From bremermr@ecn.purdue.edu Tue Apr 9 15:09:46 1996 Received: by couchey.inria.fr (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA16254; Tue, 9 Apr 96 15:09:46 +0200 Received: from cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu (bremermr@cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu [128.46.147.13]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.7.1/8.7.1) with SMTP id PAA14559 for ; Tue, 9 Apr 1996 15:08:30 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu (bremermr@localhost) by cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu (8.6.12/3.8davy) for delivery to "Damien.Doligez@inria.fr" id IAA27152; Tue, 9 Apr 1996 08:08:44 -0500 Message-Id: <199604091308.IAA27152@cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu> Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 08:08:44 -0500 From: "Myer R. Bremer" To: Damien.Doligez@inria.fr Subject: core warrior 24 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 24 April 8, 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: http://www.stormking.com/~koth ;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 still out of service, you can download Pmars at Terry's web page--http://www.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ ______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings. Some of you may have received april fool's warrior reports in the mail last week showing your prize warrior getting killed off the hill, courtesy of the staff here at Core Warrior. We can't take all the credit as Thos was a quite willing participant and essential to the little deception. No hard feelings and all in good fun, right? Hope you enjoyed it. Not quite an average week for the corewar scene. The biggest news: in the tradition of Jippo's Silk Warrior and Boeren's Gilled Octopus, a new name straight from the beginner's hill lands on top of the '94 draft hill. And quite a bit of age fell off the hill in the process. Also in this issue, a Core Warrior exclusive, source code to Thermite II by Robert Macrae. --M R Bremer ______________________________________________________________________________ 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 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 46/ 38/ 16 Scanny Boy David van Dam 155 73 2 42/ 34/ 23 Grilled Octopus v0.5 David Boeren 150 459 3 42/ 37/ 21 Gem of the Ocean P.Kline 148 112 4 43/ 38/ 19 Mirage 2 Anton Marsden 147 9 5 44/ 43/ 13 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 146 56 6 39/ 34/ 27 prova Maurizio Vittuari 144 219 7 27/ 13/ 60 Hazy Shade II John K W 142 202 8 36/ 31/ 33 Lithium John K Wilkinson 141 250 9 39/ 36/ 25 Thermite II Robert Macrae 141 1243 10 44/ 47/ 9 Memories Beppe Bezzi 141 96 11 29/ 18/ 53 Impfinity v4g1 Planar 140 1442 12 35/ 31/ 34 A Hard Day's Night Maurizio Vittuari 140 205 13 39/ 38/ 23 Chameleon M R Bremer 139 714 14 39/ 40/ 21 No Prisoners John K W 138 3 15 37/ 36/ 27 T.N.T. Maurizio Vittuari 138 968 16 34/ 30/ 36 Blue Funk 5 Steven Morrell 138 387 17 35/ 34/ 31 Tornado 3.0 Beppe 136 1044 18 22/ 9/ 69 Evol Cap 6.6 John Wilkinson 135 1257 19 31/ 26/ 44 Barrage Anton Marsden 135 716 20 39/ 43/ 18 C I A Anders Ivner 135 94 21 31/ 26/ 43 Marcia Trionfale Beppe Bezzi 135 16 22 32/ 30/ 38 Flurry Anton Marsden 135 204 23 35/ 36/ 29 Eternal Flame John K W 134 103 24 34/ 33/ 33 test P.Kline 134 40 25 31/ 31/ 38 Hector 4 Kurt Franke 132 1 Weekly age: 138 New warriors 11 Turnover/age rate 8% Average age: 397 ( 401 last week, 350 the week before ) Average score: 140 ( 141 last week, 142 the week before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by 13 authors, JKW with 5, Bezzi, Marsden, Vittuari, each