Core Wars

[OX.]

Still hanging on 91 load in MESS using the new disk image.

[+Lee Stewart]

Still hanging on 91 load in MESS using the new disk image.

 

It does take a full 2 minutes to load on my Windows 7 laptop. Are you waiting long enough?

 

...lee

[OX.]

It does take a full 2 minutes to load on my Windows 7 laptop. Are you waiting long enough?

 

...lee

 

Yes, waited longer

[+Lee Stewart]

Yes, waited longer

 

H-m-m---I'm using MESS v147 with QMC2 to start it. The disk images shouldn't matter, i.e., if they work on one version, they should work on any other. What device driver are you using for the floppies? I'm using the Myarc HFDC.

 

...lee

[OX.]

H-m-m---I'm using MESS v147 with QMC2 to start it. The disk images shouldn't matter, i.e., if they work on one version, they should work on any other. What device driver are you using for the floppies? I'm using the Myarc HFDC.

 

...lee

 

What is QMC2? I'm using also using the myarc hfdc floppy driver, only thing I can think that is different is the version of MESS (140) and possibly the E/A cart image.

[+Vorticon]

OK... TIF.DSK seems to be corrupted in some way---at least, for use with MESS. The attached file should work. It should also work with Classic99; but, like Walid said, you can't save anything because Classic99 won't do sector writes.

 

...lee

 

TIF-Vorticon.zip

Lee, I'm not convinced this is the case. I downloaded my own disk images and they work just fine on real hardware (CF7+), Classic99 and Win994a. I suspect it's something to do with MESS itself. When in doubt, the real hardware trumps it all

[+Lee Stewart]

What is QMC2? I'm using also using the myarc hfdc floppy driver, only thing I can think that is different is the version of MESS (140) and possibly the E/A cart image.

 

QMC2 is a GUI available here that can make it easier to use MESS.

[+Lee Stewart]

Lee, I'm not convinced this is the case. I downloaded my own disk images and they work just fine on real hardware (CF7+), Classic99 and Win994a. I suspect it's something to do with MESS itself. When in doubt, the real hardware trumps it all

 

You may well be right; but, the last image was actually bigger than 90KB. I don't have any other clue why it wouldn't work. For MESS unique gotchas, Michael Zapf will need to weigh in. I don't know if he's on this forum.

 

...lee

[+Vorticon]

Behold ZEUS, who fires lightning bolts from his eyes and his arse! It's my first personal battle bot, and it seems to be relatively successful in killing the IMP, DWARF and GEMINI bots, although not always...

ZEUS uses a 3 prong strategy: a coherent beam directed from its back to try to ward off any incoming IMP's, and a wide volley from the front. Then is replicates itself to another location and starts all over again. As far as battle bots are concerned, it is a behemoth at 26 instructions, so it can be vulnerable to small and fast bots. It also demonstrates the use of the unused B fields in the JMP instructions as storage and counters areas in order to minimize the use of DAT statements. I'm curious to see if anyone else here has come up with a bot of their own and how it fares against ZEUS.

Below is the listing for ZEUS:

 

: ZEUS
INIT
DAT .# 0 .# 0
ORG
MOV .! -1 .@ 5
CMP .! 1 .# 9
JMP .! 4 .# 0
ADD .# 1 .! -1
ADD .# 1 .! 1
JMP .! -5 .# -30
MOV .# 0 .! -4
MOV .# 27 .! -2
MOV .! -9 .@ -3
CMP .! -7 .# 9
JMP .! 4 .# -11
ADD .# 1 .! -9
ADD .# 1 .! -7
JMP .! -5 .# 300
MOV .@ -4 .@ -1
CMP .! -5 .# 14
JMP .! 4 .# 0
ADD .# 1 .! -7
ADD .# 1 .! -5
JMP ! -5 .# 0
MOV .# 300 .! 307
MOV .# 0 .! 295
MOV .# -11 .! 302
MOV .# -30 .! 296
JMP .! 290 .# 0 ;

 

Here it is seen battling GEMINI

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFANT61hEF0

 

NOTE: during my development of ZEUS, I encountered a subtle bug in Core War which I corrected and I updated the file in post # 13 in this thread. ZEUS is included on screen 119 of the program.

Edited December 7, 2012 by Vorticon

[OX.]

Will this run with Willsy's turbo forth?

[+Lee Stewart]

Will this run with Willsy's turbo forth?

 

TurboForth does not have bitmap support, yet---so, no, it won't run there.

 

...lee