From news-rocq.inria.fr!jussieu.fr!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.erols.net!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!metro.atlanta.com!news.new-york.net!news.stormking.com!bezzi@nemo.it Thu Mar 6 11:06:02 1997 Article: 7206 of rec.games.corewar Path: news-rocq.inria.fr!jussieu.fr!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.erols.net!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!metro.atlanta.com!news.new-york.net!news.stormking.com!bezzi@nemo.it From: Beppe Bezzi Newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Subject: Core warrior 56 Date: 5 Mar 1997 09:08:33 -0500 Organization: Storm King Ind. Inc. Lines: 455 Sender: server@news.stormking.com Distribution: world Message-ID: Reply-To: bezzi@nemo.it NNTP-Posting-Host: valhalla.stormking.com Originator: corewar-l@stormking.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2 .xX$$x. .x$$$$$$$x. d$$$$$$$$$$$ ,$$$$$$$P' `P' , . $$$$$$P' ' .d b $$$$$P b ,$$x ,$$x ,$$x ,$$b $$. Y$$$$' `$. $$$$$$. $$$$$$ $$P~d$. d$$$b d d$$$ `$$$$ ,$$ $$$$$$$b $$$P `$ $$$b.$$b `Y$$$d$d$$$' . . a . a a .aa . a `$$$ ,$$$,$$' `$$$ $$$' ' $$P$XX$' `$$$$$$$$$ .dP' `$'$ `$'$ , $''$ `$'$ `Y$b ,d$$$P `$b,d$P' `$$. `$$. , `$$P $$$' Y $. $ $ $ Y..P $ `$$$$$$$' $$$P' `$$b `$$$P `P `$' `Y'k. $. $. $. $$' $. Issue 56 3 March, 1997 ______________________________________________________________________________ Core Warrior is a weekly newsletter promoting the game of corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills--currently the '94 draft hill and the beginner hill. Coverage will follow where ever the action is. If you have no clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star internet locals for more information: FAQs are available by anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu as pub/usenet/news.answers/games/corewar-faq.Z FTP site is: ftp.csua.berkeley.edu /pub/corewar Web pages are at: (Please note new Stormking's address) http://www.koth.org/ ;Stormking http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza http://pauillac.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/ ;Planar Newbies should check the stormking page for the FAQ, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! If ftp.csua.berkeley.edu is unreachable, you can download pMARS at: Terry's web page--http://www.infi.net/~wtnewton/corewar/ Planar ftp site--ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/pmars Fechter ftp site--ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar A collection of Bezzi's hints in the first issues is available at: ftp://ftp.volftp.vol.it/pub/pc/msdos/games/solutions/bbhints.zip Beppe Bezzi web page - http://www.aspide.it/freeweb/Bezzi ______________________________________________________________________________ Greetings. Traffic on the hills is very little, and I'm rather busy, so I delayed the issue. I hope as soon as traffic will come back to old values to begin publishing CW weekly as usual. This week we have an interesting hint by Robert Mcrae on hill balance of power and how much a new warrior, He Scans Alone in the example, will move the equilibrium. --Beppe Bezzi ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server ICWS '94 Draft Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 38.6/ 23.7/ 37.7 Head or Tail Christian Schmidt 153.5 14 2 35.4/ 18.1/ 46.5 RetroQ P.Kline 152.7 26 3 38.0/ 26.3/ 35.6 Nine Seven Six M R Bremer 149.7 90 4 32.1/ 15.4/ 52.5 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 148.8 226 5 35.4/ 23.7/ 40.9 Gigolo Core Warrior staff 147.2 280 6 46.2/ 47.1/ 6.7 He Scans Alone P.Kline 145.2 41 7 39.5/ 35.6/ 24.8 Tides v0.1 Ian Oversby 143.5 10 8 32.0/ 21.7/ 46.4 unrequited love kafka 142.3 324 9 40.4/ 38.7/ 20.9 NCC-1701-A Philip Kendall 142.1 29 10 31.0/ 20.7/ 48.4 Trident^2 John K W 141.3 156 11 39.8/ 38.4/ 21.7 Solomon v0.8 Ian Oversby 141.2 72 12 39.5/ 39.4/ 21.1 QFalcon (vii) Ian Oversby 139.6 19 13 39.4/ 40.5/ 20.1 The Machine Anton Marsden 138.2 132 14 32.1/ 26.2/ 41.8 Terkonit 