with 3. In a move that's not totally new, but even still surprising none the less, a b-hill author lands a warrior on top of the '94 hill. David van Dam's GPT series was scattered throughout the beginners' hill, doing quite well but not spectacularly. However, Scanny Boy has all the right stuff to dominate the 'pro' hill. In case you haven't noticed, Scanny Boy is a .5c scanner with a spl/spl/dat coreclear and djn stream. Good job. Before van Dam burst onto the scene, Gem of the Ocean reigned supreme with scores up to 166 points. Naked Dancer and Grilled Octopus led for a short while, along with venerable Impfinity. However, near the end of the week, it was reigning Scanny Boy with brief outbreaks of Octopus. Kurt Franke decided to kill Stepping Stone at an age of 529, remove the hand- shake and then resubmit it. Stepping Stone was in 10th place and doing well, but the new version jumped on in 4th place. Anticipating the removal of self fights? Coincidentally, Memories also left the hill at an age of 529. Frontwards v2 also took the off ramp and left the hill at exit 1420. However, it occupies a very prestigious spot in the corewar hall of fame. Replicators are getting the snot beat out of them. Evol Cap, Barrage, Marcia Trionfale, and Hector 4 are all lurking on the bottom rungs of the hill. Most likely due to the effects of Scanny Boy and Mirage 2. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 25 8/ 39/ 53 Gem of the Ocean P.Kline 76 1 16 34/ 36/ 30 Eternal Flame John K W 133 1 8 43/ 48/ 9 Memories Beppe Bezzi 138 1 22 39/ 44/ 17 C I A Anders Ivner 134 1 9 44/ 46/ 10 Naked dancer Beppe Bezzi 141 1 1 44/ 40/ 16 Scanny Boy David van Dam 148 1 4 43/ 43/ 14 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 143 1 12 30/ 25/ 45 Marcia Trionfale Beppe Bezzi 134 1 4 40/ 39/ 20 Mirage 2 Anton Marsden 141 1 16 36/ 43/ 21 No Prisoners John K W 130 1 25 31/ 31/ 38 Hector 4 Kurt Franke 132 1 New versions of Gem of the Ocean, Memories, Naked Dancer, and Stepping Stone. CIA is back after a week long absence. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More. # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 26 3/ 1/ 0 Naked dancer Beppe Bezzi 9 56 26 4/ 3/ 1 Error 0 Planar 14 40 26 2/ 2/ 0 Gem of the Ocean P.Kline 6 7 26 25/ 34/ 40 tripod v1.3 Brian Haskin 117 16 26 39/ 52/ 9 Memories Beppe Bezzi 125 529 26 35/ 43/ 21 Sloth v0.4 Ian Oversby 127 127 26 26/ 25/ 49 Hector 3 Kurt Franke 127 151 26 37/ 46/ 17 Wind-up Toy v0.4 Ian Oversby 128 64 26 36/ 44/ 20 myConfuser2.1 Paulsson 127 63 26 38/ 51/ 12 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 125 1420 26 2/ 2/ 0 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 5 529 Over 3,000 challenges of age disappered from the hill this week. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 19 27/ 18/ 54 Impfinity v4g1 Planar 137 1442 16 23/ 9/ 68 Evol Cap 6.6 John Wilkinson 138 1257 3 41/ 34/ 25 Thermite II Robert Macrae 147 1243 12 37/ 32/ 31 Tornado 3.0 Beppe 142 1044 10 39/ 35/ 26 T.N.T. Maurizio Vittuari 143 968 7 34/ 25/ 41 Barrage Anton Marsden 144 716 5 41/ 35/ 24 Chameleon M R Bremer 147 714 6 41/ 37/ 22 Grilled Octopus v0.5 David Boeren 146 459 24 32/ 31/ 37 Blue Funk 5 Steven Morrell 134 387 No one new. Interesting. ______________________________________________________________________________ HALL OF FAME * means the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Jack in the box Beppe Bezzi 1620 P-warrior 2 Torch t18 P.Kline 1539 Bomber 3 Impfinity v4g1 Planar 1442 * Stone/ imp 4 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 1420 One shot scanner 5 quiz Schitzo 1262 Scanner/ bomber 6 Evol Cap 6.6 John Wilkinson 