Book Image

Practical Game AI Programming

By : Micael DaGraça
Book Image

Practical Game AI Programming

By: Micael DaGraça

Overview of this book

The book starts with the basics examples of AI for different game genres and directly jumps into defining the probabilities and possibilities of the AI character to determine character movement. Next, you’ll learn how AI characters should behave within the environment created. Moving on, you’ll explore how to work with animations. You’ll also plan and create pruning strategies, and create Theta algorithms to find short and realistic looking game paths. Next, you’ll learn how the AI should behave when there is a lot of characters in the same scene. You'll explore which methods and algorithms, such as possibility maps, Forward Chaining Plan, Rete Algorithm, Pruning Strategies, Wall Distances, and Map Preprocess Implementation should be used on different occasions. You’ll discover how to overcome some limitations, and how to deliver a better experience to the player. By the end of the book, you think differently about AI.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
6
Navigation Behavior and Pathfinding
9
AI Planning and Collision Avoidance

Chapter 5. Animation Behaviors

When we think about AI, usually we imagine smart robots, mechanical objects that perfectly perform a vast array of actions, and the same thought happens with video game AI. We tend to think about opponents or allies that act, react, think, or do a lot of things with smart decisions, and that's correct, but one more important aspect is usually left behind, the animations. In order to create believable and realistic AI characters, the animation is one of the most important aspects. Animations define the visual interaction, that is, what it looks like when the character is doing something. It's very important to have the animations working as well as the functional mechanics in order for the character to be believable. In this chapter, we'll be looking at some useful techniques and solutions to use, re-use, and create animations that smoothly fit the characters' behaviors. The way we create and use animations are the same for the player as for the AI characters...