Galactic Arms Race

I recently came across an interesting game whilst surfing the Intrawebs, called Galactic Arms Race (or GAR). The developers describe the game as "Space Diablo", with real-time combat, cool particle system weapons, and RPG-style leveling and skill trees. At first looks it's a relatively simple space shooter where players choose one of three alien factions, then proceed to battle aliens, pirates, and other villainous enemies, gain levels, skills and find new weapons. Nothing new there then.

What is new, and most interesting about this game, is that none of the weapons are created by the games developers, but are instead created by the game itself. You read that right, self-evolving game content. The game uses a complex set of algorithms called cgNEAT (content-generating NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies). It takes popular weapons (based on how often they are fired or equipped) and evolves them based on preferred player features. Players are limited to only being able to use a few weapons, so they must choose which ones they wish to use carefully.

The original game website can be found here, a general look at the weapons system can be found here and a complex and detailed look at the system behind it can be found here.