1257 * Imp / stone 7 Thermite II Robert Macrae 1243 * Qscan -> bomber 8 Tornado 3.0 Beppe Bezzi 1044 * Bomber 9 T.N.T. Maurizio Vittuari 968 * Bomber 10 Iron Gate 1.5 Wayne Sheppard 926 CMP scanner 11 Agony II Stefan Strack 912 CMP scanner 12 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 869 Stone/ imp 13 Thermite 1.0 Robert Macrae 802 Qscan -> bomber 14 Blue Funk 3 Steven Morrell 766 Stone/ imp 15 Night Train Karl Lewin 755 Replicator 16 Mirage 1.5 Anton Marsden 736 Scanner/ bomber 17 Barrage Anton Marsden 716 * Qscan -> replicator 18 Chameleon Myer R Bremer 714 * P-warrior 19 Blizzard Anton Marsden 713 Qscan -> replicator 20 HeremScimitar A.Ivner,P.Kline 666 Bomber 21 La Bomba Beppe Bezzi 650 Qscan -> replicator 22 myVamp v3.7 Paulsson 643 Vampire 23 Hazy Shade Of Winter John Wilkinson 616 P-warrior 24 Armory - A5 John Wilkinson 609 P-warrior 25 juliet and paper Bremer & Bezzi 607 P-warrior Frontwards v2 ends its run up the hall of fame ranks at number 4 clearing the way for Impfinity, the current active age leader. Phq is pushed off by newcomer Chameleon, now in 18th place. Minimum price of admission to the hall rises from 578 to 607. Grilled Octopus would be the next warrior to join the elite, perhaps next week, maybe a bit longer depending on the volume of challenges. ______________________________________________________________________________ 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 # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 58/ 28/ 14 Violent Micro v0.3 basehead 189 2 2 50/ 17/ 33 Fork v0.2-9p/51b Christoph C. Birk 182 17 3 45/ 12/ 43 Vectorfantasy v0.3 basehead 177 14 4 49/ 36/ 15 Living Let Die III Julian 162 71 5 50/ 38/ 12 Anti Imp bjoern guenzel 161 5 6 44/ 27/ 30 Bag of Tricks II Andy Nevermind 161 98 7 50/ 42/ 8 GPT 21a David van Dam 158 39 8 38/ 19/ 43 Toxin v0.6a Edgar 158 65 9 39/ 24/ 37 Hyakutake Perihelion Scott Manley 154 54 10 41/ 29/ 30 Rabbit v0.2a Christoph C. Birk 152 20 11 46/ 41/ 14 look-see Anonymous 150 47 12 38/ 36/ 26 Ineffectual Ian Oversby 141 73 13 43/ 45/ 11 Optma Dwarf v5.1 Phoenix 141 87 14 43/ 47/ 11 bloodstone V2.0 bjoern guenzel 139 83 15 40/ 42/ 17 MegaSnail v1.1 Edgar 138 66 16 26/ 22/ 53 The Wild Thirteen bjoern guenzel 129 38 17 40/ 52/ 8 Optma Dwarf v5.0 Phoenix 128 89 18 35/ 43/ 22 Badhead V1.0p bjoern guenzel 127 53 19 36/ 48/ 17 Antibodies Mk II Andrew Fabbro 123 24 20 38/ 56/ 6 beta tiny twist bjoern guenzel 119 9 21 31/ 46/ 23 small incident bjoern guenzel 116 22 22 24/ 34/ 43 The Wild Mover bjoern guenzel 114 35 23 9/ 55/ 37 doofworm bjoern guenzel 62 3 24 7/ 2/ 2 test Anti 6 bjoern guenzel 24 7 25 2/ 98/ 0 Unknown Anonymous 6 1 basehead has new versions of Violent Micro and Vectorfantasy out. They're not number one and number two this time, but one, three isn't so bad. It's difficult to tell exactly what's on the beginner's hill due to lack of strategy lines. Hello Anonymous. I know who you are. What do you think about having a beginners' hill without any age limits? Maybe some sort of intermediate hill? ______________________________________________________________________________ The Hint -------- The entire collection of Core Warrior hints written so far are now are available at ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar/documents/bbhints.zip -------- Sorry. None this week. These things are becoming difficult to think of. ______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra Paul Kline recently published Gem of the Ocean, with a plea for more open-ness. Considering he was king at the time I consider that a royal command :) I hadn't published Thermite II because it is really very similar to