May 4, 1994 Issue #7
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This newletter 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:
Excitment is thick in the air after the first two rounds of Stefan Strack's
corewar tournament. It's still too early to tell what will happen, and if the
fierce competition on the '94 hills is any indication of what's to come, it
will not get any easier to predict later on. (Still, I know who I want to
win!) Good luck to all the remaining participants! (... and condolences
to Michael Constant and Nandor Sieben, the first two participants to be
eliminated.)
If you are working on warriors for a large size core on an IBM computer with
Super-VGA graphics, you will definitely want to grab the latest version of
pMARS off of "soda.berkeley.edu". It is now possible to watch your large
warriors in action! Thanks to the pMARS team for a great effort!
Other helps now available include a faster verion of Optima (by Michael
Constant) and a step-size help file for 8000 size cores by Paul Kline that is
readable. Both are tools no redcode developer should be without.
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The ICWS '94 Draft Hill:
Core size: 8000 instrucitons
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 44/ 36/ 20 Pyramid v1.0 Michael Constant 151 1
2 38/ 25/ 38 Der Zweite Blitzkrieg - 9 Mike Nonemacher 151 112
3 39/ 28/ 33 Torch P.Kline 150 2
4 43/ 36/ 21 Sauron v5.0 Michael Constant 150 12
5 32/ 16/ 52 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 148 129
6 32/ 17/ 51 Cannonade P.Kline 147 4
7 44/ 43/ 14 Iron Gate 1.5 Wayne Sheppard 145 106
8 33/ 23/ 44 Lucky 3 Stefan Strack 144 122
9 32/ 21/ 47 Twimpede+/Small-X Jay Han 143 5
10 40/ 38/ 21 Request v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 143 160
11 32/ 22/ 46 NC 94 Wayne Sheppard 142 142
12 43/ 48/ 8 Rave 4.1 Stefan Strack 138 94
13 41/ 45/ 14 Dragon Spear c w blue 137 162
14 29/ 21/ 50 ^C Steven Morrell 137 21
15 36/ 36/ 28 Christopher Steven Morrell 135 50
16 30/ 25/ 45 Splash Jay Han 134 100
17 29/ 25/ 46 Imperfection v3.4 Michael Constant 133 25
18 35/ 37/ 28 Yop La Boum v2.1 P.E.M & E.C. 133 92
19 38/ 44/ 18 SJ-4 J.Layland 133 36
20 40/ 48/ 12 Iron Gate 1.2b Wayne Sheppard 131 3
21 2/ 98/ 0 Looking Brant D. Thomsen 7 0
Since the last issue of the Warrior, exactly 99 programs have made it onto
the '94 standard hill. "Der Zweite Blitzkrieg - 9", "Pyramid v1.0",
"Sauron v5.0", and "Torch" are all been fighting for the top slot on the
hill, and all of them deserve it. It looks like the "pizza" hill is well
represented by every type of program but "paper". (Anders Ivner's "Killer
Instinct" was in third place on the hill last month. However, it is still
doing well on the "stormking" hill.) Perhaps "paper" is the one warrior
type that doesn't benefit from the newer standard. (Opinions, anyone?)
I am also including the results of the "stormking" hills in this, and future,
issues of _The_'94_Warrior_. I had planned to cover the "pizza" hill
exclusively, but later decided that the "stormking" hills have enough traffic
to warrant their coverage as well. In addition, they also tend to have a much
different "flavor" resulting from the quite different programs on the hill.
If you have a program that can't quite get onto a hill on one server, I'd
recommend trying it on the other one -- it may do quite well!
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
The "stormking" hill appears to be even more diverse than the "pizza" hill.
This hill will be a fun one to watch as it developes. Many of the programs
on it are '88 standard programs, and several other programs have been
converted from the '88 to the '94 standard. The "pizza" hill, on the other
hand, has many warriors that are highly '94 dependent.
