From bezzi@nemo.it Mon Oct 14 10:11:10 1996 Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by tobago.inria.fr (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id KAA01294 for ; Mon, 14 Oct 1996 10:10:45 +0200 Received: from nemont.nemo.it ([194.184.149.2]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.1) with SMTP id KAA23255 for ; Mon, 14 Oct 1996 10:10:32 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from async2.nemo.it (194.184.149.104) by nemont.nemo.it (EMWAC SMTPRS 0.81) with SMTP id ; Mon, 14 Oct 1996 10:09:30 +0100 Message-ID: X-Sender: bezzi@mail.nemo.it X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 10:07:12 +0200 To: corewar-l@stormking.com, "Myer R. Bremer" , Damien.Doligez@inria.fr (Damien Doligez), b.guenzel@ucl.ac.uk, amarsden@st-james.comp.vuw.ac.nz, bezzi@nemo.it From: Beppe Bezzi Subject: Core Warrior 47 Status: R .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 47 14 October, 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: (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 NEW Beppe Bezzi web page - http://www.aspide.it/freeweb/Bezzi ______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings. The first round of the tournament has been a real debacle for Core Warrior staff. Myer and Anton, pitted against two opponents like the young lion Franz and the expert Steven Morrell, lost their matches and now are in the bottom of the standings. One cannot leave them alone for a moment :-) The 94 hill lost two of the three older warriors, TNT pro and Jack in the box II. All happened when Robert Mcrae, back to the arena after some time for the tournament and under an obvious attack of battle lust, submitted a dozen test warriors to the hill leaving it with perhaps the lowest average age from its creation, only 117 Thos modified the format of his hills on the web page; now you can look at warriors headers, or mail the author, with a click of the mouse. Good work. --Beppe Bezzi ______________________________________________________________________________ Tournament time First round of my tournament is over, not without some surprising result. Some of the 'battle scarred veterans' have been beated by jounger player used at the beginners hill more than at the hall of fame, in particular the victories of Matt Lewinsky and Justin Kao against two veterans of the caliber of Robert Mcrae and J.K. Wilkinson are worth mention, congratulations. Here are first round results and standings: CC Paper 3T by Franz scores 369 Chameleon by M R Bremer scores 180 Results: 106 43 51 invicta by John K. Lewis scores 95 mayhem.q by harleyQ2 scores 455 Results: 15 135 50 Falcon v0.5 by Ian Oversby scores 529 T-1 vX by Ross Morgan-Linial scores 64 Results: 174 19 7 Yet 4b Clear by Justin Kao scores 277 evoltmp by John K W scores 271 Results: 75 73 52 ompega by Steven Morrell scores 279 Damage Incorporated by Anton Marsden scores 225 Results: 61 43 96 Fleetfoot in a Rose-Garden by Robert Macrae scores 120 Flamberge 101 by Matt Lewinski scores 465 Results: 35 150 15 Tangle Trap by David Moore scores 230 Sapphire by Philip Kendall scores 341 Results: 67 104 29 myConfuser by Paulsson scores 383 Negative Energy by Zul Nadzri scores 200 Results: 122 61 17 digital breakdown v01b by bjoern guenzel scores 181 Linalg by George Eadon scores 253 Results: 5 29 166 Standing after round 1 are the following: Pos. # Player Score ----------------------------------------------- 1 1 Franz 3 1 4 Joshua 3 1 5 Ian Oversby 3 1 7 Justin Kao 3 1 9 Steven Morrell 3 1 12 Matt Lewinski 3 1 14 Philip Kendall 3 1 15 Magnus Paulsson 3 1 18 G. Eadon 3 10 2 M. R. Bremer 0 10 3 J. K. Lewis 0 10 6 Ross Morgan-Linial 0 10 8 J. K. Wilkinson 0 10 10 Anton Marsden 