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Micromouse tournaments have been happening since the late 1970s, a deceptively simple form of robotics competition where entrants design small robots that must autonomously navigate a maze from start to finish as quickly as possible. A new video from documentary creators Veritasium highlights what it calls “The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition on Earth” and the deep struggle to optimize both physical engineering and robotics.

For my part I found it so interesting because I assumed that this style of robotics competition had gone out of fashion decades ago. As with many competitive events, however, it turns out that new innovations bred ever-more-clever solutions to the mazes and the mouse’s programming. One particularly dramatic moment comes when a team introduces diagonal movement, while another when someone starts solving for fastest traversal time rather than physically shortest path.

 “It turns out solving the maze is not the problem, right? It never was the problem, right?” says MIT Research Engineer David Otten in the video. “It’s actually about navigation, and it’s about going fast.”

A lot of the algorithms and programming you hear about in here are…

Intel has announced a new deal to make it easier for chip designers to use Intel’s 18A manufacturing tech to make Arm-based SoCs. But this doesn’t mean your next gaming PC will be Arm-powered, even if that may well happen one day.

The deal with Arm isn’t actually an agreement to manufacture anything immediately. Indeed, it’s not a deal between Intel and Arm to make anything at all, be that SoCs or CPUs.

Instead, it’s all about optimising Arm’s chip designs and IP for Intel’s upcoming 18A node, and vice versa, making it easier for the third party licensees who use that Arm IP to hire Intel to make their chips.

Intel says the support it will offer those eventual customers goes beyond traditional wafer fabrication to include “packaging, software and chiplets.” A sort of one-stop shop for turning an idea for a new SoC into a physical, usable product, then.

Moreover, this deal doesn’t really say anything new about Intel’s commitment to its x86 PC processors. The company’s IDM 2.0 strategy which CEO Pat Gelsinger laid out a couple of years ago expressly made foundry services, or manufacturing chips for and designed by customers, central to a new era envisaged f…

When I played Baldur’s Gate 3 back in the autumn, I decided to roll with a Dark Urge Paladin, and it was such a fascinating experience that I wrote a whole article about it. But to give you the notes, combining a class that’s sworn to abide by justice with a character who just flippin’ loves murder creates an incredible internal conflict, leading to a character arc which, for me, felt like the closest you could come to a canonical playthrough of BG3.

I’m sure everyone says that, because BG3 is designed to make whatever character you create fold into the story in a way that feels like it was always meant to be. As it turns out, though, I might have been closer to the mark than I thought, at least according to what the game’s own developers say.

Speaking to IGN’s Kat Bailey, Larian’s CEO Swen Vincke and lead writer Adam Smith discussed the development of the Dark Urge character. In the interview, Bailey says she’s considered rolling a Dark Urge Paladin for her next playthrough to which Smith responds “I think a Dark Urge Paladin is super interesting.” At this point Vincke reveals “The default class was originally going to be Paladin, but then we started thinking about …

A week after suddenly springing back to life—and more than eight months after the open beta was taken offline—Player First Games has announced that Smashlike fighting game Multiversus will go into full release on May 28.

Multiversus made quite a splash when it launched into open beta in July 2022, attracting millions of players and running through two full seasons before it was unexpectedly ended a year later. I thought there was a good chance it was gone for good—Warner’s been rolling that way lately—but the resumption of activity on Multiversus’ social media accounts last week pretty clearly indicated otherwise.

Much has changed during its time away. Multiversus has moved to Unreal Engine 5 and has been “rebuilt from the ground up to support our new netcode,” which director Tony Huynhy said will provide more consistent and accurate gameplay regardless of platform. Each character in the game will have “new attacks and combat mechanics,” and a new PvE mode with “unique rewards” has been added.

Huynh also teased the addition of “some really exciting brand new personalities” to the Multiversus lineup, although nothing specific on who’s com…

Starfield‘s fast travel and loading screen-heavy approach to space exploration has become something of a thorny subject—PC Gamer’s own Morgan Park felt the sting of the game’s boundaries recently, with some players upset they’re getting something closer to Mass Effect than No Man’s Sky.

Pre-release, Todd Howard spoke with IGN about Bethesda’s decision to keep surface and space separate, explaining that “the on-surface is one reality, and then when you’re in space it’s another reality.” When it comes to zipping around in-game, unless you’re grav-jumping your ship isn’t fast enough to get much of anywhere. It’s mainly there for ship-to-ship interaction, dogfighting, and getting prank called.

Undeterred, games writer and streamer Alanah Pearce (charalanahzard on Twitch) tested those boundaries herself on her stream over the weekend. “So, I’m going to bed,” Pearce states at the top of the stream, before deliberating over which celestial body to fly towards—she chooses the dwarf planet Pluto. It has a slow orbit, making it the least likely to drift away while she leaves the game to idle.

She finds the ideal flight direction, …