Product Review

"AI Techniques for Game Programming" takes the difficult topics of genetic algorithms and neural networks and explains them in plain English. Gone are the tortuous mathematic equations and abstract examples to be found in other books. Each chapter takes readers through the theory a step at a time, explaining clearly how they can incorporate each technique into their own games. After a whirlwind tour of Windows programming, readers will learn how to use genetic algorithms for optimization, path-finding, and evolving control sequences for their game agents. Coverage of neural network basics quickly advances to evolving neural motion controllers for their game agents and applying neural networks to obstacle avoidance and map exploration. Backpropagation and pattern recognition is also explained. By the end of the book, readers will know how to train a network to recognize mouse gestures and how to use state-of-the-art techniques for creating neural networks with dynamic topologies.