From news-rocq!univ-lyon1.fr!cines.fr!ciril.fr!isdnet!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!skynet.be!news.vas-net.net!server2.netnews.ja.net!pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk!not-for-mail Fri Apr 14 14:42:12 2000 Article: 11343 of rec.games.corewar Path: news-rocq!univ-lyon1.fr!cines.fr!ciril.fr!isdnet!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!skynet.be!news.vas-net.net!server2.netnews.ja.net!pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk!not-for-mail From: Philip Kendall Newsgroups: rec.games.corewar Subject: Core Warrior 77 Date: 14 Apr 2000 10:58:57 +0100 Organization: University of Cambridge, England Lines: 575 Sender: pak@cass52.hoyle.star.fleet Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: cass52.ast.cam.ac.uk X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.2 Xref: news-rocq rec.games.corewar:11343 [Credit to John Metcalf for writing this. I'm just posting it -- Phil] .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 77 13 April, 2000 _______________________________________________________________________________ Core Warrior is a newsletter promoting the game of corewar. Emphasis is placed on the most active hills - currently the '94 draft hill, the beginner hill and the '94 no-pspace hill. Coverage will follow where ever the action is. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about then check out these five-star internet locals for more information: FAQs are available from: http://www.koth.org/corewar-faq.html http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html The ftp site and it's mirrors are at: ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/corewar ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/para/doligez/cw/mirror ftp://www.koth.org/corewar pMARS itself is also available from: http://www.koth.org/pmars ;pMARS home page ftp://members.aol.com/ofechner/corewar ;Fechner ftp site Web pages are at: http://www.koth.org/ ;KOTH http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth ;Pizza http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar ;Planar Newbies should check the above pages for the FAQ, language specification, guides, and tutorials. Post questions to rec.games.corewar. All new players are infinitely welcome! _______________________________________________________________________________ Welcome to issue 77... Time has passed slowly since last issue, with little sign of activity on the hills. However, there are clearly a couple of outstanding projects in progress, as evidenced by some interesting test results returned by both Pizza and Koth. Pihlaja has revealed the secrets of Origami Harquebus, which still dominates Pizza's '94 hill by 5 points. Other excellent code published includes Kline's Stalker... -- John Metcalf _______________________________________________________________________________ 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 42.0/ 33.9/ 24.1 Origami Harquebus mjp 150.0 23 2 39.7/ 34.2/ 26.1 Self-Modifying Code Ben Ford 145.1 75 3 37.3/ 29.9/ 32.8 Vilex Ken Espiritu 144.7 27 4 30.7/ 20.2/ 49.1 Wintermute John Metcalf 141.2 16 5 29.7/ 19.1/ 51.3 Jade Ben Ford 140.2 52 6 38.7/ 37.3/ 24.0 Recycled Bits David Moore 140.2 129 7 28.1/ 16.9/ 55.1 Tie Factory Christian Schmidt 139.3 1 8 27.2/ 15.6/ 57.2 Stylized Euphoria Ken Espiritu 138.7 19 9 29.5/ 20.9/ 49.6 nPaper II Paul-V Khuong 138.1 32 10 43.3/ 48.6/ 8.2 Iron Curtain 3 Ken Espiritu 138.0 3 11 26.3/ 16.1/ 57.6 Cinammon John Metcalf 136.6 25 12 29.3/ 22.2/ 48.5 Stonewashed Christian Schmidt 136.4 9 13 25.0/ 13.9/ 61.0 Return of the Fugitive David Moore 136.1 56 14 29.5/ 23.6/ 46.9 Unlucky Redcoder John Metcalf 135.4 5 15 30.9/ 