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Game AI Pro – Online Edition 2021
The online-exclusive fourth volume in the Game AI Pro book series (published Dec 2021).
Notice: The individual authors retain full copyright over this material and it cannot be distributed, reprinted, or hosted for download anywhere else. Doing so would violate copyright law.
All Chapters
1. Automated AI Testing: Simple tests will save you time, Malte Skarupke
2. Efficient, Event-Based Simulations, Rez Graham
3. Gearing the Tactics Genre: Simultaneous AI Actions in Gears Tactics, Matthias Siemonsmeier
4. Knowledge is Power, an Overview of AI Knowledge Representation in Games, Daniel Brewer
5. Taming Spatial Queries – Tips for Natural Position Selection, Eric Johnson
6. Flooding the Influence Map for Chase in Dishonored 2, Laurent Couvidou
7. Managing Pacing in Procedural Levels in Warframe, Daniel Brewer
8. Cinematic Gameplay in Watchdogs 2: Pose Matching and AI Coordination, Christopher Dragert
9. Obstacle avoidance for robots of multiple sizes and forms in Horizon Zero Dawn, Carles Ros Martínez
10. AI-Driven Autoplay Agents for Prelaunch Game Tuning, Igor Borovikov
11. You had me at 'AAAAHHH' - On the importance of reactions in game AI, Sergio Ocio Barriales
12. Squad Coordination in Days Gone, Tobias Karlsson
13. Template Tricks for Data-Driven Behavior Trees, Anthony Francis
14. Planning Movement on Player-Modifiable Maps, Jurie Horneman
15. Should STL containers be used in game engines?, Jiri Holba
16. Open-world Enemy AI in Mafia III, Jiri Holba and Gael Huber
17. Game Balancing using Genetic Algorithms to Generate Player Agents, Kazuko Manabe and Youichiro Miyake
Game AI Pro 3
The third volume in the Game AI Pro book series (published June 2017).
All chapters are available to download as of September 2019.
Notice: CRC Press retains full copyright over this material and it cannot be distributed, reprinted, or hosted for download anywhere else. Doing so would violate copyright law. GameAIPro.com has permission from CRC Press to host this material.
Intro
Section 1: General Wisdom
1. The Illusion of Intelligence, Steve Rabin
2. Creating the Past, Present, and Future with Random Walks, John Manslow demo code
3. Logging Visualization in FINAL FANTASY XV, Matthew W. Johnson, Fabien Gravot, Shintaro Minamino, Ingimar Hólm Guðmundsson, Hendrik Skubch, and Youichiro Miyake
4. What You See Is Not What You Get: Player Perception of AI Opponents, Baylor Wetzel and Kyle Anderson
5. Six Factory System Tricks for Extensibility and Library Reuse, Kevin Dill
6. Debugging AI with Instant In-Game Scrubbing, David Young
7. But, It Worked on My Machine! How to Build Robust AI for Your Game, Sergio Ocio Barriales
Section 2: Architecture
8. Modular AI, Kevin Dill and Christopher Dragert
9. Overcoming Pitfalls in Behavior Tree Design, Anthony Francis
10. From Behavior to Animation: A Reactive AI Architecture for Networked First-Person Shooter Games, Sumeet Jakatdar
11. A Character Decision-Making System for FINAL FANTASY XV by Combining Behavior Trees and State Machines, Youichiro Miyake, Youji Shirakami, Kazuya Shimokawa, Kousuke Namiki, Tomoki Komatsu, Joudan Tatsuhiro, Prasert Prasertvithyakarn, and Takanori Yokoyama
