Issue 44 September 23, 1996
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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: (Please note new Stormking's address)
http://www.koth.org/ ;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 ftp site--ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars
Fechter ftp site--ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar
A collection of Bezzi's hints in the first issues is available at:
ftp://ftp.volftp.vol.it/pub/pc/msdos/games/solutions/bbhints.zip
______________________________________________________________________________
Greetings.
After a forced break in late summer, due to Pizza maintenance, the 94 hill
has gone back to his standard level of activity; don't be fouled by the
small number of new warriors, more than 50 test that would have made the
hill have been submitted. The test option proved in fat very popular even if
there are a few drawbacks; one is that the aging of warriors cannot be
ompared with that of past ones being now far more difficult. The second is
that opponent don't have chanes to challenge a warrior under test, as Paul
Kline pointed out, until it's released in offiial form. Last, as I
experimented, a test warrior can score very different once it's released,
this because test works on but 100 fights and the real fight on 200, and I'm
not very lucky having lost more than 10 points :-(
Steven Morrell volunteered to recalculate the hall of fame removing
unnatural aging from the scores one we agree on a method to do it. The
better one seems to disount aging if the pushed off warrior has an score
under a treshold; I proposed 125 but Planar told me that some warriors,
Impfinity to tell one, have been pushed off with lower scores. Having to set
one, to allow Steven start his work, what about 120.
Another hot topic in the newsgrou is if there is a need of a central
organization, to take the place of the near dead ICWS, or if we can go on
without it. The discussion is still hot.
For those loving the old 88 redcode standard; it's worth noting that the 88
hill, available at koth@koth.org (Stormking), has a new leader with an
incredible 17 pts lead. Congratulations to David Moore for his Racer X.
--Beppe Bezzi
______________________________________________________________________________
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
The current ICWS '94 Draft hill:
# %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age
1 40.3/ 19.0/ 40.7 Gigolo Core Warrior staff 161.6 1
2 38.8/ 20.2/ 41.0 unrequited love kafka 157.3 45
3 42.8/ 32.0/ 25.2 CC Paper Franz 153.5 4
4 42.1/ 32.0/ 25.9 Frogz Franz 152.2 5
5 31.5/ 14.8/ 53.7 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 148.2 113
6 44.1/ 40.6/ 15.3 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 147.6 124
7 42.8/ 40.2/ 17.0 Goldfinch P.Kline 145.3 66
8 42.4/ 39.4/ 18.2 Probe Anton Marsden 145.3 125
9 31.5/ 19.7/ 48.8 Rosebud Beppe 143.2 798
10 35.9/ 28.6/ 35.6 Simple v0.4b Ian Oversby 143.2 76
11 38.7/ 35.3/ 26.1 Flimsy v0.5c Ian Oversby 142.1 6
12 43.4/ 47.2/ 9.4 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 139.6 175
13 30.0/ 20.5/ 49.6 Impish v0.1 Ian Oversby 139.4 2
14 39.3/ 39.3/ 21.4 mrb-test m r bremer 139.4 31
15 39.1/ 40.2/ 20.7 Test Anton Marsden 138.1 35
16 25.1/ 12.6/ 62.3 ompega Steven Morrell 137.6 240
17 33.8/ 30.3/ 35.9 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 137.2 482
18 33.8/ 30.7/ 35.5 Falcon v0.3 Ian Oversby 136.9 30
19 38.3/ 40.3/ 21.4 Instant Wolf 3.4 Edgar 136.4 8
20 37.8/ 39.8/ 22.4 Inferno 2.4 Philip Kendall 135.9 3
21 36.1/ 39.0/ 24.9 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 133.2 843
22 39.6/ 46.2/ 14.2 Earthquake v0.2 Bjoern & Ian 132.9 82
23 38.3/ 45.3/ 16.3 myVamp5.5 Paulsson 131.3 15
24 35.7/ 40.7/ 23.6 Yogi Bear P.Kline 130.8 329
25 36.7/ 44.0/ 19.3 BackFromVacation Edgar 129.5 17
Weekly age: 15 ( 9 last issue, 9 the month before ) more than 50 test
New warriors: 8 Turnover/age rate 53%
Average age: 146 ( 174 last issue, 180 the week before )
Average score: 142 ( 136 last issue, 142 the week before )
The top 25 warriors are represented by several authors :-) Sorry, I don't
have the patience to fill in the details this week.
