The time has come to push the boundaries of nanoscale warrior design. Whether you are a new or an experienced player, join the CoreWar Nano Challenge and prove your mastery of the nano core to win $100 prize.

CHALLENGE RULES

1. The challenge will be held under the 94nop standard with Nano hill settings:
Core size 80
Max cycles 800
Max processes 80
Max length 5
Min distance 5

2. Each player may submit up to two entries.

3. Qualification stage. The entries will be scored against the Nash equilibrium (NE) of the Koenigstuhl nano hill snapshot from 2025.05.01:
Prob Name Author
15.53 14_12.red yabevolver
10.13 Combat Arithmetic inversed
8.60 Nonlocality 2 inversed
8.25 Transfer Function Terry Newton
6.83 032_42.red yabevolver
6.74 b69e6908-a5be0bba-ab4445f7.rc bvowk
6.20 Unholy Fire John Metcalf
6.14 Quantum Foam inversed
4.99 [RS] Nextratulated Sturvinator 2 inversed
4.77 128_48.red yabevolver
4.63 Diffraction Limit S5 inversed
4.31 Cold Plasma inversed
3.72 8c09fc1a-4799259f-1747246f bvowk
3.00 Pacler Deux Roy van Rijn
2.66 Flamewraith John Metcalf
2.08 [RS] Existephall Apris inversed
1.16 Nonlocality inversed
0.25 145_13.red yabevolver

Qualification scores will be calculated as the weighted averages of the scores against the above warriors with weights corresponding to NE probabilities. Scoring is exact (permute option). Entries scoring above 146 points shall advance to the next stage.

4. Final stage. All entries advancing from the qualification stage will be added
to the Koenigstuhl nano hill snapshot from 2025.05.01 and the new Nash equilibrium will be calculated. Players will then be ranked by total NE probability of qualified entries.

5. The prize fund is $130, $100 for the first place, $30 for the second place.

6. I will be submitting my own entries as well. To ensure fair play, they will be provided in a passworded archive at the announcement day.

7. Important dates:
Submission deadline 2025.06.15 10:00 UTC
Contest date 2025.06.15 14:00 UTC

8. Links:
Official tournament links:
[email protected] -- mailbox for entries
http://inversed.ru/CoreWar_Challenge_2.htm -- tournament page
https://www.youtube.com/@Inversed -- livestream
Follow the announcements at:
rec.games.corewar -- Usenet newsgroup
https://x.com/inversed_ru -- my X account
https://x.com/xcorewar -- Core War on X
https://www.reddit.com/r/corewar/ -- Core War subreddit
CoreWar resources:
https://corewar.co.uk -- all things Core War
https://www.corewar.info -- another great site
https://asdflkj.net/COREWAR/koenigstuhl.html -- warrior repository
Software:
https://corewar.co.uk/mars.htm -- Core War simulators
https://corewar.co.uk/evolving.htm -- list of evolvers
https://www.corewar.info/evolve.htm -- another list

9. No politics / offensive contents in submissions.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Hi inversed,

This sounds fun - I'm really looking forward to it. I've written a Ruby
script to run benchmarks against the Nash equilibrium if anyone would
like to use it:

# Nash Equilibrium Benchmark

# Benchmarks one or more candidate warriors against all *.red files in
# the current directory. Each benchmark file's name (e.g. 3039.red)
# determines its probability weight. E.g. 3039 means a 30.39% influence
# on the total score.

# Usage: $ ruby nashbench.rb [files]
# Example: ruby nashbench.rb *.rc *.red

CORESIZE = 80
ROUNDS = 142
benchmark = Dir.glob('*.red')

ARGV.each do |chal|
total = 0
benchmark.each.map do |war|
score = `./pmars #{chal} #{war} -k -b -s 80 -l 5 -p 80 -c 800 -
P`.split
total += (3 * score[0].to_i + score[1].to_i) * war.to_i
end
puts "#{(total / 1e2 / ROUNDS).round(3)} - #{chal}"
end

A copy with appropriately named benchmark warriors is also available here:

* https://corewar.co.uk/metcalf/nashbench.zip

I think I'm busy at UTC 14:00 on the 15th. Will the livestream be
available to watch later?

