Game AI Uncovered: Volume Two continues the series with the collected wisdom, ideas, tricks and cutting‑edge techniques from 22 of the top game AI professionals and researchers from around the world.
The techniques discussed in these pages cover the underlying development of a wide array of published titles, including The Survivalists, Wheelman, Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, Dead Space, Zombie Army 4, Evil Genius 2, Sniper Elite 5, Sonic & All‑Stars Racing Transformed, DiRT: Showdown, and more.
Contained within this volume are overviews and insights covering a host of different areas within game AI, including generalised planners, player imitation, awareness, dynamic behaviour trees, decision‑making architectures, agent learning for automated playthroughs, utility systems, machine learning for cinematography, directed acyclic graphs, environment steering, difficulty scenarios, environmental cues through voxels, automated testing approaches, dumbing down your AI, synchronized path following, and much more.
Beginners to the area of game AI, along with professional developers, will find a wealth of knowledge that will not only help in the development of your own games but also spark ideas for new approaches.
This volume includes chapters written by Nuno Vicente Barreto, Steve Bilton, Andy Brown, Dr Allan Bruce, Richard Bull, Phil Carlisle, Sarah Cook, Michele Condò, Steven Dalton, Rodolfo Fava, Jonas Gillberg, Dominik Gotojuch, Dale Green, Tobias Karlsson, Jonathan Keslake, Fernando Penousal Machado, Ivan Mateev, Dr Nic Melder, Dr Bram Ridder, Paul Roberts, Licínio Roque, and Andrea Schiel.
1. Low Bandwidth, Synchronised Path Following in Team17’s The Survivalists.
Steven Dalton
2. Going Stateless: An Evolution of Behaviour Trees in Team17’s The Survivalists and Beyond.
Steven Dalton
3. Monkey Business: NPC Player Imitation in Team17’s The Survivalists.
Steven Dalton
4. Dynamic Behaviour Trees: Building for Scalability.
Jonathan Keslake
5. Building a Buddy: Choosing the Right Brain.
Dale Green
6. Making Up Your AI’s Mind: Decision-Making Architectures.
Tobias Karlsson
7. High Speed Vehicle Driving in Wheelman.
Dr Allan Bruce
8. AI Awareness in Sports Games.
Paul Roberts
9. Crafting the Illusion: Difficulty Scenarios.
Paul Roberts
10. Towards Controlled Design of Learning Agents for Automated Video Game Playing.
Dominik Gotojuch
11. Utility Systems for High-Level Group Management.
Steve Bilton
12. Machine Learning Based Automated Cinematography for Games.
Phil Carlisle
13. Directed Acyclic Graphs for Fun and Profit.
Ivan Mateev
14. Navigating Broken Data.
Jonas Gillberg
15. Environment Steering.
Rodolfo Fava
16. Using Voxels for Environmental Cues.
Richard Bull
17. The Creature Believability Scale.
Nuno Vicente Barreto, Fernando Penousal Machado & Licínio Roque
18. Automated Testing Using AI Planning.
Dr Bram Ridder
19. Dumbing Down AI - The Art of Making Intelligence Stupid.
Sarah Cook
20. Race Director.
Andy Brown
21. SB-GOAP: Self-Balanced Goal Oriented Action Planner.
Michele Condò
22. Generalised AI Planners.
Andrea Schiel
23. Unleashing Mayhem: The Demolition Derby Game Modes of DiRT: Showdown.
Dr Nic Melder
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.
