Article 790 of rec.games.corewar: Newsgroups: rec.games.corewar From: t-jcisek@microsoft.com (Julius Cisek) Subject: Down with PitTrap - ICWS'88 too simple? Message-ID: <1992Apr30.190647.21754@microsoft.com> Date: 30 Apr 92 19:06:47 GMT Organization: Microsoft Corp. Lines: 72 As some of you may know, I removed PitTrap v2.3a from the King of the Hill tournament. I do this because I found that PitTrap was almost identical to scissors88, a warrior written by Scott Nelson long before I even knew about corewar. I didn't write PitTrap using Scott's code; it was a completely original program, but this is the problem with ICWS'88. There is just not enough variety to facilitate truly original programs. Just the fact the step values can play such a crucial role in the success of a program (Dwarf-12b, also by Scott Nelson survived for over 100 successful challenges before parting) shows you that we need a new standard. The only TRULY original program I've seen since I started playing KotH is Synch by Andy Pierce (a really brilliant idea) and there have been hybrids (not nearly as successful) since. For now, my suggestion is to follow Andy's, Scott's, and Stefan's suit and start posting the source to your programs. Here is PitTrap v2.3a (with "decoys" removed for sake of length): ;redcode verbose ;name PitTrap v2.3a ;author J.Cisek ;strategy creation date 4/6/92 ;strategy steal processes into slave pit ;strategy slave pit is a simple bomber that kills itself ;strategy v1.1 4/7/92 doesn't trap itself... ;strategy v2.0 4/8/92 smaller code/quicker search ;strategy v2.1 4/13/92 better slave pit ;strategy v2.2a 4/22/92 better step value ;strategy v2.3 4/24/92 decoys [v2.3a optimal step] INSTALL equ 3000 STEP equ 3044 init mov trap, INSTALL mov intval, INSTALL mov bomb, INSTALL here mov search, INSTALL+1 mov search+1, INSTALL+1 mov search+2, INSTALL+1 mov pit, INSTALL+2 mov pit+1, INSTALL+2 mov pit+2, INSTALL+2 jmp INSTALL+here+1 trap jmp pit+1, #-1 intval dat #STEP, #-STEP bomb dat #trap dat #42 search add intval, trap mov trap, @trap jmp search, #0 dat #42 pit mov bomb, __| /- O O idiot!" Redmond, WA 98052 \X/ | U| \|