Thermite 1.0 in concept, and any published QS may suffer from other QS's which have scans tuned to defeat it. To ameliorate this problem I have changed the QS order for this version, but there should be no impact on performance except against other QS. Here are the big changes over Thermite 1.0. -- Scans Only 60 Locations The code is slimmer than before, since I only scan 60 locations instead of the 78 required to cover the whole of core. Why? Well... If you are fighting a non-quickscanner, you give up a few wins, but not too many as, by the time the last 20 locations have been scanned, the enemy has had ample time to boot. If you are fighting a QS, a similar argument applies; the missed wins are minimal because the enemy should already have hit you! OTOH you gain *substantially* from the occasions on which he scans one of the locations left vacant by slimming your code, hence missing you, because you have a 75% chance of a free attack on him while he scans on. -- Tornado Incendiary Bombing My old version used a 0.33c vampire to attack once the enemy had been scanned. Using a 0.6c incendiary bomber gives almost as thorough a kill, delivered much faster. The indirect bombing also permits attacking 3 widely-spaced locations with each cycle of the bombing loop. This goes well with my prefered wide coverage of the target area. No matter whether I scan the warrior, a decoy before or a decoy after, there will be bombs landing near the warrior soon. I use SPL/MOV/JMP incendiary bombs to obtain maximum effect against Silks, to which Brand tends to lose. This does cost me some losses against other QS's armed with DAT bombs in the cases when we find each other at roughly the same time, and I land a stun while he lands a kill. La Bomba, against which I did most of my development, was particularly frustrating to deal with but the 60-location scan helped. -- Tweaked Brand Not much different from the other variants. Re-ordering of the main loop gave a small gain against my test suite (as I remember I needed 4000 battles to be sure; I _mean_ small) and the constants have been optimised against Silks, to give maximum run length. Spacing is somewhat compromised, which will hurt against bombers, but (by good fortune) this property helps against anti-bombers which rely on mod-4 patterns. I rather like succeeding because I'm *less* efficient than my opponent's strategy assumes :) -- Launched Bomber Why? The version without the launch hit #1 on it's first hill test (hard to beat:) and anyway, after a QS you have removed the most urgent incentive to launch, because any QS has already hit you or been hit; either way, launching won't matter. But... I had a vague feeling that it might not be safe to hang around. One-Shots, perhaps? When I wrote Thermite II Silk/Imps were strong and numerous, and a resurgence of carpet-bombing scanners seemed like one possible future. I decided that, even though I lost some points through the extra length and time taken to start bombing, it would pay in terms of life-expectancy to launch, so the second version is the one I left on the hill. BTW I'm not overly keen on exhaustive testing of incremental variants on the hill; the benefit is that you develop a good feel for the character of each constituent but (for me) at the cost of losing some of the charm which lies in new ideas or at least new uses for old ones. In any case, if I choose to leave the lesser of two versions on the hill, whats the point >:-? -- Bug? John K.W. mailed me with a tiny, suicidal warrior which managed to beat Thermite once in two hundred times. All I can imagine is that, that one time, I somehow scanned his code within