0.4 Christian Schmidt 138.0 32 15 34.0/ 30.3/ 35.7 Fast Fast Fast v2 Franz 137.6 40 16 37.7/ 38.7/ 23.6 Damage Incorporated Anton Marsden 136.6 267 17 35.5/ 36.0/ 28.5 Scanitator 4 Christian Schmidt 135.1 28 18 27.7/ 20.4/ 51.8 Impish v0.2 Ian Oversby 135.1 265 19 32.7/ 31.3/ 36.0 Instant Ogre Edgar 134.1 9 20 36.9/ 40.4/ 22.7 Instant Wolf Edgar 133.4 47 21 41.0/ 49.0/ 10.0 Memories Beppe 132.9 140 22 37.7/ 44.4/ 17.8 Oblivion Ian Sutton 131.1 91 23 26.2/ 21.9/ 51.9 blue spark 0.04 bjoern guenzel 130.5 6 24 31.1/ 33.5/ 35.4 Dust 7.0 Justin Kao 128.7 1 25 4.0/ 0.0/ 0.0 Test I Ian Oversby 12.0 2 Monthly age: 13 this month ( 9 last issue, 15 the issue before ) New warriors: 5 Turnover/age rate 38% Average age: 93 ( 119 last issue, 115 the issue before ) Average score: 135 ( 134 last issue, 138 the issue before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by 15 independent authors: Oversby with 5; Schmidt with 3; Kline, JKW, Marsden and Edgar with 2. All others with one lonely warrior each. The fall of Blur2 and Probe, poor Anton :), made the hill much younger. Head or Tail kept the top spot all time. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 3 39.8/ 35.0/ 25.2 Tides v0.1 Ian Oversby 144.5 1 13 32.5/ 32.5/ 35.0 Instant Ogre Edgar 132.5 1 25 23.2/ 22.1/ 54.7 blue spark 0.04 bjoern guenzel 124.4 1 11 37.4/ 38.8/ 23.8 Test I Ian Oversby 136.0 1 25 29.5/ 35.0/ 35.5 Dust 7.0 Justin Kao 124.0 1 Tides is the only warrior to enter the hill in the top spots. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 26 1.9/ 0.9/ 1.2 Pulp v0.5 Ian Oversby 7.0 5 26 35.4/ 46.4/ 18.3 Probe Anton Marsden 124.4 396 26 24.5/ 26.0/ 49.4 Eva Peron David Randel 123.0 8 25 23.2/ 22.1/ 54.7 blue spark 0.04 bjoern guenzel 124.4 1 26 35.1/ 46.4/ 18.5 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 123.8 403 The two older warriors leave the hill. ______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 8 29.9/ 21.5/ 48.6 unrequited love kafka 138.3 324 5 34.2/ 27.2/ 38.6 Gigolo Core Warrior staff 141.2 280 16 35.4/ 41.5/ 23.1 Damage Incorporated Anton Marsden 129.4 267 19 23.8/ 19.8/ 56.5 Impish v0.2 Ian Oversby 127.8 265 6 28.8/ 16.9/ 54.4 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 140.7 226 No new entries, two losses ______________________________________________________________________________ OLD HALL OF FAME * means the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Thermite II Robert Macrae 2262 Qscan -> bomber 2 Impfinity v4g1 Planar 1993 Stone/ imp 3 Jack in the box Beppe Bezzi 1620 P-warrior 4 Tornado 3.0 Beppe Bezzi 1567 Bomber 5 Torch t18 P.Kline 1539 Bomber 6 Chameleon Myer R Bremer 1437 P-warrior 7 Frontwards v2 Steven Morrell 1420 One shot scanner 8 Evol Cap 6.6 John Wilkinson 1299 Imp / stone 9 quiz Schitzo 1262 Scanner/ bomber 10 T.N.T. Maurizio Vittuari 1204 Bomber 11 Grilled Octopus v0.5 David Boeren 1154 P-warrior 12 Hazy Shade II John Wilkinson 1102 P-warrior 13 Stepping Stone Kurt Franke 1049 Qscan -> Vampire 14 Rosebud Beppe Bezzi 993 Stone/ imp 15 Iron Gate 1.5 Wayne Sheppard 926 CMP scanner 16 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 925 Bomber 17 Agony II Stefan Strack 912 CMP scanner 18 Barrage Anton Marsden 876 Qscan -> replicator 19 Blue Funk Steven Morrell 869 Stone/ imp 20 Flurry Anton Marsden 835 Qscan -> pwarrior 21 Thermite 1.0 Robert Macrae 802 Qscan -> bomber 22 Blue Funk 3 Steven Morrell 766 Stone/ imp 23 Night Train Karl Lewin 755 Replicator 24 Mirage 1.5 Anton Marsden 736 Scanner/ bomber 25 Blizzard Anton Marsden 713 Qscan -> replicator ______________________________________________________________________________ NEW HALL OF FAME * means the warrior is still active. Pos Name Author Age Strategy 1 Probe Anton Marsden 403 Q^2 -> Bomber 2 Blur 2 Anton Marsden 396 Scanner 3 unrequited love kafka 324 * Stone/ imp 4 Falcon v0.3 Ian Oversby 275 P-warrior 5 Gigolo Core Warrior staff 280 * Q^2 -> Stone/ imp 6 Damage Incorporated Anton Marsden 267 * Q^2 -> Bomber 7 Impish v0.2 Ian Oversby 265 * Stone/ imp 8 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 226 * Q^2 -> Stone/ imp 9 Rosebud Beppe 218 Stone/ imp 10 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 214 Q^2 -> Scanner/ bomber 11 Instant Wolf 3.4 Edgar 205 P-warrior 12 Goldfinch P.Kline 201 P-warrior 13 Simple v0.4b Ian Oversby 197 Stone/ imp 14 ompega Steven Morrell 189 Stone/ imp 15 Frogz Franz 172 Paper 16 Trident^2 John K W 156 * Stone/ imp 17 Memories Beppe 140 * Scanner 18 The Machine Anton Marsden 132 * Scanner 19 Tiberius 3.1 Franz 130 P-warrior 20 CC Paper 3.3 Franz 107 Paper 21 mrb-test m r bremer 106 ? 