0 10 11 Robert McRae 0 10 13 David M. Moore 0 10 16 Zul Nadzri 0 10 17 Bjoern Guenzel 0 Next round will be played withlimited processes rules; redcode and coresize are those of first round but warriors have to work under following assert: ;assert MAXPROCESSES == 8 && MAXLENGTH == 200 You can see tournament results at my new web page: http://www.aspide.it/freeweb/Bezzi the tournament internal link is still floating, because the page is under construction, but I hope all of you will be able to find them even if most of the text is writen in italian (Corewar part is in english, don't worry) I'm working at something interesting for next rounds, stay tuned. ______________________________________________________________________________ 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 36.7/ 20.8/ 42.5 Gigolo Core Warrior staff 152.6 116 2 45.6/ 45.0/ 9.4 Memories Beppe 146.2 7 3 32.9/ 20.4/ 46.6 unrequited love kafka 145.4 160 4 39.2/ 33.5/ 27.3 Damage Incorporated Anton Marsden 144.9 103 5 29.3/ 15.0/ 55.7 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 143.6 62 6 30.2/ 16.8/ 53.0 Impish v0.2 Ian Oversby 143.5 101 7 41.1/ 39.1/ 19.8 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 143.1 239 8 30.4/ 18.4/ 51.1 Rosebud Beppe 142.4 913 9 34.4/ 29.0/ 36.7 Tiberius Franz 139.7 23 10 24.3/ 10.9/ 64.8 testing t2 John K W 137.8 2 11 24.2/ 10.7/ 65.1 Trident^2 John K W 137.7 8 12 41.8/ 46.1/ 12.1 Eggbeater Anton Marsden 137.6 21 13 23.4/ 9.9/ 66.7 test John K W 136.8 1 14 32.0/ 27.9/ 40.2 Simple v0.4b Ian Oversby 136.0 191 15 37.3/ 39.1/ 23.6 Probe Anton Marsden 135.5 240 16 24.7/ 14.4/ 60.9 ompega Steven Morrell 135.0 355 17 31.3/ 27.5/ 41.2 Falcon v0.3 Ian Oversby 135.0 145 18 36.4/ 39.1/ 24.5 Goldfinch P.Kline 133.8 181 19 40.3/ 47.5/ 12.2 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 133.1 290 20 38.2/ 43.4/ 18.4 Bodge 1 Robert Macrae 133.0 32 21 38.3/ 43.9/ 17.8 Harmony P.Kline 132.8 26 22 31.9/ 31.4/ 36.8 CC Paper 3.3 Franz 132.3 58 23 35.5/ 40.2/ 24.3 Instant Wolf 3.4 Edgar 130.9 123 24 33.3/ 36.6/ 30.1 Frogz Franz 129.9 120 25 34.6/ 40.7/ 24.7 Instant Wolf Edgar 128.5 40 I like this hilltop :-) Weekly age: 56 ( 46 last issue, 13 the week before ) New warriors: 9 Turnover/age rate 16% Average age: 142 ( 169 last issue, 140 the week before ) Average score: 138 ( 133 last issue, 140 the week before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by 15 authors: Marsden with 4; Franz and Oversby with 3; Beppe, Kline and Edgar with 2; everyone else with 1. King Report: Lot of movement in the top, no warrior held the King spot for long. Blur 2, Damage Incorporated, Return of Jedimp and Unrequited Love kept it for some challenge. Q^2 scans are still at the top in various combinations. Paper warriors are losing a bit while anti imp scanners are back. Pspacers are having very hard times; the first of them is in 18th position Lots of testing this week, more than 70 test challenges. To submit a test warrior you have to put the word 'test' where usually goes quiet or verbose. Example to test on the 94 hill: ;redcode-94 test ;name Test ... ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 2 45.1/ 46.2/ 8.7 Memories Beppe 144.0 1 5 37.7/ 28.6/ 33.7 Tiberius Franz 146.7 1 8 20.1/ 9.2/ 70.7 Trident^2 John K W 131.0 1 11 22.3/ 11.2/ 66.5 testing t2 John K W 133.3 1 13 37.2/ 40.0/ 22.7 Instant Wolf Edgar 134.5 1 15 40.7/ 43.2/ 16.1 Harmony P.Kline 138.3 1 15 19.5/ 10.0/ 70.5 test John K W 129.0 1 16 42.6/ 47.7/ 9.7 Eggbeater Anton Marsden 137.5 1 20 38.7/ 48.3/ 13.0 Bodge 1 Robert Macrae 129.1 1 Three new entries in the top ten: new version of Memories, Tiberius and Trident^2 ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 26 32.3/ 40.4/ 27.3 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 124.2 925 26 26.8/ 30.7/ 42.5 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 123.0 559 26 33.6/ 42.4/ 24.0 mrb-test m r bremer 124.8 114 26 2.1/ 1.3/ 0.6 Test Anton Marsden 7.0 95 26 32.5/ 42.1/ 25.4 Inferno 2.4 Philip Kendall 123.0 84 26 37.1/ 48.8/ 14.1 Taking Names P.Kline 125.4 68 26 30.8/ 44.3/ 24.9 mayhem harleyQ2 117.3 19 26 21.6/ 35.9/ 42.5 Barbarian 3.1 Franz 107.3 9 26 3.7/ 21.9/ 74.4 sin harleyQ2 85.5 4 T.N.T. pro ends its run at 925 age, Jack II at 559. