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.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 A Math and Physics Primer

Chapter 2 State-Driven Agent Design

Chapter 3 How to Create Autonomously Moving Game Agents

Chapter 4 Sports Simulation — Simple Soccer

Chapter 5 The Secret Life of Graphs

Chapter 6 To Script, or Not to Script, That Is the Question

Chapter 7 Raven: An Overview

Chapter 8 Practical Path Planning

Chapter 9 Goal-Driven Agent Behavior

Chapter 10 Fuzzy Logic

Appendix A C++ Templates

Appendix B UML Class Diagrams

Appendix C Setting Up Your Development Environment

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.