Thanks,

John


On Fri, 16 May 2025 16:45:55 +0300, inversed wrote:

The time has come to push the boundaries of nanoscale warrior design.
Whether you are a new or an experienced player, join the CoreWar Nano Challenge and prove your mastery of the nano core to win $100 prize.

CHALLENGE RULES

1. The challenge will be held under the 94nop standard with Nano hill settings:
Core size 80 Max cycles 800 Max processes 80 Max
length 5 Min distance 5

2. Each player may submit up to two entries.

3. Qualification stage. The entries will be scored against the Nash equilibrium (NE) of the Koenigstuhl nano hill snapshot from 2025.05.01:
Prob Name Author
15.53 14_12.red yabevolver 10.13 Combat
Arithmetic inversed
8.60 Nonlocality 2 inversed 8.25 Transfer
Function Terry Newton 6.83 032_42.red
yabevolver 6.74 b69e6908-a5be0bba-ab4445f7.rc bvowk 6.20
Unholy Fire John Metcalf 6.14 Quantum Foam
inversed 4.99 [RS] Nextratulated Sturvinator 2 inversed
4.77 128_48.red yabevolver 4.63 Diffraction
Limit S5 inversed 4.31 Cold Plasma
inversed 3.72 8c09fc1a-4799259f-1747246f bvowk 3.00 Pacler
Deux Roy van Rijn 2.66 Flamewraith
John Metcalf 2.08 [RS] Existephall Apris inversed
1.16 Nonlocality inversed 0.25 145_13.red
yabevolver

Qualification scores will be calculated as the weighted averages of the scores against the above warriors with weights corresponding to NE probabilities. Scoring is exact (permute option). Entries scoring above
146 points shall advance to the next stage.

4. Final stage. All entries advancing from the qualification stage will
be added to the Koenigstuhl nano hill snapshot from 2025.05.01 and the
new Nash equilibrium will be calculated. Players will then be ranked by
total NE probability of qualified entries.

5. The prize fund is $130, $100 for the first place, $30 for the second place.

6. I will be submitting my own entries as well. To ensure fair play,
they will be provided in a passworded archive at the announcement day.

7. Important dates:
Submission deadline 2025.06.15 10:00 UTC Contest date
2025.06.15 14:00 UTC

8. Links:
Official tournament links:
[email protected] -- mailbox for
entries http://inversed.ru/CoreWar_Challenge_2.htm --
tournament page https://www.youtube.com/@Inversed
-- livestream
Follow the announcements at:
rec.games.corewar -- Usenet
newsgroup https://x.com/inversed_ru -- my
X account https://x.com/xcorewar --
Core War on X https://www.reddit.com/r/corewar/
-- Core War subreddit
CoreWar resources:
https://corewar.co.uk -- all things
Core War https://www.corewar.info --
another great site https://asdflkj.net/COREWAR/koenigstuhl.html
-- warrior repository
Software:
https://corewar.co.uk/mars.htm -- Core War
simulators https://corewar.co.uk/evolving.htm --
list of evolvers https://www.corewar.info/evolve.htm
-- another list

9. No politics / offensive contents in submissions.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Only one day remains before the nano challenge submission deadline. Thus far I got entries from NDusN, S.Fernandes, Dave Hillis, Roy van Rijn, Simon Wainwright, and John Metcalf. If you want to participate but not on this list, make sure to send your entries before 2025.06.15 10:00 UTC to [email protected] or [email protected].
--

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Thanks for running this. I enjoyed participating, and the presentation
on stream was exciting to watch.

As a newcomer to CoreWar, there was just one thing that tripped me up.
And judging by the number of submitted warriors that failed to meet the
cutoff for the qualification round, it may have been a point of
confusion for others as well: the scoring did match what I expected.

To take an example with one of my warriors:

$ pmars 145_13.red karlach.red -b -s 80 -l 5 -p 80 -c 800 -P
145_13.red by yabevolver scores 216
Karlach by koorogi scores 186
Results: 64 54 24

But the scores shown on stream for this matchup were 152.1 and 131.0.
Across the board, it looks like the scores have been divided by 1.42, I
suppose to normalize them to 100 rounds.

I'll know this for next time. But I've been unable to find anything on
either corewar.co.uk or www.corewar.info that would lead me to expect
this. Is it there and I've just missed it? How can other future
newcomers avoid falling into this trap?

--
koorogi

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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