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Mat Buckland

Programming Game AI by Example 1st Edition

by Mat Buckland (Author)

4.6 177 ratings

Part of: Wordware Game Developer's Library (4 books)

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Programming Game AI by Example provides a comprehensive and practical introduction to the “bread and butter” AI techniques used by the game development industry, leading the reader through the process of designing, programming, and implementing intelligent agents for action games using the C++ programming language. Techniques covered include state- and goal-based behavior, inter-agent communication, individual and group steering behaviors, team AI, graph theory, search, path planning and optimization, triggers, scripting, scripted finite state machines, perceptual modeling, goal evaluation, goal arbitration, and fuzzy logic.

ISBN-10

1556220782
ISBN-13

978-1556220784
Edition

1st
Publisher

Jones & Bartlett Learning
Publication date

October 14, 2004
Part of series

Wordware Game Developer's Library
Language

English
Dimensions

6.5 x 1 x 9 inches
Print length

495 pages
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Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"Programming Game AI by Example stands out from the pack by providing industrial-strength solutions to difficult problems, like steering and goal-oriented behavior. Mat guides the reader toward building a foundation robust enough for real games. This book is a must-have for anyone new to the field, and has tips for the seasoned professional as well. I wish I had read it eight years ago!"
---Jeff Orkin, AI architect, Monolith Productions, No One Lives Forever 2 and F.E.A.R

"...a nice combination of a lot of really useful information, put together in a way that doesnt make my brain leak."
---Gareth Lewis, Project leader, Lionhead Studios, Black & White 2

"Each chapter of Mats book gently introduces the reader to a fundamental game AI technology before expanding the new idea into a fully formed solution replete with extensive code and clearly worded examples. The tone of the book is uncomplicated and accessible to the reader, allowing a novice programmer the opportunity to get to grips with the basics of game AI programming by implementing their own systems direct from theory or expanding upon code examples offered to gain understanding in a sandbox environment. Once individual technologies are fully understood, the book goes on to combine these ideas into several complete game environments allowing the reader to understand the relationships between the interacting systems of an overarching game architecture."
---Mike Ducker, AI programmer, Lionhead Studios, Fable

"Using easy-to-follow and well-described examples, this book shows you how to use most of the techniques professional AI programmers use. A great introduction for the beginner and an excellent reference for the more experienced!"
---Eric Martel, AI programmer, Ubisoft, Far Cry (XBox)

"Programming Game AI by Example is an excellent book for the game programming neophyte, the intermediate programmer, and even the expert - it doesnt hurt to go over familiar ground, does it? The book concisely covers all of the important areas, including basic maths and physics through to graph theory and scripting with Lua, to arm any programmer with the tools needed to create some very sophisticated agent behaviours. Unusually for books of the type, Programming Game AI by Example is solid in its software engineering too, with the example code demonstrating game uses of familiar design patterns. Id have no qualms about recommending Programming Game AI by Example to any programmer. Its an excellent read and an excellent springboard for ideas."
---Chris Keegan, Technical director, Climax Studios (Solent)

About the Author

Mat Buckland is a freelance programmer and writer. He became interested in AI when he coded Waddington’s Monopoly for the ZX Spectrum way back in the ’80s, and over the years his passion for making computers “think” has never faded. He is the author of the book AI Techniques for Game Programming and the founder of ai-junkie.com, a popular web site that specializes in AI tutorials. He is also a member of the AI Interface Standards Committee and co-hosts the AI round table at the European Game Developers Conference.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Jones & Bartlett Learning; 1st edition (October 14, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 495 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1556220782
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1556220784
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.5 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #391,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #104 in Computer & Video Game Design
- #206 in Game Programming
- #1,162 in Computer Software (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.6 177 ratings

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177 global ratings

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A. M. Hernandez

A Stellar Book On All Accounts. A Must Have For AI Coders.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 27, 2015

Verified Purchase

Programming Game AI By Example by Mat Buckland is one of those books that comes highly recommended and was one I had been meaning to read for a long time. In fact, I originally purchased the paperback in 2006 and never got around to reading it. The interesting part is that the book is still very much relevant today and is not dated in the least. Well now maybe some of the engines and middleware have this stuff built in, but the fundamentals I think I still important to understand.

