A midweek review of Corewar
July 2, 1993
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I. The Standings:
# %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age
1 42/ 35/ 23 Winter Werewolf 3 W. Mintardjo 149 155
2 34/ 25/ 41 FlyPaper 3.0 J.Layland 142 261
3 42/ 42/ 16 Grimm's Vampyre c w blue 141 20
4 37/ 33/ 30 Herem VI Anders Ivner 141 9
5 30/ 20/ 49 testing Anders Ivner 141 2
6 42/ 44/ 14 Impurge Fredrik Ohrstrom 141 161
7 42/ 44/ 13 Dragon Spear c w blue 140 939
8 43/ 48/ 9 Agony 6.0 Stefan Strack 139 91
9 30/ 25/ 45 Sphinx v2.8 W. Mintardjo 136 1835
10 41/ 48/ 11 Charon v8.1 Cisek,Strack,Kline 135 1
11 30/ 25/ 45 Deck of Many Things c w blue 135 69
12 29/ 24/ 47 Night Crawler Wayne Sheppard 133 837
13 29/ 24/ 47 Imprimis 7 P.Kline 133 77
14 39/ 48/ 13 Fire Storm v1.1 W. Mintardjo 130 476
15 28/ 26/ 46 ttt nandor sieben 130 61
16 26/ 24/ 50 Incrimination v1.0 Brant D. Thomsen 129 241
17 30/ 33/ 37 Passport P.Kline 128 47
18 34/ 44/ 22 Wimp 8.1 Brant D. Thomsen 125 72
19 19/ 15/ 66 Imps! Imps! Imps!-d Steven Morrell 122 71
20 19/ 34/ 47 Express P.Kline 105 3
21 2/ 2/ 0 Charon v8.1 Cisek,Strack,Kline 7 22
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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:
Major accolades go out this week to W. Mintardjo, whose Sphinx v2.8
has set a new duration record for KotH. Will Sphinx break the 2000
barrier? How high can he go?
At the other end of the scale, major frustration to W. Sheppard who
knocked of his own Snake warrior due to low performance (too many
anti-vamps out there Wayne? :-) With his flagship Night Crawler
suffering the blues, he tried this one:
20 32/ 47/ 21 !@#$%^&*() Wayne Sheppard 117 1
Ah! the sweet feeling of success:
5 28/ 14/ 58 Imps! Imps! Imps!-d Steven Morrell 141 10
S. Morrell seems to have discovered the secret of tying, but he's
also tough on Irony which dropped a bunch. (Irony would be one of yours,
wouldn't it, Wayne? :-)
It took him six or seven tries, but A. Ivner finally got his reincarnation
of Herem to work as well under the name Herem VI as it did as 'test Herem'.
Maybe there's something to this 'test' name theory of mine.
This week's hot topic on rec.games.corewar is the new draft proposal for
the Corewar language. Seems everyone has a favorite expansion idea.
Mark Durham worked overtime to draft the latest version, which is a
major feat, and excellent work. Now we'll see if we can get people
past the bitching, booing, and hissing phase into a constructive
process leading to an improved standard. Internet news has been
described as anarchy, so it should be interesting to see how this
develops.
And speaking of changes, this 'conservative veteran' would like
to report that he has just ordered Think C v6.0 for his Mac and will
soon be abandoning Basic for the new world of C. Just so's you all
know I'm not just a stick-in-the-mud who's afraid of change. Give
me a week or two with the manual, and I'm sure I can start helping
with the 'portable Corewar' project :-) Besides, this package comes
with a free trip to Hawaii.
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IV. The Outlook:
3 33/ 18/ 48 testing Anders Ivner 148 1
4 40/ 32/ 28 test Herem Anders Ivner 148 1
6 39/ 33/ 28 Herem VI Anders Ivner 144 1
7 32/ 26/ 43 ttt nandor sieben 138 1
7 34/ 30/ 37 Passport P.Kline 137 1
9 40/ 42/ 18 Grimm's Vampyre c w blue 138 1
10 41/ 46/ 13 Irony Wayne Sheppard 136 1
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V. The Quick Look:
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VI. The Hint:
You submitted 'Blastem', and it scored 129 points and got on the Hill. Great!
Then you tweaked your constants and it dropped to 120 :-( So you
resubmitted the original and it still only gets 120. What is going on?
A couple of factors are involved here. Your first submission
probably knocked off a warrior that you beat. Your second submission
has to play your first version, instead of the weaker warrior, and doesn't
do so well against him.
Another factor is that you only battle 100 games against each opponent
per submission. And 100 is still a small enough number (out of nearly
8000 possible setups) that through sheer chance you will win or lose
a few more against the same opponent on successive tries. In fact
you should probably not feel too confident in a gain of 10 wins or less
against any one opponent.
When submitting variations of the same warrior, look for gains against
a whole class of opponents - paper, scanners, imps, stones, etc. Then
you'll know you are on to something.
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VII. The End: