From news-rocq.inria.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!ghost.dsi.unimi.it!batcomputer!hookup!news.kei.com!eff!news.umbc.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!peruvian.cs.utah.edu!bdthomse Tue Apr 5 14:43:10 1994 Article: 576 of rec.games.corewar Newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Path: news-rocq.inria.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!ghost.dsi.unimi.it!batcomputer!hookup!news.kei.com!eff!news.umbc.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!peruvian.cs.utah.edu!bdthomse From: bdthomse%peruvian.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brant Thomsen) Subject: The '94 Warrior Date: 2 Apr 94 13:48:59 MST Message-ID: <1994Apr2.134900.8347@hellgate.utah.edu> Originator: bdthomse@peruvian.cs.utah.edu Organization: University of Utah CS Dept Lines: 423 __ __| | ) _ \ | | \ \ / _) | __ \ _ \ / ( | | | \ \ \ / _` | __| __| | _ \ __| | | | | __/ \__ |___ __| \ \ \ / ( | | | | ( | | _| _| |_|\___| _/ _| \_/\_/ \__,_|_| _| _|\___/ _| April 2, 1994 Issue #5 ______________________________________________________________________________ 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 ______________________________________________________________________________ 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: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 42/ 31/ 27 Killer instinct Anders Ivner 154 10 2 38/ 24/ 38 NC II Wayne Sheppard 153 65 3 38/ 25/ 37 Sphinx v5.1 W. Mintardjo 150 68 4 32/ 22/ 46 ttti94 nandor sieben 143 16 5 43/ 44/ 13 Fire Storm v1.1 W. Mintardjo 142 71 6 34/ 27/ 40 JustTakingALookSee J.Layland 141 64 7 31/ 22/ 47 ttti nandor sieben 140 21 8 40/ 42/ 17 Sylvester v1.0 Brant D. Thomsen 139 47 9 32/ 25/ 43 Twimpede/88 Jay Han 139 1 10 39/ 43/ 18 Request v2.0 Brant D. Thomsen 136 3 11 39/ 43/ 17 Ntttgtstitd Simon Hovell 136 11 12 31/ 27/ 42 Snake Wayne Sheppard 134 20 13 38/ 42/ 21 Fast Food v2.1 Brant D. Thomsen 134 23 14 38/ 43/ 19 Beholder's Eye v1.7 W. Mintardjo 132 77 15 40/ 47/ 13 Rave 4 Stefan Strack 132 4 16 40/ 48/ 12 Rave Stefan Strack 132 48 17 38/ 44/ 18 SJ-4 J.Layland 131 14 18 37/ 42/ 21 Christopher Steven Morrell 131 9 19 36/ 42/ 22 tiny J.Layland 130 45 20 39/ 49/ 13 Testing an Idea Brant D. Thomsen 128 2 21 39/ 50/ 12 Impurge 94 Fredrik Ohrstrom 127 7 It looks like the '94 draft hill has really slowed down. I would speculate that this is a result of the greatly increased amount of attention being given to the '94 experimental hill. The one new program since the last issue to make it onto the hill is Jay Han's "Twimpede/88". Congratulations, Jay, on this unique honor! ______________________________________________________________________________ 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 hill: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 48/ 28/ 24 Request-55440 Brant D. Thomsen 169 35 2 33/ 11/ 56 Variation A-1.a Jay Han 156 4 3 46/ 40/ 14 Kill Imps!!! Steven Morrell 152 22 4 35/ 24/ 41 CG-X IV Brant D. Thomsen 145 86 5 31/ 17/ 52 Lucky 13 Stefan Strack 144 1 6 28/ 15/ 57 Twimpede Jay Han 141 2 7 44/ 47/ 9 Rave B4 Stefan Strack 140 44 8 21/ 10/ 69 Imperfection v2.3 Michael Constant 132 29 9 36/ 40/ 24 Vanity IIx Stefan Strack 132 26 10 23/ 19/ 58 Bimper Wayne Sheppard 127 10 11 29/ 34/ 36 Night Crawler Wayne Sheppard 124 45 12 37/ 51/ 12 The Count Jay Han 124 25 13 35/ 50/ 16 Dagger v6.0 X Michael Constant 119 75 14 21/ 22/ 57 BigImps James Layland 119 95 15 18/ 20/ 62 BigImp Alex MacAulay 117 76 16 18/ 22/ 60 Skimp 127 Jay Han 113 57 17 27/ 47/ 26 Sunburst 33 Jay Han 107 65 18 10/ 21/ 68 bimp.c test Wayne Sheppard 99 12 19 11/ 22/ 67 bimp.c test Wayne Sheppard 99 20 20 5/ 26/ 70 Impale v2a James Ojaste 84 3 21 1/ 1/ 3 Lucky 13 Stefan Strack 5 7 Before I even attempt to summarize what has been happening on the '94 experimental hill, I think it would be helpful to reprint the hill as it was during the last issue. (17 Days previously.) The current ICWS '94 Experimental hill: # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 53/ 12/ 35 BigImp Alex MacAulay 194 25 2 52/ 17/ 30 Imperfection v1.0 X Michael Constant 187 21 3 60/ 34/ 6 Rave 3 (55440) Stefan Strack 185 36 4 42/ 13/ 45 Skimp 127 Jay Han 171 6 5 54/ 42/ 4 No Ties Allowed Wayne Sheppard 166 41 6 51/ 38/ 10 Dagger v6.0 X Michael Constant 164 24 7 41/ 17/ 42 BigImps James Layland 164 44 8 49/ 39/ 12 Sunburst 33 Jay Han 159 14 9 44/ 31/ 25 CG-X IV Brant D. Thomsen 157 35 10 49/ 42/ 10 BS J.Layland 156 43 11 41/ 34/ 25 Iron Gate Wayne Sheppard 148 40 12 35/ 26/ 39 FatImp Jay Han 144 1 13 40/ 50/ 10 Silly 2 James Ojaste 130 7 14 41/ 54/ 5 Silly James Ojaste 129 9 15 33/ 46/ 21 testing testing Fredrik Ohrstrom 121 31 16 32/ 46/ 22 Crimp Jay Han 118 2 17 34/ 53/ 13 VJX-2a James Ojaste 115 28 18 28/ 42/ 31 Bloom Jay Han 114 12 19 30/ 50/ 20 Surprise7b James Ojaste 109 10 20 32/ 59/ 8 VJX-2 James Ojaste 105 29 Since the last issue of _The_'94_Warrior_, 51 new programs have made it onto the hill -- this is 3 new programs a day. Of the first 12 programs on the hill, only one was on the hill during the last issue. More programs have been submitted in this period than in the entire life of the hill previously. (Are you getting the point yet?!) Perhaps the most surprising thing about the current standings on the hill is the amount of diversity there is between the warriors. Scanners, stones, and imp-spiral combinations are all well represented. In fact, the warrior currently at the top of the hill is a vampire. (Certainly not what I would have predicted.) It looks as if this is the hill where the excitement is! ______________________________________________________________________________ HINTS and HELPS: To assist program development on the '94 experimental hill, I have used Michael Constant's "Optima" program to calculate the twenty most-efficient step-sizes for mods 1 to 10. (A mod 1 step-size will eventually cover every location in the core, a mod 2 step-size will eventually cover one-half of the locations in the core, etc.) Notice that there is a bug in the version of "Optima" released last year. A quick fix is to make the variable "i" in the function "opt" long instead of short. An easier fix will be to wait until Michael releases the next version. This bug only makes itself known when using a large coresize and a large step size. In fact, it was due to this bug that I ended up using a step-size of 9719 in the 55440 coresize version of Request -- it was the best mod 1 step the program could find. [The source code for Request-55440 will probably be included in the next issue. I figured the following tables would be more useful given the current number of programs being submitted to the '94 experimental hill. Also, there are a couple of points about program development I am finishing up for a future hint, and "Request" will be good example to use for them.] Results of running "Optima" on a 55440 size core: Mod 1: 16211 6.183968 23269 6.183968 15481 6.132795 16921 6.132795 22889 6.113332 24151 6.113332 16369 6.065658 21649 6.065658 12689 6.056693 15611 6.056693 20509 6.056693 21151 6.056693 20617 6.052941 22873 6.052941 12503 6.048468 16393 6.048468 16817 6.045978 21247 6.045978 9719 6.028265 23399 6.028265 Mod 2: 