Lots of new warriors in the top position. Bezzi made many test during the
week, some of which scored very high, to shodown with the new King, Gigolo,
a cooperative warrior made with the others of Core Warrior staff. Don't ask
him why after scoring 12 points over the second his warrior setted with but
three unless you want to learn some new Italian words :-)
Kafka's unrequited love loses top position after two weeks of domain, but
remains near the top. Franz puts two warriors in top ranks, both using the
qscan->silk combination; perhaps replicators are back vith vengeance.
Q^2 scans are dominating the hill at expense of pspacers.
______________________________________________________________________________
94 - What's New
# %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age
1 37.2/ 19.8/ 43.0 Gigolo Core Warrior staff 154.5 1
2 42.8/ 31.4/ 25.8 Frogz Franz 154.3 1
4 41.5/ 32.9/ 25.5 CC Paper Franz 150.1 1
5 39.3/ 35.2/ 25.5 Flimsy v0.5c Ian Oversby 143.3 1
8 38.9/ 39.3/ 21.8 Instant Wolf 3.4 Edgar 138.5 1
13 27.4/ 21.5/ 51.1 Impish v0.1 Ian Oversby 133.3 1
17 36.6/ 41.0/ 22.4 Inferno 2.4 Philip Kendall 132.1 1
17 37.9/ 45.4/ 16.7 myVamp5.5 Paulsson 130.5 1
Revolution in the first spots, we have a new 1st, 3rd and 4th.
______________________________________________________________________________
94 - What's No More
# %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age
26 35.3/ 45.6/ 19.1 Twister Beppe Bezzi 125.0 575
26 23.6/ 21.1/ 55.3 Armory II John K W 126.0 257
26 1.5/ 1.7/ 0.8 myVamp5.4 Paulsson 5.4 159
26 0.2/ 1.0/ 2.8 September Beppe 3.4 21
26 36.1/ 46.9/ 17.0 Violent Micro v0.4d basehead 125.2 16
26 1.8/ 1.8/ 0.4 Instant Wolf 3.4 Edgar 5.9 15
26 1.6/ 2.1/ 0.3 Flimsy v0.5a Ian Oversby 5.2 14
26 4.0/ 2.5/ 1.5 Atom Smasher 2 Anton Marsden 13.5 3
Twister leaves us at the age of 575 and Armory at 257; all other are very
young or killed by the author.
______________________________________________________________________________
94 - What's Old
# %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age
21 36.1/ 39.0/ 24.9 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 133.2 843
9 31.5/ 19.7/ 48.8 Rosebud Beppe 143.2 798
17 33.8/ 30.3/ 35.9 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 137.2 482
24 35.7/ 40.7/ 23.6 Yogi Bear P.Kline 130.8 329
16 25.1/ 12.6/ 62.3 ompega Steven Morrell 137.6 240
Rosebud keeps his position while T.N.T. pro and Yogi lose some spots and
Jack a few. Seen the sarcity of veterans I decided to include them starting
at 200 age.
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HALL OF FAME
* means the warrior is still active.
Pos Name Author Age Strategy
1 Thermite II Robert Macrae 2262 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 1102 P-warrior
13 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 1049 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 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 843 * Bomber
19 Flurry Anton Marsden 835 Qscan -> pwarrior
20 Thermite 1.0 Robert Macrae 802 Qscan -> bomber
21 Rosebud Beppe Bezzi 798 * Stone/ imp
22 Blue Funk 3 Steven Morrell 766 Stone/ imp
23 Night Train Karl Lewin 755 Replicator
24 Mirage 1.5 Anton Marsden 736 Scanner/ bomber
25 Blizzard Anton Marsden 713 Qscan -> replicator
T.N.T. pro gains a spot; no new entries and we won't have for long being
next scheduled at more than 200 distance.
