Talk:Core War

GFDL
My contributions to this article may have included GFDL-licensed content from The Core War FAQ by Anton Marsden. I am not the copyright holder of such content, and therefore cannot license it under terms other than those of the GFDL. I release the rest of my contributions to this article to the public domain, however, as stated on my my user page.

(I honestly don't remember if I actually used any verbatim content from the FAQ or not. I feel this disclaimer is in order regardless.  By the way, isn't there some standard template for this?) —Ilmari Karonen 14:41, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Keep User: refs out of article
The Beginner's Guide to Redcode by Ilmari Karonen provides an introduction to Redcode for programmers and nonprogrammers alike.

should not point to User: stuff.

Fplay 01:25, 12 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, you're absolutely correct. Back when I added the link, I didn't know that yet.  Thanks for spotting it.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:29, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Date of initial SciAm article
William R. Buckley recently changed the date of Dewdney's first SciAm article on Core War from May to March 1984. I got the May 1984 date from the Core War FAQ, so if the change is correct, we should probably let Anton know so he can change the FAQ. I'll try to verify this at the local library as soon as possible. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 09:59, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Ummm... that link you've given (which I believe to be the master copy) says March, as does the most recent copy posted to r.g.cw. With respect to the original edit summary, I'll give pointers to Assume Good Faith and No Personal Attacks for reasons which I think are obvious :-( Cheers --Pak21 10:45, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I think I see the problem: the FAQ gives March 1984 as the publication date of the Core War Guidelines, but May as the date of the first SciAm article. It seems A Brief History of Corewar agrees with this.  My impression (please correct me if I'm wrong), from reading the May 1984 article, is that the Guidelines enjoyed only limited circulation prior to the publication of the SciAm article, and so May 1984 can be considered the date when Core War was introduced to the public.  In any case, I suppose the paragraph ought to be reworded for clarity.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:57, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * References to the first article being published in the May 1984 Scientific American include Dewdney's CV, Dewdney's third article and Dewdney's original Core War Guidelines. Once I've looked into this, I will correct A Brief History of Corewar if necessary.


 * Thanks, and no hard feelings. Nice to see this issue settled. (Bzzzzzz.....)  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:19, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Instruction Set Descriptions.
It has been a very long time since I worked with Core War, so the material I've added is a bit halting. My notes are now buried in storage, so it will take me some time to get to updates. William R. Buckley 19:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

However, the complaint of Dbabbitt though sophomoric, does point up some deficiency in the article. The instruction sets should be fully described in the article. William R. Buckley 19:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

One point not made in the article is the first standard; ICWS 86. For instance, MICE is written to ICWS 86, not ICWS 88. William R. Buckley 19:10, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Dang.  Relative addressing ONLY?   I'd have thought that at least 2 memory addresses could be absolute, with a very large memory range between them, say, 256 bits worth of addressing between them.   Two absolute memory addresses could be distinguished by a single bit, for that matter.    But relative addressing is exactly what made modern microprocessors miserable to program.   Anyway, the main page of this article could be improved by discussing or pointing to descendants of Core War.  And for what it's worth, yes, a table of instructions would make the main page a lot more readable.   Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 22:27, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Historical Records
For editors having interest in such things, please know that I have in my possession all of the mail received by the ICWS during the years of my tenure as director. This means that material of historical value is available. William R. Buckley 18:28, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Is there a record of who has participated in Core War tournaments, and who has won or lost?  The main page of this article could be improved with a link to a list of tournament outcomes, and how long it took for the results to be realized.   216.99.198.33 (talk) 02:50, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Regarding Source Materials
The ICWS and AMRAN published The Core War Newsletter. This publication has been followed by many other web-based news reporting mechanisms, many of which remain available via web browsing. It is therefore disingenuous for others to complain about lacking citations, instead of providing same. William R. Buckley (talk) 14:32, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Creeper/Reaper
I do not agree that Core War is founded upon the Creeper/Reaper programs of Shoch and Hupp. Clearly, I was aware of the Early Experience with Worms from CACM, having been a subscriber at the time. I was also aware of the paper by Vyssotsky et al., when I read the SciAm article in May of 1985. For anybody who has read both papers, Darwin is clearly the origin of Core War. William R. Buckley (talk) 23:53, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

N to the nth participants
The main page of this article could be improved with observations as to what happens in a playing field that is very crowded with participants. In my opinion, crowded means 1 cell open after loading the entire available array with participants, say, 256 participants or more. I would guess that there would be a magnificent shakeout during the first few turns, followed either by an unusual oscillating pattern, or a general annihilation till one participant alone remains.

Have there been any Core War tournaments? Which programmer or team has won the most tournaments? Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 22:39, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Merge from Redcode
Since Redcode has no other use than to play Core War, I suggest that article be merged into this one. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:35, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Two examples showing Redcode used for something other than Core War: Forth Interpreter in Redcode Happy Numbers in Redcode 87.115.83.45 (talk) 21:57, 11 September 2010 (UTC)


 * These are amazing and heartening applications of the Redcode language. Well done, indeed!  William R. Buckley (talk) 16:25, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Since Redcode has no significant uses other than to play Core War, I still think that article should be merged into this one. Yeah, it's a Turing-complete langauge and can solve any problem..but why would you want to? --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:31, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Not very interactive, is it? --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:36, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * At least two dialects of Redcode include I/O. Redcode is used in some schools / colleges to teach assembly programming. The Redcode and Core War articles should not be merged. 87.115.83.45 (talk) 22:05, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia has a disambiguation page for Redcode, and it currently redirects back to Core War.  If there are really two dialects for this language, and at least one of them has support for I/O, however limited, then the disambiguation page should be fixed with a direct to a page on Redcode.   As it stands now, the disambiguation page is doing a disservice to people wanting to learn more about it.   Somebody should go there and fix it.   216.99.198.33 (talk) 02:56, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * You're somebody. If there's more than a line or two that can be referenced about using Redcode for other than Core War, then write it up! --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:06, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Softwar
I had heard mention to this kind of "games" as Softwar (with no final e). Anyone can vote for that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.241.45.151 (talk) 22:46, 31 August 2011 (UTC)