
  MEVO For Windows
  ================

This is the MEVO Evolver code version 10/2/09 compiled for Windows.
It's now much faster thanks to the binrun program which bypasses
the cmd.exe command interpreter when shelling pmars, improving the
speed of evolving nano warriors by about three times. It still isn't
as fast as the Linux version of MEVO but much better than it was.
If there are any issues related to binrun then remove the
set comspec line from the run_mevo.bat file.

This version of MEVO and its utilities has been tested under Windows XP.
Operation with other versions of Windows has not been tested. Other things
compiled using FreeBasic worked under Vista etc so MEVO itself "should" work
there, however the package includes some optional dos-based programs that
may cause issues, in particular the dos/286 version of pmarsv and the
dos-compiled plotlog program. The pmarsv program is easily replaced, the
plotlog program isn't necessary for evolving, just a crude way to chart
performance over time from logged data.

Although MEVO performs much less disk I/O than old warrior-file-based
evolvers, it still writes a few temp files (to temp under the main dir)
which the OS flushes to disk every few seconds. Never run MEVO on a
solid-state disk such as a thumbdrive or some netbooks. To eliminate
all disk writes use a ram disk program. Possibilities include AR Ramdisk
from AR Soft (http://www.arsoft-online.com/), for Vista see these notes:
http://www.fiveanddime.net/windows-vista-notes/ram-disk-howto.html
Other notes are at: http://www.satsignal.eu/wxsat/Dexatek/RAMdisk.html
Other possibly more Vista-compatible possibilities include:
http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk/
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/ (ram disk link towards end)
I have only tested AR Ramdisk under Windows XP, seems to work fine there.
When using a ram disk, for best results prepare a master copy of the
evolver containing only the needed things (move binaries to another
path directory, eliminate unneeded sources, test sets, utilities, etc),
copy the master dir to the ram disk and rename it to reflect the run,
then when done evolving copy it back to the hard disk to archive results.

Everything that should be needed to evolve is included, double-click
the run_mevo.bat file to start. Default INI is for evolving nano warriors,
to evolve for other coresizes copy one of the other .ini files to replace
the mevo.ini file. An old version of pmarsv.exe is included with the
INI files set to text mode for using the run and battle functions, if
pmarsvopts is set to display graphics then it switches to full screen.
Note that this is an old dos program and might not work well with newer
versions of Windows. For better results get the pmarsw.exe and sdl.dll
files from: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jpihlaja/cw/pmars-sdl/
The binaries be placed in the bin directory, edit the INI to specify
pmarsw and if not in bin or in a path directory, also specify the path.
Experiment with pmarsvopts to specify speed and graphics mode.

See mevo_docs.txt for general information about the MEVO program.

Benchmarking tools are in the benchtools directory, see the
readme there for instructions. The benchmark programs can be made
to run faster by running the .bas sources under QBasic instead of
using the compiled versions, after putting a copy of qbasic.exe in
a path directory (or in MEVO's bin or benchbins directory) edit the
batch files to run: qbasic /run benchbins\bench.bas
instead of the stock bench.exe program. They may also be run
using the Blassic interpreter: blassic benchbins\bench.bas

The plotlog program isn't exactly Windows-friendly, The original version
works well when compiled by FreeBasic for Linux but so far I've had no luck
getting a FreeBasic-compiled version (or any graphics) to work in Windows.
Modified and compiled using FirstBasic, the source can be run under QBasic.
Runs full-screen. Because that makes it very difficult to make a screen dump,
added dos-specific code that outputs the image to a "plotlog.bmp" bitmap file,
requires about 10-20 seconds to write the file before the program will respond
to a keypress to exit. BMP is not an efficient format but should be easy to
convert to whatever is needed. Tested under Windows XP. Newer versions of
Windows might not like it, besides being dos it uses OUT/INP to access
hardware ports to obtain the color palette in use.

MEVO is Copyright 2009 Terry Newton under the terms of the GNU General Public
License (GPL), the utilities may be considered public domain. All software
in this archive is provided as-is and without warranty.

Various benchmark sets put that were together by various experimenters are
included, most are linked from: http://www.corewar.co.uk/bench.htm
The nanob2 test set is the top 20 warriors from the June 2009 Koenigstuhl
nano hill: http://users.obs.carnegiescience.edu/birk/COREWAR/NANO/hill_rec.html
The warriors themselves are the creations of their individual authors
as noted in the comments of the .red files.

Package history...

11/1/09  Added binrun.exe to speed up nano evolving.

10/31/09 Modified the benchtools scripts and findbest program to avoid
         having to enter report filenames when running findbest.

10/13/09 Initial Windows package based on the 10/2/09 version of MEVO.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Terry Newton (wtn90125@yahoo.com)

