1. Core Wars
Speaking of different subjects...
A few years ago, I picked up a book called _The Armchair Universe_. It
is basically a collection of old computer articles. It impressed me so
much that recently I bought it. Going through it again, I was reminded
of a game in the book, from around 1984, called Core War...
The idea was, you'd write a program that would simulate an 8000-address
memory array. Then, two people would write programs in a special, small
scripting language. The goal would be to write a program that would
destroy the other; executing an invalid command was an automatic loss,
so you basically shot "zero-bombs" at each other. The articles were
interesting, and I thought the concept had a lot of potential.
Well, I've just finished a very rough version of Core War myself. I
had planned on cleaning it up and testing things out a bit more before
releasing it, but apparently most of my friends around here aren't all
that interested in it. There's very little motivation if I can't
eventually compete against someone with it. 
Is anyone on the list interested? If not, I'll just hand off the code
to Rob for the user's contributions. If so, then it'll be worthwhile to
clean things up a bit, hopefully with others helping me test and
offering suggestions. Don't get me wrong, the game WORKS... it's just
not very solid (entering in an invalid filename crashes rather than
prompting for a new one, for example.) Plus, there's no parser for the
user programs; you have to write your programs out by hand as
sequences of atoms (but it's in decimal instead of hex, fortunately.)
And I'm not sure how solid the design of my variant is (a command or
two has been left out/altered/added.)
So, how about it? Maybe we could resurrect the game (even if only as a
short-lived fad) and get another small tournament going...
Rod
2. Re: Core Wars
On Mon, 16 Aug 1999 14:18:56 -0500, Roderick Jackson <rjackson at CSIWEB.COM>
wrote:
>Speaking of different subjects...
>
>A few years ago, I picked up a book called _The Armchair Universe_. It
>is basically a collection of old computer articles. It impressed.....
>....The idea was, you'd write a program that would simulate an 8000-address
>memory array. Then, two people would write programs in a special, small
>scripting language. The goal would be to write a program that would
>destroy the other; executing an invalid command was an automatic loss,
>so you basically shot "zero-bombs" at each other. The articles were
>interesting, and I thought the concept had a lot of potential.
>
>Well, I've just finished a very rough version of Core War myself. I
>had planned on cleaning it up and testing things out a bit more before
>releasing it, but apparently most of my friends around here aren't all
>that interested in it. There's very little motivation if I can't
>eventually compete against someone with it.
>
>Is anyone on the list interested?.....
Sounds suitably weird
Tell me more.
Terry
3. Re: Core Wars
Count me in on Core Wars! I wrote a version of my own in BASIC years ago
(since lost) and would love to try my hand at the game.
--Mike Nelson
-----Original Message-----
From: Roderick Jackson <rjackson at CSIWEB.COM>
To: EUPHORIA at LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU <EUPHORIA at LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>
Date: Monday, August 16, 1999 12:21 PM
Subject: Core Wars
>Speaking of different subjects...
>
>A few years ago, I picked up a book called _The Armchair Universe_. It
>is basically a collection of old computer articles. It impressed me so
>much that recently I bought it. Going through it again, I was reminded
>of a game in the book, from around 1984, called Core War...
>
>The idea was, you'd write a program that would simulate an 8000-address
>memory array. Then, two people would write programs in a special, small
>scripting language. The goal would be to write a program that would
>destroy the other; executing an invalid command was an automatic loss,
>so you basically shot "zero-bombs" at each other. The articles were
>interesting, and I thought the concept had a lot of potential.
>
>Well, I've just finished a very rough version of Core War myself. I
>had planned on cleaning it up and testing things out a bit more before
>releasing it, but apparently most of my friends around here aren't all
>that interested in it. There's very little motivation if I can't
>eventually compete against someone with it.
>
>Is anyone on the list interested? If not, I'll just hand off the code
>to Rob for the user's contributions. If so, then it'll be worthwhile to
>clean things up a bit, hopefully with others helping me test and
>offering suggestions. Don't get me wrong, the game WORKS... it's just
>not very solid (entering in an invalid filename crashes rather than
>prompting for a new one, for example.) Plus, there's no parser for the
>user programs; you have to write your programs out by hand as
>sequences of atoms (but it's in decimal instead of hex, fortunately.)
>And I'm not sure how solid the design of my variant is (a command or
>two has been left out/altered/added.)
>
>So, how about it? Maybe we could resurrect the game (even if only as a
>short-lived fad) and get another small tournament going...
>
>
>Rod
>
4. Core Wars
Core Wars was first described in the "Mathematical Games" column
in _Scientific_American_, back when Martin Gardner was the sole
writer for the column (it has since had several writers, and
several names, including [writers] Douglas Hofstadter and
A.K.Dewdney, and named "Computer Recreations" and "Metamagical
Themas"). The basic idea is that you have a bunch of programs
written in an assembler-like language, and two (canonically) or
more (in some implementations) such programs are running
simultaneously in a virtual machine designed for the purpose,
with the objective being that one program tries to make the other
program execute an erroneous statement, thus terminating.
There is a Usenet newsgroup, rec.games.corewar, that is devoted
to this pursuit, and the FAQ for that group has pointers to
several web sites where one can find updated descriptions of the
language, implementations of the virtual machine, tournament
arenas, warrior programs to run or to analyze, and so on. Quite
fascinating. Highly recommended.
--
Jeff Zeitlin
jzeitlin at cyburban.com
5. Re: Core Wars
Michael Nelson wrote:
>Count me in on Core Wars! I wrote a version of my own in BASIC years ago
>(since lost) and would love to try my hand at the game.
Wow, thanks for all the interest (and info) folks. I'll check out the
newsgroup and links, but in the meantime, I'll whip up a quick
how-to-use text for my program to release with it. It should be
finished in a day or two.
Rod
6. Re: Core Wars
Thus spake Terry Moriarty on Mon, 16 Aug 1999:
>Subject: Re: Core Wars
>>Is anyone on the list interested?.....
>
>
>Sounds suitably weird
>Tell me more.
>
>Terry
>
And me too.
Bruce.
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Macintosh/PC Support ====================================================
Language Project. =====================================================
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