reviews/ai_for_games_developers.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<page title="AI for Games Developers" keywords="">
<item>
<p>Authors: David M. Bourg and Glenn Seemann</p>
<p>ISBN: <isbn>0-596-00555-5</isbn></p>
<p>Publisher: O'Reilly Associates</p>
<p>Reviewed by: Simon Wistow</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
AI is a funny discipline. In the concept of computer graphics there's a
term called 'The Uncanny Valley' which describes the odd phenomenom
observed when creating photorealistic humans. The graph of quality of
graphics versus perceived realism rises smoothly and proportionately
until just before 100% realism at which point it suddenly dips
dramatically and then continues rising. The reason is that at that point
your brain starts noticing the things that are wrong rather than all the
things that are right.
</p>
<p>
AI is just like that.
</p>
<p>
There are some fantastic academic AIs which would never be used for games
because games, like movies, are about suspension of disbelief and not
about realism. It's more important for a games AI to seem real rather
than actually *being* real. This also has the added advantage that faked
AI is often a lot cheaper, in terms of time, cost and processor cycles,
than 'real' AI.
</p>
<p>
This book is about the fake 'AI'.
</p>
<p>
The big problem this book has it that the state of the art moves
incredibly fast and is well beyond the scope of a 360 odd page book.
Instead, and quite correctly, what it does is produce a primer of the
basic techniques - their pros, their cons - and doesn't try and pretend
that at the end of it you'll be able to get a job as senior AI developer
at Bungie working on Halo 3.
</p>
<p>
You might spot some of the techniques they're using though. Which is
pretty neat.
</p>
<p>
So what *does* it cover then?
</p>
<p>
The book starts gently - the first seven chapters are based on very
simple techniques such line of sight chasing, flocking, A* path finding,
- all basic techniques that can be easily illustrated using ye olde
worlde 2D tile based game worlds and then scaled up to fully 3D, cortex
busting, immersively shiny 3D environments.
</p>
<p>
Then there's a slightly odd (for me at least) chapter technique on
scripted AI encounters. It's this chapter which, in my mind,
demonstrates the most serious problem with this book. In many ways it's
sufficent just to say that there are scripted AI events and these are
the advantages and disadvantages. Dedicating a whole chapter to it -
nearly the same number of pages as the ones on rules based AI,
probability in games and fuzzy logic, seems a bit, well, imbalanced.
</p>
<p>
I'm not going to dive into details about the rest of the chapters suffice
to say that they cover the aformentioned fuzzy logic, probability and
rule-based AI as well as Finite State Machines (also called Discrete
Finite Automata) and Genetic Algorithms , Bayseian techniques and an
introduction to Neural Networks.
</p>
<p>
To be honest I quite enjoyed this book but had problems imaging who it
was actually for. If you know anything about AI then it's really all a
bit too simplified and if you don't then, well, it's a bit too simplified
for you really learning anything. Although it will point you in the
direction of the right words to look up when you actually want to go a
bit more hardcore. It's sort of a pop-ai book - a lightweight easy read
primer and when I stop being snobby about it and admit that I like
reading pop books on psychology, economics and the like then I'll concede
that it's not a bad read if this sort of thing interests you.
</p>
</item>
</page>
reviews/ai_for_games_developers.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<page title="AI for Games Developers" keywords="">
<item>
<p>Authors: David M. Bourg and Glenn Seemann</p>
<p>ISBN: <isbn>0-596-00555-5</isbn></p>
<p>Publisher: O'Reilly Associates</p>
<p>Reviewed by: Simon Wistow</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
AI is a funny discipline. In the concept of computer graphics there's a
term called 'The Uncanny Valley' which describes the odd phenomenom
observed when creating photorealistic humans. The graph of quality of
graphics versus perceived realism rises smoothly and proportionately
until just before 100% realism at which point it suddenly dips
dramatically and then continues rising. The reason is that at that point
your brain starts noticing the things that are wrong rather than all the
things that are right.
</p>
<p>
AI is just like that.
</p>
<p>
There are some fantastic academic AIs which would never be used for games
because games, like movies, are about suspension of disbelief and not
about realism. It's more important for a games AI to seem real rather
than actually *being* real. This also has the added advantage that faked
AI is often a lot cheaper, in terms of time, cost and processor cycles,
than 'real' AI.
</p>
<p>
This book is about the fake 'AI'.
</p>
<p>
The big problem this book has it that the state of the art moves
incredibly fast and is well beyond the scope of a 360 odd page book.
Instead, and quite correctly, what it does is produce a primer of the
basic techniques - their pros, their cons - and doesn't try and pretend
that at the end of it you'll be able to get a job as senior AI developer
at Bungie working on Halo 3.
</p>
<p>
You might spot some of the techniques they're using though. Which is
pretty neat.
</p>
<p>
So what *does* it cover then?
</p>
<p>
The book starts gently - the first seven chapters are based on very
simple techniques such line of sight chasing, flocking, A* path finding,
- all basic techniques that can be easily illustrated using ye olde
worlde 2D tile based game worlds and then scaled up to fully 3D, cortex
busting, immersively shiny 3D environments.
</p>
<p>
Then there's a slightly odd (for me at least) chapter technique on
scripted AI encounters. It's this chapter which, in my mind,
demonstrates the most serious problem with this book. In many ways it's
sufficent just to say that there are scripted AI events and these are
the advantages and disadvantages. Dedicating a whole chapter to it -
nearly the same number of pages as the ones on rules based AI,
probability in games and fuzzy logic, seems a bit, well, imbalanced.
</p>
<p>
I'm not going to dive into details about the rest of the chapters suffice
to say that they cover the aformentioned fuzzy logic, probability and
rule-based AI as well as Finite State Machines (also called Discrete
Finite Automata) and Genetic Algorithms , Bayseian techniques and an
introduction to Neural Networks.
</p>
<p>
To be honest I quite enjoyed this book but had problems imaging who it
was actually for. If you know anything about AI then it's really all a
bit too simplified and if you don't then, well, it's a bit too simplified
for you really learning anything. Although it will point you in the
direction of the right words to look up when you actually want to go a
bit more hardcore. It's sort of a pop-ai book - a lightweight easy read
primer and when I stop being snobby about it and admit that I like
reading pop books on psychology, economics and the like then I'll concede
that it's not a bad read if this sort of thing interests you.
</p>
</item>
</page>