Game AI Pro 2: Collected Wisdom of Game AI Professionals

Game AI Pro 2: Collected Wisdom of Game AI Professionals presents cutting-edge game artificial intelligence (AI) techniques primarily from game developers of shipped commercial games and, to a minor extent, from academia. Topics covered include AI architectures, steering and path finding, tactics/strategy, genre-specific techniques, gesture recognition, and learning techniques. The book acts as a toolbox of techniques that can be applied to many common and not-so-common situations—techniques have largely been proven in shipped commercial games. The book is written in a technical style that is accessible to beginners but is ultimately aimed at the intermediate to expert professional game developer.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Game AI Appreciation, Revisited
Chapter 2: Combat Dialogue in FEAR : The Illusion of Communication
Chapter 3: Dual-Utility Reasoning
Chapter 4: Vision Zones and Object Identification Certainty
Chapter 5: Agent Reaction Time : How Fast Should an AI React?
Chapter 6: Preventing Animation Twinning Using a Simple Blackboard
Chapter 7: Possibility Maps for Opportunistic AI and Believable Worlds
Chapter 8: Production Rules Implementation in 1849
Chapter 9: Production Systems : New Techniques in AAA Games
Chapter 10: Building a Risk-Free Environment to Enhance Prototyping : Hinted-Execution Behavior Trees
Chapter 11: Smart Zones to Create the Ambience of Life
Chapter 12: Separation of Concerns Architecture for AI and Animation
Chapter 13: Optimizing Practical Planning for Game AI
Chapter 14: JPS+ : An Extreme A* Speed Optimization for Static Uniform Cost Grids
Chapter 15: Subgoal Graphs for Fast Optimal Pathfinding
Chapter 16: Theta* for Any-Angle Pathfinding
Chapter 17: Advanced Techniques for Robust, Efficient Crowds
Chapter 18: Context Steering : Behavior-Driven Steering at the Macro Scale
Chapter 19: Guide to Anticipatory Collision Avoidance
Chapter 20: Hierarchical Architecture for Group Navigation Behaviors
Chapter 21: Dynamic Obstacle Navigation in Fuse
Chapter 22: Introduction to Search for Games
Chapter 23: Personality Reinforced Search for Mobile Strategy Games
Chapter 24: Interest Search : A Faster Minimax
Chapter 25: Monte Carlo Tree Search and Related Algorithms for Games
Chapter 26: Rolling Your Own Finite-Domain Constraint Solver
Chapter 27: Looking for Trouble : Making NPCs Search Realistically
Chapter 28: Modeling Perception and Awareness in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist
Chapter 29: Escaping the Grid : Infinite-Resolution Influence Mapping
Chapter 30: Modular Tactical Influence Maps
Chapter 31: Spatial Reasoning for Strategic Decision Making
Chapter 32: Extending the Spatial Coverage of a Voxel-Based Navigation Mesh
Chapter 33: Infected AI in The Last of Us
Chapter 34: Human Enemy AI in The Last of Us
Chapter 35: Ellie: Buddy AI in The Last of Us
Chapter 36: Realizing NPCs : Animation and Behavior Control for Believable Characters
Chapter 37: Using Queues to Model a Merchant’s Inventory
Chapter 38: Psychologically Plausible Methods for Character Behavior Design
Chapter 39: Analytics-Based AI Techniques for a Better Gaming Experience
Chapter 40: Procedural Content Generation : An Overview
Chapter 41: Simulation Principles from Dwarf Fortress
Chapter 42: Techniques for AI-Driven Experience Management in Interactive Narratives