12. A Reusable, Light-Weight Finite-State Machine, David “Rez” Graham
13. Choosing Effective Utility-Based Considerations, Mike Lewis
14. Combining Scripted Behavior with Game Tree Search for Stronger, More Robust Game AI, Nicolas A. Barriga, Marius Stanescu, and Michael Buro
Section 3: Movement and Pathfinding
15. Steering against Complex Vehicles in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Eric Martel
16. Predictive Animation Control Using Simulations and Fitted Models, Ingimar Hólm Guðmundsson, Hendrik Skubch, Fabien Gravot, and Youichiro Miyake
17. Fast Cars, Big City: The AI of Driver San Francisco, Chris Jenner and Sergio Ocio Barriales
18. A Unified Theory of Locomotion, Graham Pentheny
19. RVO and ORCA: How They Really Work, Ben Sunshine-Hill
20. Optimization for Smooth Paths, Mark Langerak demo code
21. 3D Flight Navigation Using Sparse Voxel Octrees, Daniel Brewer
22. Faster A* with Goal Bounding, Steve Rabin and Nathan R. Sturtevant
23. Faster Dijkstra Search on Uniform Cost Grids, Steve Rabin and Nathan R. Sturtevant
Section 4: Tactics and Strategy
24. Being Where It Counts: Telling Paragon Bots Where to Go, Mieszko Zieliński
25. Combat Outcome Prediction for Real-Time Strategy Games, Marius Stanescu, Nicolas A. Barriga, and Michael Buro
26. Guide to Effective Auto-Generated Spatial Queries, Eric Johnson
27. The Role of Time in Spatio-Temporal Reasoning: Three Examples from Tower Defense, Baylor Wetzel and Kyle Anderson
28. Pitfalls and Solutions When Using Monte-Carlo Tree Search for Strategy and Tactical Games, Gijs-Jan Roelofs
29. Petri Nets and AI Arbitration, Sergio Ocio Barriales
30. Hierarchical Portfolio Search in Prismata, David Churchill and Michael Buro
Section 6: Character Behavior
31. Behavior Decision System: Dragon Age Inquisition’s Utility Scoring Architecture, Sebastian Hanlon and Cody Watts
32. Paragon Bots: A Bag of Tricks, Mieszko Zieliński
33. Using Your Combat AI Accuracy to Balance Difficulty, Sergio Ocio Barriales
34. 1000 NPCs at 60 FPS, Robert Zubek
35. Ambient Interactions: Improving Believability by Leveraging Rule-Based AI, Hendrik Skubch
36. Stochastic Grammars: Not Just for Words!, Mike Lewis demo code
37. Simulating Character Knowledge Phenomena in Talk of the Town, James Ryan and Michael Mateas
Section 7: Odds and Ends
38. Procedural Level and Story Generation Using Tag-Based Content Selection, Jurie Horneman
39. Recommendation Systems in Games, Ben G. Weber
40. Vintage Random Number Generators, Éric Jacopin demo code
41. Leveraging Plausibility Orderings to Achieve Extremely Efficient Data Compression, Jeff Rollason
42. Building Custom Static Checkers Using Declarative Programming, Ian Horswill, Robert Zubek, and Matthew Viglione
Game AI Pro 2
The second volume in the Game AI Pro book series (published April 2015).
All chapters are available to download as of April 2017.
Notice: CRC Press retains full copyright over this material and it cannot be distributed, reprinted, or hosted for download anywhere else. Doing so would violate copyright law. GameAIPro.com has permission from CRC Press to host this material.
