Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This is mad. Over on StarCraft 2 forum Teamliquid, a poster who goes by Lomilar has been talking about a program he’s coded called EvolutionChamber. It uses genetic algorithms to find powerful build orders, meaning his program takes a population of build orders, kills off the useless ones, and has the most successful ones reproduce asexually to create a new population, which tests itself again, and so on. I’m taking all this from this blog post by programmer Louis Brandy, wherein he breaks down what Lomilar’s done so that lay folk can understand it.

EvolutionChamber’s already come up with one ludicrous build order, which I’ve posted beneath the jump.
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In 17 years, it will be 2010. The number 17 is important to us because that’s the age at which mother will finally let us buy our own clothes. Also, 2010 sounds totally sci-fi. We’ll defintely have jetpacks and laser-epiglottises by then. Having spent years deep in exhaustive, cutting-edge research, these are our top 17 (we do like that number) predictions for the future:
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Brief self-linking ahoy – IGN asked me to pen a quick round-up of ten of the most theoretically scintillating PC games due next year. That’s “10 of”, not “the 10″. It’s all stuff you fine, PC-loving human beings will already be eminently aware of, but thought you’d be interested to a) observe the random leaps my tiny brain makes when coming up with lists and b) start thinking in this thread about what you’re most looking forward to, given 2009′s big games are about to come and go this month. Yeah? Yeah.

(Oh, and I didn’t write the bit about Alienware at the bottom, and I’m sorry about the intro typo.)

Games For Windows top spokesman (and RPS’ favourite name in the games industry), Kevin Unangst, has been interviewed by Gamasutra’s Brandon Sheffield. In the interview Unangst is careful to talk up the PC, while avoiding the clear and present fact that the humble box will ultimately outmode and obliterate the console toys and become the de facto single format for gaming. Wuh? Crazy talk? Nolan Bushnell is with me. Find out what I’m wittering about after the link.
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Some interesting (and perhaps worrying) facts’n'quotes over in this report on PC industry heavyweights discussing the future of the ol’ IBM Compatible as a gaming platform. They claim all is rosy and well, but it seems PC gaming generates half a billion dollars less now than it did in 2001 – though as the piece points out this doesn’t include digital distribution such as Gametap or Steam (and, I’d guess, MMO subscriptions too). Or, indeed, pirated copies of games, the elephant in that particular room which doesn’t seem to have been mentioned, and could quite possibly account for some of the drop from $1.5 billion to $970 million over the last five years.

I can’t help but get a little bit snooty and defensive when I hear talk of something rotten in the state of PC gaming. Read the rest of this entry »