A midweek review of Corewar
April 14, 1993
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I. The Standings:
# %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age
1 40/ 20/ 40 Night Crawler Wayne Sheppard 159 44
2 49/ 41/ 11 Dragon Spear c w blue 157 146
3 38/ 20/ 41 NC III Wayne Sheppard 156 1
4 48/ 41/ 12 Zipp c w blue 155 15
5 48/ 44/ 8 Agony 5.1 Stefan Strack 152 198
6 37/ 23/ 40 Imprimis 6 P.Kline 150 444
7 47/ 45/ 8 Medusa's v7 Mintardjo & Strack 150 337
8 34/ 24/ 42 Sphinx v2.8 W. Mintardjo 144 1042
9 43/ 44/ 12 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 143 1000
10 32/ 22/ 46 +0 Stormbringer Dan Nabutovsky 142 1474
11 30/ 20/ 50 It nandor sieben 141 6
12 38/ 37/ 24 Leprechaun 1b Anders Ivner 139 956
13 42/ 47/ 11 Pippin v2.0 Arno M. Fuhlendorf 138 3
14 36/ 37/ 28 Nurgle c w blue 135 27
15 29/ 25/ 46 Silver Paper W. Mintardjo 133 75
16 40/ 48/ 12 Emerald 4 P.Kline 133 19
17 39/ 46/ 15 Sucker 6 Stefan Strack 131 66
18 39/ 48/ 12 Charon v9.0 Cisek,Strack,Kline 131 31
19 36/ 46/ 18 Eclipse III P.Kline 126 16
20 27/ 30/ 43 Consumption v2.0 Arno M. Fuhlendorf 124 8
21 12/ 78/ 10 Invest Andre van Dalen 47 0
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II. The Basics:
-Core War Archives are available via anonymous FTP at
soda.berkeley.edu in pub/corewar...
-FAQ for this newsgroup is available via anonymous FTP at
rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.z
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III. The Scoop:
Last week this newsletter reported the premature demise of W. Sheppard's
Night warrior, the first of several long-standing imp-stone programs to
fall of the Hill in months. Well, Mr. Sheppard did not take that kindly,
no-siree-bob! He has unleashed a series of new fighters in what can only
be called "The Week of Wayne's Weveange!". Cover your eyes children :-)
First to fall victim to Wayne's attack was S. Strack's much-emulated
Sucker 5, at the ripe old age of 1261. We all remember that Sucker 4
fell off the Hill just before making 1000 (when imps reappeared), so
we could almost consider this an effective age of over 2000 -- almost!
Course it didn't take long for Sucker 6 to appear and stake out a claim,
(though it's not riding as high as it used to).
Wayne's second victim was N. Sieben's mysterious 'It', another imp-stone
program of long-standing (1282). Many times It seemed to be up when
other imps were down and down when others were up. Just recently, It
was sharing the top 5 with four scanners. But an unfortunate combination
of opponents, and a determined Sheppard-attack was all-she-wrote for It.
No telling yet how successful the new version of It will be :-).
Not content to just knock fighters off of KotH, Wayne released his
own stone-imp program, Night Crawler. Studying all those opponents
must have given him an idea, 'cause NC is sitting pretty on top of the
Hill. On top of that, his Iron Gate made 1000 just in time for this
edition (hey, even electronic newsletters have lead times :-)
D. Nabutovsky's +0 Stormbringer now has a 400+ lead in the
geriatrics competition and still looks tough.
Other programs of note to fall this week included Moonstone 1 by
D. Nabutovsky (207), a surprising effective stone, and Paratroops v2.1 (393)
by W. Mintardjo, which used a scan->bomb->multi-bomber strategy to good effect.
Congrats to W. Mintardjo, whose Sphinx v2.8 has now passed 1000 challenges.
A. Ma was kept busy handling bug-reports for his new Corewars
emulator. As the old saying goes, 'if you never write anything, you
will never get written up' or something like that. Hope you get time
to work on fighters this week :-)
C.W. Blue is a quiet fellow -- quietly been taking over the Hill :-)
His Dragon Spear, Zipp, and Nurgle (and assorted sub-type-xxx's) are
beating up on a lot of good fighters. Keep it up!
