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

by Ian Millington (Author)
Key Phrases: combining steering behaviors, tactical pathfinding, steering pipeline, The Sims, Coordinated Action, Predicting Physics (more...)

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; Har/DVD 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 (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #37,968 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 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 (REAL NAME)

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 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dissapointing, September 28, 2008

By	Justin M. Kellogg - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book for an Artificial Intelligence for Games class at my University. I haven't read through all of the book, but I can already tell you that the pseudo-code in this book is very poor. It's obvious that the author didn't actually go through and run the code to make sure it worked. In the movement algorithms, the code would sometimes alter rotation (speed of orientation) when it should be altering the orientation itself. In the dynamic kinematics class, the code multiplies the velocity by the acceleration instead of just simply adding the acceleration to the velocity.

Even when you get the provided movement algorithms to work the way the author probably intended, there are still issues that aren't considered. I won't get into too much detail but an example is the "Arrive" behavior. It doesn't work properly because the bot never arrives at it's target. There is nothing in the algorithm that actually decelerates the bot or nullifies the velocity. So you basically get a bot that wiggles back and forth on stationary targets.

The explanations are pretty straight foward, and I admit I haven't read the full book yet. I just think it's pretty unacceptable to publish something with so many errors in the pseudo-code.

4 of 4 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 (REAL NAME)

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.