______________________________________________________________________________
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
The current Beginner hill:
# %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age
1 54.6/ 34.4/ 11.0 Throw Rug J E Long 174.8 30
2 55.2/ 36.1/ 8.7 Tsunami v0.3 Ian Oversby 174.3 73
3 53.4/ 35.2/ 11.4 Violent Micro v0.4d basehead 171.6 44
4 48.9/ 33.3/ 17.8 Heretic 1.0 Philip Kendall 164.6 55
5 44.8/ 31.8/ 23.3 Versatility 1.6 Ross 157.8 42
6 44.8/ 33.2/ 22.0 Inferno 2.3 Philip Kendall 156.5 31
7 46.3/ 37.8/ 15.9 Velveeta Shift-I shar 154.7 6
8 48.7/ 42.8/ 8.5 Hawk 1.0 Philip Kendall 154.7 27
9 39.5/ 25.6/ 34.9 Gravel 7 Justin Kao 153.5 50
10 44.7/ 38.8/ 16.6 BloodSucker 1.0 Philip Kendall 150.6 54
11 37.3/ 25.9/ 36.8 Ties, Ties, Ties! (+3) Ross 148.7 92
12 44.5/ 40.9/ 14.6 Neverending Brutality 7 Franz 148.1 21
13 42.3/ 36.7/ 21.0 Black v0.1 Justin Kao 147.9 45
14 37.6/ 28.2/ 34.1 Papyrus 6 Justin Kao 147.0 61
15 41.9/ 38.7/ 19.4 Vampirism 1.4 Philip Kendall 145.0 48
16 41.1/ 37.3/ 21.5 RSB harleyQ2 144.9 15
17 44.6/ 46.3/ 9.1 T-1 w/decoy Ross 143.0 83
18 43.9/ 46.4/ 9.6 T-1 Ross 141.4 91
19 39.9/ 39.2/ 20.9 (-: :-) Ross 140.5 79
20 38.7/ 38.7/ 22.6 TIE Fighter Ross 138.8 78
21 33.9/ 35.5/ 30.6 Frog Franz 132.4 8
22 40.0/ 52.1/ 8.0 Syzygy 1.2 Philip Kendall 127.9 29
23 32.2/ 38.5/ 29.4 Hammermill v2.4 Matt Lewinski 125.9 2
24 34.8/ 53.4/ 11.9 jmztest2 George Eadon 116.1 3
25 4.0/ 0.0/ 0.0 Epithelioma Matt Lewinski 12.0 1
Ick died of old age. The scanner Throw rug is the new leader
______________________________________________________________________________
The Hint
Killing imps
by Beppe Bezzi
Imp stones are proliferating in the 94 hill, sometimes with a qscan
sometimes not. Against the qscan the only defence is booting away as fast as
you can, little else to say. Against stones, apart being a replicator, one
have to be resistant against decrements/increments and djn streams, I'll
speak of that in future. Against imps the best defence is a good gate.
94 standard allows combining the gate with a forward running coreclear, but
there are a few different ways to do that, what's the best ?
I ran a few test pitting the more common gate clears against some different
imp spirals; the spirals are all 3 points, 8 processes, binary launched and
differ but in the imp instruction:
Spiral #0,2667 mov.i #0, 2667
Spiral #1,2667 mov.i #1, 2667
Spiral #-1,2667 mov.i #-1, 2667
Spiral #2667,*0 mov.i #2667, *0
One can think that the first three will behave in the same way, but that's
not true as we'll see. The last one is a different kind that's getting more
and more popular; it's the a-driven imp, used by Die Hard and now by Rosebud.
Now the clears. All those clears can easily be fitted inside your favourite
bomber or scanner.
;name gate c-c1
gate1 equ (gate-5)
org start
for 10
dat 0,0
rof
dat -5, 100
gate dat -5, jump-gate1+5
spl #-5, jump-gate1+5
for 10
dat 0,0 ;the warrior goes here
rof
start spl #-10,#10
mov @jump,>gate1
jump djn start+1,{gate+1
That's the clear used by Torch 18 and Thermite 2, just to say two successful
warriors, it's a two pass spl/dat clear, switching to dat one its djn stream
derements the b-field of 'jump' line.
Here is how it scored:
Rank Name Author %W %L %T Score
___________________________________________________________________________
1 gate c-c1 Anonymous 85 1 14 1074
2 Spiral #2667,*0 Anonymous 1 45 54 57
3 Spiral #0,2667 Anonymous 1 98 1 4
4 Spiral #1,2667 Anonymous 1 98 1 4
5 Spiral #-1,2667 Anonymous 1 98 1 4
You can see it's very effective against mov #xx,2667 imps, when the imp hits
the gate the attack is transferred to the next branch of the spiral, but
scores less than 50% wins against a-driven imps.
;name gate c-c2
;assert 1
gate1 equ (gate-5)
org start
for 10
dat 0,0
rof
dat -5, 100
gate dat -5, jump-gate1+5
spl #-5, jump-gate1+5
for 10
dat 0,0
rof
start spl #-10,#10
mov @jump,>gate1
mov @jump,>gate1
jump djn start+1,{gate+1
This clear is the same of gate c-c1 but has one more mov line. This makes
the clear more vulnerable against bombs, but improves our performances
against both silk and imps. Tornado 3.0 used this clear.
