Torch. However, there
is a new entry that seems to be giving them some stiff competition.
Sasami, by T. Hsu, was submitted to the hill a few days ago, and has been
clinging to fourth place ever since. The rest of the hill, as far as I can
tell, is total chaos. I have a feeling that the next couple of weeks will
be really interesting -- especially as more programs are submitted that take
advantage of the latest pMARS additions.
The current ICWS '94 Draft hill on "Stormking":
# %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age
1 45/ 29/ 26 Sauron v3.6 Michael Constant 160 1
2 41/ 27/ 32 Killer instinct Anders Ivner 155 24
3 36/ 21/ 43 Twimpede+/8000-d1 Jay Han 150 14
4 44/ 38/ 17 Ntttgtstitd Simon Hovell 150 25
5 43/ 38/ 19 Request v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 148 17
6 34/ 21/ 44 Lucky 3 Stefan Strack 147 12
7 35/ 23/ 42 NC II Wayne Sheppard 147 79
8 35/ 25/ 40 Sphinx v5.1 W. Mintardjo 145 82
9 43/ 41/ 17 Sylvester v1.0 Brant D. Thomsen 144 61
10 29/ 19/ 53 ttti nandor sieben 139 35
11 32/ 26/ 42 JustTakingALookSee J.Layland 138 78
12 31/ 24/ 45 Snake Wayne Sheppard 138 34
13 43/ 47/ 10 Rave 4.1 Stefan Strack 138 7
14 39/ 40/ 21 tiny J.Layland 138 59
15 29/ 20/ 51 ttti94 nandor sieben 137 30
16 39/ 42/ 19 Beholder's Eye v1.7 W. Mintardjo 137 91
17 38/ 42/ 19 Christopher Steven Morrell 135 23
18 39/ 43/ 18 SJ-4 J.Layland 134 28
19 37/ 43/ 20 Fast Food v2.1 Brant D. Thomsen 131 37
20 35/ 40/ 26 pepper P.Kline 129 6
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The ICWS '94 Draft Experimental Hill:
Core size: 55,440 instructions
Max processes: 10,000 per program
Duration: After 500,000 cycles, a tie is declared.
Max entry length: 200 instructions
The current ICWS '94 Experimental (Big) hill on "Pizza":
# %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age
1 50/ 34/ 16 ivscan6b J.Layland 165 17
2 49/ 33/ 18 Request-55440 Brant D. Thomsen 164 153
3 49/ 35/ 17 Pyramid v5.3 Michael Constant 163 44
4 37/ 18/ 46 Aleph 1 Jay Han 156 15
5 42/ 34/ 24 Stimpy v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 151 8
6 36/ 27/ 37 Variation G-1 Jay Han 145 117
7 41/ 38/ 21 Aleph 0 Jay Han 145 16
8 42/ 41/ 17 Fscan Jay Han 142 1
9 32/ 25/ 43 NotSoBigImps James Layland 140 13
10 38/ 37/ 25 Lump J.Layland 139 98
11 39/ 39/ 22 Vanity IIx Stefan Strack 138 108
12 43/ 47/ 10 Rave B4.1 Stefan Strack 138 114
13 32/ 27/ 41 Der Zweite Blitzkrieg - 9 Mike Nonemacher 138 115
14 31/ 25/ 43 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 137 7
15 42/ 46/ 12 Squint Mike Nonemacher 137 91
16 33/ 31/ 35 Lucky 13 Stefan Strack 135 159
17 42/ 48/ 10 Plasma v5 Wayne Sheppard 135 55
18 31/ 32/ 37 Sasami / 55440 T.Hsu 131 3
19 30/ 30/ 39 Splash 1 Jay Han 130 118
20 7/ 2/ 0 Fscan Jay Han 21 2
Not too much is happening on the big hill at the moment. I've noticed that
the intensity tends to switch between the '94 draft and the '94 experimental
hills. Then again, perhaps it's just summer break.
