Re: [kidsgames] ITP: corewars (fwd)

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Doug Loss wrote:
> 
> Erik wrote:
> >
> > On 07-Mar-2000 Kidsgames Project Coordinator - Jeff Waddell wrote:
> > > Thought the corewars afficionado's would find these welcome news.  Now
> > > what IS corewars again?
> > >
> > my understanding is that it's a virtual machine and you write programs to run
> > inside of it. The goal is to kill other programs (starvation, deadlock,
> > segfault, etc) without being killed yourself. You play by coding... kinda like
> > realtimebattle except in a much more abstract way
> >
> Pretty much correct.  In classic corewars the battle space is a loop of
> virtual memory addresses where your programs reside.  All programs are
> written in RedCode, a simplified assembly language.  The object is to
> maintain your program's code against attack while attempting to screw up
> other programs' code enough to make them unexecutable.  The last program
> running wins.

AFAIK:

It was originally run on a *BARE* PDP-11 using the PDP instruction set - and
the original goal was to have your program fill up memory with copies of
itself.  Since the PDP series had switches and lights on it's front panel
to allow you to enter and view memory contents directly, this was something
that you could play without any software, OS or peripherals!

Since it's pretty antisocial to do this on a real running machine, and it was
perfectly possible to screw up the hardware, the game quickly evolved into
something that runs in a virtual machine.

I saw it played on a PDP-11/20 back in 1976-ish - it seemed to me that it
was REALLY hard to tell who had won - or even if the game was over for that
matter.

...oh - and it's *NOT* a kids game - it's *WAY* too hard!

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1@airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker@hti.com      (work)


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