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If you have personal experience, read, any of the books, I (and I imagine other HNers) appreciate your comments on the books. Specifically are the "AI Game Pro

If you have personal experience, read, any of the books, I (and I imagine other HNers) appreciate your comments on the books. Specifically are the "AI Game Programming Wisdom" books, the new revisions of the same thing? or they complement each other?

maaaats 12y ago
"Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" by Russel&Norvig is one of the most used course books in AI. It covers basics of formal logic, search, making decisions, handling uncertainty etc. All at an introduction level, though, so for someone with many years of programming experience many of these things may be known already. As my adviser says: Once AI discovers something interesting, it becomes labeled something else or become a part of "standard computer science". I can recommended the book for an overview of the field and knowledge of the basic techniques, but not as something to read when game AI is the goal.
- Jare 12y ago
  It was the reference book for game AI programmers when there were no game AI books. :) I still think it's a great baseline for any AI programmer.
- douche 12y ago
  EDIT: I just looked through the table of contents again, and it does actually have useful topics in it. I was so scarred by my godawful, incredibly academic, college AI course that I only remembered the bullshit that we actually covered in that course. Literally nothing in the course was worth wasting my time on, and it looks like we went purposefully around anything that might have been relevant or interesting. It's baffling to me that two of the worst three computer science courses I took were AI and Algorithms & Data Structures. Both had mindbogglingly abstract, mathematically-oriented profs, who spent every lecture transcribing proofs from the textbook onto the blackboard. How do you teach a course on these subjects and have no assignments that involve writing code? This is at the place where BASIC was created, for chrissakes.
  - jeffreyrogers 12y ago
    I had a very similar experience as you wrt AI and algorithms courses. Oddly enough, when I then (later) started exploring these more on my own I found them much more interesting.
GuiA 12y ago
Speaking for the ones I have on my shelves: --- The AI Game Programming Wisdom and Game Programming Gems are not revision of the same things. They're just part of the same series; the format of the books is more akin to a collection of articles (all by different authors from the industry), grouped by topic. For example in volume 1, you have: - General Wisdom (4 articles) - Useful Techniques and Specialized Systems (8) - Pathfinding with A* (5) - Pathfinding and Movement (6) - Tactical Issues and Intelligent Group Movement (6) - General Purpose Architectures (6) - Decision Making Architectures (5) - FPS, RTS, and RPG AI (6) - Racing and Sports AI (8) - Scripting (7) - Learning (10) (the groupings are different for each books) I quite recommend these books - the quality of the articles can be uneven, but you almost always learn something. The main critics against them are that 1) the material can be dated (these books are from the early 2000s) and 2) some of the content can be found online for free. They're still good resources to have on your shelves IMO. In the same vein, I recommend the GPU Gems and Graphics Gems for realtime graphics programming. --- "Programming Game AI by Example" by Buckland is a great, hands on, practical approach to game programming. It is not academic or theoretical by any means, but that's one of its strong traits - it's code driven. It was my first AI read while in high school, and I really recommend it. The perfect audience for that would be a motivated teenager or undergrad who knows enough programming to make small games, but hasn't taken full AI courses yet. --- "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" by Norvig et al. is kind of the CLRS of AI - a thorough, deep introduction to the field that will give you all the tools you need to solve pretty much any problem you can encounter. It can be a bit dry/academic at times, but that's the price you have to pay. It's great to learn from it as part of a focused course while you're still getting familiar with the field, and it's also great to flip to a random chapter every once in a while to revisit the basics when you're a more mature professional. --- "Designing Sociable Robots" by Breazal is a cool read - it's a collection of 13 fairly independent chapters by the author which mash together HCI, social sciences, robotics, electronics, programming, and each explain how a subcomponent of a full "sociable" robot (in this case her lab's project, Kismet) works (e.g. the vision system, an expressive vocalization system, etc.). --- "Society of Mind" by Minsky is a very interesting read. It's more high level and philosophical, but it's definitely worth it. It's almost 30 years old though, and I'm not sure how much his work has held up to modern theories - I don't follow that field too closely. --- "Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI" by Mark is not that code heavy compared to the others (especially the Game AI Wisdom series), although it does have some, and is rather more oriented towards mathematical modeling. It touches on game theory, utility functions, probability distributions, etc. I think it's the most mathy an AI text can be before becoming pretty much pure math, which is great- it's a great stepping stone for the folks who are programmers first and who want to know more of the math theory behind it all (whether just for understanding or to be able to build their own algorithms).
douche 12y ago
I'll put my vote in for Buckland's Programming Game AI by Example. It is very approachable, code-heavy, and it's also got some great examples to visualize the techniques discussed. Very easy to translate what you learn reading this book into any projects of your own, particularly if you take the time to actually code the examples and work through the exercises at the end of the chapter. I've got a copy of Ian Millington's AI book that I need to finish reading. So far it seems to be very good. It's not as example-driven, but it seems to have good breadth on real-world game AI topics. The Game Programming Gems series is worth reading through, if, as others have noted, a little dated in places. The general game design and AI sections hold up better than some of the high-performance math and graphics tweaks included from that era. I believe a good portion of them are available for free online, although I may be confusing one of the other Gems series.
RunningWild 12y ago
"AI : A Modern Approach" is considered the high-level standard text on the subject. It's coverage is fairly broad, but it prioritizes the idea of an AI "agent"; an autonomous "thing" attempting to understand its environment and make the best choices within the context of it's given priorities. The "AI Game Programming Wisdom" books I own the first 2 volumes of. They're the same format as the "Game Programming Gems" (or "Graphics Gems" before that). That is, a series of articles written by many different authors on a smorgasbord of topics. Pros : Wide and sometimes highly-specific coverage and many code samples. Cons : Can be heavily cherry-picked in topic choices. May not be pertinent to anything you need specifically. Refer to the TOC on each respective volume to see if any of the articles pertain to what you need. Also, this article from Game Developer Magazine offers a cursory introduction to the approach taken by the Norvig book; Agents : https://www.scribd.com/doc/251684769/Adding-Planning-Capabilities-to-Your-Game-AI https://www.scribd.com/doc/251684769/Adding-Planning-Capabil...
psyklic 12y ago
I authored one of the 55 chapters/articles in "AI Game Programming Wisdom 4." Just like the "Game Programming Gems" series, each book 1-4 is a separate collection of articles by various authors on various topics in game AI. The books are much more practical than textbooks, contain a lot of great video game-specific material (including how the AI for some popular games was done), and the CDs include (2008-era) source code. I'd recommend them -- most articles are still very relevant. Although they do vary in quality, there are some great reads. EDIT: Steve Rabin (the editor) has a very high rated new book out called "Game AI Pro: Collected Wisdom of Game AI Professionals" -- http://www.amazon.com/Game-AI-Pro-Collected-Professionals/dp/1466565969 http://www.amazon.com/Game-AI-Pro-Collected-Professionals/dp...