22 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 105 Bomber 23 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 100 P-warrior Oblivio and NineSevenSix are near to enter the new HoF ______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server Beginner's Hill: Hill Specs: coresize: 8000 max. processes: 8000 duration: after 80,000 cycles, a tie is declared. max. entry length: 100 minimum distance: 100 maximum age: At age 100, warriors are retired. rounds fought: 200 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 1 51.2/ 38.7/ 10.1 Pentagram 2.a J.A.Denny 163.8 23 2 48.1/ 35.3/ 16.7 Hexagram J.A.Denny 160.9 21 3 45.5/ 31.3/ 23.2 Flimsy v0.6 Ian Oversby 159.8 22 4 49.2/ 41.0/ 9.8 Goothmonger v1.2 Ian Sutton 157.3 46 5 41.1/ 28.8/ 30.0 Scanitator 3.0 Christian Schmidt 153.4 28 6 43.4/ 33.9/ 22.7 Versatility 1.7 Ross Morgan-Linial 152.9 49 7 40.7/ 28.7/ 30.6 Dust 7.0 Justin Kao 152.7 1 8 40.6/ 29.9/ 29.5 Dust 0.7.5 Justin Kao 151.4 48 9 46.3/ 43.0/ 10.7 Scankiller 0.1 Christian Schmidt 149.6 33 10 46.1/ 44.0/ 9.9 The Stainless Steel Rat Christian Schmidt 148.1 44 11 43.3/ 39.4/ 17.3 Microsoft Office '96 Justin Kao 147.3 98 12 32.6/ 17.9/ 49.5 DemonSpawn J.A.Denny 147.2 31 13 44.3/ 43.4/ 12.3 Short Sword 4 JS Pulido 145.2 3 14 41.7/ 38.6/ 19.7 Vivid Radiation 2.0 Matt Lewinski 144.9 70 15 44.0/ 43.1/ 12.9 Flamberge 13.4 Matt Lewinski 144.9 71 16 38.8/ 33.0/ 28.2 Zorm-B Anonymous 144.7 6 17 37.9/ 32.0/ 30.0 Apocalypse Matt Lewinski 143.8 79 18 35.9/ 30.3/ 33.8 Escargot 0.5 Justin Kao 141.5 68 19 32.9/ 27.1/ 40.0 Quantum Christian Schmidt 138.8 25 20 41.4/ 45.1/ 13.5 Mostly Harmless v1.1 Justin Kao 137.7 52 21 32.9/ 30.4/ 36.7 Heartworm Edgar 135.3 19 22 39.7/ 44.5/ 15.8 Bash the Rat V1.4 Ian Sutton 134.9 63 23 37.3/ 47.2/ 15.5 Dwa Michaly b Waldemar Bartolik 127.4 9 24 32.2/ 43.1/ 24.8 Time Lag 1c3 Ilmari Karonen 121.3 5 25 33.9/ 51.5/ 14.6 Dwa Michaly a Waldemar Bartolik 116.4 13 ______________________________________________________________________________ The Hint The Likely Impact of He Scans Alone on the Hill Population For some time I have been playing with ideas about how populations of warriors evolve. I think HSA will have an important impact on the hill, so it seemed like a good time to formalise what I've been doing and *test* my views. What difference, if any, will HSA make? Background. Imagine that we have a hill with very many warriors, all *sharing* a small number of public designs. Players are continually trying to get warriors on the hill by *selecting* from among those designs, but nothing new is written. As new warriors challenge the hill, the population -- or more precisely, the proportion of each design in the hill population -- will fluctuate around some equilibrium. If you know the scores the warriors average against each other you can calculate what it is. To make it concrete, imagine that all the warriors where copies of Blur, Labo or Torn, a scanner, paper and bomber respectively. This table shows the average points scored by each against the others, so Blur scores 165 against Labo. (For the moment lets ignore the uncertainty due to only having estimates of the average scores). Blur Labo Torn Blur 142 165 99 Labo 117 101 265 Torn 189 22 149 >From this you can calculate the "equilibrium" population, which is Blur Labo Torn 56.8% 25.0% 18.2% At equilibrium, every warrior scores equally. In this case, all warriors score 139.93 