its few cycles of life, and that then I crashed as a result. But how? >Program "Thermite II" (length 100) by "Robert Macrae" >(contact address "ff95@dial.pipex.com"): >;strategy Same old strategy, but nastier... >Killing Hazy Shade Of Winter III wins: 1 >Thermite II wins: 199 >Ties: 0 > >How did I get a win against Thermite?!?! >Here is an EXACT copy of what I sent to Pizza... >Thermite would've had to die within 3 cycles! ... :/ > >;redcode-94 >;name Killing Hazy Shade Of Winter III >;kill Hazy Shade Of Winter III >;author John K W > >p: ldp.b #0, #0 >jmp <-1 Any ideas, anyone :-? THERMITE II ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ;redcode-94 ;name Thermite II ;kill Thermite II ;author Robert Macrae ;assert CORESIZE == 8000 ;strategy Same old strategy, but nastier... ; Therm 3.7 had everything I wanted for scan and bomber (Brand 3.3). ; Now check for any surplus cells, clean up logic, shuffle scan ; -- the tedious stuff. ; ***** REMEMBER ***** not to publish scan in this order! ; Therm 4.1 tries launching bomber, against oneshots! org start qstep equ 6 ; gap between bombs qrounds equ 8 ; number of bombing runs qgap equ (qrounds * qstep) ; Space covered by each bomb-type qspread equ (qgap*3) ; Total coverage bigst equ 113 qstart equ start+1000 qst equ qstart -(4*bigst) ; ------------------------------------------------------ qspb spl -1, #qgap+1 ; 3 bombs for QS qmvb mov -qgap, >-qgap qjmb jmp -qgap, -2*qgap+qstep qincr dat #qstep, #qstep ; step for QS which add.b found, found2 ; (From Pyramid) sne.i @found, @found2 ; Is it in first two? add.ab #2*bigst, found sne.i qspb-1, @found ; Is it first or third? add.ab #bigst,found mov qjmb, @found found seq qspb-1, *0 ; look qgap back from hit sub.ab #qgap/2, found ; and sub qgap/2 if found. qplace add.b found, #-qgap/2+qstep+found mov.i qspb, @qplace ; Preposition first SPL add.ba found, qstone add.b found, qstone ; Initialise Tornado pointers qst1 mov qjmb, *qstone ; Tornado bombing engine mov qmvb, @qstone ; "to fill enemy with hot qstone mov @3*qgap/2+found, *qgap/2+found sub.f qincr, qstone ; Adapted to SPL/MOV/JMP djn.b qst1, #qrounds ; and to cover wider range. launch mov cp, cp+4000 lloop mov {launch, gate-1 cp djn.f clr, {gate-1 ; 3 DATs sm mov -step2, >-step2 ; mov half of the incendiary FOR 11 dat 0, 0 ROF start s1 for 5 sne.x qst+4*bigst*s1, qst+4*bigst*s1+bigst*1 seq.x qst+4*bigst*s1+bigst*2, qst+4*bigst*s1+bigst*3 mov.ab #qst+4*bigst*s1-found, found rof jmn which, found s2 for 5 sne.x qst+4*bigst*(s2+5), qst+4*bigst*(s2+5)+bigst*1 seq.x qst+4*bigst*(s2+5)+bigst*2, qst+4*bigst*(s2+5)+bigst*3 mov.ab #qst+4*bigst*(s2+5)-found, found rof jmn which, found s3 for 5 sne.x qst+4*bigst*(s3+10), qst+4*bigst*(s3+10)+bigst*1 seq.x qst+4*bigst*(s3+10)+bigst*2, qst+4*bigst*(s3+10)+bigst*3 mov.ab #qst+4*bigst*(s3+10)-found, found rof jmn.b which, found jmp launch, {-500 end ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All in all it surprises me that such modest changes lead to such an increase in effectiveness, but then Thermite 1.0 was never intended as more than a first version. It was left on the hill only because I ran out of coding time. For further explanation of the QS concept, see Corewarrior 5 for the code of Thermite 1.0. Note that Michael Constant and Beppe Bezzi (at least) have strong and somewhat different views on the subject :) So far, Thermite II seems to beat Beppe's "qtest" warriors handily ;] Guess I'll have to write something new now... ______________________________________________________________________________ Questions? Concerns? Comments? Complaints? Mail them to people who care. authors: Beppe Bezzi or Myer Bremer