Artificial Intelligence for Games (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology) [Hardcover]

Ian Millington (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0124977820 | ISBN-13: 978-0124977822 | Publication Date: June 21, 2006 | Edition: 1

Creating robust artificial intelligence is one of the greatest challenges for game developers. The commercial success of a game is often dependent upon the quality of the AI, yet the engineering of AI is often begun late in the development process and is frequently misunderstood.

In this book, Ian Millington brings extensive professional experience to the problem of improving the quality of AI in games. A game developer since 1987, he was founder of Mindlathe Ltd., at the time the largest specialist AI company in gaming. Ian shows how to think about AI as an integral part of game play.

He describes numerous examples from real games and explores the underlying ideas through detailed case studies. He goes further to introduce many techniques little used by developers today. The book's CD-ROM contains a library of C++ source code and demonstration programs, and provides access to a website with a complete commercial source code library of AI algorithms and techniques.

* A comprehensive, professional tutorial and reference to implement true AI in games.
* Walks through the entire development process from beginning to end.
* Includes over 100 pseudo code examples of techniques used in commercial games, case studies for all major genres, a CD-ROM and companion website with extensive C++ source code implementations for Windows, and source code libraries for Linux and OS X available through the website.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Ian Millington crosses the boundary between academic and professional game AI with his book Artificial Intelligence for Games. Most books either lack academic rigor or are rigorous with algorithms that won't work under the CPU constraints imposed by modern games. This book walks a line between the two and does it well. It explains algorithms rigorously while also discussing appropriate implementation details such as scheduling AI over time and using the right data structures. I will be using this book for my Game AI course." -Jessica D. Bayliss, Ph.D., Rochester Institute of Technology

"This is the first serious attempt to create a comprehensive reference for all game AI practices, terminology, and know-how. Works like this are badly needed by the maturing video games industry. Systematic yet accessible, it is a must-have for any student or professional." -Marcin Chady, Ph.D., Radical Entertainment

"This book promises to be the closest I've seen to what is needed in the field. I would highly recommend it for people in the industry." -John Laird, University of Michigan

"Ian Millington's book is a comprehensive reference to the most widely used techniques in game AI today. Any game developer working on AI will learn something from this book, and game producers should make sure their AI programmers have a copy." -Dr. Ian Lane Davis, Mad Doc Software

Book Description

The first comprehensive tutorial for professionals to implementing AI in games

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 896 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1 edition (June 21, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0124977820
• ISBN-13: 978-0124977822
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #474,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressed, this is well worth it., August 18, 2006

By 

Adam Larson (Sturgeon Bay, WI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Artificial Intelligence for Games (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology) (Hardcover)

I have been fascinated with AI for a long time, so I was excited to see this book. I own 3 other AI books, and all of them are really good. This book explains things in a way that is easy to understand. The author doesn't use any C++ in the book every algorithm is done in pseudo-code to make it easy to implement using any language. It is a definitive guide to the basic and not so basic AI techniques. The aicore that the author provides on the CD is well documented and is very helpful.

The book covers:
Steering behaviors
Pathfinding
Decision Making
State Machines
Fuzzy Logic
Waypoints
Learning Behaviors
Communication
Teaching characters

And a break down of how a typical AI design is done in different types of games.

Just to give you a notion I am about 12 hours into this book. So I may add or change this as I get further along, but overall this is a must have book.

There are a few things that I personally don't like. One is no .exe are on the cd so everything has to be built. This is a new book, so maybe the author will build them and place them on his website. I would also like to see some solutions for Visual Studio on the cd. The author says several times he tries and makes the code as platform independent as possible, but It would be nice to have prebuilt .exe files at least so I can see the demo's in action.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful Concepts Made Easy, June 17, 2008

By 

Kevin Vitale (Detroit, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Artificial Intelligence for Games (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology) (Hardcover)

Understand that the pseudo-code approach this book takes is what makes it such a standout from the rest of the crowd. The author is technically thorough and the syntax is straightforward enough to use in any language needed. Moreover, it frees the author to discuss AI in abstract terms which, in the end, proves to be much more valuable content. C++ source code puts the pseudo-code discussions into practice for those looking for real-world examples.

I would HIGHLY recommend this book as a follow up to Mat Buckland's "Programming Game AI by Example" (Nov., 2004)

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent C++ Source for AI, July 26, 2008

By 

J. Wrenholt (Lincoln, NE United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Artificial Intelligence for Games (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology) (Hardcover)

This is a very solid book on AI for games.

The C++ source code provided with the book is excellent. While the examples are visually unexciting, they demonstrate the power of the book's principles without the clutter that a complete graphics game would require. I was able to compile and build all the examples on the CD in one evening. The code demonstrates many of the best practices of C++ programming and design patterns.

The author builds up a nice AI engine as you progress through the book. The C++ code from the CD (or web-site) is well commented and ties exactly into the pseudocode in the book.

Millington goes into considerable detail as he reveals the power of Artificial Intelligence for Games. He carefully explains each step including the math and physics required to carry out the execution. It is obvious that he has a great deal of experience in writing computer games. He shows you a clear solid way of doing things and then discussed the strengths and weaknesses by comparing it to other techniques and addressing possible optimizations.

To read and understand this book takes time and hard work. Artificial Intelligence is a large and complex topic in math and computer science programs. The author has brought many nuggets of wisdom from that branch of research and made them understandable and useful for game programmers. Not an easy job, but Millington is one of the best at explaining difficult concepts in a clear and straight forward way.

The other reviewer's that are knocking this book because of the code, don't know what they are talking about. The code is excellent and what makes this a 5-star pick.