Intro
Section 1: General Wisdom
1. Game AI Appreciation, Revisited, Kevin Dill and Mike Lewis
2. Combat Dialogue in FEAR: The Illusion of Communication, Jeff Orkin
3. Dual-Utility Reasoning, Kevin Dill
4. Vision Zones and Object Identification Certainty, Steve Rabin
5. Agent Reaction Time: How Fast Should an AI React?, Steve Rabin
6. Preventing Animation Twinning Using a Simple Blackboard, Michael Dawe
Section 2: Architecture
7. Possibility Maps for Opportunistic AI and Believable Worlds, John Manslow
8. Production Rules Implementation in 1849, Robert Zubek
9. Production Systems: New Techniques in AAA Games, Andrea Schiel
10. Building a Risk-Free Environment to Enhance Prototyping: Hinted-Execution Behavior Trees, Sergio Ocio Barriales
11. Smart Zones to Create the Ambience of Life, Etienne de Sevin, Caroline Chopinaud, and Clodéric Mars
12. Separation of Concerns Architecture for AI and Animation, Bobby Anguelov
13. Optimizing Practical Planning for Game AI, Éric Jacopin
Section 3: Movement and Pathfinding
14. JPS+: An Extreme A* Speed Optimization for Static Uniform Cost Grids, Steve Rabin
15. Subgoal Graphs for Fast Optimal Pathfinding, Tansel Uras and Sven Koenig
16. Theta* for Any-Angle Pathfinding, Alex Nash and Sven Koenig
17. Techniques for Robust, Efficient Crowds, Graham Pentheny
18. Context Steering: Behavior-Driven Steering at the Macro Scale, Andrew Fray
19. Guide to Anticipatory Collision Avoidance, Stephen J. Guy and Ioannis Karamouzas
20. Hierarchical Architecture for Group Navigation Behaviors, Clodéric Mars and Jérémy Chanut
21. Dynamic Obstacle Navigation in Fuse, Jan Müller
Section 4: Applied Search Techniques
22. Introduction to Search for Games, Nathan R. Sturtevant
23. Personality Reinforced Search for Mobile Strategy Games, Miguel A. Nieves
24. Interest Search: A Faster Minimax, Jeff Rollason
25. Monte Carlo Tree Search and Related Algorithms for Games, Nathan R. Sturtevant
26. Rolling Your Own Finite-Domain Constraint Solver, Leif Foged and Ian Horswill
Section 5: Tactics, Strategy, and Spacial Awareness
27. Looking for Trouble: Making NPCs Search Realistically, Rich Welsh
28. Modeling Perception and Awareness in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist, Martin Walsh
29. Escaping the Grid: Infinite-Resolution Influence Mapping, Mike Lewis
30. Modular Tactical Influence Maps, Dave Mark
31. Spatial Reasoning for Strategic Decision Making, Kevin Dill
32. Extending the Spatial Coverage of a Voxel-Based Navigation Mesh, Kevin A. Kirst
Section 6: Character Behavior
33. Infected AI in The Last of Us, Mark Botta
34. Human Enemy AI in The Last of Us, Travis McIntosh
35. Ellie: Buddy AI in The Last of Us, Max Dyckhoff
36. Realizing NPCs: Animation and Behavior Control for Believable Characters, Jeet Shroff
37. Using Queues to Model a Merchant’s Inventory, John Manslow
38. Psychologically Plausible Methods for Character Behavior Design, Phil Carlisle
Section 7: Analytics, Content Generation, and Experience Management
39. Analytics-Based AI Techniques for a Better Gaming Experience, Truong-Huy D. Nguyen, Zhengxing Chen, and Magy Seif El-Nasr
40. Procedural Content Generation: An Overview, Gillian Smith
41. Simulation Principles from Dwarf Fortress, Tarn Adams
42. Techniques for AI-Driven Experience Management in Interactive Narratives, Vadim Bulitko, Greg Lee, Sergio Poo Hernandez, Alejandro Ramirez, and David Thue
Game AI Pro
The first volume in the Game AI Pro book series (published Sept 2013).
All chapters are available to download as of Sept 2015.
Notice: CRC Press retains full copyright over this material and it cannot be distributed, reprinted, or hosted for download anywhere else. Doing so would violate copyright law. GameAIPro.com has permission from CRC Press to host this material.
