A midweek review of Corewar
July 28, 1993
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I. The Standings:
# %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age
1 42/ 41/ 18 Grimm's Vampyre c w blue 143 95
2 45/ 46/ 9 Agony 6.0 Stefan Strack 143 166
3 35/ 27/ 38 FlyPaper 3.0 J.Layland 142 336
4 39/ 36/ 25 Winter Werewolf 3 W. Mintardjo 142 230
5 42/ 43/ 14 Dragon Spear c w blue 141 1014
6 43/ 44/ 13 Iron Gate 1.01 Wayne Sheppard 141 55
7 43/ 46/ 11 Impurge Fredrik Ohrstrom 140 236
8 37/ 34/ 29 Herem VI Anders Ivner 139 84
9 32/ 25/ 43 Deck of Many Things c w blue 138 41
10 31/ 23/ 46 ttt nandor sieben 138 136
11 30/ 22/ 48 Impact v1.0 Anders Ivner 138 49
12 30/ 23/ 47 Night Crawler Wayne Sheppard 137 912
13 30/ 23/ 46 Imprimis 7 P.Kline 137 152
14 30/ 23/ 47 Sphinx v2.8 W. Mintardjo 137 1910
15 30/ 24/ 47 Incrimination v1.0 Brant D. Thomsen 136 316
16 40/ 46/ 14 Fire Storm v1.1 W. Mintardjo 135 551
17 30/ 26/ 45 Hydra Stephen Linhart 134 19
18 22/ 13/ 64 Imps! Imps! Imps!-d Steven Morrell 131 146
19 40/ 50/ 10 Creampuff II P. Kline 130 9
20 35/ 46/ 20 lil' shears P.Kline 124 1
21 7/ 50/ 43 Hyper Cat V2.1 E.C et P.E.M 64 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:
Accolades to CW Blue whose Dragon Spear passed 1000 challenges this week.
Considering its age, Dragon Spear has been unusually successful the last
few days, frequently occupying the #1 spot. Can't recall whether we
ever saw DS's source - hint-hint - :-).
A flurry of apparent newcomers has been assaulting the Hill recently.
Linhart's interesting 'Hydra' program is the most successful entry.
Note to Steve: some of us spent months before getting on KotH.
Additional Note to Steve, whose email was bounced back to me:
I noticed you are able to ;kill some versions of Hydra but not all.
Did you submit a version from another computer account? KotH uses
the sender's mail address not the ;author line to distinguish ownership.
If not, you can contact Bill Shubert by sending a regular mail message
to the same address as KotH.
Going to give us any hints about what makes Hydra work? :-)
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IV. The Outlook:
8 30/ 25/ 44 Hydra Stephen Linhart 135 1
8 43/ 47/ 9 Creampuff II P. Kline 139 1
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V. The Quick Look:
20 26/ 45/ 28 nugget v6 Nick Bourner 108 1
21 0/ 47/ 53 Tie Me Up M. S. Veach 54 0
21 0/ 87/ 13 Findimp Test G. Ritter 13 0
21 0/ 89/ 11 frontv0 Mike Feier 11 0
21 0/ 89/ 11 Pink Nightmare V1.2 Mike Feier 11 0
21 1/ 30/ 69 Thing G. Ritter 72 0
21 1/ 34/ 66 Infest v1.0 M. Burton 68 0
21 1/ 35/ 64 fork E. Djikstra 67 0
21 1/ 54/ 45 Pause&Clear2 James Ojaste 49 0
21 1/ 72/ 28 front242v3 Mike Feier 29 0
21 1/ 84/ 14 Crazed Dwarf G. Ritter 19 0
21 2/ 29/ 69 Deflagellator G. Ritter 74 0
21 2/ 62/ 36 Quartz G. Ritter 42 0
21 2/ 64/ 34 Kimp3! James Ojaste 41 0
21 2/ 98/ 0 gImp 1.00 Patrice Cummings 7 0
21 3/ 76/ 21 banzai_pe P.E. Moreau 31 0
21 5/ 70/ 25 Crazed Dwarf 1.1 G. Ritter 41 0
21 6/ 57/ 36 Kimp! James Ojaste 55 0
21 6/ 90/ 5 Mantis 8000 D. Ritter 21 0
21 7/ 40/ 53 Thing 1.21 G. Ritter 73 0
21 7/ 56/ 38 Thief! James Ojaste 57 0
21 7/ 66/ 26 Clone G. Ritter 48 0
21 9/ 68/ 23 Test IRP Rodney Schuler 51 0
21 9/ 77/ 13 VFC V2.0 P.E. Moreau 42 0
21 10/ 29/ 61 Test-IS G. Ritter 92 0
21 10/ 88/ 2 Sieve v1.0 James Ojaste 33 0
21 11/ 82/ 7 Dopey 1.04 Patrice Cummings 40 0