26.9/ 42.2 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 134.9 129 16 32.0/ 29.4/ 38.5 Trefoil f Steve Gunnell 134.6 7 17 35.7/ 37.6/ 26.7 Trefoil the original Steve Gunnell 133.7 20 18 27.9/ 22.3/ 49.9 EvoP 3 Ken Espiritu 133.5 32 19 39.8/ 46.2/ 14.0 Friction Ken Espiritu 133.3 7 20 30.4/ 27.6/ 42.0 Trefoil c Steve Gunnell 133.2 12 21 27.7/ 22.6/ 49.7 Exor Ken Espiritu 132.9 32 22 37.6/ 42.7/ 19.7 SnooPy P.Kline 132.6 22 23 27.2/ 22.5/ 50.4 Jaguar Christian Schmidt 131.8 26 24 39.2/ 48.1/ 12.8 Resurrection Ken Espiritu 130.2 4 25 36.6/ 43.0/ 20.5 myBlur2 Paulsson 130.2 40 Age since last issue: 12 ( 20 last issue, 25 the issue before ) Days since last issue: 121 ( 101 last issue, 37 the issue before ) Average age: 34 ( 28 last issue, 33 the issue before ) Average score: 137 ( 137 last issue, 141 the issue before ) Average movement: -1.5 ( -4.2 last issue, -0.4 the issue before ) Warriors surviving: 18 ( 9 last issue, 13 the issue before ) The top 25 warriors are represented by just 10 independent authors: Espiritu with 7, Schmidt with 4, Metcalf and Gunnell with 3 each, Ford and Moore with 2 and the others with just one warrior each. ( 10 authors last issue, 10 the issue before ) Snoopy drops 19 places from 3rd; nPaper climbs 10 places to 9th. _______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's New (Sorted by rank and score) # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 5 25.7/ 18.0/ 56.2 Tie Factory Christian Schmidt 133.4 1 7 39.6/ 46.2/ 14.2 Friction Ken Espiritu 133,1 1 8 41.9/ 49.8/ 8.3 Iron Curtain Ken Espiritu 134.0 1 15 35.3/ 41.5/ 23.2 Combatra David Moore 129.1 1 15 29.1/ 31.0/ 39.9 Trefoil f Steve Gunnell 127.3 0 16 26.1/ 24.8/ 49.1 Unlucky Redcoder John Metcalf 127.4 1 19 27.9/ 29.3/ 42.8 Trefoil e Steve Gunnell 126.5 1 23 37.0/ 49.3/ 13.8 Resurrection Ken Espiritu 124.6 1 25 35.6/ 46.8/ 17.6 Spat the dummy II Steve Gunnell 124.5 1 25 27.2/ 31.1/ 41.7 Skaven Christian Schmidt 123.4 1 25 35.9/ 48.8/ 15.4 vamp/scan test 7 Ken Espiritu 122.9 1 Players entering hill since last issue: 5 ( 7 last issue, 9 the issue before ) Average rank of new entries: 17 ( 13 last issue, 11 the issue before ) Moore demonstrates p-space can be used for more than just p-switching, with Combatra, his boot distance calculator. Schmidt's brainwashing paper achieves some excellent scores, suffering only against one of Espiritu's new scanners. _______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's No More (Sorted by age) # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 26 34.4/ 45.2/ 20.4 Snowman John Metcalf 123.7 64 26 21.4/ 19.6/ 59.0 Safety in Numbers Ken Espiritu 123.3 23 26 29.7/ 36.0/ 34.3 Am I Alive? Christian Schmidt 123.4 22 26 25.8/ 30.1/ 44.1 Digital Dream Christian Schmidt 121.4 10 26 32.2/ 43.5/ 24.3 Combatra David Moore 120.8 3 26 1.9/ 1.6/ 0.6 Trefoil e Steve Gunnell 6.1 3 26 35.2/ 47.8/ 17.0 Qshot Christian Schmidt 122.5 2 26 26.6/ 31.1/ 42.3 Skaven Christian Schmidt 122.2 2 26 34.7/ 47.7/ 17.6 Spat the dummy II Steve Gunnell 121.8 2 26 35.0/ 49.3/ 15.7 vamp/scan test 7 Ken Espiritu 120.7 2 26 37.9/ 50.9/ 11.2 Kenshin c Steve Gunnell 124.9 1 _______________________________________________________________________________ 94 - What's Old # %W / %L / %T Name Author Score Age 6 38.7/ 37.3/ 24.0 Recycled Bits David Moore 140.2 129 15 30.9/ 26.9/ 42.2 The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 134.9 129 2 39.7/ 34.2/ 26.1 Self-Modifying Code Ben Ford 145.1 75 12 29.3/ 22.2/ 48.5 Stonewashed Christian Schmidt 136.4 69 13 25.0/ 13.9/ 61.0 Return of the Fugitive David Moore 136.1 56 5 29.7/ 19.1/ 51.3 Jade Ben Ford 140.2 52 Stormbringer climbs a few ranks out of the danger