maaaats 12y ago

"Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" by Russel&Norvig is one of the most used course books in AI. It covers basics of formal logic, search, making decisions, handling uncertainty etc. All at an introduction level, though, so for someone with many years of programming experience many of these things may be known already. As my adviser says: Once AI discovers something interesting, it becomes labeled something else or become a part of "standard computer science". I can recommended the book for an overview of the field and knowledge of the basic techniques, but not as something to read when game AI is the goal.

Jare 12y ago
It was the reference book for game AI programmers when there were no game AI books. :) I still think it's a great baseline for any AI programmer.
douche 12y ago
EDIT: I just looked through the table of contents again, and it does actually have useful topics in it. I was so scarred by my godawful, incredibly academic, college AI course that I only remembered the bullshit that we actually covered in that course. Literally nothing in the course was worth wasting my time on, and it looks like we went purposefully around anything that might have been relevant or interesting. It's baffling to me that two of the worst three computer science courses I took were AI and Algorithms & Data Structures. Both had mindbogglingly abstract, mathematically-oriented profs, who spent every lecture transcribing proofs from the textbook onto the blackboard. How do you teach a course on these subjects and have no assignments that involve writing code? This is at the place where BASIC was created, for chrissakes.
- jeffreyrogers 12y ago
  I had a very similar experience as you wrt AI and algorithms courses. Oddly enough, when I then (later) started exploring these more on my own I found them much more interesting.