16238 11.586204 20498 11.477182 21502 11.477182 22766 11.439446 23266 11.439446 15458 11.393845 16462 11.393845 12718 11.343555 23278 11.343555 11974 11.340597 20474 11.340597 15314 11.325805 22706 11.325805 16894 11.307190 23234 11.307190 20546 11.242397 21074 11.242397 20458 11.233378 24422 11.233378 20558 11.232151 Mod 3: 24357 16.517452 21381 16.368905 22971 16.368905 14907 16.340657 20373 16.340657 21057 16.330429 22503 16.330429 14691 16.305265 15261 16.305265 19461 16.144705 20571 16.144705 24483 16.085124 16473 16.023107 20607 16.023107 16827 16.003463 22773 16.003463 9687 16.002976 23007 16.002976 19911 15.997132 23439 15.997132 Mod 4: 22964 22.001587 20996 21.523631 24356 21.523631 17228 21.204705 24148 21.204705 22756 21.191717 23476 21.191717 15548 21.175265 22892 21.175265 20068 21.112923 23228 21.112923 24196 20.981312 23404 20.955336 20476 20.869038 23924 20.869038 16508 20.834981 23428 20.834981 21508 20.811025 22508 20.811025 12988 20.771196 Mod 5: 21445 26.052133 23435 26.052133 9865 25.878055 21215 25.878055 24175 25.794624 24905 25.794624 12115 25.712546 21485 25.712546 16265 25.675566 22735 25.675566 11785 25.657527 16465 25.657527 20315 25.560566 24875 25.560566 16925 25.451881 24125 25.451881 9965 25.415351 21475 25.415351 9925 25.400469 15445 25.400469 Mod 6: 16134 31.110510 21174 31.110510 15234 30.829960 21486 30.829960 21246 30.807230 20994 30.786449 16374 30.408486 14946 30.113649 19986 30.113649 19938 29.889598 21522 29.889598 17142 29.831800 24198 29.831800 16194 29.815564 24834 29.815564 20298 29.745427 24762 29.745427 20058 29.643468 21642 29.643468 17382 29.622686 Mod 7: 16373 35.304963 21427 35.304963 21007 35.243086 24367 35.243086 20041 35.102538 21049 35.102538 24157 34.939891 24997 34.939891 21623 34.906301 24983 34.906301 23429 34.649956 25459 34.649956 17129 34.616366 21161 34.616366 15043 34.480237 21077 34.480237 20293 34.479353 22547 34.479353 14651 34.413057 24899 34.413057 Mod 8: 12104 39.494299 24184 39.494299 20344 39.289941 21256 39.289941 15272 39.236831 21752 39.236831 16232 39.235676 22952 39.235676 19864 38.698802 20296 38.698802 20456 38.686102 25064 38.686102 13144 38.587964 23384 38.587964 24424 38.525617 25096 38.525617 16024 38.514071 16904 38.514071 23416 38.514071 24296 38.514071 Mod 9: 12087 44.316123 21177 44.316123 14967 43.623478 24903 43.623478 21141 43.594252 21501 43.594252 20961 43.468583 21519 43.468583 16983 43.337068 22887 43.337068 11997 43.281539 21627 43.281539 14841 43.227472 22761 43.227472 19647 43.107647 21663 43.107647 16749 42.900146 24309 42.900146 16461 42.870921 24219 42.870921 Mod 10: 19990 48.630705 21050 48.630705 21470 48.029948 22930 48.029948 16210 47.889230 24830 47.889230 16910 47.670936 24130 47.670936 13150 47.441819 23230 47.441819 9970 47.376872 22910 47.376872 15350 47.310121 22790 47.310121 12490 47.265019 19930 47.265019 21430 47.061158 23930 47.061158 16930 47.021469 19330 46.691322 ______________________________________________________________________________ Looking to the Future: The lastest draft of the standard has been on soda.berkeley.edu for a couple of months now (as /pub/corewar/documents/icws94.0202.Z). Take a look at it and let the newsgroup know what you think. There are some interesting additions to the former '94 draft standard, so it's worth your effort to get a copy and study it. Also, please submit your programs to the '94 hills. We'd love to have your best KOTH warrior on the standard '94 hill, even if it is still '88 compliant. If you have any comments or questions about the '94 hills or the '94 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