zone. _______________________________________________________________________________ The Extended New Hall of Fame: * indicates 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 Damage Incorporated Anton Marsden 373 Q^2 -> Bomber 4 Return Of The Jedimp John K W 357 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 5 unrequited love kafka 346 Q^2 -> Paper 6 Impish v0.2 Ian Oversby 345 Stone/imp 7 Gigolo Core Warrior staff 332 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 8 Falcon v0.3 Ian Oversby 275 P-warrior 9 Nine Seven Six M R Bremer 232 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 10 Rosebud Beppe 218 Stone/imp 11 Newt Ian Oversby 216 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 12 Q^2 Miro Anders Ivner 214 Q^2 -> Scanner/bomber 13 Instant Wolf 3.4 Edgar 205 P-warrior 14 Goldfinch P.Kline 201 P-warrior 15 Simple v0.4b Ian Oversby 197 QScan -> Stone/imp 16 Trident^2 John K W 195 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 17 ompega Steven Morrell 189 Stone/imp 18 Frogz Franz 172 Q^2 -> Paper 19 The Machine Anton Marsden 164 Scanner 20 Memories Beppe 152 Scanner 21 Vain Ian Oversby 147 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 22 Head or Tail Christian Schmidt 142 Q^2 -> Paper 23 Electric Head Anton Marsden 140 P-warrior 24 Vigor Ken Espiritu 138 Q^2 -> Paper 25 Fixed Ken Espiritu 135 Q^2 -> Paper 26 Tiberius 3.1 Franz 130 Q^2 -> Paper 27 Recycled Bits David Moore 129 * P-warrior = The Stormbringer Christian Schmidt 129 * Q^2 -> Stone/imp 29 Ultraviolet-B Ken Espiritu 120 Q^2 -> Paper 30 obvious to those who k Robert Macrae 117 Q^2 -> Paper 31 Solomon v0.8 Ian Oversby 116 Stone and scanner 32 CC Paper 3.3 Franz 107 Q^2 -> Paper 33 mrb-test M R Bremer 106 *Unknown* 34 T.N.T. pro Maurizio Vittuari 105 Bomber = Pulp v0.5 Ian Oversby 105 Q^2 -> Paper 36 Fugitive David Moore 102 Q^2 -> Paper/imp 37 Vengeance Robert Hale 101 Q^2 -> Stone/imp 38 Jack in the box II Beppe Bezzi 100 P-warrior = Fire and Ice David Moore 100 P-warrior 40 Oblivion Ian Sutton 99 P-warrior 41 Silver Talon 1.2 Edgar 93 Scanner 42 death by redcode Simon Wainwright 91 Q^2 -> Bomber 43 Bodge 1 Robert Macrae 85 Q^2 -> Scanner 44 Inferno 2.4 Philip Kendall 84 Qscan -> Bomber 45 Test Anton Marsden 83 *Unknown* = NCC-1701-A Philip Kendall 83 P-warrior 47 RetroQ Paul Kline 82 Q^2 -> Paper 48 Tornado 4 Beppe Bezzi 78 Bomber 49 He Scans Again Paul Kline 76 Scanner 50 Self-Modifying Code Ben Ford 75 * P-warrior Recycled Bits and The Stormbringer continue to make slow progress, climbing just a single place. We welcome Ben Ford to the Hall of Fame with his Self Modifying Code. _______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the Internet Pizza Server Beginner 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 45.5/ 18.8/ 35.7 PC WFB 172.3 85 2 42.4/ 28.0/ 29.5 DiHydrogen Monoxide Josh Yeager 156.8 47 3 46.7/ 37.3/ 16.0 Grand Mal 1.0 Ransom Smith 156.2 48 4 45.2/ 35.1/ 19.7 Golden Gun Ken Hubbard 155.2 50 5 32.0/ 13.3/ 54.7 Arkenstone John Morahan 150.7 2 6 40.1/ 32.6/ 27.3 jollyblu aCM 147.6 49 7 32.1/ 16.8/ 51.0 Caladan II Ingo S Kacza 147.5 67 8 42.7/ 39.2/ 18.1 Gomjabbar V Ingo S Kacza 146.1 45 9 27.2/ 8.8/ 64.0 PimpKing 1.0 Simon Duff 145.5 32 10 31.0/ 18.2/ 50.8 2stoned aCM 143.7 55 11 37.4/ 31.2/ 31.4 Mob Boyz Simon Duff 143.5 33 12 42.6/ 42.0/ 15.4 Forgotten Lore Simon Duff 143.2 64 13 44.8/ 46.4/ 8.8 Kenshin d Steve Gunnell 143.1 36 14 44.5/ 47.8/ 7.7 Mini John Metcalf 141.3 1 15 40.9/ 41.5/ 17.6 Wild-Fire P_.V_.K./John Metcal 140.4 95 16 25.4/ 12.5/ 62.1 Fangorn John Morahan 138.3 6 17 40.4/ 43.6/ 16.0 Neverland II John Metcalf 137.2 84 18 37.5/ 38.7/ 23.8 da mutant Paul-V Khuong 136.2 94 19 36.7/ 38.1/ 25.2 Arsonic C