Neural networks, decision trees, genetic classifiers: If these are AI concepts you'd like to employ in your own games-and you know your way around C++-this is the book for you! In these pages, leading game AI developer Alex J. Champandard shows you how to create a slew of autonomous synthetic creatures-in the process exploring the techniques and theories central to AI game development. Complex concepts are made easily graspable, even fun, as you apply them to the step-by-step development of your own complete bot. The focus here is on designing individual creatures, each with unique abilities and skills. Each chapter tackles a specific problem, using demos and examples to drive the points home. Best of all, Alex draws on his own real-life experiences to provide tips and tricks to speed the process and resolve thorny issues. On the companion Web site, you'll find code examples and the samples of some of the games covered in the book.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 8 Ratings

Poorly Written Original Content - 2004-05-26
Reviewer Rating:
This book is the only book of it's kind with the Game AI content in the world at this point (late May 2004). So if youre interested in Game AI it's the only book you can get, however it is poorly written, has mistakes, typos, and insufficent description of the FEAR platform that is required for you to be familiar with if you want to understand the content of the book thoroughly. This view is maintained by my peers, tutors and lecturers in the University i go to which is currently using this book as a guide to our game devalopment unit (because its the only one of its kind).

I can't help but feel that the book was kinda rushed and was not properly/thoroughly proofed read by the editor. I am confident that a lower priced 2nd edition with all the mistakes taken out would be really appropriate and appreciated by game AI interested people. If not some one else should become the 2nd person in the world to write a book on this subject: Game AI.

The author should be a little self critical and make a 2nd edition and make us all happy instead of living in denial and giving him self 5 stars. Dont see how he can improve on him self without being self critical. We are all greatful here in my University for his initiative in inventing the first book on game ai but were also all very frustrated when strugling to asimilate it's content.

Also a great deal of the SOURCE CODE did NOT WORK. Some of them did, but a large fraction of them DID NOT work as expected from the book.

Granted some chapters that covered basic principles were easy to follow but some intermediate chapters really made me frustrated as i re-read them again and again to try and understand a concept but continue to fail unless i label certain sentences as mistakes that were worded wrongly or backward etc.

I was going to rate this book 2 stars because i felt that some chapters were well written and covered the content well, but since so many people already gave it an unrealistic score of 5 stars (perhaps a conspiracy by the author's friends) i have decided to compensate for this and lower my rating to 1 star.

Hopefully this will balance out the scoring to a fair and realistic level that it deserves.

David Ong, Australia

Bridging the Gap - 2004-03-18
Reviewer Rating:
The book does come with source code, part of an ongoing open source project in game AI. The SDK with the book has in fact hundreds of C++ files demonstrating each technique in practice. You can even get the framework supporting the book freely over at http://AiGameDev.com/.

One of my main focuses when writing the book was to bridge the gap between theory and practice, academia and industry. The book covers a lot of ground, but also leaves the reader room to experiment and try out the ideas in practice. You'll get as much out of the book as you put into it.

A tutorial series entitled 'Exercises in Game AI Programming' has just been launched based on the book. You can find it over at http://AiGameDev.com/ also. Decide for yourself!

Alex Champandard

One of a Kind - 2004-07-16
Reviewer Rating:
This is truly a unique book, there is no other text available at the moment which covers the material that Alex covers in this book. If you're looking for an introduction to a lot of the major concepts in AI, then this is the book for you. As for the people saying the code is useless, its more likely that your programming skills are lacking. I used Alex's FEAR SDK to write an agent for use in my own research, and the product was again unique. Alex is not only a talented writer and AI expert, but also an excellent programmer.

If you are interested in seeing something before you buy this book, check out ai-depot.net, also having read Alex's research paper for his masters I can confidently say that Alex is one of THE authority on these subjects!

So check out the book already!

Good if you already know AI and want to get into game development - 2006-01-02
Reviewer Rating:
This book is good in the sense that it sheds some light on how to apply many well-known algorithms (such as neural networks) in games, but it doesn't go very deep in any of those techniques, leaving the reader to understand many details only by reading the provided source code.

Some chapters, such as the ones on genetic algorithms, could have some improvement and more practical examples.

It is good as an introductory book for someone who already has notions of AI algorithms, though. For anyone looking for a deeper coverage of algorithms, I'd suggest the book "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" by Stuart Russel.

Nice concept, not very practical - 2006-02-24
Reviewer Rating:
There are conceptual books and there are hands-on books. This is serves me as a reader more as a conceptual one, especially when compared to "Programming Game AI by Example " by Mat Buckland, which has quick and fun examples. It's difficult to read for the casual reader. BUT, this does not mean, that it is a bad book, by no means, when I need new ideas for AI, I come back to this one and get new ideas, as it covers all techniques that I could think of, which should make it a good reference for the serious reader. The whole library behind it shows, that the author has invested much effort in this. So my final recommendation is to buy it together with Mat's book as both together make a nice team, especially so as Mat's book is easier to understand.

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