Welcome! It's all free!

All book chapters are free to download.

Enjoy!



-Steve Rabin, Series Editor

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

Preface

Author Bios

Index

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

Preface

Author Bios

Index

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

Preface

Author Bios

Index

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