P._V._K. 135.2 92 20 36.9/ 39.0/ 24.1 the boy's a time bomb aCM 134.8 41 21 37.0/ 40.0/ 23.0 Freeze 1.3 David Houston 134.0 13 22 36.8/ 40.1/ 23.1 FireMaster 2 P._V._K. 133.5 90 23 34.6/ 37.9/ 27.5 Freeze 2.0 David Houston 131.4 29 24 30.4/ 48.0/ 21.5 pop1.red ----------- 112.9 7 25 23.0/ 38.6/ 38.4 Imp2000 Dave Hillis 107.3 8 Silken Half Life, Quickest Zeta and Nuke it! all retired during the 33 successful challenges since last issue. _______________________________________________________________________________ Current Status of the KOTH.ORG '94 No Pspace 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: 250 instruction set: ICWS '94 Draft, excluding ldp and stp # %W/ %L/ %T Name Author Score Age 1 45/ 42/ 13 Stalker P.Kline 147.7 136 2 34/ 20/ 47 Uninvited John Metcalf 147.3 103 3 35/ 24/ 41 Omnibus John Metcalf 146.6 160 4 33/ 20/ 48 Jade Ben Ford 145.7 220 5 43/ 42/ 14 Zooom... John Metcalf 144.7 287 6 36/ 28/ 35 Blacken Ian Oversby 144.6 398 7 43/ 42/ 15 Eraser II Ken Espiritu 144.0 108 8 34/ 25/ 40 Experimental John Metcalf 143.8 107 9 44/ 47/ 9 Kenshin Steve Gunnell 142.4 106 10 31/ 21/ 48 Jaguar Christian Schmidt 141.9 138 11 43/ 44/ 13 Boys are Back in Town 1.1 Philip Kendall 141.6 413 12 32/ 22/ 46 nPaper II Paul-V Khuong 141.4 151 13 43/ 45/ 12 vamp/scan test b1 Ken Espiritu 140.8 66 14 30/ 19/ 51 Tie Factory Christian Schmidt 140.6 2 15 42/ 44/ 14 Jinx Christian Schmidt 139.3 114 16 31/ 22/ 47 EvoP 3 Ken Espiritu 139.1 147 17 27/ 16/ 58 Cinammon John Metcalf 137.9 116 18 44/ 50/ 7 Iron Curtain test Ken Espiritu 137.3 1 19 32/ 28/ 40 Ant Factory Christian Schmidt 136.9 246 20 31/ 27/ 42 Icen Ben Ford 134.2 245 The hill ages 97 with seemingly perpetual testing, helping Boys are Back in Town become the first warrior to pass the age of 400. Win! perishes, age 322. _______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra - Midget by Chip Wendell Breaking from the great Core Warrior tradition of publishing warriors employing innovative new techniques, presented below is Midget, a warrior of interest to Core War historians... Midget somehow became lost in time. We know of it's existence from Dewdney's report (Scientific American, Jan 1987) of the first annual Core War tournament. Now, thanks to Ian D Bartholomew, the code for Midget has been recovered, as have all missing finalists from this tournament. As you will have no doubt suspected, Midget is based on Dwarf. However, there are important improvements which have since become commonplace. For example, the distance between zero bombs is 28. The highest common factor of this and coresize is 4. Every fourth location will therefore be bombed but the larger step size finds larger opponents much sooner than a step of 4 would. Midget is the first known warrior to exploit this fact. One problem many early warriors face is the changes which have occurred to redcode since Dewdney's first specifications. Midget has suffered in this repsect. Originally, Midget's zero bombs would have been fatal if they were place on an enemy program; this is no longer the case. Another interesting change to redcode is the CMP instruction. This originally functioned as skip if not equal; currently it performs skip if equal. This affects warriors such as Gemini. Anyhow, here's the code for Midget. Watch also for the other five missing finalists (including Commando :-) appear on Koenigstuhl sometime soon. ;redcode ;name Midget ;author Chip Wendell ;strategy 3rd place in ICWST'86 ;assert 1 START ADD #-28 ,3 MOV #0 ,@2 JMP -2 DAT #-980 END START Examples of famous warriors still missing include Scanner by David Jones, mentioned in Dewdney's first Core War article (Scientific American, May 1984) as the first