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From: skipper@diku.dk (Jakob Skipper)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: Core Wars
Keywords: core wars, genetic algorithms, ga, mule dna
Message-ID: <1991May30.115136.24223@odin.diku.dk>
Date: 30 May 91 11:51:36 GMT
References: <1991May29.001505.12073@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: skipper@freja.diku.dk
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen
Lines: 29

reaper@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dan Michaeloff) writes:


>   I am using a GA to evolve a Core Wars fighter program, using tournaments
>against past contest winners to measure goodness.  However, one of the '88
>finalists, "Mule DNA" by Douglas McDaniels of the US, looks like it may have
>been created by a GA, as it contains many seemingly arbitrary constants.
>However, it seems to consist of repeated segments.

>   Does anyone know more on this?  Has anyone applied GAs to Core Wars?

A friend of mine once did it, with very little success. There are, however,
several people doing other experiments that comes close: using evolution
to write programs. Among others these people include myself and Thomas Ray
from School of Life & Health Sciences, Delaware (ray@brahms.udel.edu).
He will have an article about his system in the proceedings of the second
conference of artificial life, Santa Fe, 1990 ( the book "Artificial
Life II" is coming Real Soon Now and is beeing published by Addison-Wesley ).
I will also have a paper ready within not-so-long time.

>Is this the right newsgroup for this?

I don't know. There is no newsgroup for discussions of artificial life.
The subject pops up now and then in this group and in comp.ai. But there is
an artificial life mailing list. Just send E-mail to:

      alife-request@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu

Jakob Skipper