Core Wars

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Screenshots - Core Wars

Core Wars atari screenshot
Core Wars atari screenshot
Core Wars atari screenshot

Information - Core Wars

GenreMiscellaneousYear1988
Language[unknown]Publisher[no publisher]
ControlsMouseDistributor-
Players-Developer[n/a]
ResolutionLow / Medium / HighLicensed from-
Programmer(s)

Wade, Fred P.

CountryUSA
Graphic Artist(s)

Wade, Fred P.

SoftwareEnglish
Game design

Wade, Fred P.

Box / InstructionsEnglish
Musician(s)

[n/a]

LicensePD / Freeware / Shareware
Sound FX

[n/a]

Serial
Cover Artist(s)ST TypeST, STe / 1MB
MIDIVersion
Dumpdownload atari Core Wars Download / MSANumber of Disks1 / Single Sided
Protection

Instructions - Core Wars

This document contains a very short description of the REDCODE 
assembler and MARS emulator. If you really want to get serious 
about corewars, like entering a tournament, you should join the 
International Core Wars Society by sending $25.00 to

     International Core Wars Society
     8619 Wassall Street
     Wichita, KS 62210-1934

For other information, see the January 1987 issue of "Scientific 
American."

Strategy.

The object of the game is to code up a warrior (program) which 
will outlast all other warriors it meets, or at least keep going 
until the clock runs out. The way one destroys a warrior is to get 
all of his processes to execute data values. A warrior may spawn 
new processes as described below, but he is limited to a maximum 
of 64 processes. There is a certain amount of luck involved in a 
particular battle, as the processes are loaded in a random, non-
overlapping manner. All addressing is relative to the instructions 
location, so there is no way to know in advance where your 
opponent is. There are examples of some previously successful 
programs included with this down load. So far, I have not seen any 
examples of a self repairing program.

Operation. The two programs supplied are meant to be run either 
from the desktop or from a shell. First, one uses his favorite 
text editor to create an ASCII file of the source code for his 
warrior with the extension .s. The assembler converts the source 
code into a listing file with extension .l, and an object file 
with extension .o. Assembly errors are shown in the listing file. 
The corewars program is then run, and using the GEM menus, you 
load two warriors and turn them loose. The default settings for 
core size and battle length are the ones used in the 2nd 
International Core War Competition. These values may be different 
in the next tournament.

Assembler Syntax.

I tried to follow the syntax in the original core wars standard 
dated May 21, 1986.

All characters are converted to uppercase when read. Blank lines are 
allowed.

The syntax of a line is

label operation operand(s) comments.

These fields are discussed in more detail below.

Labels. Labels are indicated by a letter in the first character 
position of a line, and are terminated by white space. Labels have 
a maximum of 8 characters, and all other characters must be 
alphanumeric.

Operations. The operation field consists a valid operation listed 
below, and is terminated by whitespace.

Operands. The operand field may contain none, one, or two operands, 
depending on the instruction. If two operands are required, they 
should be separated by a comma. Each operand may be preceded by a 
mode character, also given below. Addition and subtraction of 
labels, constants, etc. are supported, but no parenthesis are 
allowed. The operands field is terminated by either a ;, 
whitespace, or the end of the line. No checking is done 
on the legality of arithmetic operations as far as overflow or label 
arithmetic.

Comments. Comments are indicated by a ;. All characters from the 
semi-colon to the end of the line are treated as a comment. If the 
first character of a line is a ;, the line will be treated as a 
comment only.

Mode Characters. Note that all addressing is done relative to the 
program counter. This is called direct addressing in the core wars 
standard, but I'm more used to calling this relative addressing.

# Immediate Addressing. The operand is treated as a constant. Note 
that if a label is used, the translated value of the label 
relative to the location count is used. This probably isn't 
correct, but it made the implementation easier.

$ Direct Addressing. Again, this is relative to the location 
counter. Direct addressing is the default mode.

@ Indirect Addressing. This uses the contents of the location of 
the referenced location as a pointer to actual location. Note that 
the pointer is evaluated relative to the pointer location.

< Auto-Decrement Indirect Addressing. This is similar to Indirect 
Addressing as described above, but the pointer is reduced by one 
before it is used. If you do strange things using this instruction, 
strange things may happen, as the microcode for this mode 
is not well defined in the standard.

The Operations. Value as used below means the portion of the word 
used for storing numeric values. All values are modulo memory 
size, although the modulus operation is not performed until the 
warrior's object code is loaded.

DAT value

This is not an operation, but an assembler directive which places 
the value at the location given by the location counter. Any 
process which executes a data statement will die. 

MOV A,B

Move the value at the effective address A to the effective address 
B.

ADD A,B

Add the value at the effective address A to the value at effective 
address B, and place the result in effective address B.

SUB A,B

Subtract the value at the effective address A from the value at effective 
address B, and place the result in effective address B.

JMP A

Start executing at effective address A.

JMZ A,B

If the value at effective address B is zero, then execution starts at 
effective location A. Otherwise execution continues with the next 
location.

JMN A,B

If the value at effective address B is not zero, then execution 
starts at effective location A. Otherwise execution continues with 
the next location.

DJN A,B

The value at the effective address B is decremented by one. If the 
result is not zero, then execution starts at effective location A. 
Otherwise execution continues with the next location.

CMP A,B

The value at effective address A is compared with the value at 
effective address B. If they are equal, the next location is 
skipped. If neither one of the operand's mode is immediate, then 
the complete word is tested for equality.

SPL B

This instruction spawns a new process which will start executing 
at effective address B. The spawning process continues at the next 
location. Spawning will not occur if there are already 64 
processes running for this warrior.

END

This is an assembler directive indicating the end of the REDCODE. 
This assembler is unhappy if it does not find an END directive 
before it finds an end-of-file.

SPACE N,M

This is an assembler directive which is ignored by this assembler.

Miscellaneous. 

Instruction execution begins at the first location or at the label 
START. Any key stops the battle. Dark dots represent program 
counters, while light dots represent a memory access. The 
instruction trace columns are instruction operation code, a mode, 
a value, b mode, and b value. Core accesses are indicated by 
read/write, location, operation code, a field mode, a field value, 
b mode, and b value. The b value is used to hold data values.

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