self-repairing program. Also lost are almost all of the warriors which competed in the ICWS Tournaments of 1991 and 1992. - > ) ] O [ ( < - A. K. Dewdney's Core War articles, as published in Scientific American, are available on the WWW at http://www.koth.org/info/sciam _______________________________________________________________________________ Extra Extra Extra - Cinammon by John Metcalf Cinammon is a paper/imp which produces imps with two different techniques. Imp-ring forming paper steps are chosen to generate 3-point rings, while mirrored-imps are created by binary-launching the paper. To create a paper which forms 3 point imp-rings (which have an imp-step of 2667) we need to find paper steps which ensure when an imp is executed, it is followed at least sometimes by processes executing at imp+2667 and imp+2667*2. If we take a simple silk copy copy, we can create a diagram showing where and when each process is executed, as described by David Moore's article in Core Warrior #68: spl 2 ; 5 parallel processes spl 2 spl 1 pap1: spl @0, X mov }pap1, >pap1 ; copy pap2: spl @0, Y mov }pap2, >pap2 ; copy imp: mov.i #0, 2667 | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ----+------------------------------------------ 0 | 0 1 2 3 4! 1 | 2+Y 3+Y 4+Y! 2 | 2+2Y 3+2Y 4+2Y! 3 | 2+3Y 3+3Y 4 | 2+4Y 5 | X 1+X 2+X 3+X 4+X! 6 | 2+X+Y 3+X+Y 4+X+Y! 7 | 2+X+2Y 3+X+2Y 8 | 2+X+3Y 9 | 2X 1+2X 2+2X 3+2X 4+2X! 10 | 2+2X+Y 3+2X+Y 11 | 2+2X+2Y 12 | 3X 1+3X 2+3X 3+3X 13 | 2+3X+Y 14 | 4X 1+4X 2+4X 15 | 5X 1+5X Each row in the table represents an individual copy of the paper. Each entry shows where a process is executing at any given time. Processes are executed in column order; each entry will be executed in turn, top to bottom, repeated once for each parallel process the paper has. This is followed by the same procedure in each subsequent column. To make a paper which generates 3 point imp-rings, we select 3 positions which we will refer to as R, S and T, sharing the same column in the table, each lower (and consequently executed later) than the previous. Position R should be where an imp is executed, as indicated by an exclamation mark in the table. Now, all we require are values for X and Y providing a solution, if one exists, to the following equations, where R, S and T are substituted with their corresponding entries in the table: S = R + 2667 (2667 is the imp-step for 3 point rings in T = S + 2667 a coresize of 8000, since 2667*3 = 8001) For example, after selecting the processes at rows 0, 1 and 2 of column 4, we can show Y must be equal to 2668 for imp-rings to form. This is the sequence employed by Return of the Fugitive: (3+Y) = (4) + 2667 (2+2Y) = (3+Y) + 2667 -> Y = 2668 By selecting the processes at rows 2, 6 and 9 of column 6, we show Y must be equal to X - 2667 for imp-rings to form. This sequence is used by both The Fugitive and Cinammon: (4+X+Y) = (4+2Y) + 2667 (4+2X) = (4+X+Y) + 2667 -> Y = X - 2667 At least 4 other sequences which allow imp-rings to form exist. However, these appear to be less effective than the two illustrated above, which were chosen for use by David Moore in his two Fugitives. Cinammon expands on this simple paper/imp, with the addition of a 3rd silk copier, a silk-imp and a binary-launched mirrored-imp. A mini-Q^3 has also been added, as has a wimp. The decision to add a wimp was not taken without careful consideration. While the score improves against certain scanners and p-spacers, it suffers a slight decrease against many other warriors. Notable examples include Friction and Eraser. The wimp is placed in an area of core which isn't overwritten by the paper. To ease the process of finding these core pockets I used a CDB macro which lists the location of all pockets of at least 5 memory units. I'm certain you can improve on the macro below: pockets=&l0~!!