Wednesday 12 November 2008

Neo's Mini Challenge - Roy's Idea

Roy suggested a tricky extension to Neo's Mini Challenge in rec.games.corewar:
Lets try to find a solution for this gate:
djn.f #0,>-5
(I haven't got one yet)
It appears a one instruction solution isn't possible. However, 5 players found a solution in two instructions.  Congratulations to Ilmari, John, Rashnok, Roy and me! Also, well done to German and Lukasz who also discovered solutions, albeit slightly longer.

I discovered a five line imp:
imp mov.i #4,   *1
mov.i #4, *1
mov.i #4, *1
mov.i #4, *1
mov.i #4, *1
By adding a loop, I managed to reduce the initial size to two instructions:
imp mov.i #4,   *1
djn.a imp, #0
John and Rashnok discovered the same 3 line imp and used a loop to reduce the size. Ilmari discovered a 2 line imp. Roy wrote a program to find 58 solutions by brute force!

Full details are on Neo's page for the Harmless Overrun Mini Challenge.

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