there I posted about it are you happy now
02-02-2014, 08:56 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-02-2014, 08:57 AM by Norivia.)
A few times over the last year or two I've come across a game that's been around since the 80s and that I find utterly fascinating, but I'm still not sure I want to actually play. That game is Core War.
It's a programming game, where you and your opponent write programs, or Warriors, and the programs fight each other. Not as in "if the enemy does x then attack with y" though. You write programs in Redcode, a purpose-built assembly language, using standard assembly type opcodes-- add, move, jump, and etc. Very low level, very close to the hardware. Then, the programs are loaded up into the game's memory, and the programs are run-- changing the memory around them, rewriting each others' programs! The idea of the game just seems so satisfying, so creative!
To be a little more accurate, and technical, about the game (or just read it from someone who actually knows what they're talking about): each player's code is loaded into a memory space of something like 8000 instructions, and then each warrior executes one instruction at a time. The goal is to overwrite the opponent's instructions to make them execute an illegal command, usually by executing a data command (data instructions signify that the memory location is ONLY for holding information-- a number -- and thus should never be actually executed).
The game's even built up something of a rock-paper-scissors system, with bombers (rocks), scanners (scissors), and replicators (papers). Of course there are hybrids and such, and programs that take different strategies, but these seem to be the baselines. There's also lots of 'genetic' warriors, where people use programs to evolve the warriors through battles-- not quite pokemon, but more, "make a change, and if it gives you a better win rate, keep it, otherwise discard it". It seems like such an odd metagame, in that the game's rules are basically entirely based around how functional of a language Redcode is.
I find Core War neat for its history as well-- made in 1984 originally, with the last widely-accepted rules update in '94. It's been another whole 20 years since then without much change, but it's cool to see how times have changed. In the original article by A.K. Dewdney (the creator), he talks about how assembly languages like Redcode are different than sophisticated programs like Fortran, Pascal, and BASIC (this is the part where you laugh). The community seems pretty small at this point, but it's made rounds on the internet enough in the past that my dad had heard about the game long ago (but never got around to playing it), just as I did recently.
There are still some king-of-the-hills running where you email your program to the server email address, and they run your program against all the programs on the hill, and if your program beats enough of them it boots the lowest spot. I wonder what games that are new currently will still be played 30 years down the road... Starcraft if anything, I'd bet.
So um. Yeah. Anyone heard of/played Core War? It seems like an interesting study in game design if nothing else as is probably mentioned in this gamasutra article that I've only briefly skimmed. Despite its simplicity, something about this game tickles my imagination, evoking 'hacking and cyberspace' in the same way that wind waker and megaman legends make me contemplate ancient ruins, endless skies, and A World Covered By Endless Water . . .
It's a programming game, where you and your opponent write programs, or Warriors, and the programs fight each other. Not as in "if the enemy does x then attack with y" though. You write programs in Redcode, a purpose-built assembly language, using standard assembly type opcodes-- add, move, jump, and etc. Very low level, very close to the hardware. Then, the programs are loaded up into the game's memory, and the programs are run-- changing the memory around them, rewriting each others' programs! The idea of the game just seems so satisfying, so creative!
To be a little more accurate, and technical, about the game (or just read it from someone who actually knows what they're talking about): each player's code is loaded into a memory space of something like 8000 instructions, and then each warrior executes one instruction at a time. The goal is to overwrite the opponent's instructions to make them execute an illegal command, usually by executing a data command (data instructions signify that the memory location is ONLY for holding information-- a number -- and thus should never be actually executed).
The game's even built up something of a rock-paper-scissors system, with bombers (rocks), scanners (scissors), and replicators (papers). Of course there are hybrids and such, and programs that take different strategies, but these seem to be the baselines. There's also lots of 'genetic' warriors, where people use programs to evolve the warriors through battles-- not quite pokemon, but more, "make a change, and if it gives you a better win rate, keep it, otherwise discard it". It seems like such an odd metagame, in that the game's rules are basically entirely based around how functional of a language Redcode is.
I find Core War neat for its history as well-- made in 1984 originally, with the last widely-accepted rules update in '94. It's been another whole 20 years since then without much change, but it's cool to see how times have changed. In the original article by A.K. Dewdney (the creator), he talks about how assembly languages like Redcode are different than sophisticated programs like Fortran, Pascal, and BASIC (this is the part where you laugh). The community seems pretty small at this point, but it's made rounds on the internet enough in the past that my dad had heard about the game long ago (but never got around to playing it), just as I did recently.
There are still some king-of-the-hills running where you email your program to the server email address, and they run your program against all the programs on the hill, and if your program beats enough of them it boots the lowest spot. I wonder what games that are new currently will still be played 30 years down the road... Starcraft if anything, I'd bet.
So um. Yeah. Anyone heard of/played Core War? It seems like an interesting study in game design if nothing else as is probably mentioned in this gamasutra article that I've only briefly skimmed. Despite its simplicity, something about this game tickles my imagination, evoking 'hacking and cyberspace' in the same way that wind waker and megaman legends make me contemplate ancient ruins, endless skies, and A World Covered By Endless Water . . .