Intro
Section 1: General Wisdom
1. What is Game AI?, Kevin Dill
2. Informing Game AI through the Study of Neurology, Brett Laming
3. Advanced Randomness Techniques for Game AI: Gaussian Randomness, Filtered Randomness, and Perlin Noise, Steve Rabin, Fernando Silva, Jay Goldblatt
Section 2: Architecture
4. Behavior Selection Algorithms: An Overview, Michael Dawe, Steve Gargolinski, Luke Dicken, Troy Humphreys, Dave Mark
5. Structural Architecture—Common Tricks of the Trade, Kevin Dill
6. The Behavior Tree Starter Kit, Alex Champandard, Philip Dunstan
7. Real-World Behavior Trees in Script, Michael Dawe demo code
8. Simulating Behavior Trees: A Behavior Tree / Planner Hybrid Approach, Daniel Hilburn demo code
9. An Introduction to Utility Theory, David “Rez” Graham demo code
10. Building Utility Decisions into Your Existing Behavior Tree, Bill Merrill
11. Reactivity and Deliberation in Decision Making Systems, Carle Côté
12. Exploring HTN Planners through Example, Troy Humphreys
13. Hierarchical Plan-Space Planning for Multi-Unit Combat Maneuvers, William van der Sterren
14. Phenomenal AI Level-of-Detail Control with the LOD Trader, Ben Sunshine-Hill
15. Runtime Compiled C++ for Rapid AI Development, Doug Binks, Matthew Jack, Will Wilson
16. Plumbing the Forbidden Depths: Scripting and AI, Mike Lewis
Section 3: Movement and Pathfinding
17. Pathfinding Architecture Optimizations, Steve Rabin, Nathan Sturtevant
18. Choosing a Search Space Representation, Nathan R. Sturtevant
19. Creating High-Order Navigation Meshes through Iterative Wavefront Edge Expansions, D. Hunter Hale, G. Michael Youngblood
20. Precomputed Pathfinding for Large and Detailed Worlds on MMO Servers, Fabien Gravot, Takanori Yokoyama, Youichiro Miyake
21. Techniques for Formation Movement using Steering Circles, Stephen Bjore demo code
22. Collision Avoidance for Pre-Planned Locomotion, Bobby Anguelov
23. Crowd Pathfinding and Steering using Flow Field Tiles, Elijah Emerson
24. Efficient Crowd Simulation for Mobile Games, Graham Pentheny demo code
25. Animation-Driven Locomotion with Locomotion Planning, Jaroslaw Ciupinski
Section 4: Strategy and Tactics
26. Tactical Position Selection: An Architecture and Query Language, Matthew Jack
27. Tactical Pathfinding on a NavMesh, Daniel Brewer
28. Beyond the Kung-Fu Circle: A Flexible System for Managing NPC Attacks, Michael Dawe
29. Hierarchical AI for Multiplayer Bots in Killzone 3, Remco Straatman, Tim Verweij, Alex Champandard, Robert Morcus, Hylke Kleve
30. Using Neural Networks to Control Agent Threat Response, Michael Robbins
Section 5: Agent Awareness and Knowledge Representation
31. Crytek’s Target Tracks Perception System, Rich Welsh
32. How to Catch a Ninja: NPC Awareness in a 2D Stealth Platformer, Brook Miles
33. Asking the Environment Smart Questions, Mieszko Zielinski
34. A Simple and Robust Knowledge Representation System, Phil Carlisle
35. A Simple and Practical Social Dynamics System, Phil Carlisle
36. Breathing Life into Your Background Characters, David “Rez” Graham demo code
37. Alibi Generation: Fooling All the Players All the Time, Ben Sunshine-Hill
Section 6: Racing
38. An Architecture Overview for AI in Racing Games, Simon Tomlinson, Nic Melder
39. Representing and Driving a Race Track for AI Controlled Vehicles, Simon Tomlinson, Nic Melder
40. Racing Vehicle Control Systems using PID Controllers, Simon Tomlinson, Nic Melder
41. The Heat Vision System for Racing AI: A Novel Way to Determine Optimal Track Positioning, Nic Melder
42. A Rubber-Banding System for Gameplay and Race Management, Nic Melder
Section 7: Odds and Ends
43. An Architecture for Character-Rich Social Simulation, Michael Mateas, Josh McCoy
44. A Control-Based Architecture for Animal Behavior, Michael Ramsey
45. Introduction to GPGPU for AI, Conan Bourke, Tomasz Bednarz
46. Creating Dynamic Soundscapes using an Artificial Sound Designer, Simon Franco
47. Tips and Tricks for a Robust Third-Person Camera System, Eric Martel
48. Implementing N-grams for Player Prediction, Procedural Generation, and Stylized AI, Joseph Vasquez II demo code
AI Summit GDC 2015
Steve Rabin - JPS+ now with Goal Bounding: Over 1000x Faster than A* slides
Steve Rabin - Simplest AI Trick in the Book slides