🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <28334@castle.ed.ac.uk> sah@castle.ed.ac.uk (Juggler) writes:
>
>Roger Ford (or is it Chris??) writes:
>There are a finite number of ways to implement Red Code warrriors,
>just as an example.  Both Sucker 4 and the first Kobold both use a step 
>rate of 37.  Granted one bombs and one slaves  are we going to say that
>one guy copied another.  No matter what you change the step rate to
>Emerald is just Kobold is just  Stone.
>

Well, in this case it's genuinely "parallel development". Sucker 4 entered the
hill sometime May/June, but I didn't post the code until it got pushed off 
two weeks ago. The code to Kobold was posted somewhere between those two time
points, I think. A good constant can make the difference between doom and
success on KotH, but it strikes me as silly to claim "intellectual
property" for a number.

I personally have no problem with copycatting, *provided* the code originator
is acknowledged in the strategy lines or as co-author. I've had a long and
fruitful collaboration with Jules Cisek that started when I optimized his 
posted Charon v1.0. Lately, Matt Hastings has approached me with some
anti-imp mods to Agony (taught me a lot about ring-defenses, too), a
collaboration I hope to continue.

-Stefan (stst@vuse.vanderbilt.edu)

P.S.: I wish Bill Shubert would add a filter to KotH that rejects warriors
with missing or uninformative strategy lines. "Sorry, your redcode program
did not compile successfully due to insufficient documentation" :-) :-)