The book starts with a quick primer on math and physics. The basics are explained, like Cartesian coordinates, trigonometry, vectors, coordinate spaces, and some physics. Like most people reading a book of this level, the beginning was a light refresher. However, I’m a big stickler for reading books from cover to cover with no skipping around, so I did not mind a short recap. Next Buckland gets into state-driven design and demonstrates a simple command-line app using the concepts. I found this approach successful, and it was able to show the concepts without complex 2D or 3D math getting in the way.

He followed up with autonomous moving agents, mostly based on steering behaviors. I was already somewhat familiar with steering behaviors, but I found the author’s description and code to be clear and concise and explained the concept better than I’ve seen before. He then applies the previous topics to a simple soccer game. This was a great next step, and really compiled the knowledge being taught into something concrete. In the next chapter, the author went into graphs; what they are, how to use them, and some popular algorithms link Dijkstra and A*. I always wanted to know what A* was, and this book explains it fairly well.

Buckland then devotes a section to cover scripting languages and why they are useful. In this case, he chose Lua (not a bad choice) and explains some basics about the language, how to interface it with C++, and creates a simple finite state machine. This chapter is helpful even if you’re not coding AI and just need a scripting language for your game or engine (provided you like Lua). In fact, a lot of the concepts in this book are generic enough that they can be applied to multiple fields of interest for game developers.

Next, the author creates a simple overhead game framework used in the subsequent examples. Using this framework he then shows practical path planning, goal driven agent behavior, and finishes up with fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic is another one of those buzzwords that always intrigued me but I never really understood. Buckland concludes with a quite excellent explanation of the concept.

Overall I found this book to be stellar on all accounts. I feel that any game developer could gain insight from this text, even if they aren’t primarily working with AI programming. The scripting coverage could be used in many games, and the algorithms covered are generic enough to apply to different disciplines. While this is the first book I’ve read on AI, I really can’t imagine a better introduction. Highly recommended.

20 people found this helpful

Helpful

Justin

Perfect AI Entry Level Book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 30, 2014

Verified Purchase

One Line Synopsis - This book is a must for anyone interested in the topic of AI in games, and it is full of examples that really drive home the lessons being taught.

With all the college courses and graduate studies devoted to the field of artificial intelligence, this book could have easily drowned itself it excessive theory. Thankfully, this did not happen. The author is truly able to give concrete examples and demonstrate the applicable methodologies. Not only do the examples given in the text convey the lessons in AI so clearly, they could easily be employed in your own projects.

I have given myself plenty of time not only to read the book, but generate my own AI code inspired from the book. It really is the perfect blend of theory, practice, and examples. If you are looking for an entry level AI book that will also deliver you into the intermediate stages of AI programming, this is the book you have been looking for.

I would highly recommend anyone who purchases the book to check out the source code that can be found on the companion website. It not only offers the source code from the book, but also the standalone executables that run the programs discussed. As AI behavior is such a dynamic phenomenon, it really lends itself to view the examples in motion alongside the text. That's why these programs are so helpful. Additionally, one can tell a lot of care was put into constructing these programs to really demonstrate the main point of each topic.

As an aside, chapter 2 of this book is an exceptional chapter for those interested in game engine design. It primarily deals with state-driven design and finite state machines, but also discusses game entities and their management along with message handling. While the topics in this chapter deal with AI behavior, their applications go far beyond AI and could easily be applied to many other features of games and software.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Mark B.

OK

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 30, 2005

Verified Purchase

It is as the title says, Programming Game AI by Example. Reading it, I felt that going more deeply into concepts rather than showing short snippets of code would have been more useful to me. I also felt that the code shown in the book was shallow at some points and really quite useless without the source code that the book provides a link to on the web. I learned more going through each class of the source code and seeing what each function actually did, rather than just seeing a few function calls in the example code in the book. Which may seem obvious enough, but the example code could have been left out entirely in my opinion and just referenced. However, it is all brought together quite nicely in the final game where the focus of each chapter is shown in a final product.