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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 51/ 32/ 18 Demand-55440 M. Constant & B. Tho 170 9
2 39/ 21/ 40 Variation G-1 Jay Han 157 44
3 44/ 35/ 20 Request-55440 Brant D. Thomsen 153 80
4 35/ 22/ 43 Splash 1 Jay Han 149 45
5 45/ 43/ 12 Squint Mike Nonemacher 148 18
6 37/ 27/ 36 Lucky 13 Stefan Strack 148 86
7 41/ 37/ 22 Vanity IIx Stefan Strack 146 35
8 33/ 24/ 44 BigImps James Layland 142 15
9 43/ 45/ 12 Virus Jay Han 141 3
10 43/ 46/ 11 Rave B4.1 Stefan Strack 141 41
11 41/ 42/ 17 Raiden Richard van der Brug 139 14
12 39/ 40/ 21 White Fang Steven Morrell 139 5
13 32/ 25/ 42 Der Zweite Blitzkrieg - 9 Mike Nonemacher 139 42
14 28/ 18/ 54 Imperfection v2.4 Michael Constant 138 51
15 43/ 49/ 8 Scanalyzer Jay Han 138 4
16 38/ 38/ 24 Sauron v3.4 Michael Constant 137 23
17 38/ 38/ 24 Lump J.Layland 137 25
18 34/ 32/ 34 Sissy Jay Han 137 40
19 37/ 45/ 18 testing2 J.Layland 129 1
20 5/ 0/ 0 Big J-1 Jay Han 14 2
Although many new programs have made it onto the hill, the hill hasn't changed
all that much. Scanners, imp-spirals, and vampires all seem to be well
represented. Perhaps the largest change is the addition of "Demand-55440",
which currently has a stronghold on the top position. "Demand" appears to
be good proof of something I've heard repeated many times in the newsgroup by
prominent redcode authors: the best warriors tend to be those that have a
combination of strategies or types.
The current ICWS '94 Experimental (Big) hill on "Stormking":
# %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age
1 53/ 31/ 15 Raiden Richard van der Brug 175 1
2 44/ 21/ 35 Lucky 13 Stefan Strack 168 18
3 46/ 30/ 25 Request-55440 Brant D. Thomsen 161 52
4 39/ 19/ 42 Bakers Dozen Wayne Sheppard 159 11
5 43/ 28/ 29 Sauron v2.4 Michael Constant 158 3
6 41/ 28/ 30 Variation D-1 Jay Han 155 13
7 45/ 36/ 20 Vanity IIx Stefan Strack 154 6
8 33/ 17/ 50 Imperfection v2.3 Michael Constant 149 46
9 44/ 46/ 10 Rave B4.1 Stefan Strack 141 7
10 30/ 23/ 47 BigImps James Layland 138 112
11 41/ 45/ 14 Dagger v7.0 Michael Constant 136 12
12 41/ 46/ 13 bigproba nandor sieben 136 10
13 30/ 24/ 47 BigImp Alex MacAulay 135 93
14 34/ 34/ 32 Industrious Stefan Strack 134 2
15 41/ 47/ 12 The Count Jay Han 134 42
16 34/ 38/ 27 Test Stefan Strack 131 4
17 34/ 38/ 27 Open Arms Stefan Strack 130 5
18 31/ 34/ 35 Veeble Jr. T. H. Davies 129 14
19 35/ 45/ 19 IceCube 1.4 Richard van der Brug 125 8
20 37/ 51/ 11 Kill Imps!!! Steven Morrell 123 39
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HINTS and HELPS:
I wanted to come up with some good use for the MUL and DIV instructions for
this issue's hint. There has been a large amount of '94 code posted recently,
but I don't recall any of it that used either of these instructions.
The two things that I was able to imagine that MUL and DIV would be
useful for is a binary bomber (where the programs bombs over successively
smaller intervals), and programs that must be able to run in many different
possible coresizes. So, along this line, I came up with a program which will
launch an imp-spiral with the minimum number of points for any size core
(given a know size limit).
At first, I tried to do this without using any constants, but the "mod"
mathematical limitations became too much. Recall that for an "P" point
imp-spiral to be possible in a size "C" core, then for any step-size "S" where
S * P = N * C + 1 (and N is any possible integer in the range 1 <= N < P),
then we have a stepsize to create an imp-spiral with that many points. The
problem is, of course, that N * C + 1 becomes 1 in the core no matter what
integer value N is assigned. This can make finding the possible imp-steps for
large values of N quite difficult to do during run-time.