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IV. The Outlook:
6 34/ 23/ 43 Silver Paper W. Mintardjo 145 1
7 43/ 43/ 14 Charon v9.0 Cisek,Strack,Kline 144 1
7 44/ 40/ 15 Sucker 6 Stefan Strack 149 1
10 39/ 36/ 25 Nurgle c w blue 142 1
6 36/ 24/ 40 Bronze Paper W. Mintardjo 149 1
3 49/ 40/ 11 Zipp c w blue 159 1
1 43/ 20/ 36 Night Crawler Wayne Sheppard 166 4
4 38/ 22/ 40 Test Wayne Sheppard 155 1
2 40/ 20/ 40 NC II Wayne Sheppard 160 1
2 36/ 20/ 44 NC III Wayne Sheppard 151 1
10 28/ 20/ 52 It nandor sieben 136 1
10 39/ 43/ 18 sub-type-ps c w blue 136 1
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V. The Quick Look:
21 32/ 47/ 22 v5 j.layland 116 0
21 9/ 82/ 9 Get Andre van Dalen 35 0
19 31/ 44/ 25 Rain Wayne Sheppard 119 1
21 14/ 85/ 1 seer Hank Turowski 43 0
21 30/ 32/ 37 test Unknown 129 2
21 31/ 66/ 3 Dwarf Magnus 96 0
20 26/ 68/ 5 Hunter Hank Turowski 84 1
20 23/ 59/ 18 Invest Andre van Dalen 88 1
20 27/ 30/ 43 Jester c w blue 123 1
21 28/ 50/ 22 Plasma Wayne Sheppard 106 0
21 28/ 36/ 37 Scaper c w blue 119 0
21 23/ 30/ 47 p2roba nandor sieben 115 0
21 11/ 84/ 6 Boinger Jason Grundy 38 0
21 38/ 51/ 12 CraMPon c w blue 125 0
21 20/ 68/ 12 DemonIV Cormac Walsh 71 0
21 27/ 42/ 31 DemonIII Cormac Walsh 111 0
21 21/ 73/ 6 Diplomat Rodney Kinney 68 0
20 28/ 35/ 37 RotLD 2.2 nandor sieben 121 1
21 3/ 67/ 30 Wimp v1.0 Brant D. Thomsen 40 0
19 33/ 48/ 20 Eclipse II P.Kline 118 1
18 40/ 51/ 10 Iron Fence Wayne Sheppard 129 1
21 1/ 90/ 9 LERSSI III Arto Vuori 12 0
18 39/ 46/ 15 Tomb Stone c w blue 132 1
20 21/ 78/ 1 sub-type-b c w blue 64 1
20 4/ 64/ 32 Ground-Zero E. J. Andrews 45 1
21 25/ 72/ 2 dumb bomber Hank Turowski 78 0
21 26/ 55/ 20 Ground-Zero+ E. J. Andrews 97 0
20 1/ 41/ 58 Hand of Doom Jarkko Lindblad 61 1
20 38/ 57/ 5 Stoned Again c w blue 120 1
21 33/ 52/ 15 sub-type-cmp c w blue 114 0
21 24/ 64/ 11 Diplomat 1.03 Rodney Kinney 84 0
21 27/ 55/ 18 Distance v1.1 Brant D. Thomsen 99 0
21 26/ 58/ 16 Distance v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 95 0
21 32/ 39/ 29 Salamander II Anders Ivner 125 0
21 0/ 88/ 12 Validate 1.0R Stefan Strack 12 0
21 9/ 91/ 0 cheap-scanner A.T. Crowley 26 0
21 30/ 43/ 27 Am I Evil 10.0 Jarkko Lindblad 117 0
21 11/ 52/ 37 BscannerBomber Wayne Sheppard 70 0
20 37/ 47/ 16 Moonstone v1.1 Unknown 127 1
18 28/ 29/ 43 Consumption v2.0 Arno M. Fuhlendorf 128 1
21 23/ 56/ 20 Thundering buttocks Jordan Horwich 90 0
21 14/ 83/ 2 JG-HI2-Hopping Imp 2 Jason Grundy 45 0
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VI. The Hint:
Newcomers to the game frequently confuse their recode assembler syntax
with actual runtime code. Operators like * / + -, as well as EQU's
and parens are only 'assembler' operators, they are evaluated before
the program is loaded. An example:
mov 100,@2*10
is changed to:
mov 100,@20
If you are suspicious that your emulator is not doing what you think
it should, take a look at the assembled instructions.
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VII. The End:
Paul Kline
pk6811s@acad.drake.edu