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 8 30.4/ 18.4/ 51.1 Rosebud Beppe 142.4 913 16 24.7/ 14.4/ 60.9 ompega Steven Morrell 135.0 355 19 40.3/ 47.5/ 12.2 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 133.1 290 15 37.3/ 39.1/ 23.6 Probe Anton Marsden 135.5 240 7 41.1/ 39.1/ 19.8 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 143.1 239 Rosebud is now the oldest warrior. ______________________________________________________________________________ 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 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 925 Bomber 16 Rosebud Beppe Bezzi 913 * Stone/ imp 17 Agony II Stefan Strack 912 CMP scanner 18 Barrage Anton Marsden 876 Qscan -> replicator 19 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 869 Stone/ imp 20 Flurry Anton Marsden 835 Qscan -> pwarrior 21 Thermite 1.0 Robert Macrae 802 Qscan -> bomber 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 ends its run in 15th position. Rosebud moves up some spots. ______________________________________________________________________________ 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 48.2/ 16.0/ 35.8 Dust 0.7 Justin Kao 180.5 3 2 48.2/ 38.5/ 13.3 Velveeta Shift-I shar 157.9 93 3 47.5/ 37.9/ 14.7 Paper Shredder 3500 Justin Kao 157.1 30 4 47.0/ 38.6/ 14.4 mayhem.q harleyQ2 155.3 6 5 47.8/ 41.4/ 10.8 Flamberge 101 Matt Lewinski 154.3 7 6 45.8/ 38.7/ 15.5 nSplit Lite v1.2 shar 152.9 81 7 37.8/ 23.9/ 38.3 Q Yogurt Franz 151.7 26 8 44.6/ 40.7/ 14.7 Recover 3 Franz 148.5 1 9 44.7/ 41.2/ 14.1 Eagle.b1 Philip Kendall 148.2 58 10 42.3/ 38.6/ 19.1 mayhem harleyQ2 146.0 43 11 34.6/ 24.3/ 41.0 Gravel 11 Justin Kao 144.9 54 12 34.1/ 25.0/ 40.9 FastScan 1.0 Philip Kendall 143.3 73 13 29.5/ 20.9/ 49.6 Papyrus 13 Justin Kao 138.1 55 14 40.8/ 44.9/ 14.3 Neverending Brutality 10 Franz 136.7 22 15 29.1/ 23.8/ 47.1 testing Anonymous 134.4 4 16 29.7/ 25.1/ 45.2 Sapphire Philip Kendall 134.3 52 17 37.5/ 40.9/ 21.7 hack.exp harleyQ2 134.1 8 18 35.9/ 38.2/ 25.9 murder.p harleyQ2 133.6 75 19 39.7/ 47.1/ 13.2 Conquest II Zul Nadzri 132.4 74 20 37.1/ 42.9/ 20.0 Microsoft NT v2.5 Justin Kao 131.3 44 21 26.2/ 23.5/ 50.4 Sand Storm v0.7 Justin Kao 128.8 38 22 35.0/ 42.4/ 22.6 Autumn Leaves Matt Lewinski 127.7 27 23 28.3/ 30.4/ 41.3 Frog Franz 126.3 95 24 27.3/ 30.2/ 42.4 Linalg George Eadon 124.4 9 25 27.2/ 31.1/ 41.7 Barbarian 3 Franz 123.3 23 Dust 0.7 holds the head with an incredible lead over the second; in fact the warrior did well also in the 94 hill; Justin it's time to play in the pros and leave the -b hill to beginners, same thing for Franz of course. ______________________________________________________________________________ The Hint Better Warriors (Papers and Stones) by Franz I'm writing this because I don't think these topics have been covered, or I haven't read about them anywhere. And I am still a beginner so my coding is not so good. These are the things that I have found useful. (what I'm trying to say is this code may suck) STONES ====== Making stones anti-imp ... well here are a few ideas that DO work. At least I think they do! If writing regular stone (.33c) have the counter where you are bombing, well