An Introduction to Corewar
I remember reading about Corewar roughly 20 years ago and thinking that I will have to have a go at that when I get the time. As often happens in life, things got in the way and I only recently managed to give it a go. I love the challenge of programming and the competitive aspect of this programming game really appeals to me. The object of the game is to write a battle program that will take over a virtual computer and kill the other battle programs running upon it. Since the game recently celebrated it's 25th birthday, I thought that I would write the following brief introduction to the game to whet peoples' appetite and encourage new interest.
The game was first described in Core War Guidelines by D. G. Jones and A. K. Dewdney in March 1984 and was introduced to the public in May 1984 via Dewdney's Computer Recreation column in Scientific American.
There have been several revisions to REDCODE (the form of assembly language in which the programs are written). The most used is currently The International Core Wars Society (ICWS) 1994 standard with the extensions introduced by pMARS 0.8. There is also some interest in the older ICWS '88 standard.