The current ICWS '94 Experimental (Big) hill on "Stormking":
# %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age
1 48/ 12/ 40 Variation M-1 Jay Han 184 2
2 46/ 30/ 24 Request-55440 Brant D. Thomsen 162 54
3 40/ 20/ 40 Lucky 13 Stefan Strack 161 20
4 46/ 36/ 18 Raiden Richard van der Brug 157 3
5 45/ 35/ 19 Vanity IIx Stefan Strack 155 8
6 35/ 18/ 47 Bakers Dozen Wayne Sheppard 153 13
7 40/ 30/ 31 Sauron v2.4 Michael Constant 150 5
8 30/ 15/ 55 Imperfection v2.3 Michael Constant 146 48
9 36/ 31/ 33 Variation D-1 Jay Han 142 15
10 44/ 47/ 10 Rave B4.1 Stefan Strack 141 9
11 42/ 46/ 12 bigproba nandor sieben 138 12
12 41/ 46/ 14 Dagger v7.0 Michael Constant 136 14
13 40/ 48/ 11 The Count Jay Han 132 44
14 27/ 23/ 50 BigImp Alex MacAulay 132 95
15 30/ 29/ 41 jmpWetPaper-94x-a J.M.Pohjalainen 131 1
16 26/ 23/ 51 BigImps James Layland 129 114
17 31/ 35/ 34 Veeble Jr. T. H. Davies 126 16
18 28/ 37/ 34 Industrious Stefan Strack 119 4
19 29/ 40/ 31 Open Arms Stefan Strack 117 7
20 29/ 41/ 30 Test Stefan Strack 116 6
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HINTS and HELPS:
For this issue's hint, I'd like to make some suggestions about what new
abilities the A-field indirection in the latest pMARS release makes possible.
(I tried to come up with examples for each of these points, but couldn't find
any that I was really pleased with.)
Probably the most obvious benefit is the enhanced ability to store information
in the A-field of instructions. With the increasing use of SPL #a, JMP #a,
and MOV.I #a instructions, the are an increasing number of instructions in
a program that can have their A-field used to store information. Take a
look at your old programs and see if there isn't another DAT that you can
eliminate, or if you can now implement a SPL/DAT core-clear with that code.
Another feature that is made possible by the latest enhancements to pMARS is
that anti-vampiric code is now much easier to write. It is no longer
necessary to extract the A-field value from an instruction, as you can now
simply use the value in that location as a pointer instead. (Actually, I'm
not that excited about having better anti-vampiric programs, since I've grown
fond of Request over the last few months.) I tried to take advantage of this
ability when I submitted the program Insight to the hill, but it did much
worse against vampires -- and better against several other programs -- than I
expected.
Along these same lines, I have the feeling that the latest changes to pMARS
will result in more intelligent programs. For instance, much more information
can be found in boot-strapping code. Instead of just being able to trace
where MOV statements point to, the SPL and JMP statements will always be
traceable as well. I wouldn't be surprised if there is soon a warrior on the
hill that uses a quick-scanner to find bootstrapping code, then tries to
exploit any information in that code. Now, more than ever, I think it will
become important to spend a couple of extra instructions covering up your
trail after you boot-strap.
I have no doubt that there will be some interesting changes to the hill when
using these new addressing modes becomes more common. I have already found
myself writing programs differently to account for their effects.
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Looking to the Future:
I'd like to (again) encourage everyone to experiment around with the latest
additions to the pMARS language. Remember that A-field indirection, and the
NOP and SNE instructions, have not been added to the draft of the '94
language. It will be your input that will be used to decide, later on,
whether or not they will be.
If you have any comments or questions about the '94 hills or the '94 draft
standard that you think might be of general interest, please let me know.
Also, if there are any particular topics you would like to see covered in
future editions of _The_'94_Warrior_, please send me e-mail on that as well.
Good luck, and happy computing!
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