21 12/ 80/ 8 Kammakazi V0.0 Mike Feier 44 0
21 13/ 35/ 52 Thing 1.2 G. Ritter 92 0
21 13/ 59/ 28 threescore 1.0 Steve Gunnell 66 0
21 13/ 69/ 18 Scan v1.3 James Ojaste 58 0
21 13/ 72/ 15 Bang2! James Ojaste 53 0
21 13/ 87/ 1 Wipe James Ojaste 39 0
21 14/ 76/ 10 Hyper Cat V2 E.C et P.E.M 52 0
21 15/ 71/ 14 Bang! James Ojaste 58 0
21 15/ 79/ 6 Plit 1.0 G. Ritter 51 0
21 16/ 79/ 5 sore loser Steven Morrell 53 0
21 16/ 83/ 1 dopey patrice cummings 48 0
21 17/ 68/ 15 test P.Kline 67 0
21 17/ 80/ 3 D2.2ab James Ojaste 55 0
21 18/ 29/ 53 gen1417062609 the sun god 108 0
21 19/ 32/ 49 toilet paper v1.0 Steven Morrell 107 0
21 19/ 75/ 6 mauve Greg Ritter 64 0
21 22/ 27/ 51 Test-IS,S +13 Unknown 117 0
21 22/ 28/ 50 Test-IS,S +5 G. Ritter 115 0
21 22/ 35/ 44 Test-IS,S G. Ritter 109 0
21 22/ 75/ 3 D2.2a James Ojaste 70 0
21 23/ 38/ 40 Jason's Super Hydra Jason & Stephen Linh 108 0
21 23/ 47/ 30 minimite Cormac Walsh 100 0
21 24/ 34/ 43 Test-IS,D,S G. Ritter 114 0
21 26/ 65/ 9 D2.2 James Ojaste 87 0
21 28/ 46/ 25 Passport 1.1 P.Kline 110 0
21 29/ 61/ 10 Spiral Stephen Linhart 98 0
21 32/ 45/ 23 Emerald 4.1 P.Kline 119 0
21 32/ 52/ 16 :( v1.1 Steven Morrell 111 0
21 33/ 46/ 22 Emerald 5.1000 P.Kline 120 0
21 33/ 48/ 19 lil' shears P.Kline 118 3
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VI. The Hint:
Last week I mentioned that there could be a difference in success between
ADDing your steps and SUBtracting them. Here is the result of a little
test I ran, using +12 and -12 as step sizes in Lil' Shears:
Opponent sub #12 add #12 sub - add
------------------ -------- -------- -----------
Impurge 50/44/06 74/23/03 -24/+21/+03
FlyPaper 3.0 22/56/22 06/78/16 +14/-22/+06
Creampuff II 65/28/07 53/31/16 +12/-03/-09
Fire Storm v1.1 30/53/17 44/45/11 -14/+08/+06
Dragon Spear 51/29/20 44/41/15 -07/+12/-05
ttt 11/71/18 12/68/20 -01/+03/-02
Winter Werewolf 3 44/35/21 48/30/22 -04/+05/-01
Grimm's Vampyre 36/49/15 35/52/13 +01/-03/+02
Agony 6.0 53/39/08 47/39/14 +06/+00/-06
Iron Gate 1.01 40/36/24 43/43/14 -03/-07/+10
Herem VI 30/45/25 32/42/26 -02/+03/-01
Hydra 17/60/23 22/54/24 -05/+06/-01
Imprimis 7 26/42/32 22/55/23 +04/-13/+09
Night Crawler 20/58/22 27/49/24 -07/+09/-02
Impact v1.0 26/34/40 22/40/38 +04/-06/+02
Deck of Many Things 09/31/60 05/38/57 +04/-07/+03
Sphinx v2.8 29/43/28 32/44/24 -03/-01/+04
Imps! Imps! Imps!-d 05/68/27 07/67/26 -02/+01/+01
Incrimination v1.0 35/33/32 43/31/26 -08/+02/+06
lil' shears (self) 36/36/28 42/42/16 -06/-06/+12
Against Impurge and FlyPaper I definitely suspect a difference. Against
Creampuff and Fire Storm, maybe. Unfortunately the differences seemed
to cancel each other out, so no overall advantage is gained :-(.
Other differences are probably due to the randomness inherant in KotH.
Here is the source for Lil' Shears, an 8-line spl-jmp bombing b-scanner
with a gate. The gate is not obvious, but develops after the core-clear.
;redcode
;name lil' shears
;kill lil' shears
;author P.Kline
;strategy bscanning spl-jmp bomber with core-clear & gate
bbmb mov bjmp,@bjmp
bnex add #12,@2
jmz bnex,@bbmb
mov bspl,@bbmb
bjmp jmp @-1,-1 ; this gets bombed with bspl to start core-clear
bspl spl 0,<1 ; this gets decremented by above to <7872
mov 1,-3
dat <7871,<-1 ; this decrements the mov for the core-clear
end bnex
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VII. The End:
Paul Kline
pk6811s@acad.drake.edu