points. For example for Blur, 56.8% x 142 + 25.0% x 165 + 18.2% x 99 = 139.93. (Nearly) What happens if you deviate from equilibrium? Well, in this case, if you add more papers the scanners move to the top of the table and more are added, which push off the excess papers. This is a stable equilibrium and the population will oscillate around it, never getting too far out of line before new warriors arrive to take advantage of the disequilibrium. Life gets more complicated as the number of designs is increased, because some may not be present in the equilibrium at all. This means that you can't get an explicit formula for the equilibrium, but you can still simulate easily. Just model the hill, run it for several thousands of new submissions and "hopefully" it will end up near equilibrium. If you prefer something more solid than hope, replicate this process many times with slightly differing tables of scores and you obtain a measure of the stability of the equilibrium. [Theory Note -- I am ignoring potential problems here. In particular it is not in general true that there is only 1 equilibrium -- consider a warrior with a perfect handshake, but which loses to everything else. It may also be possible for non-point equilibria and chaotic behaviour to exist, but I don't think this matters too much in practice.] Phew. So with a small amount of code (Pascal source and Windows executable available) we can take a bunch of warriors and ask which ones would make it into the equilibrium. The warriors in the equilibrium represent in a compact way the current "state of the art". A new warrior pushes the state forward if it makes it into this population. Warriors which don't make it can be tested against the population to find out by how much they miss, which provides a global ranking in the style of Mount Olympus. So How about HSA? As a practical example, I took a dozen warriors intended to cover a spread of types; for simplicity I ignored P-space and Qscans. I make no great claims for the construction of the list, I just picked some of the code I test against. My lack of hill-success suggests this set is profoundly flawed :-/ He Scans Alone Blur 2 Harmony La Bomba Paper Copy Die Hard Paper Copy D-Clear Version (Everyone should have one:) Rosebud Impfinity v4g1 Seventyfive Torch t18 Tornado 3.0 Copy Tornado Dat Version (Minimalist DAT bomb, DAT clear) Because I'm really interested in generic types like "bomber" and "paper", I've usually just taken the central element, perhaps with a small decoy. "Copy" means I've chopped the warrior out of something larger (Apologies to the authors for any breakages:) and "Version" means I've adapted it in some way. This is the resulting score matrix, based on 100 fights. H B H L D D R I S T T T HSA 150 171 152 177 195 102 141 91 102 171 127 112 Blur 120 142 199 165 97 148 145 212 167 117 132 99 Harmony 146 85 142 130 150 189 110 175 108 103 122 134 La Bomba 111 117 136 101 105 268 102 99 177 118 134 265 Die Hard 93 127 90 99 100 148 103 97 174 132 136 164 D-Clear 1 177 151 111 16 76 150 97 109 186 130 112 102 Rosebud 156 139 173 105 100 181 101 91 212 176 184 187 Impfin v4g1 205 74 112 105 109 175 118 102 195 144 166 223 Seventy5 198 128 189 102 69 114 71 81 150 113 114 201 Torch t18 120 165 181 136 93 154 89 123 167 138 116 135 Tornado 3.0 160 153 164 119 85 181 82 91 174 152 133 155 Tornado Dat 184 189 161 22 74 195 106 49 99 138 134 149 We can now crank the handle on our simulated hill, to obtain the following equilibria. To get the following estimates I ran a 10000 rounds on the hill, with HSA first excluded and then included. Weights converged to about 4 decimal places. Pre-HSA HSA Score HSA -- 18% 140.68 Blur 39% 29% 140.68 Harmony 0% 0% 122.77 La Bomba 14% 6% 140.68 Die Hard 0% 0% 120.85 D-Clear 1 0% 0% 127.81 Rosebud 23% 13% 140.69 Impfin v4g1 0% 12% 140.69 Seventy5 0% 3% 140.66 Torch t18 7% 0% 134.45 Tornado 3.0 0% 0% 136.56 Tornado Dat 17% 19% 140.71 The table shows the equilibrium weights Pre- and Post- HSA. The Score