There's a bunch of different versions of Windows Vista out there. But there's only 3 versions that most people will care about:

• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Ultimate

Home Premium includes Media Center which is very cool.  Having been a Snapstream (BeyondTV) user and Tivo user, I have not been a fan of Media Center to say the least. But the Vista edition of it has won me over. It's just totally incredible. Windows Vista Business adds domain logons and better Remote Desktop Features. 

So for power users, there's a problem -- I want/need to be able to remote desktop into my machine and I use my machine on a network of computers and the business edition has all kinds of goodies for working with networked PCs.  On the other hand, I also want Media Center.

Microsoft predicted this and the result was Windows Vista Ultimate which combines them both.  And just to sweeten the pot, Microsoft has also includes "Ultimate Extras". These are basically downloadable super-power toys that Microsoft provides as an extra benefit.

As some may be aware, Stardock worked with Microsoft on Windows DreamScene, the animated wallpaper feature.  I'm quite a fan of the feature as many people have wanted animated wallpapers for years.  And before some net-geek says "But dude, there's been animated wallpapers for years" my answer is: yea right. Because yea, we've all been using them right? Oh..no, wait, that's right, previous attempts sucked down massive CPU and did flakey things to the icons and icon text on our desktops. 

By animated wallpaper I mean actual animation that a normal human being might actually use and not just a tech demo.  Windows DreamScene plays loopable high-definition wallpaper. Like static wallpaper, you'll likely see obnoxious things be created and useful. For me, it's about subtlety. If it's not slowing down my computer, what do I care if my desktop background isn't static? You can read more about it here.

So then it boils down to cost.  Which is where things get less fun...

UPGRADE PRICING:

• Windows Vista Home Premium: $159
• Windows Vista Business: $199
• Windows Vista Ultimate $259

Which means for Home Premium users they have to wonder whether Ultimate Extras, Remote Desktop, Network tools, and Domain logons is worth $100.  I'd itemize it like this personally:

• Remote Desktop $50 (if you're one of those people who think VNC is "just as good" see "go away" part at the beginning or better yet, go get Linux and be done with it)
• Ultimate Extras: $40
• Domain Logon: $30
• Network Tools: $20

Total: $140.  Now your mileage may vary on how much you think each of those is worth. I'm just saying how much those things are worth it to me.  If the number adds up to over $100 then you're in a good shape. If not, then there's a problem.

Personally, Ultimate it where it's at.  I want my cake and eat it too. I want to be able to Remote Desktop into my machine and I want to be able to have Media Center on it too. And having cool Ultimate Extras is icing on the cake.

Next week users of Object Desktop who have Windows Vista will be able to try out the first beta of LogonStudio.  We will be adding a "Vista Logons" gallery to WinCustomize.com where users can share their replacement Windows Vista logons.

In the following weeks, we plan to get the Vista boot screen section up and running as well.

If you don't have Object Desktop, you can get it at www.objectdesktop.com.

On the hierachy of lameness, you have:

1. A guy playing a video game
2. A guy watching his friend playing a video game
3. A guy watching computer players play each other in a video game.

I am at the bottom.

I watch computer players play each other. To see what smart things they do in different situations and what dumb things they do.  So much of good computer AI really boils down to play testing. The best algorithms in the world are no match for real world playing. And what looks like a good idea on paper can end up being a disaster in the real game.

The decision tree in Galactic Civilizations is actually pretty significant. Consider the choices it has to make. Then consider other strategy games you've played and think of the choices that have to be made there:

