Home

Rec. Math

Debate

CCM MP3

Links

Comments

CoreWar

     This is NOT a violent game where you run around killing people. This is a sophisticated programming game where you design a program (a list of instructions), called a CoreWar warrior, that has to cause the other program to stop running. It does this by causing the other program to run an illegal instruction. No blood.
CoreWar warriors, the programs you write, look like this:

;redcode
;Author Unknown
;Name Imp

     mov.i   0,1

     What's all of this mean? And what's it do? This is what a warrior looks like. It would be saved as a file with a .red extension, signifying a redcode warrior. The first line of the warrior, ";redcode", designates the rest of the file to be redcode, the programming language that is used to make warriors. The warrior, with a name like "imp.red", would be run by a MARS (Memory Array Redcode Simulator). A MARS can run more than one redcode program at a time, which is how you have "battles". Two or more redcode warriors are loaded into a MARS program, and the first to stop the other program wins.
What's the rest of the redcode mean?

  • ";Author Unknown" signifies that the author of the program is "Unknown". If the author was myself, you would write ";Author Robbie Rothermel".
  • ";Name Imp" defines the name of the redcode warrior. This warrior is called "Imp".
  • "mov.i   0,1" is the first actual line of redcode. To learn more about redcode, download pMARS and read the "redcode.ref" file that comes in the .zip file.

Redcode is based around assembly code. Click here for information on the history and basics of assembly code programming. This information file is written by me, and it isn't finished yet, but it's a start.

I'll have to put more information on Redcode in later. Until then, if you're interested in CoreWars and Redcode, head over to http://www.koth.org/. Then, download pMARS, and read the "redcode.ref" file. Enjoy!


History of CoreWars

     I have to work on this section, but until I do, here's a simple rundown of the history of CoreWars.

  • CoreWars conceived and created by A. K. Dewdney, a famous recreational mathematics columnist.
  • A. K. Dewdney wrote about CoreWars in Scientific American.
  • CoreWars tournaments began to be held.
  • International Core War Society is created.


click here to return to my Recreational Mathematics webpage