GuiA 12y ago

Speaking for the ones I have on my shelves: --- The AI Game Programming Wisdom and Game Programming Gems are not revision of the same things. They're just part of the same series; the format of the books is more akin to a collection of articles (all by different authors from the industry), grouped by topic. For example in volume 1, you have: - General Wisdom (4 articles) - Useful Techniques and Specialized Systems (8) - Pathfinding with A* (5) - Pathfinding and Movement (6) - Tactical Issues and Intelligent Group Movement (6) - General Purpose Architectures (6) - Decision Making Architectures (5) - FPS, RTS, and RPG AI (6) - Racing and Sports AI (8) - Scripting (7) - Learning (10) (the groupings are different for each books) I quite recommend these books - the quality of the articles can be uneven, but you almost always learn something. The main critics against them are that 1) the material can be dated (these books are from the early 2000s) and 2) some of the content can be found online for free. They're still good resources to have on your shelves IMO. In the same vein, I recommend the GPU Gems and Graphics Gems for realtime graphics programming. --- "Programming Game AI by Example" by Buckland is a great, hands on, practical approach to game programming. It is not academic or theoretical by any means, but that's one of its strong traits - it's code driven. It was my first AI read while in high school, and I really recommend it. The perfect audience for that would be a motivated teenager or undergrad who knows enough programming to make small games, but hasn't taken full AI courses yet. --- "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" by Norvig et al. is kind of the CLRS of AI - a thorough, deep introduction to the field that will give you all the tools you need to solve pretty much any problem you can encounter. It can be a bit dry/academic at times, but that's the price you have to pay. It's great to learn from it as part of a focused course while you're still getting familiar with the field, and it's also great to flip to a random chapter every once in a while to revisit the basics when you're a more mature professional. --- "Designing Sociable Robots" by Breazal is a cool read - it's a collection of 13 fairly independent chapters by the author which mash together HCI, social sciences, robotics, electronics, programming, and each explain how a subcomponent of a full "sociable" robot (in this case her lab's project, Kismet) works (e.g. the vision system, an expressive vocalization system, etc.). --- "Society of Mind" by Minsky is a very interesting read. It's more high level and philosophical, but it's definitely worth it. It's almost 30 years old though, and I'm not sure how much his work has held up to modern theories - I don't follow that field too closely. --- "Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI" by Mark is not that code heavy compared to the others (especially the Game AI Wisdom series), although it does have some, and is rather more oriented towards mathematical modeling. It touches on game theory, utility functions, probability distributions, etc. I think it's the most mathy an AI text can be before becoming pretty much pure math, which is great- it's a great stepping stone for the folks who are programmers first and who want to know more of the math theory behind it all (whether just for understanding or to be able to build their own algorithms).

douche 12y ago

I'll put my vote in for Buckland's Programming Game AI by Example. It is very approachable, code-heavy, and it's also got some great examples to visualize the techniques discussed. Very easy to translate what you learn reading this book into any projects of your own, particularly if you take the time to actually code the examples and work through the exercises at the end of the chapter. I've got a copy of Ian Millington's AI book that I need to finish reading. So far it seems to be very good. It's not as example-driven, but it seems to have good breadth on real-world game AI topics. The Game Programming Gems series is worth reading through, if, as others have noted, a little dated in places. The general game design and AI sections hold up better than some of the high-performance math and graphics tweaks included from that era. I believe a good portion of them are available for free online, although I may be confusing one of the other Gems series.

RunningWild 12y ago

"AI : A Modern Approach" is considered the high-level standard text on the subject. It's coverage is fairly broad, but it prioritizes the idea of an AI "agent"; an autonomous "thing" attempting to understand its environment and make the best choices within the context of it's given priorities. The "AI Game Programming Wisdom" books I own the first 2 volumes of. They're the same format as the "Game Programming Gems" (or "Graphics Gems" before that). That is, a series of articles written by many different authors on a smorgasbord of topics. Pros : Wide and sometimes highly-specific coverage and many code samples. Cons : Can be heavily cherry-picked in topic choices. May not be pertinent to anything you need specifically. Refer to the TOC on each respective volume to see if any of the articles pertain to what you need. Also, this article from Game Developer Magazine offers a cursory introduction to the approach taken by the Norvig book; Agents : https://www.scribd.com/doc/251684769/Adding-Planning-Capabilities-to-Your-Game-AI https://www.scribd.com/doc/251684769/Adding-Planning-Capabil...

psyklic 12y ago

I authored one of the 55 chapters/articles in "AI Game Programming Wisdom 4." Just like the "Game Programming Gems" series, each book 1-4 is a separate collection of articles by various authors on various topics in game AI. The books are much more practical than textbooks, contain a lot of great video game-specific material (including how the AI for some popular games was done), and the CDs include (2008-era) source code. I'd recommend them -- most articles are still very relevant. Although they do vary in quality, there are some great reads. EDIT: Steve Rabin (the editor) has a very high rated new book out called "Game AI Pro: Collected Wisdom of Game AI Professionals" -- http://www.amazon.com/Game-AI-Pro-Collected-Professionals/dp/1466565969 http://www.amazon.com/Game-AI-Pro-Collected-Professionals/dp...