AI Game Programming Wisdom (with CD-ROM) (Game Development Series) (Hardcover)

~ Steve Rabin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

AI is one of the most challenging tasks a programmer can undertake, and this unique collection of articles provides programmers with a much-needed resource for conquering the challenge. AI Game Programming Wisdom takes an inclusive view of AI that assumes game AI involves anything an AI programmer might have to program to make intelligent characters. So, everything from basic AI architectures and learning to pathfinding, scripting, and animation selection is covered. In addition, genre specific articles cover highly focused subjects within the FPS, RTS, RPG, Racing, and Sports genres.

Written by AI experts, the articles serve as a road map to what has worked successfully for others and what might be possible in the future. They delve deep into AI game programming issues and provide insightful new ideas and techniques that can be easily integrated into your own games. This virtual toolbox includes a wide variety of tools for solving many common AI problems as well as solutions to genre specific issues you might encounter.

The book is divided into eleven comprehensive sections covering: General Wisdom; Useful Techniques and Specialized Systems; Pathfinding with A*; Pathfinding and Movement; Tactical Issues and Intelligent Group Movement; Architecting a Game AI; Decision-Making Architecture, FPS, RTS, and RPG AI; Racing and Sport AI; Scripting; and Learning.

Whether you are just getting into the industry or are a seasoned pro, this is a must-have resource for you and your team!

KEY FEATURES

* Contains the generous knowledge and insights of over 45 industry experts

* Provides comprehensive coverage of all aspects of AI game programming

* Includes insightful articles on "Learning" in AI - the next big thing

* Includes ready-to-use ideas and code

* Provides skill enhancement for beginning/ intermediate programmers, and insightful new ideas for the pros

On The CD-ROM: (Windows/Windows NT) Material that augments many of the articles, including demos of techniques, source code from the articles in C++ primarily, with a few in C and Java. There are also high-resolution versions of the color images, and links to useful and interesting game development sites.

System Requirements: Intel Pentium-series, AMD Athlon or newer processor recommended. Windows 95 (32MB RAM), or Windows NT4 (64MB RAM) or later required, 3D graphics card recommended for optimal performance, and DirectX 8 or higher.

Contributors

Joseph C. Adzima Bob Alexander Thor Alexander Greg Alt Jonty Barnes Lee Berger Gari Biasillo Bruce Blumberg Mark Brockington Timothy Cain Phil Carlisle Alex J. Champandard Chris Charla Mike Christian Mark Darrah Chad Dawson Richard Evans John Hancock Vernon Harmon Dan Higgins Jason Hutchens Damian Isla Sandeep V. Kharkar Kristin King Neil Kirby Francois Dominic Laramee Lars Liden John Manslow James Matthews Alex W. McLean Mike Mika Fri Mommersteeg John O'Brien Jeff Orkin Marco Pinter Falko Poiker Steve Rabin John Reynolds Bob Scott Tom Scutt P.J. Snavely Noah Stein Smith Surasmith Paul Tozour William van der Sterren Tom Vykruta Steven Woodcock Michael Zarozinski

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 (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #459,896 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This item is part of The Charles River Media Game Development Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 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 (REAL NAME)

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 (REAL NAME)

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

"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.