AI for Game Developers (Paperback)

~ (Author), Glenn Seemann (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Advances in 3D visualization and physics-based simulation technology make it possible for game developers to create compelling, visually immersive gaming environments that were only dreamed of years ago. But today's game players have grown in sophistication along with the games they play. It's no longer enough to wow your players with dazzling graphics; the next step in creating even more immersive games is improved artificial intelligence, or AI.

Fortunately, advanced AI game techniques are within the grasp of every game developer--not just those who dedicate their careers to AI. If you're new to game programming or if you're an experienced game programmer who needs to get up to speed quickly on AI techniques, you'll find AI for Game Developers to be the perfect starting point for understanding and applying AI techniques to your games.

Written for the novice AI programmer, AI for Game Developers introduces you to techniques such as finite state machines, fuzzy logic, neural networks, and many others, in straightforward, easy-to-understand language, supported with code samples throughout the entire book (written in C/C++). From basic techniques such as chasing and evading, pattern movement, and flocking to genetic algorithms, the book presents a mix of deterministic (traditional) and non-deterministic (newer) AI techniques aimed squarely at beginners AI developers. Other topics covered in the book include: Potential function based movements: a technique that handles chasing, evading swarming, and collision avoidance simultaneously Basic pathfinding and waypoints, including an entire chapter devoted to the A* pathfinding algorithm AI scripting Rule-based AI: learn about variants other than fuzzy logic and finite state machines Basic probability Bayesian techniques Unlike other books on the subject, AI for Game Developers doesn't attempt to cover every aspect of game AI, but to provide you with usable, advanced techniques you can apply to your games right now. If you've wanted to use AI to extend the play-life of your games, make them more challenging, and most importantly, make them more fun, then this book is for you.

About the Author

Bourg, as a naval architect and marine engineer, performs computer simulations and develops analysis tools that measure such things as hovercraft performance and the effect of waves on the motion of ships and boats.

Glenn Seemann is a veteran game programmer with over a dozen games for Mac and Windows systems to his credit. He's a co-founder, with David Bourg, of Crescent Vision Interactive, a game development company specializing in cross platform games for both online and retail distribution.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (July 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596005555
• ISBN-13: 978-0596005559
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #604,288 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars No, no, no!, August 20, 2004

By	Mr AI "aideveloper" (UK) - See all my reviews

Oh dear. This is a really poor book, and I'd advise you to save your money and buy something else.

Bourg's first book on game development (on Phyiscs) suffered poor reviews for being shallow, not presenting real-world techniques, and glossing over huge gaping problems in his approach. This book has all the same problems, and even more strongly in places.

Firstly he makes a big point of saying that the book is aimed at novice developers and he will cover only a few techniques designed to get you up and running. In his list, however, he has genetic algorithms, neural networks and production systems, all of which large AI teams for major developers find it very hard to get working usefully (e.g. finding an application suited for a GA in a game is just about impossible). His approaches are in places laughable.

Secondly he then lauds completely inappropriate algorithms. His steering system is based on potential functions, for example, and he proposes this because he says it allows you to mix several different movement concerns. This is completely disingenuous to his readers. The technique is very simple and useful only when several concerns are NOT blended together. When you mix things you ALWAYS get wells-of-attraction and your characters get stuck hopelessly. Just about ANY other technique would improve on this (and there's no use just saying 'do pathfinding' either: there's much more mileage in steering algorithms).

And the final thing that annoyed me was his approach all the way along of saying 'I'm only going to show you a few techniques'. Trying to make the selling point of the book that it doesn't cover anywhere near enough ground to get your AI up and running!

Just about every chapter had significant problems in it. His knowledge of the subject wouldn't pass a sophomore AI exam (I've taught AI courses at University: I'm not exaggerating). It is full of innaccuracies (e.g. he says 'new AI' is non-deterministic, while 'old AI' is deterministic - a moronic comment).

If you are a novice trying to get going in AI, this book will seriously harm you development. Try John Funge's new book, or the new Morgan Kauffman book (you'll have to wait a few months). Even reaching through the two AI Programming Wisdom will see you far better prepared for real development, despite the odd lemon of an article in them.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Conceptually OK, terrible code & implementation, June 19, 2005

By	Eli Bendersky (Israel) - See all my reviews

AI for Game Developers is a book aimed at beginner game programmers that want to apply AI techniques in their games. The range of topics covered is vast, chasing, flocking, pathfinding, state machines, bayesian networks, neutal networks, genetic algorithms, fuzzy logic and more.

The authors spend time to explain these AI concepts from the ground up, with numerous code samples and accompanied by full programs including GUIs & simulations, downloadable form the book's website.

So far all good, but not really so if you look a little closer. For a programmer with more experience than the complete novice, many problems become apparent quickly:

The code listings ("examples", as the authors uncommonly call them) are lacking in many aspects. The code is of low quality. C++-- some call it, and it's an appropriate name for the code of this book (take a big program with a bunch of globals and void foo(void) operating on them, wrap it all (public) in a class, and call it Object Oriented). The principal author is a scientific programmer, which shows well since the code looks sometimes like a port from Fortran. The code is also poorly typeset, in a font almost identical to the text, which makes samples hard to spot and follow. The authors also paste huge amounts of code in the book that sometimes fill whole pages, without any apparent reason. Another little deficiency is the typesetting / overall formatting quality of the book - some diagrams are simply missing, fonts are uncomfortable (especially the mix of code & text)...

It seems that most of this book's problems are about the code, though. On the conceptual level, the book is not bad. As far as I can judge, the explanations are clear and even novices should have no trouble understanding how the algorithms work. Just look away from the code, please !!

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent agents should steer clear from this book, July 17, 2005

By	Riccardo Audano (Chiavari, Italy) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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Terrible and useless even for a book on AI for budding game developers. The theory and explanations in this book are sometimes decent but more often than not quite lacking. (es: in one of the first chapter the author uses Bresenham algorithm without taking the time to explain it). The use of tile based examples introduce unnecessary overhead, and the continuos attempts to introduce physics related code and references to the author's other book on game physics are just plain annoying. The range of subjects covered is very broad (chasing and evading, pathfinding, emergent behaviours, rule based reasoning, bayesian networks, neural networks, fuzzy logic, finite state machines, genetic algorithms), definitely too broad to treat each of these subject in decent depth and with clarity. Example code is of low quality and just superficially object-oriented. If you are looking for a decent introduction to game AI I recommend Matt Buckland "Programming Game AI by Example" and "AI Techniques for Game Programming".