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 loContinue
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.
Bradipomannaro 
Intelligent agents should steer clear from this book
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 ba ... (continue)
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".
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