1. What should my tax rate be? The higher, the more unhappy my people will be which will slow down population growth but the more money I get.
2. What should my spending rate be? Spend too much and I'll run out of money or not have enough to make quick purchases. Spend too little and I'll fall behind.
3. How should I set my ratios of research, social, and military?
4. How should I design my ship? There's an infinite number of designs possible.
5. What technology should I research? There's over a dozen distinct, non-connected branches in GalCiv (look carefully at the # of branches in other games -- usually less than 3 or 4). Pick the wrong one and my economy might be weakened or maybe my industry weak or my military weak or my morale weak or maybe I won't be able to get those special worlds or maybe my logistics will be too low or maybe my miniaturization won't be competitive and so on.
6. What should I put on my planets? Do I use that special farming tile (i.e. put a farm on it?) or should I sacrifice it for another factory or a research center or save it for a galactic achievement or a fusion power plant? Or maybe build a farm but if I do, will I have space to put on morale improving buildings?
7. How should I use my military forces? Is the human player my friend or is his build up designed for a sneak attack? Should I escort my transport even though my transport moves at 10 moves per turn while my escorts only move at 4 or do I send it at that undefended planet that is only 12 moves away and the fog of war might be hiding an enemy there?
8. Should I hold back my fleet and wait for more shpis to be built to make a bigger fleet or should I send it out now and wreak some havoc?
9. Should I build a transport (only transports can take planets -- unlike in many other games where any unit can conquer the city/planet/star/) or a constructor to take that nearby resource?
10. Should I build a starbase near my planet or should I extend my range with a starbase?
11. Should I upgrade my starbase or construct a new one by a different planet?
12. Should I put resources into spies and if so, how much?
13. What should I be doing with my spies? Protect my worlds or send them out? If so, which worlds should they go to?
14. If I'm sending a spy to a given world, which planet improvements should I take out that will do the most harm to them based on the strategy that I perceive they're taking? Or alternatively, which enemy agent should I nulify?

Some of these decisions are more complex than others. The one I have the most difficulty with is one of the more straight forward -- what to research and when.  I've had others I've had to struggle with -- I didn't write, for instance, the planet improvement placement code in GalCiv II, but in Dark Avatar I've rewritten it (for better or worse) to something that matches more closely the way I play the game.

In most strategy games that have computer opponents, the decision tree is kept very small.  Think through the games you've played and consider the # of actual decisions that the computer opponents have to make. And by decisions, I mean actual choices as opposed to choices that are pretty obvious.

Consider your first 20 turns of Galactic Civilizations II. What should you research? If you research the same thing (i.e. you script it) you become predictable. If you just have the computer players randomly select what it should research, it becomes pretty obvious and ineffective. 

Having computer players that don't cheat makes it tough too. I can't just tell the computer players to send a colony ship to the closest uncolonized planet. It has to know about it or at least make a reasonable guess based not on real data but based on what the map looks like.  Very often players will complain that the AI should have not done this or that without realizing that the AI made its decision because it couldn't see their ships or a planet. Sometimes players will insist that the AI must know where the good planets are because it did what most good players would do -- built a colony ship and sent it into a sector full of planets that were on the galactic sensor map (the odds were in its favor after all).

In most games with tech trees, players are pretty much expected to research every technology. In GalCiv, players are punished for doing that. The tech tree is too big. Players have to pick and choose which techs for their strategy for a particular game. That means the AI can't just randomly muddle through. It has to wisely pick.  At lower difficulty levels, that's what I have the AI do -- randomly pick technologies. But higher up, people expect their opponents to be thinking about this stuff carefully -- and they do.

And so on a variety of maps, a variety of players, I watch them play each other. What's worse, I like doing it.

We are quickly coming up to the day when Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar goes gold.

With the last beta being nearly feature complete, work has begun to be totally focused on making the computer AI make full use of the new features as well as make use of the new options that take advantage of Dualcore and Quadcore machines.

As some people know, the AI in GalCiv is not scripted but is instead based on a series of adaptive algorithms based on trying to play similar to a human player (or at least a human player who is role playing as an alien race).  Each player has its own unique artificial intelligence engine which runs in multiple dedicated threads.

To see a running tab on how the computer players are doing, see the Journals area. There you will see the AI do stupid things and see how we tweak the algorithms so that it makes better decisions (usually based on making sure it has more information to make a decision on).

Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar will be released on February 14th. It is an on-line only release (i.e. you can only get it on its own here -- CD or digital download).  Users who pre-order it will be able to start getting it early (how early we can't say yet).

In beta 2, the AI was able to start using all the new features.  But post beta 2, i.e. the builds that aren't publicly available, the serious AI work starts going in.  And that's where tons of AI analysis, vs. AI gaming, AI vs. AI gaming, and so forth really gets going.  Getting the AI better at using transports, better technology handling, etc. are all very important.

