Programming Game AI by Example

I think this is a great book. Clearly written and does not not assume any prior knowledge. I must say that I 've only used it for the implementation of steering behaviours until now so I can not comment on the rest. Also a minor disadvantage is that I do not have a way to compile the code on a mac (please let me know if I am wrong on that).

I found this book to be a fantastic resource for AI Game Development. It showed me new techniques on implementing simple agents that displayed intelligent behaviour, without causing the resulting program to be a resource hog on the computer. It teaches 'weak' AI techniques instead of all the 'strong' AI I was taught at university. This makes the book more useful for game development and quite easy to follow. I found the most useful chapters were on building autonomous agents and the chapter devoted to pathfinding. This is not just the usual pathfinding techniques that show you how to get from A to B in the shortest distance, but how to set up your program in order to balance the need of your agents with the capabilities of the CPU, such that your agents wont slow down your program to an unbearable frame-rate, yet still show intelligent behaviour.

A good book for game AI to get you started, the text reads fine and is easy to follow. The code on the other hand is rather messy, and I agree with the other reviewer that pseudo code would have been a better option - you have to read through all the authors little coding habits to root out what you need. Still, worth a read because the AI descriptions are very well put together.

A great read. Tells you all you need to start implementation in your own code in a very short time. A bit heavy on the maths for some perhaps but I guess that is the nature of the topic so the way the author deals with it is exceptionally well done. The examples are great and really show the good and bad methods. I've seen both in games I own since reading this book and know how their underlying coding works now. Well worth buying though the full price is steep so I got a second-hand copy...

First off, it's a good read as it is so well written. There is an invaluable basic maths/physics primer at the start (in fact I still refer to that section a year later). Then a nice gentle intro with FSMs (although, on my girlfriends orders, I had to rewrite the tasks given to the Miner's Wife). From there it's Steering Behaviours, Sports AI, Pathfinding etc (all the usual suspects) but the examples for each are superb. I did struggle slightly translating the code (pseudo-code would have been nice) but that's a minor point.

Practical and useful tutorials on implementing various kinds of AI behaviour in computer games. Uses C++ and LUA scripting. Excellent working examples with efficient coding.

Perfect book for who is starting facing game programming. Well explained. It gives you the instruments to operate quickly.

Hello, I just want to say I have no problem with the book, and its contents, infact its quite good (my uni uses it as reference material). How ever, before you buy please read what I have to say. The book is 500 a5 pages long, and has helpful images to explain various points. But its the back cover where I found my mayor problem, the RRP price of this book is $49.95 (about £35 at time of writing), and amazon are selling this for nearly double that. I understand amazon faces importing charges (assuming it wasn't printed in the UK), but even so, selling a book for almost double what it retails for. Also, if you want this book, check the American site, and see how much shipping is, it probably cheaper to buy it from there. http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Game-Example-Mat-Buckland/dp/1556220782/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369083688&sr=8-1&keywords=programming+game+ai+by+example :)