AI Game Development: Synthetic Creatures with Learning and Reactive Behaviors [Paperback]

If you are interested in seeing something before you buy this book, check out ai-depot.net, also having read Alex's research paper for his masters I can confidently say that Alex is one of THE authority on these subjects!

So check out the book already!

I can't help but feel that the book was kinda rushed and was not properly/thoroughly proofed read by the editor. I am confident that a lower priced 2nd edition with all the mistakes taken out would be really appropriate and appreciated by game AI interested people. If not some one else should become the 2nd person in the world to write a book on this subject: Game AI.

The author should be a little self critical and make a 2nd edition and make us all happy instead of living in denial and giving him self 5 stars. Dont see how he can improve on him self without being self critical. We are all greatful here in my University for his initiative in inventing the first book on game ai but were also all very frustrated when strugling to asimilate it's content.

Also a great deal of the SOURCE CODE did NOT WORK. Some of them did, but a large fraction of them DID NOT work as expected from the book.

Granted some chapters that covered basic principles were easy to follow but some intermediate chapters really made me frustrated as i re-read them again and again to try and understand a concept but continue to fail unless i label certain sentences as mistakes that were worded wrongly or backward etc.

I was going to rate this book 2 stars because i felt that some chapters were well written and covered the content well, but since so many people already gave it an unrealistic score of 5 stars (perhaps a conspiracy by the author's friends) i have decided to compensate for this and lower my rating to 1 star.

Hopefully this will balance out the scoring to a fair and realistic level that it deserves.

David Ong, Australia

The book does come with source code, part of an ongoing open source project in game AI. The SDK with the book has in fact hundreds of C++ files demonstrating each technique in practice. Links to the website are given almost every chapter, so a genuine reader would hardly miss them. You can even get the framework supporting the book freely over at http://AiGameDev.com/.

As for shallow reviews of AI techniques, I guess you'd have to ignore the fact that the book is recommended reading - if not required - in already 4 Universitiy courses on Games & AI in the UK and America.

One of my main focuses when writing the book was to bridge the gap between theory and practice, academia and industry. The book covers a lot of ground, but also leaves the reader room to experiment and try out the ideas in practice. You'll get as much out of the book as you put into it - so reading it might be a good start for Riccardo.

A tutorial series entitled 'Exercises in Game AI Programming' has just been launched based on the book. You can find it over at http://AiGameDev.com/ also. Decide for yourself!

Alex Champandard