Game AI Pro 2: Collected Wisdom of Game AI Professionals

566 Pages·2015·24.87 MB·English

by  Steven Rabin

Computer Game Development / Design RABIN
Collected Wisdom
of Game AI
Professionals
Collected Wisdom
Game AI Pro2: Collected Wisdom of Game AI Professionals presents of Game AI
cutting-edge tips, tricks, and techniques for artificial intelligence (AI) in games,
drawn from developers of shipped commercial games as well as some of the Professionals
best-known academics in the field. It contains knowledge, advice, hard-earned
wisdom, and insights gathered from across the community of developers and
researchers who have devoted themselves to game AI.
In this book, 47 expert developers and researchers have come together to bring
you their newest advances in game AI, along with twists on proven techniques
that have shipped in some of the most successful commercial games of the last
few years. The book provides a toolbox of proven techniques that can be applied
to many common and not-so-common situations. It is written to be accessible
to a broad range of readers.
Beginners will find good general coverage of game AI techniques and a number
of comprehensive overviews, while intermediate to expert professional game
developers will find focused, deeply technical chapters on specific topics of
interest to them.
• Covers a wide range of AI in games, with topics applicable to almost any game
• Touches on most, if not all, of the topics necessary to get started in game AI
• Provides real-life case studies of game AI in published commercial games
• Gives in-depth, technical solutions from some of the industry’s best-known
games
• Includes downloadable demos and/or source code, available at
http://www.gameaipro.com
EDITED BY
STEVE RABIN
K23980
ISBN: 978-1-4822-5479-2
90000
9 781482 254792

Collected Wisdom
of Game AI
Professionals
EDITED BY
STEVE RABIN
Boca Raton London New York
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Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Web Materials xv
Editors xvii
Contributors xix
Section I General Wisdom
1 Game AI Appreciation, Revisited 3
Mike Lewis and Kevin Dill
2 Combat Dialogue in FEAR: The Illusion of Communication 19
Jeff Orkin
3 Dual-Utility Reasoning 23
Kevin Dill
4 Vision Zones and Object Identification Certainty 27
Steve Rabin
v
5 Agent Reaction Time: How Fast Should an AI React? 31
Steve Rabin
6 Preventing Animation Twinning Using a Simple Blackboard 35
Michael Dawe
Section II Architecture
7 Possibility Maps for Opportunistic AI and Believable Worlds 41
John Manslow
8 Production Rules Implementation in 1849 49
Robert Zubek
9 Production Systems: New Techniques in AAA Games 59
Andrea Schiel
10 Building a Risk-Free Environment to Enhance Prototyping:
Hinted-Execution Behavior Trees 69
Sergio Ocio Barriales
11 Smart Zones to Create the Ambience of Life 89
Etienne de Sevin, Caroline Chopinaud, and Clodéric Mars
12 Separation of Concerns Architecture for AI and Animation 101
Bobby Anguelov
13 Optimizing Practical Planning for Game AI 117
Éric Jacopin
Section III Movement and Pathfinding
14 JPS+: An Extreme A* Speed Optimization for Static Uniform
Cost Grids 131
Steve Rabin and Fernando Silva
15 Subgoal Graphs for Fast Optimal Pathfinding 145
Tansel Uras and Sven Koenig
16 Theta* for Any-Angle Pathfinding 161
Alex Nash and Sven Koenig
vi Contents
17 Advanced Techniques for Robust, Efficient Crowds 173
Graham Pentheny
18 Context Steering: Behavior-Driven Steering at the Macro Scale 183
Andrew Fray
19 Guide to Anticipatory Collision Avoidance 195
Stephen J. Guy and Ioannis Karamouzas
20 Hierarchical Architecture for Group Navigation Behaviors 209
Clodéric Mars and Jérémy Chanut
21 Dynamic Obstacle Navigation in Fuse 225
Jan Müller
Section IV Applied Search Techniques
22 Introduction to Search for Games 237
Nathan R. Sturtevant
23 Personality Reinforced Search for Mobile Strategy Games 243
Miguel A. Nieves
24 Interest Search: A Faster Minimax 255
Jeff Rollason
25 Monte Carlo Tree Search and Related Algorithms for Games 265
Nathan R. Sturtevant
26 Rolling Your Own Finite-Domain Constraint Solver 283
Leif Foged and Ian Horswill
Section V Tactics, Strategy, and Spatial Awareness
27 Looking for Trouble: Making NPCs Search Realistically 305
Rich Welsh
28 Modeling Perception and Awareness in Tom Clancy’s Splinter
Cell Blacklist 313
Martin Walsh
29 Escaping the Grid: Infinite-Resolution Influence Mapping 327
Mike Lewis
Contents vii
30 Modular Tactical Influence Maps 343
Dave Mark
31 Spatial Reasoning for Strategic Decision Making 365
Kevin Dill
32 Extending the Spatial Coverage of a Voxel-Based
Navigation Mesh 389
Kevin A. Kirst
Section VI Character Behavior
33 Infected AI in The Last of Us 407
Mark Botta
34 Human Enemy AI in The Last of Us 419
Travis McIntosh
35 Ellie: Buddy AI in The Last of Us 431
Max Dyckhoff
36 Realizing NPCs: Animation and Behavior Control
for Believable Characters 443
Jeet Shroff
37 Using Queues to Model a Merchant’s Inventory 463
John Manslow
38 Psychologically Plausible Methods for Character
Behavior Design 471
Phil Carlisle
Section VII Analytics, Content Generation,
and Experience Management
39 Analytics-Based AI Techniques for a Better Gaming Experience 481
Truong-Huy D. Nguyen, Zhengxing Chen, and Magy Seif El-Nasr
40 Procedural Content Generation: An Overview 501
Gillian Smith
viii Contents