🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <28067@castle.ed.ac.uk>, sah@castle.ed.ac.uk (Juggler) writes:
> 
> 	Talking of frustration, whenever I try to perfect my 200%xC
> scanner+etc (see above), it moves through various incarnations until
> it's perfect, at which stage I usually realise that it's actually just
> Emerald (or Nomuckingabout or Imprimis or whatever) with a couple of
> numbers changed. All my wholly original codes get completly gubbed by
> the "state of the net" ones (why didn't *I* think of impire :-(). In the
> true style of most research, I'm therefore limiting my search for
> novelty to one (1) original line in any new redcode. With this
> groundbreaking new design methodology, I've just sent my latest and
> greatest offering to koth . . .

One of the risks of publishing a good program is that others will make
a minor change to it and send it up.  Almost immediately after publishing
Imprimis a couple of *presumably-similar* programs appeared (Plasma Sheep
and - oh what's the name of that other one - +1 Tearjerker or something).
But in the long run, that's not really a problem.  The more versions of
similar programs that get put up, the more likely someone will write
a program that attacks just those programs successfully and move them
down the ladder.  Then someone will work out an improvement on the
base design that differentiates their version, and that gets everyone
going again.

For example, Flash Paper was very successful over the summer, until
some act-alikes made their way onto the hill.  It couldn't beat them
so its' own score began to slide.  Eventually, even Matt took another
look at the program and worked out an improvement.  First introductions
of new concepts are usually open for major improvements - witness Impire.

Of course no one wants 20 versions of Imprimis or Emerald or ScamScan
or whatever, so everybody continues to work on improving the designs
of all (now) four types of fighters - bombers, scanners, replicators,
and imps.  Each has a natural advantage over at least one of the
others and can be improved to do better against the rest.

For the continuing good of the game, we need to see more good code 
published.  Maybe next week, after the EBS tourney, folks will open
up a bit?  Please?

Paul Kline
pk6811s@acad.drake.edu