Of course, to do all that, the AI bugs in beta 2 have to be fixed too (such as accidentally nulling of military prioritizing leading to researching of defensive techs but not offensive technologies -- i.e. slow researching of weapons).

The Setup: Drengin AI vs. Terran AI vs. Torian AI vs. Altarian AI

The Map: equally balanced for all sides

The results:

Game #1: Drengin Empire wins.

Final designs:

vs.

Notes:

Drengin dominates. However, no capital ships appear -- even though they have the tech. Still poor handling of transports.

Other AI faults noticed: Lack of Morale buildings on planets. Spotty technology research. Spotty use of galactic resources.

I play and I play and I play.

And every tiem I play, I still see stupid AI stuff. Which is bound to happen because, realistically, unless one hard codes it, the AI will make mistakes.  The challenge is always one of making sure that the AI is considering as many variables as possible and then tune it over and over and over and over.

Tonight's game I won easily.  Here were the results:

Technologies researched (and in order):

Wars:

First War: Player (Terran Alliance) vs. Torians

vs.

Result: Torians destroyed

Second War: Player (Terran Alliance) vs. Altarians

vs.

Result: Altarians destroyed

Other Ships:

Thalans:

Attack: 4 Defense: 4

Attack 2: Defense 2:

Player ships: 3 attack, 0 defense.

Changes made, next game...

CES is winding down but before it's all gone, check out the link below for some of the sights from CES 2007!

And so another Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has come to a close. What a show it was too. I think I'm ready to sleep for a week!

Here are some of the highlights...In Pictures!

Yahoo showed off their Windows Vista specific version of Yahoo Instant Messenger.

PowerUser.TV's Kristin Hatcher outside the Microsoft partner tent

http://qna.live.com looks very interesting. You basically go on and can ask questions and see (hope) that someone has an answer. Similarly, you can also try to answer other people's questions and people will vote on the best answer.  Your questions are stored as part of your account so you can go back and look at them.  In some respects, it is like getting help on Usenet taken to the next level. Whether it will work or not remains to be seen.

Microsoft really pushed their Home Server solution. It's designed to let your various home computers work together.

Microsoft IPTV looked very interesting as well.

Crysis, a new game for Windows Vista looked absolutely incredible. I've never seen a first person shooter look as good as this.

CES is huge and was packed.

LG was showing off appliances that will let users use both HD DVDs and Blu-Ray DVDs on the same drive (either a computer or for your living room).

LG was also showing a real live 3D monitor. No special glasses. If you were looking straight on on it, it really did look 3D!

The 100 inch LCD monitor. I need this...for...um..testing

Infocus showed their impressive SP777. A high-definition digital projector. It was incredibly impressive in action. It can do a 5000 to 1 contrast ratio. Uses the DarkChip(TM) with 3 DLP processors.

Samsung has this really cool little music player.

You can see all the CES coverage from this year plus the latest happenings with Windows Vista here at www.vistablogging.com.

As for me, I'm going to sleep for a week as soon as things calm down..

Mary Jo Foley knows Microsoft.  She's been covering them for the past decade.  Blogger Robert Scoble and his wife sit down and interview Mary Jo Foley. Check it out, definitely worth the watch.

Windows Vista comes in several different incarnations. But essentially there are two pathways -- the home user and the business user. However, at the very top of the pile is the Windows Vista SCU that gives you everything that is in both the top of the lines business editions and home editions -- Windows Vista Ultimate.

The main attraction of Windows Vista Ultimate is that users get all the professional features of Windows Vista Business like domain logon, full backup, full Remote Desktop support, and so forth as well as the full feature set of Windows Vista Home Premium such as Media Center, XBox 360 integration, etc.

But Microsoft sweetens the deal for Windows Vista Ultimate users in the form of Windows Vista Ultimate Extras. Ultimate Extras is an on-going series of downloadable content that allows Microsoft to deliver some outstanding new features to Ultimate users even after release.

This week at CES, Microsoft unveiled the first set of Ultimate Extras including Windows DreamScene, a game, bit locker support, a photo manipulation application, and multi-language on a single PC support.

Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley has more details on this below.

View: Ultimate Extras revealed

View: Windows Vista Editions