AI Game Programming Wisdom (with CD-ROM) (AI Game Programming Wisdom (W/CD)) [Hardcover]

Steve Rabin (Author)

Book Description

Series: AI Game Programming Wisdom (W/CD) | Publication Date: March 12, 2002

Learn how AI experts create intelligent game objects and characters with this first volume in the AI Game Programming Wisdom series. This unique collection of articles gives programmers and developers access to the insights and wisdom of over thirty AI pros. Each article delves deep into key AI game programming issues and provides insightful new ideas and techniques that can be easily integrated into your own games. Everything from general AI architectures, rule based systems, level-of-detail AI, scripting language issues, to expert systems, fuzzy logic, neural networks, and genetic algorithms are thoroughly covered. If you're a game programmer (AI/logic, front-end, user interface, tools, graphics, etc.) this comprehensive resource will help you take your skills and knowledge to the next level.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Steve Rabin is a 10-year video game industry veteran working at Nintendo of America. He’s written AI for three published games and was a contributor to both Game Programming Gems 1 and 2. He also served as the AI section editor for Game Programming Gems 2, and has spoken on AI at the Game Developers Conference. He holds a degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Washington where he specialized in robotics, and resides in Redmond, Washington.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 672 pages
• Publisher: Charles River Media; 1st edition (March 12, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584500778
• ISBN-13: 978-1584500773
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #145,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference, useful for a broad audience, June 3, 2002

By 

Paolo Gaudiano (Essex, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: AI Game Programming Wisdom (with CD-ROM) (AI Game Programming Wisdom (W/CD)) (Hardcover)

I bought this book because of one particular article on swarm simulations. Once I got the book I was amazed by the breadth of topics and by the quality of the articles. I found myself leafing through the entire book and exploring the CD-ROM.
The book is well written and nicely organized into logical sections. Where space considerations prevented an author from going into great detail, the companion CD-ROM and the list of references gave great opportunities to explore the subject further.
I should also mention that my background is not in gaming, but more in scientific applications and consulting. This book is an excellent reference even for non-gamers. It is sufficiently general in its coverage to allow me to understand the context of each article, and sufficiently detailed that I would feel comfortable implementing any of the algorithms presented.
In all, this is an excellent book that should be equally useful to gaming enthusiasts, programmers, and other technical people looking for a solid reference that covers a number of interesting algorithms, techniques and approaches to some challenging computational problems.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of useful tips, July 4, 2003

By 

Amit Patel (SF Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: AI Game Programming Wisdom (with CD-ROM) (AI Game Programming Wisdom (W/CD)) (Hardcover)

It's hard to find good information about game programming and design. The trouble is that people working in the industry have an incentive to keep their techniques secret -- they don't want their competitors to learn them. The people who aren't in the industry can write about games but don't have the experience to back it up.

Game AI Programming Wisdom gives us wisdom from people who have worked on real games. Each section is a short explanation of a particular problem (like pathfinding, tactical reasoning, or pattern recognition). Since they're short and independent, you can pick the section that applies to the problem you're trying to solve and read that without having to read everything in order. However, each section is written by a different person, so if you try to read the book straight through you will be distracted by the change in writing styles and level of detail.

I'm quite glad to see this book. It's actually the first game programming/design book that I purchased. (I'm quite picky when it comes to books. I'm sure Amazon doesn't like that.) Most of the game books I see go into low level programming details. This book teaches you the principles and techniques that will be useful for more than the specific problems they cover.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A useful collection of AI game techniques, December 16, 2002

By 

Tyler C. Folsom (Redmond, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: AI Game Programming Wisdom (with CD-ROM) (AI Game Programming Wisdom (W/CD)) (Hardcover)

"Artificial Intelligence" means different things to different people. One useful application is the control of nonplayer characters (NPC) in video games. This is the first book to address this field. Like any collection of papers, it is uneven and does not systematically cover the subject. It should be read in conjunction with a traditional AI text, such as Murphy "Introduction to AI Robotics", Russell and Norvig "Artificial Intelligence: a Modern Approach", Tom Mitchell "Machine Learning" or perhaps Bruce Blumberg's forthcoming "Synthetic Characters".

I teach AI at DigiPen Institute of Technology and made this one of the required books. It is good in showing which techniques are most useful in games and what you need to consider when designing your AI. Some papers are overly general and some are too specific. That's probably unavoidable, but game programmers can pick and choose the most appropriate ideas. Unfortunately, some of the better introductory articles on A*, finite state machines, flocking and fuzzy logic are not in this book but in "Game Programming Gems".

Once you understand the basics of AI, this book can save some major headaches by helping with the selection of an appropriate architecture. The CD has source code to help you get off to a good start. Reading the appropriate articles will let you anticipate problems before they happen and design around them. Professional game programmers will likely find at least one technique that pays back the cost of the book.