AI Game Programming Wisdom 2 (Game Development Series)

AI Game Programming Wisdom 2, the second volume in this cutting-edge series, is packed with all new tricks, techniques, algorithms, architectures, and philosophies all written by industry experts! The wealth of knowledge and expertise in this volume is sure to surpass your expectations. As with the first volume, this book is designed to provide practical advice for building state-of-the-art game AI for commercial games; however, it also strives to help you look forward to leading-edge techniques that will be critical in future explorations. AI Game Programming Wisdom 2 provides advances, discoveries, and triumphs that will influence and drive game AI for the next decade. The breadth of experience and diverse backgrounds of the authors make this a truly global, cross-sectional resource for game AI. The book is divided into twelve comprehensive sections, including an all new speech recognition and dialogue section. There is also coverage of a wider variety of game genres and a cumulative index is included for easy cross referencing between volumes. This new volume alone is an indispensable tool, but together with volume 1, these books form a remarkable collection that no game AI programmer should be without!

A game has to be able to think, or at least imitate thought sufficiently to render a convincing representation of some character or phenomenon. This sort of logic requires planning on the part of the programmer: A swordfighter not only has to find his enemy and engage him in combat, but know how to react if the opponent runs away, dies, or summons his buddies. The better the game designer is at endowing characters with behaviors, capabilities, and reactions, the more realistic and exciting his or her games will be. A soldier that can shoot at targets in the distance is okay, but a soldier that can also lay an ambush, shoot around corners, and fight with a knife is a lot more exciting. AI Game Programming Wisdom 2 comprises a series of article from accomplished game programmers about designing games that feature complex and lifelike behavior.

The contributors--there are dozens--share their professional experience in the field of simulating life in software. Some of their examples are crystal-clear--Nick Porcino's block diagrams that explain the behavior of artificial insects are one example. What's more, the compilation is remarkably comprehensive, addressing such issues as how collectives (such as platoons of soldiers) exhibit behavior that takes into account the perceptions of their members (as well as the lack of information--the fog of war). This book is carefully designed to help game architects plan more exciting and realistic environments for their players. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to design a computer game in which computer-managed characters need to behave intelligently. There's coverage of how to encode a character's motivations, how to make a character relate to a group, how to make characters move through and perceive space, and how to make a character learn over time.