Core Wars

Welcome to the CORE WARS system for the Macintosh! Core Wars is the Ultimate game for HACKERS. It was designed by A. K. Dewdney, and described in his "Computer Recreations" collumns which appeared in the May '84 abd March '85 issues of Scientific American. In Core Wars two programs battle for control of the imaginary MARS computer. The programs are written by the players in an "assembly language" called REDCODE. The players edit, assemble, and run their programs all within the Core Wars system. The programs may be stored on disk, and loaded later to fight other players' programs. During battle, the players can see all 8000 cells of the memory in the MARS computer. The dynamics of the battle can be viewed, or the battle can be stopped, so that memory may be examined in detail. There is no end to the interesting battle programs that can be written. Some of them are described in this manual. Others in the articles mentioned above. You may create others. Chapter I Commands When you load the Core Wars program by double clicking on its ICON, you will be entertained with a little rendition for whom the credit must obviously go to George Lucas. You may terminate this performance any time after the text begins to scroll by simply clicking the mouse. Core Wars starts out with an empty screen and the menu bar. There are the 3 familiar menu items: apple, FILE, and EDIT, and a fourth unfamiliar one named WAR. It is with these menus that all of the Core Wars functions are invoked. The File Menu As always, the File menu contains the commands which manipulate the files which are input to the system, and output from the system. The quit command also resides here. The user who is familiar with the Macintosh should find no surprises in the structure of this menu. The commands all have there most obvious meaning. The Edit Menu Once again, the user should find no surprises here, except for the fact that the UNDO command is not implemented. (So don't make any mistakes). The clipboard is managed as usual and should be transferrable into other programs as a TEXT item. The War Menu Here is where the new stuff starts. The War menu contains the commands which control the battle of the programs within the MARS computer. Load Soldier: Implies that an edit window is open with a complete REDCODE program in it. The program is assembled and prepared for loading into the memory of the MARS system. When assembly is complete, a dialog box appears which allows the user to set the absolute load address of his program, and whether the program he is loading will be playing as WHITE, BLACK or neutral. Neutral is good for loading data structures which are accessories to programs. Clear Battlefield: Erases the memory of the MARS computer. All programs wh…