🚀 go-pugleaf

Imp rings on the X-hill tend to work differently than they do on the
standard hill.  Among the reasons for this, the largest step an
imp-ring can use on the X-hill is 250, which limits you to a few values,
like 127, 63, and 21.  One of the effects this has on gating is that
you can't be sure what step is being used in the attack, so you need
to make your gates adaptive.  The problem with this is that X-hill
programs tend to be larger, hence more vulnerable to imp rings and 
my adaptive gates tend to be just large enough that it either won't
fit, or makes the program too big of a target.

Well, I came up with what I call the lazy imp-ring defense, which is
to launch an imp if you unexpectedly find yourself outside your program.

Many of my programs use monitors, which just wait for a certain number
of clock cycles to occur, then do some action.  Here is how it looks
in most of my programs

	MOV	#WAIT, DELAY
DELAY	DJN	DELAY,#0
	JMZ	DOIT,DELAY
	MOV	0,1

Basically, as soon as the imp ring writes (MOV 0,STEP) to DELAY,
it drops out of the delay loop, and since DELAY isn't 0, we know we left
abnormally.  Now, an imp isn't the best imp-ring defense, but I find it
scores much better than many of my own programs (Sonic Boom in particular)
and at any rate, deprives the opponent of a lot of points.

-- 
Eric J. Schwertfeger, maniac@cs.unlv.edu