~if1>a+b~!!~m_p~!1~&l+1~if0a+b~!~&l-1~if.-x>3~ca.-x+1,x OPTIMIZATION: To optimize Cinammon, I wished to improve on the simple slow Dumb Brute Force method I have used in the past. The mini-hill technique is popular and has produced good results. In the end though, I opted for the quicker to implement Improved Brute Force: * proceeding as with Dumb Brute Force, we test the paper with random steps against a selection of warriors, * if the test paper scores below a carefully chosen value against one particular opponent, we abandon the steps without further testing, * if the paper scores well overall, we test similar steps during the next round of tests. In this instance, similar steps were chosen by changing just one step - by adding a large factor of coresize. One small problem has troubled me in the past. PMars uses a random number generator to determine the distance between warriors in each round. Over 200 rounds there are usually some duplicate distances. Presuming we wish to avoid these, we can either modify pMars or select a suitable -F number. Once again I opted for the easiest approach, and looked for a -F number without either duplicate or consecutive distances over 200 rounds. There are just four, 1306, 2204, 4864 and 7293 - one of which I selected to use during optimization. (What drawbacks are there to this solution?) After a couple of hours runtime on an i486, several potentially good sets of steps were revealed. The top three of these were tested against Pizza's '94 hill before the steps used in the warrior below were finally selected: ;redcode-94 ;name Cinammon ;author John Metcalf ;strategy Mini-Q^3 -> Paper/Imps and Wimp ;assert CORESIZE==8000 pStep1 equ 6405 ; computer optimized against scans pStep2 equ 4240 ; from HSA, Snoopy & Recycled Bits pStep3 equ (pStep2-2667) wBoot equ (pap1+5373) ; pocket to place wimp, distance ; particularly effective against org qGo ; Recycled Bits scan :-) ppGo:mov {pap1, {bb ; binary launch mov {pap1, {bb bb: spl pap1+4000+12,{qf+25*qs pap1:spl @12, >pStep1 mov }pap1, >pap1 mov }pap1, >pap1 ; copy pap2:spl @0, >pStep2 mov }pap2, >pap2 ; copy pap3:spl @0, >pStep3 mov }pap3, >pap3 ; copy mov.i #-2669, }4000-pStep3 ; silk-imp mov.i #-pStep2, 2667 ; standard-imp mov.i #4001, *0 ; mirrored-imp for 40 dat 0,0 rof wimp:jmp #0, #0 qf equ qKil qs equ 222 qd equ 322 qi equ 7 qr equ 11 qGo: seq qd+qf+qs, qf+qs ; 1 jmp qSki, {qd+qf+qs+qi seq qd+qf+6*qs, qf+6*qs ; B jmp qFas, {qd+qf+6*qs+qi seq qd+qf+5*qs, qf+5*qs ; B-1 jmp qFas, qBmb seq qd+qf+9*qs, qf+9*qs ; A-1 djn qFas, {qFas seq qd+qf+10*qs, qf+10*qs ; A jmp qFas, {qFas seq qd+qf+3*qs, qf+3*qs ; C jmp >qFas, {qd+qf+3*qs+qi seq qd+qf+2*qs, qf+2*qs ; C-1 jmp >qFas, {qSlo seq qd+qf+4*qs, qf+4*qs ; C+1 jmp >qFas, }qSlo seq qd+qf+12*qs, qf+12*qs ; B*C-B jmp qSlo, {qSlo seq qd+qf+15*qs, qf+15*qs ; B*C-C jmp qSlo, qBmb seq qd+qf+24*qs, qf+24*qs ; B*C+B jmp qSlo, }qSlo seq qd+qf+27*qs, qf+27*qs ; A*C-C djn qSlo, {qFas seq qd+qf+30*qs, qf+30*qs ; A*C jmp qSlo, {qFas sne qd+qf+18*qs, qf+18*qs ; B*C jmz.f pGo, qd+qf+18*qs-10 qSlo:mul #3, qKil ; C=3 qFas:mul.b qBmb, @qSlo qSki:sne >qf+23*qs, >qKil add #qd, qKil qLoo:mov *qKil, qf+29*qs ; 6 parallel processes and 1 spl 0, }qf+28*qs ; stray process for the wimp djn ppGo, #1 mov wimp, {1 djn.f wBoot+1, #10 ; A=10 qBmb:dat {qi*qr-10, {6 ; B=6 end _______________________________________________________________________________ Questions? Concerns? Comments? Complaints? Mail them to people who care. Beppe Bezzi , Philip Kendall , Anton Marsden , John Metcalf and Christian Schmidt