Game AI Uncovered: Volume Three continues the series with another collection of chapters from 18 of the top game AI professionals and researchers, from around the world. Each chapter includes wisdom, ideas, tips, and tricks that were used in the development of video games.
The techniques discussed in these pages cover the underlying development of a wide array of published titles, including Watch Dogs: Legion, City of Gangsters, Eve: Valkyrie, Firefall, The Persistence, Advance Soccer, Alpha Beta Gunner, and Luna Abyss.
Contained within this volume are insights that cover a host of different areas within game AI, including vehicle AI, simulating social norms, AI spawning fundamentals, pathfinding, creation of characters using components, animation‑driven behaviour, tactical positioning in football, automated testing, abstract pattern matching, and machine learning for games.
Beginners in the area of game AI, along with professional developers, will find a wealth of knowledge that will not only help in the development of their own games but also spark ideas for new approaches.
This volume includes chapters written by Dr Allan Bruce, Anubha Banerjee, Bruno Rebaque, Dale Green, David Wooldridge, Eric S. Le Saux, Greg Irwin, Jason Lok Heng Chin, Johan Holthausen, John Reynolds, Mathias Siemonsmeier, Michele Condò, Dr Nic Melder, Paul Roberts, Phil Carlisle, Richard Bull, Robert Zubek, and Tobias Karlsson.
Chapter 1 The Vehicle AI of Watch Dogs: Legion: Building a Unified Vehicle AI System for Traffic and High‑Speed Chases
Dr Nic Melder
Chapter 2 Navigating through a Traffic Intersection: How to Avoid Traffic Chaos When Jumping a Red Light
Dr Nic Melder
Chapter 3 Building the Tools for Building a City: Semi‑Procedural Tools for the Creation of the City Road Network System of Watch Dogs: Legion
Dr Nic Melder
Chapter 4 Implementing a Simple 3D Waypoint Grid for Efficient Pathfinding in Eve: Valkyrie
Dr Allan Bruce
Chapter 5 N‑Gram for Any Direction Prediction in VR
Michele Condò
Chapter 6 Creating Characters Using Components
John Reynolds
Chapter 7 Making AI Play Ball: Building and Testing Football AI
Anubha Banerjee and Greg Irwin
Chapter 8 Tactical Positioning in the Game of Football
Anubha Banerjee and Greg Irwin
Chapter 9 Automated Testing for All Developers: How Easy Access Can Make Your Dev Process More Efficient
Matthias Siemonsmeier
Chapter 10 Abstract Pattern Matching for Strategic Play
Richard Bull
Chapter 11 Animation‑Driven Behaviour
Johan Holthausen
Chapter 12 JP‑DRS: Jump‑Point Directed Recursion Search
Paul Roberts
Chapter 13 Machine Learning for Games at Scale
Phil Carlisle
Chapter 14 Behaviour Engine and Language: A Heterogeneous State Machine System
Eric S. Le Saux
Chapter 15 AI Spawning Fundamentals: A General Guide to Spawning AI Agents in Games
Bruno Rebaque
Chapter 16 Character Utility Behaviour Graph
David Wooldridge
Chapter 17 Quarterback AI
Paul Roberts
Chapter 18 Touchdown! AI Scenarios within American Football
Paul Roberts
Chapter 19 Creature Navigation in the Air and on the Ground
Jason Lok Heng Chin
Chapter 20 Debug – Identifying and Presenting Useful Information
Dale Green
Chapter 21 Not All AIs Are Made the Same
Tobias Karlsson
Chapter 22 Simulation of Social Norms in City of Gangsters
Robert Zubek
Biography
Paul Roberts is the technical director of the independent game studio Grinning Cat. Prior to this he worked in a variety of Principal / Lead AI Programmer roles for a range of studios in the UK including Sumo Digital, Team17, Traveller’s Tales, Activision, and some smaller indie studios. For several years Paul also led the Games Programming department at Staffordshire University, where he taught Game AI and programming principles. He has a Master’s degree in Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence, which focused on pathfinding, the development of the DRS algorithm and ways to test the believability of generated paths. Paul has written a number of books, some fiction, others academic, the latest of which is ‘Artificial Intelligence in Games’ published by CRC Press in 2022 and is also the editor for this Game AI Uncovered series.