column shows the score of each warrior post-HSA. Those with weights greater than 0% should have identical scores, so the 140.68 to 140.71 range is due to incomplete convergence. Those are not in the equilibrium can be ranked on their score against the equilibrium warriors, from Tornado 3.0 which is just out, to Die Hard and Harmony which are far out. The above estimates are subject to error due to using only 100 rounds per battle to estimate the strength of the warriors. As a test on this uncertainty, I ran another 100 trials and in each trial perturbed every score by +-10%. This resulted in interquartile spreads of roughly 6.5% for the warriors which are in the equilibrium -- for example HSA had a weight of between 15.6% and 21.7% half of the time. In practice this means that a difference of weights of less than 10% _within_ a column could well be due to chance, though we can be more confident about differences _between_ columns. This is because a lucky result should benefit a warrior in _both_ tests because the same scores were used. We cannot be confident that Tornado 3.0 is really out of the equilibrium, because it entered the equilibrium in 32 of these 100 perturbed trials, but Harmony and Diehard never make it in. Interpretation Firstly, the warriors not in the equilibrium. It is quite possible that they would get in if a different starting set were considered (in particular a set containing a high-scoring warrior against which they excel), but against these warriors they don't make it. - Harmony does not waste time carpeting trails but is less effective against Silks and loses to anything with SPL bombs. - Die Hard does not split fast enough to over-write opponents, leading to too many draws. - D-Clear does well against the scanners, but little else. Secondly, those in or borderline. - Blur is highly effective and forms a large part of both populations. HSA can lose a lot of time bombing Blur's carpet. It also handles Impfinity well. - La Bomba is significantly hurt by HSA but is not, as I had feared, eliminated. It spreads aggressively enough to score very well against anything which can't stun it. - Impstones overall are little affected; Rosebud is badly hit by HSA but Impfinity takes up the slack. Impfinity seems to gain from its phenomenal split rate, as hitting anything except the stones does not stun. Even with a stone hit, hundreds of further bombs will be thrown by the other. HSA spends a lot of time re-carpeting the DJN trails, so the imp-stones of the future want messy cores... Hmmm... :) - The fast bombers as a group just break even, even though with HSA pure scanners now comprise a juicy 47% of the population. I suspect the rise of Impfinity is what holds back the fast bombers -- the result would have been different if I'd just used Rosebud as the generic stone-imp representative. My DAT version of Tornado picks up enough against the scanners and rosebud to compensate of worse performance against everything else. For the bombers, dealing with imps will rise up the agenda and papers will recede somewhat. - HSA itself takes a significant chunk of the population but it could use a tweak against Impfinity. It doesn't replace Blur, partly because once it hits a DJN trail it stops scanning and carpets the whole thing. Blur's more casual approach to bombing is an advantage when the core is full of rubbish. Assuming these results hold for hill warriors rather than just the examples I've tested, then HSA *is* a substantial step forward. Silks have a major new problem. Fortunately HSA's hyper-aggressive bombing ("positive" is the kind of term the USAF would use:) makes it particularly vulnerable to decoys and trails. Perhaps a stone/silk? Or a fast bomber with a good anti-imp clear? Time to get coding... Regards, Robert Macrae ff95@dial.pipex.com _____________________________________________________________________________ Questions? Concerns? Comments? Complaints? Mail them to people who care. authors: Beppe Bezzi or Myer Bremer or Anton Marsden