Chapter 49. Game AI Engineering Principles

Key Topics

• Architectures

• Implementations

• Techniques and Their Applicability

• Learning and Feedback Mechanisms

Traditionally, AI techniques focus on very narrow problems; they struggle to solve many problems outside of their intended domain. This weakness is not so much an inconvenience as it is the essence of AI. To get around the limitations, or—from another perspective—to maximize the benefits of AI technology in game development, specific patterns are very helpful. In both design and development, AI patterns provide essential guidance that can save tremendous amounts of time and improve the final system.

Useful principles occur often in game AI development at different levels of the system. This chapter regroups and summarizes the important ideas presented throughout this book.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Architectures common in state-of-the-art game AI systems

• Implementation hints to save the developer time

• The applicability of each technique, common problems, and possible solutions

• Learning systems, and hints on how to design the feedback functions

Such tricks help developers tackle unique problems in their own games.