in front of the warrior, that way when you add to it, you might kill an imp. your bomb line can also be something like ... mov >gate,@where ... But what about those .6c bombers which have the counter as one of the mov lines ... well put that line as far up as you can and the add line as low as you can. here's an exemple (opt is the step number, stbm is where to start bombing) gate dat opt,xxx ;this is the gate line decremented and used as a bomb ... ;also the a field is used for the where line bombing ... stone mov gate,@where ;no bdecrement we have to use the gate where mov >stbm+opt,*stbm+(opt*2) ;use anything but here we increment ;the a field which will be bombed in ;the next step mov >gate,*where add.f jump,where ;jump is my coreclear spl# line jmp stone,>gate ... ... jump spl #opt*3,opt*3 ... This is quite effective against imps large spirals especially ... try your old stone configuration against this. Self splitting might be used in this warrior too ... be sure to reverse the instructions on selfsplitting stones as they are executed backwards. This has been covered many times, by many people ... but I still make that mistake sometimes and then wonder why it doesn't work right. this is usually just small speed decrease but in some cases the speed can go down by .2c and you wander why your bomber is slow. I have found the >gate is probably the most effective gate there is. Watch how mov #step,*0 can get through If you increment the *0 to *1 it becomes mov #xxx,*1 which can still live as a normal imp (1 point) and could potentially hurt your code or at least start executing your code and tie ... This is what you can do to prevent it gate dat 0,0 ... dat -20,0 ... ;your code here this will kill such an imp since the imp uses the a-field of the next instruction for movement and this will kill it. Since it copies itself behind and then just falls off and dies on the dat -20,0 PAPERS ====== What to do with papers. Silk is probably the only paper worth doing at this time. But how to do a good silk. From the tutorial you saw how to do a small yet inefficent silk .. since Status: R it has to take care of the pointers and reset them. Remember each instruction in a silk is executed many times, so just resetting a pointer takes many turns and slows down the paper. Here's how to avoid it spl @0,>step1 ;silk1 mov }-1,>-1 spl @0,>step2 ;silk2 mov }-1,>-1 spl @0,>step3 ;silk3 mov }-1,>-1 .. your attack goes here this will make copies 3 kinds one will have 3 copiers and be an exact copy, one will have two silks and one will have one silk. This is probably the standard way to silk .. maybe with a timescape routine at the end which makes one more copy. Your attack: 1) make sure it never just falls off. It has to continue or you have to make sure it dies. Since if an enemy executes your code he will usually fall htrough to the attack and you want him to die. I did this by making the last instruction copied with the paper a bomb which i used for the attack and then it would die. the problem with falling off is that the enemy migth go through your attack and then fall back to his own code. 2) NEVER, NEVER use DJN.F 0, <-xx for bombing. I tried this and it's VERY hostile against silks but a lot of other warriors are immune or little affected by this. 3) Remember the longer the paper the longer it takes to copy, do not make the bomb routine long, instead bomb a few times and let it die but in the meantime you have several other copies already bombing. Bombing by copying several lines after you is also not too effective .. it's better to just use a bomb routine which can be more effective. good bomb routines is a set of ... mov >-x,-x*2,-x*3, or Myer Bremer or Anton Marsden