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Retrospective: Core Wars

posted by azrael on Friday October 24 2014, @07:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the teach-me-sensei dept.

silverly writes:

Today I discovered an absolute gem from the past.

If you were around in 1984 you might have been super awesome and played core wars.

Core Wars is a programming game in which two or more programs run in a simulated computer with the goal of terminating every other program and surviving as long as possible. Known as Warriors, these programs are are written in an assembly language called Redcode.

Basically it's Counter-Strike/COD for programmers where you can fight in a team team, as a free-for-all, or one-vs-one.

What other cool things from the past might us youngun programmers have missed or not have an appreciation of?

 
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  • (Score: 2) by cosurgi on Friday October 24 2014, @09:24PM

    by cosurgi (272) on Friday October 24 2014, @09:24PM (#109734) Journal
    Here's one of those programs on a 2D matrix. I hope that the text aligns properly.

    ┌──────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────┐
    │ *MOVIP E ↓   │  MOV  C D →  │   LENG F ↓   │
    ├──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
    │ INC E 3 3 ↓  │  RAND E C ↑  │   PUSH F ↓   │
    ├──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
    │ MULC E 3 3 → │  MUL E E ↑   │   MOVIP G ↓  │
    ├──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
    │              │              │   DECS 1 0 ↓ │
    ├──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
    │              │              │   COPY A D ↓ │
    ├──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
    │              │  ZERO A ←    │   INCIP A ↓  │
    ├──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
    │              │  SPAWN C ↑   │   INCIP D ↓  │
    ├──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
    │              │  JMNZ G ↑    │   DUP ←      │
    └──────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┘
    --
    #
    #\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
    #
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  • (Score: 2) by cosurgi on Friday October 24 2014, @09:32PM

    by cosurgi (272) on Friday October 24 2014, @09:32PM (#109740) Journal

    Aha, by looking at it, I can't see the loop :) Maybe it's not in this one, I picked a random saved program.

    But I think that you get the point now - the loops are spatial. If that instruction "ZERO A ←" was a loop condition to go right, instead of ending the program, it would continue the loop.

    --
    #
    #\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
    #