An entire chapter on HOW to script in lua could have been done away with (thats what tutorials are for) and instead been used for concepts of how it can be used. Plus I felt it was slightly out of place as I do not recall it being used in the final game either.

I am trying to code a game in flash actionscript and for that this book was not very helpful as I do not have all the libraries that the author uses in his source code and would have appreciated a book with a broader application. Personally I thought the book was merely OK, but realizing that because I didn't find it useful doesn't necessarily mean its bad, I'm giving it a 4.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Ian

A great book, with some significant gaps.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 17, 2005

Verified Purchase

This is a great book for hobbiest game developers, and professionals new to AI. It gives a good overview of some of the most interested areas of game AI, and practical solutions to make progress.
It is the first book I've seen that makes a good effort to present solutions that would actually be used in real games. Which surprised me, because Mat's first book on game AI was just like every other title I've read: a blend of hype and unusable technology. With this book he has come on by miles.
I'm AI programmer in the industry, and this is the first book I've seen that I could hand-on-heart recommend for real technology (John Funge's book is also good, but as an overview, not for practical implementation).
There are some bits (such as the scripting chapter) that are squarely aimed outside the industry, but provide superb material for a hobbiest. The majority of the book is filled with technology that covers the very basics of game AI for novice AI developers. And there are some bits (like the goal oriented behaviour chapter) that could actually benefit people working on commercial games.
There are bits I disagreed with, inevitably.
My biggest criticism of the book is its narrow scope. It covers a handful of AI techniques well, but doesn't talk about the tens of other techniques that game AI programmers need to use to get the game out of the door. It also misses lots of techniques used in particular game genres (it is focussed primarily on shooters, although there is a chapter with some small inspiration for sports games). Some of this is because of size, but it means that the book can only act as a taster and not a real reference book.
Mat's writing is chirpy and readable, and so far the code is reasonably correct and useful. I would recommend it if you are a hobbiest game developer, but its probably far beneath you if you already work in AI in the industry.

33 people found this helpful

Programster

Fantasitc Game AI Resource

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 7, 2010

Verified Purchase

I found this book to be a fantastic resource for AI Game Development. It showed me new techniques on implementing simple agents that displayed intelligent behaviour, without causing the resulting program to be a resource hog on the computer. It teaches 'weak' AI techniques instead of all the 'strong' AI I was taught at university. This makes the book more useful for game development and quite easy to follow. I found the most useful chapters were on building autonomous agents and the chapter devoted to pathfinding. This is not just the usual pathfinding techniques that show you how to get from A to B in the shortest distance, but how to set up your program in order to balance the need of your agents with the capabilities of the CPU, such that your agents wont slow down your program to an unbearable frame-rate, yet still show intelligent behaviour.

2 people found this helpful

TG

Nicely done.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 8, 2007

Verified Purchase

First off, it's a good read as it is so well written. There is an invaluable basic maths/physics primer at the

start (in fact I still refer to that section a year later). Then a nice gentle intro with FSMs (although, on my girlfriends orders, I had to rewrite the tasks given to the Miner's Wife). From there it's Steering Behaviours, Sports AI, Pathfinding etc (all the usual suspects) but the examples for each are superb. I did struggle slightly translating the code

(pseudo-code would have been nice) but that's a minor point.

3 people found this helpful

D. Basford

Wonderful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 29, 2014

Verified Purchase

A great read. Tells you all you need to start implementation in your own code in a very short time.
A bit heavy on the maths for some perhaps but I guess that is the nature of the topic so the way the author deals with it is exceptionally well done.
The examples are great and really show the good and bad methods. I've seen both in games I own since reading this book and know how their underlying coding works now.
Well worth buying though the full price is steep so I got a second-hand copy...

Mr. S. T. Foster

A good book, does the job

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 3, 2008

Verified Purchase

A good book for game AI to get you started, the text reads fine and is easy to follow. The code on the other hand is rather messy, and I agree with the other reviewer that pseudo code would have been a better option - you have to read through all the authors little coding habits to root out what you need.

Still, worth a read because the AI descriptions are very well put together.

2 people found this helpful

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