Programming Game AI by Example,   ISBN:9781556220784

Customer Rating: 

This is the book used in my AI and Data Structures programming class at DeVry University in their Game and Simulation Programming major. This book combined with my professor who's the lead software engineer for High Voltage, Inc. have made learning various AI concepts easier than I had imagined. The book has complete source code for various types of AI structures including a message based finite state machine that allows for easy creation of states, actors, and messages with easy to understand memory management functions. There's also a graphic based test board type of application that allows you to test how fast path search algorithms ranging from Depth First, Breadth First, Djikstras, and A* methods. There's also features to learn and experiment with different heuristic methods as well. The book is easy to read and the C++ code source is easy to follow and understand for a beginner to intermediate programmer skill level.

Customer Rating: 

I was relatively new to AI when I started reading this book (I took some classes but no real insight). I skipped the physics review part because I didn't need a recap, but I think it's very useful for many. This book was kind of a revelation to me. Just reading the first three chapters you can get so many hints and design techniques you can already program your first games easily. Moreover, the code is C++, industry standard for games, giving the book an even more professional feel.
The book proceeds really fast, so if you don't have some object oriented programming experience and a minimum knowledge of C++ it might be hard to read. If that's the case I suggest to read "Accelerated C++" to start.
Highly recommended.

Customer Rating: 

For my final year project I decided to write a football soccer sim. Was not sure how to approach this. I purchased this book and read it and this helped give me a clearer idea! Whilst I did not quite understand all the concepts I was able to take ideas from some of the chapters and create my own working sim. Thanks to Matt Buckland for writing this. I'd say any material he writes is worth checking out.

Customer Rating: 

This book was just what I was looking for. The book has great examples and the accompanying code was phenomenal. This is a must get, everyone who commented on this was completely accurate!

Customer Rating: 

The title definitely delivers what it promises: programming AI by example. Some code examples could be simplified and refactored but then again book would lost some of the readability.

Most interesting part of book is goal based agent programming which I liked very much. The agent based programming would be good title for entire book but I'd like to have more about this topic. Still, I cannot drop rating based on this aspect; introduction is introduction.

Also, there are lots of introductionary stuff to mathematics and FSM that I have spend my time before reading the book. Again, this is not reason to drop rating for book since it is *meant* to be introduction to AI-programming (with examples).

I gave 5 stars since I liked the humor author had in his text. For example perception chapters are joy to read.

I can recommend this book if you haven't spend years in game industry. Even then it might give something new.