Core War resources
"There aren't too
many beginners interested in the game of Core War these
days. Of course, this is quite natural - not that many
people would consider optimizing assembly code to be fun
anyway."
|
Eh? What is corewarz??
Core War is a game played by two or more programs (and vicariously by their authors) written in an assembly language called "Redcode" and run in a virtual computer called "MARS" (for Memory Array Redcode Simulator). The object of the game is to cause all processes of the opposing program to terminate, leaving your program in sole posession of the machine. Redcode has been standardised by the ICWS (= International Core Wars Society), and is therefore transportable between all standard Core War systems.
At any time there are several Core War competitions running in the internet. You can mail your program (the "warrior") to the hosters/referees and they put it in the "ring" with other programs. Later you can visit a regularly updated ranking list to check how your program did it.
http://www.koth.org/info/greg_lindahl_corewars.html
Eh??? What'z "Corewars"??? A brief introduction to
Corewars
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html
The "official" corewars FAQ
How to start
1. Applications you need
| First you will need a MARS (= the redcode
interpreter). A very good one is pMARS, available here: http://www.koth.org/pmars/ http://www.koth.org/pmars/pmarsv.zip Since pMARS is a command-line console applications and requires lots of switches and options, it's very convenient to have a so called "shell" to make usage easier. One very good shell is pSHELL: http://www.koth.org/pmars/ptools11.zip |
2. Your first Core War
| You need some sample "warriors"
(= redcode programs) to play around. Here is a huge list: http://pauillac.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/ (Most of the warriors have the extension .TXT. Rename them to *.RED) To start your first Core War start pSHELL und load two or three warriors. RUN them. Have fun! |
3. Making your own warrior
| Making your own warrior is not very easy.
It's a good idea to read some stuff first: http://www.koth.org/info/akdewdney/index.html http://www.sci.fi/~iltzu/corewar/guide.html http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~anton/cw/corewar-faq.html http://para.inria.fr/~doligez/corewar/corewarrior/ |
Other
Misc. resources:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe=off&group=rec.games.corewar
The Core War newsgroup (news:rec.games.corewar)
http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~pak21/corewar/resource.html
The complete linklist & guide to all corewars www ressources
http://www.koth.org/
THE place to go
http://star.arm.ac.uk/~spm/corewar/rate.html
Warrior "benchmarks" (who's the best?)
07 July 2001: Peer Schaefer