Subject: Re: King of the Hill From: snewman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Steven Newman) Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Ca , USA Date: Mon, 13 Jan 1992 19:26:28 GMT Message-ID: <1992Jan13.192628.22360@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> > [discussion of why the Hill isn't getting tougher] Well, I think one reason is that it's hard to write really sophisticated programs in standard Core Wars, but I don't want to start that thread again. (And no, I haven't submitted anything to the experimental Hill, but that's just due to lack of time.) The major reason is that there isn't enough feedback. The ;strategy lines are nice to see, but not everyone uses them, and even with them it's hard to know why your program wins or loses against another. You really have to see two programs fighting on a visual display to understand why one beats another, and how you might modify yours to do better. In the interests of stimulating the Hill, I'll post source to my dodgem6 program (which, contrary to assertions as to the stability of the top 5, has been observed to leap from position 1 to position 10 or vice-versa in just a few rounds): ;redcode ;name dodgem6 ;author Steve Newman (snewman@cs.stanford.edu) ;strategy Write out a bunch of flag values and wait for the enemy ;strategy to bomb one. Analyze enemy's bomb location. Copy a dwarf ;strategy type program to a location that appears safe and transfer ;strategy control to it. Large size is due to a simple one-shot ;strategy redundancy mechanism that helps resist damage in early stage ;strategy of play. bomb EQU start-60 ;Presumed to be a DAT 0,0 instruction. ;Write a flag value (77) to 64 well-scattered locations. start SUB #248,-15 MOV #77,<(start-15) MOV #77,<(start-15) DJN start,#32 ;Now repeatedly check the 64 locations until one of them is altered. search SUB #248,start CMP #77,= 4) to deal with programs that start bombing immediately ;behind themselves. copyOffset EQU 2399+end1-dwarf1 copyLen EQU end1-start1+1 sum DAT #122 cargo1 ADD #copyOffset,start copyLp1 MOV