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TITLE:
Game Programming Gems 2
Charles River Media - ISBN (1584500549) (August, 2001)
Editor: Mark Deloura
DETAILS:
Following on the heals of the best-seller Game Programming Gems, this
book picks up where the last left off. Bringing more and shorter gems
than the first book, GPG2 features 72 gems from some 50 authors.
The new book has been reorganized a bit from the first. The AI section in
particular is significantly larger than in the previous book, and section editor
Steve Rabin has done a great job of putting a common "voice" to the articles.
My own article this time around is a followup on he flocking article I did
for GPG1 entitled "Flocking with Teeth: Predators and Prey".
As before I freely admit to bias here, but you won't go wrong buying this
book. There's a ton of good stuff here. I hope you enjoy it!
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TITLE:
Game Programming Gems
Charles River Media - ISBN (1584500492) (August, 2000)
Editor: Mark Deloura
DETAILS:
Written to the style of the classic series beloved by graphics programmers
everywhere, Game Programming Gems aims to bring the same kind of
practical "this is how you do it" functionality to game programming in general.
Now, it's not all game AI stuff, but there's a big section on the subject--
at least 8 of the 78 Gems are solidly AI. And no I didn't do all of them...my
own contribution is on flocking, while AI expert
Eric Dybsand did a Gem on
state machines. Author Bryan Stout did an A*
Gem. Etc., etc.
Yes, I'm biased, but I think this is a good book for game programmers in
general, and it's got more of an AI focus than many. If you find it useful,
I hope you'll pick it up.
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TITLE:
AI for Computer Games and Animation: A Cognitive Modeling Approach
AK Peters, Ltd. - ISBN (1-568-81103-9), August, 1999
Author: John Funge
DETAILS:
Author John Funge has done several presentations at various Game Developer's
Conferences over the years, but I only recently discovered that he'd also
written a book on the topic. John takes a more scholarly approach than
many, but covers a wide variety of topics ranging from "Embedding Goal-
directed Behavior" to "Hierarchical Finite-state Machines".
The AI concepts are presented in the context of three AI problem exampls--
a maze-solving problem, a dinosaur world in which a big T-Rex tries to eat
little Velociraptors, and an undersea world filled with mermen and sharks.
They're all pretty interesting scenarios and relate well to a variety of
"real world" game development problems.
AI for Games and Animation isn't quite the text for budding AI
deveopers, however. John dives into the "math" side of AI very quickly and
never really lets up, which can be overwhelming for somebody who's just trying
to figure out where to start. Many of the concepts presented are, arguably,
of more academic interest than "real game AI" oriented, but that's something
that each individual will have to decide for themselvs.
I've found this book to be a useful reference and recommend it if
you can handle the math.
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TITLE:
AI Agents in Virtual Reality Worlds
Wiley & Sons - ISBN (0-471-12708-6), July, 1996
Author: Mark Watson
DETAILS:
This is a great reference on developing interesting AI. Aimed mostly
at Virtual Reality games, developer/author
Mark Watson
has done a marvelous job of bringing together and describing various
AI techniques that help make characters in Virtual Reality more lifelike
and realistic. Mark covers a wide variety of topics from neural networks
to genetic algorithms, then provides a nice set of C++ templates for
his AI package. Finally, he incorporates his AI templates into an
Asteroids-like game which uses genetic algorithms to "evolve"
the playing style of the enemy ships. Good stuff.
Note that Mark also maintains a great
web page
that focuses on his books, provides source code, and other
cool stuff. Definitely recommended.
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TITLE:
Developing Games that Learn
Manning Publications - ISBN (0-13-569617-8), 1996
Authors: Leonard Dorfman and Narendra Ghosh
DETAILS:
This book is exactly what it says it is--a treatise on building games
(and game AIs) that are capable of learning from their
mistakes to become better players. The games used to illustrate the
various learning techniques experimented with are Tic Tac Toe
and Drop Four, fairly simply boardgames which nevertheless
(particularly in the case of Drop Four) require both
planning and forward thinking. The techniques presented in the book start
with what the authors call "dumb" learning--simply not repeating mistakes
that led to a loss in a previous game--to an interesting forward-looking
approach they call the three-filled marker disruption algorithm.
If I have one complaint about the book it's the source code listings
in the book itself. Though the code is provided on disk the authors
replicated most of it in the book proper, resulting in an awful lot of
pages that I would rather have seen devoted to expanding on the techniques
described. Other than that, this is an interesting book and definitely
more accessible than some of the more scholarly books currently available.
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TITLE:
Evolutionary Computation: Toward a New Philosophy of Machine Intelligence
IEEE Press - ISBN (0-7803-1038-1)
DETAILS:
This book is an introduction to the science of evolutionary computation--
the place where genetic algorithms, neural networks, and fuzzy logic
combine. It approaches the field of evolutionary computing (and its
offshoot, A-Life) from a practical overview perspective, moving from
theory to implementation to practice as necessary. A good overview
book that explores and explains the topic well.
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TITLE:
Genetic Programming: An Introduction
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers - ISBN (3-920993-58-6)
Authors: Banzhaf, Nordin, Keller, Francone
DETAILS:
This is a pretty solid book on the subject of genetic programming
and genetic algorithms (GP/GA), doing of a good job both of explaining
the basics to those new to the subject while providing a useful tool to the
expert. There are lots of references, examples, and snippets of psuedo-code,
and while there's no CD included with the book there is a web site from which
you can download a nicely documented GP/GA software package.
A good place for anybody just learning about GP/GA to start. Note that this
book is out of print, so you may have a hard time finding it.
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TITLE:
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems
Prentice Hall - ISBN (0-13-477100-1)
Author: Dan W. Patterson
DETAILS:
This book is aimed at beginner, primarily, but it's a good reference
for anybody (in my humble opinion). Very throrough discussions on
Expert Systems (arguably the simplest and most common form of game AI)
and pattern recognition. No real code, but lots of psuedo-code examples.
A good place for an AI newbie to start. Note that this book is out
of print, so you may have a hard time finding it.
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