From: wms@iwarp.intel.com (William Shubert)
Subject: KotH Submission Instructions
Organization: Intel iWarp, Beaverton, Oregon, USA
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 23:31:54 GMT

OK, it's been a while since I posted these and I've been getting a bunch of
requests, so here are the submission instructions.  I can't remember - who
took over for posting the FAQ after MAD left?  I think it's about time to
repost.  If anybody has a copy saved, maybe they could post it.
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Entry rules for King of the Hill "standard" Corewar:

1) Write a corewar program.  KotH is fully ICWS '88 compatible, EXCEPT that
   a comma (",") is required between two arguments.

2) Put the line ";redcode" at the top of your program.  This MUST be the first
   line.  Anything before it will be lost.  Writing ";redcode verbose" or
   ";redcode quiet" will alter how much information you get on your program.
   See part 5) below.

   Adding ";name <program name>" and ";author <your name>" will be helpful in
   the performance reports.  Do NOT have a line beginning with ";address" in
   your code; this will confuse the mail demon and you won't get mail back.

   In addition, it would be nice if you have lines beginning with ";strategy"
   that describe the algorithm you use.

3) Mail this file to "wms@iwarp.intel.com".

4) Within a few minutes you should get mail back telling you whether your
   program compiled correctly or not.  If it did compile correctly, sit back
   and wait; if not, make the change required and re-submit.

5) In a hour or so you should get more mail telling you how your program
   performed against the current top 20 programs.  If no news arrives in an
   hour, don't worry; entries are put in a queue and run through the
   tournament one at a time.  A backlog may develop.  Be patient.

   If your program makes it onto the hill, you will get mail every time a
   new program makes it onto the hill.  If this is too much mail, you can use
   ";redcode quiet" when you first mail in your program; then you will only
   get mail when you make it on the top 20 list or when you are knocked off.
   Using ";redcode verbose" will give you even more mail; here you get mail
   every time a new challenger arrives, even if they don't make it onto the
   top 20 list.

   Often programmers want to try out slight variations in their programs.
   If you already have a program named "Foo V1.0" on the hill, adding the
   line ";kill foo" to a new program will automatically bump foo 1.0 off the
   hill.  Just ";kill" will remove all of your programs when you submit the
   new one.

That's it!

MORE ON KOTH COREWAR IMPLEMENTATION
       Core size: 8,000 instructions
   Max processes: 8,000 per program
        Duration: After 80,000 cycles per program a tie is declared.

SAMPLE ENTRY:
;redcode verbose
;name Dwarf
;author A. K. Dewdney
;strategy Throw DAT bombs around memory, hitting every 4th memory cell.
;strategy   This program was presented in the first Corewar article.
bomb	dat	#0
dwarf	add	#4,bomb
	mov	bomb,@bomb
	jmp	dwarf
	end	dwarf

Rule variants for "eXperimental" corewar:
The same as above but use ";redcode-x" to start your program.

Your program will be entered into a second tournament with slightly different
rules.  The rules are:
   - All addressing modes are allowed with all instructions.
   - There is an additional addressing mode, called "postincrement".  To use
     it try an instruction like "mov >5,6".
   - The maximum write distance is 250 instructions.  That is, every time
     your program tries to modify memory, the address is checked; if it is
     more than 250 instructions from the process doing the modify, then
     memory is left unchanged, but the instruction continues as normal.
   - A tie is not declared until 150,000 cycles per program have elapsed.

   KotH is run on a Unix system.  The source code to the corewar program used
is freely available; it runs on any Unix system with an X windows interface.
Send mail to wms@iwarp.intel.com for a copy, or get it by anonymous FTP to
soda.berkeley.edu.  The latest version of KotH will be in either
pub/corewar/systems or pub/corewar/incoming.