The Spring 2014 Tournament of Core War

Readers of  ‘Life as it could be’ will know that a computer game plays an important role in it: Core War, to my somewhat limited knowledge the oldest, geekiest and most cerebral of all computer games. It is set up as a virtual computer in which to battle programs called ‘warriors’ are fighting to their death. The warriors are short programs written in a special purpose assembly language called Redcode. What makes the game so interesting for ‘Life as it could be’ is that the warriors can be bred by genetic algorithms or evolutionary computing. While the game has a small following, its worldwide community is very active and competes in a steady stream of tournaments—quality over quantity!