So, instead, I took a compromise. I take the CORESIZE value supplied by pMARS,
and use it to determine all the possible imp-spiral step sizes I want to try.
Then I use a simple loop to determine whether or not each possible imp-spiral
step size will work. To do this, I take the value I want to test and
multiply it by the number of points I am considering for the imp-spiral. If
the result is 1 larger than the coresize, I have a successful number. The
corewars interpreter automatically takes care of the modular arithmetic,
making the loop surprisingly short and simple.
You may want to pay special attention to the main loop in the code, as I do
some things in it that are heavily '94 dependent. Each of the modifiers in
this loop had to be chosen carefully for the program to work correctly.
The DAT statements on the end of the program will find an imp-spiral for
any coresize that is not divisible by 30030. (Notice that 30030 is the
product of all the primes no greater than 13.) I have also added the first
two 17 point imp-spiral sizes needed to handle 30030 and 60060. If you add
all of the DAT statements for the 17-point imp-spiral steps, then you will be
able to handle any coresize that is not divisible by 510510.
(B.T.W.: 510510 = 17 * 30030) This should be adequate for most
programmers. ;-)
Since a randomly sized core will be divisible by 2 half the time, the average
number of cycles needed to find the wanted imp-spiral step size should be
small. Most of your cycles will be taken up in generating the processes for
the imp-spiral and launching it. (In reality, you would probably want less
processes than I have here.) Perhaps some of you corewar experts out there
could even figure out a way to have the number of processes sent to the imp-
spiral vary dymanically based on the number of points it will have.
;redcode-94
;name Imp-Spiral Finder
;author Brant Thomsen
;strategy Launch the smallest possible imp-spiral for any coresize < 90090
;macro
boot equ 150
imp mov.I #0, 0 ; Will copy value here later.
find mov.B <d2, #0 ; Get the value to test.
mul.AB @d2, find ; See what the result would be.
djn.B find, find ; If result != 1, then try next value.
launch mov.B @d2, imp ; Put the value in the imp.
mov.I imp, imp+boot ; Move the initial imp-spiral instruction.
; Begin to generate processes.
spl.F 2
for 5
spl.F 1
rof
; Should have 48 processes here.
spl.F 2 ; Launch an imp-spiral using JMP/ADD method.
jmp.F @0, imp+boot ; Nice since don't need step size in advance.
add.F imp, -1
; These are the test values to use.
; Notice that only prime numbers are used.
dat.F 17, (d17 * CORESIZE + 1) / 17 ; Needed for size 30030
dat.F 17, (d17 * CORESIZE + 1) / 17 ; Needed for size 60060
d17
for 12
dat.F 13, (d13 * CORESIZE + 1) / 13
rof
d13
for 10
dat.F 11, (d11 * CORESIZE + 1) / 11
rof
d11
for 6
dat.F 7, (d7 * CORESIZE + 1) / 7
rof
d7
for 4
dat.F 5, (d5 * CORESIZE + 1) / 5
rof
d5
for 2
dat.F 3, (d3 * CORESIZE + 1) / 3
rof
d3 dat.F 2, (d2 * CORESIZE + 1) / 2
d2 end find ; This instruction is a DAT.F 0, 0
; It is used at the pointer to the
; current test value.
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Looking to the Future:
It looks as if the '94 standard is becoming widely accepted. There are more
programs being sent to the '94 draft hill than to the '88 standard hill on
"pizza", and the disproportion appears to be growing. I have a feeling
that it won't be long before the '94 draft hill will be the _standard_ hill.
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.
Good luck, and happy computing!
______________________________________________________________________________
Brant D. Thomsen, Editor Snail mail: 1197 East 6290 South
(bdthomse@peruvian.cs.utah.edu) Salt Lake City, UT 84121
University of Utah U.S.A.
--
Brant D. Thomsen Man will occasionally stumble over the truth,
(bdthomse@peruvian.cs.utah.edu) but most times he will pick himself up
University of Utah and carry on. - Winston Churchill
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