Rank Name Author %W %L %T Score
___________________________________________________________________________
1 gate c-c2 Anonymous 92 1 8 1128
2 Spiral #2667,*0 Anonymous 1 69 30 33
3 Spiral #0,2667 Anonymous 1 99 0 3
4 Spiral #1,2667 Anonymous 1 99 0 3
5 Spiral #-1,2667 Anonymous 1 99 0 3
As you can notice the a-driven imp has less chances to slip through the gate.
;name gate c-ca
;assert 1
gate1 equ (gate-5)
org start
for 10
dat 0,0
rof
dat 100
gate dat jump-gate1+5,-5
spl #jump-gate1+5,-5
for 10
dat 0,0
rof
start spl #-10,#10
mov @jump,}gate1
jump djn start+1,<gate+1
This is the same clear of c-c1, but it's driven by the a-field of the gate
line. Frontwards used this clear.
Rank Name Author %W %L %T Score
___________________________________________________________________________
1 gate c-ca Anonymous 41 4 56 711
2 Spiral #-1,2667 Anonymous 8 14 78 102
3 Spiral #1,2667 Anonymous 5 18 77 92
4 Spiral #0,2667 Anonymous 1 33 66 69
5 Spiral #2667,*0 Anonymous 1 98 1 4
It's very effective against a-driven imps but much less against classic
ones, expecially against mov.i #-1,2667 because the gate copies an imp
instruction to attack the imp itself, and this has, obviously, no effect.
;name stargate
;assert 1
org stun
gate dat stun,kill+10
for 10
dat 0,0
rof
stun spl #kill-gate,kill-gate+10
mov *gate,>gate
djn.f -1,{gate-kill-15
kill dat kill-gate,kill-gate+10
This one is a less used clear, MyVamp 3.7 used it. It's main advantage is
that it allows the use on djn.f, better against replicators.
I named it stargate because of the mov *gate,>gate line.
Rank Name Author %W %L %T Score
___________________________________________________________________________
1 stargate Anonymous 37 1 63 691
2 Spiral #0,2667 Anonymous 1 4 95 98
3 Spiral #-1,2667 Anonymous 1 4 95 98
4 Spiral #2667,*0 Anonymous 1 40 59 62
5 Spiral #1,2667 Anonymous 0 99 1 1
As you an see it's near unable to kill spirals with an a field of zero or
small negative.
The last clear we discuss is Bjorn Guenzel's d-clear
;redcode-94
;name d-clear
;author bjoern guenzel
;strategy clear (no scanning)
;assert CORESIZE==8000
;release 23.5.96
;kill d-clear
shift equ -3000
ptr dat >0,4000
dat 0,0
start spl #0,>ptr
mov.i bomb,>ptr
djn.f -1,>ptr
bomb dat >2667,bomb-ptr+3
bsource dat 0,0
boot z for 6
mov.i {bsource,<bootptr
rof
bootptr spl start+shift,bsource+shift
mov.i #0,-1
dat 0,0
z for MAXLENGTH-CURLINE
spl #z*100,z*101
rof
end boot
Rank Name Author %W %L %T Score
___________________________________________________________________________
1 d-clear bjoern guenzel 92 1 8 1129
2 Spiral #0,2667 Anonymous 1 90 9 12
3 Spiral #1,2667 Anonymous 1 90 9 12
4 Spiral #-1,2667 Anonymous 1 90 9 12
5 Spiral #2667,*0 Anonymous 0 96 4 4
As you can see it's equally good against all imp species. Results may be a
little distorted because I didn't remove the boot, but not too much.
Before everyone chooses d-clear as the best one, give a look at those
results; unless you have some stunning power in your warrior you'll fall
prey of every replicator.
Rank Name Author %W %L %T Score
___________________________________________________________________________
1 TimeScape (1.0) J. Pohjalainen 44 21 35 833
2 gate c-c2 Anonymous 38 15 47 161
3 stargate Anonymous 35 35 30 135
4 gate c-c1 Anonymous 23 40 37 106
5 gate c-ca Anonymous 11 38 51 84
6 d-clear bjoern guenzel 0 92 8 8
______________________________________________________________________________
Questions? Concerns? Comments? Complaints? Mail them to people who care.
authors: Beppe Bezzi <bezzi@nemo.it> or Myer Bremer <bremermr@ecn.purdue.edu>
or Anton Marsden <amarsden@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
|
