AI for Computer Games and Animation: A Cognitive Modeling Approach

Rating:
Summary: An invaluable contribution to CGI animation
Review: Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) has transformed the art of animation. Computer-generated characters are now an everyday part of contemporary culture from advertising to video games, from movies to the Internet. Artificial intelligences gives computer-generated characters the ability to react to their environment in logical ways. In most cases, a character is programmed to present a specific set of behaviors that allow it to interact with other characters or game players. But this approach also results in severe limitations on responses to a characters world and its behavior becomes too easily predictable.

In AI For Games And Animation: A Cognitive Modeling Approach, John Funge introduces a new approach for creating autonomous characters. Cognitive modeling provides computer-animated characters with logic, reasoning, and planning skills. Using this technique, an animator or programmer need only specify a behavior outline and, through reasoning, the character will automatically work out a detailed sequence of actions. AI For Games And Animation is an invaluable contribution to personal and professional CGI animation reference libraries.

Rating:
Summary: Not really useful for game programmers
Review: In this title, the author strives to take Artificial Intelligence to the next level. The cognitive approach is one where a character is given planning and reasoning skills with a behavioral outline and the character uses his own logic to determine its next actions. The book is designed for intermediate to advanced AI programmers, so the format of the book is quite technical (read as 'mathematics~ based'). The book guides you through such topics as, "Reactive Behavior Rules", "Hierarchical Finite-state Machines", "Precondition Axioms", "Sensing", "Embedding Goal-directed Behavior", Priority-based Control Systems", "Subgoals" and many other related issues.

The book is roughly about 200 pages, and has 3 different examples for you to follow: a maze, a dinosaur world, and an undersea world. The maze is simple enough, its when you see the use of the cognitive approach in the dinosaurs and undersea creatures, that you realize the true potential of this method. In particular, I found the undersea world quite interesting. It consists of predatory sharks and merpeople. A shark will forage around systematically, going back to any spots it last saw a merperson, and will chase and try to eat any merperson it sees. Sounds simple enough. The merpeople have no weapons, but use their superior reasoning capacities to elude the 'jaws of death'. This is when things get cool. Using techniques described in the book, the author demonstrates how a merperson who has been given 'brave' characteristics will try and help a fellow merperson crying for help, as it tries to evade becoming the shark's next meal. The 'brave' merperson even risks his own cyber-life by hiding between rocks and getting dangerously close to the shark, trying to get its attention. A close call or two and the 'brave' merperson is finally able to distract the shark long enough for the other merperson to escape. The 'brave' one then leads the other back to the safety of the rocks and caves. Overall, pretty interesting reactions.

When you start thinking like the author does, the whole realm of game character AI takes on a whole new meaning. Speaking of meanings, according to the Merriam Webster's Dictionary, cognitive is described as = 1 : relating or involving the act or process of knowing; including both awareness and judgment. ( from Latin -cognitio, from cognoscere, to become acquainted with, know, to come to know ) 2 : based on or capable of being reduced to empirical factual knowledge. This truly is the theory being presented in this book. It is definitely not a beginner's guide to AI, nor by any means a final authority on the subject. AI for Games and Animation is a book that helps you, the animator/ game designer, progress the way you think about your characters and how they will function for you in your next project. If the subject of AI programming pertains to you, you would be well off adding this new release to your collection.

Rating:
Summary: Good ideas, but not fleshed out enough
Review: The idea of creating an autonomous virtual creature with behaviors that dynamically change in response to alterations in the virtual environment is intriguing. With a set of many different creatures available, one could add as many of each type as necessary and have a game or simulation with an enormous number of possible outcomes. This idea is consistent with the object-oriented approach to programming, where complex blocks of code are called components. In the ideal scenario, to build a program from components, you would select the ones that you need and then specify how many of each type and how they are to interact.
Funge puts forward the principles of a high-level language that can be used to abstractly define the behaviors of virtual characters. Unfortunately, he does not describe enough of the language to be completely convincing that his approach has been effectively implemented. Even insects demonstrate behavior that appears complex, and his examples are those of a Tyrannosaurus Rex trying to herd a small set of Velociraptors and a set of merpeople trying to avoid a predatory shark. Both examples include fixed obstacles and to be interesting, the creatures must exhibit behaviors that surprise human observers as well as their virtual opponents.
The treatment of artificial intelligence (AI) is also too light to completely prepare the way for the case studies. For example, the title of chapter 6 is "Learning", where the topic is ways in which a machine (virtual creature) can learn. However, it is only fourteen pages long, which is hardly enough paper and ink to even scratch the surface of this complex topic.
This is not to say that there is a lack of good ideas in the book, in fact there are many. My criticism is that they are not expanded out to the point where someone who reads only this book will be able to act on them. Intelligence is a complex topic, and making it artificially has proven to be very hard. Therefore, none of the ideas put forward in this book are adequately covered.

Rating:
Summary: Not really useful for game programmers
Review: The title of this book is its biggest flaw because it appears to cater to game programmers but the techniques described within it are not that useful. It appears that the book is marketed to the game programming community due to its immense size. Anybody interested it this book would be well advised to purchase the siggraph proceedings that it comes from because not only will you learn what this book is about, you will also have a large resource of other techniques that can be used for graphics and animation.

Yes, John's technique is interesting and different ... however he does not have a gaming background, has never worked on games, and it is obvious that this book is simply an extension of a research paper. You can find better resources for both AI and game programming elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: A Concise Overview of AI for Computers
Review: When I bought this book I wasn't quite sure what to expect since the title, "AI for Games and Animation: ..." is so broad sounding. What I did expect was that it would be written in an easy to read form and hopefully provide enough in-depth coverage of the topics so that a reasonable game programmer could implement them based on the information provided, without further research. This criteria seems to be adhered to in the technical articles in a publication such as Game Developer.

Apparently, no-one bothered to tell Mr. Funge about this. Although the book does provide some case studies (examples) the actual details of their implementations are often glossed over or shrouded in unnecessary mathematical formalism that is out of place in a game programmer's book. To give an example, complex topics such as inverse kinematics and coupled spring systems are given several short paragraphs. In describing coupled spring systems for deforming a mesh, Funge uses "x dot" notation that most game programmers probably are not familiar with.

The only saving grace is the reference section which can point the reader to more specific literature that may actually be helpful in constructing implementations of some of the techniques described in the book. This increases the rating from the worst (1 star) to 2 stars since it is actually pretty comphrensive.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing new about AI
Review: When you are reading this book you fell like a man telling you things that you already know, nothing new. If you dont know nothing about AI maybe will help you.There is not algorithms on it, only obvious info. If you want to learn real AI buy "Artificial Inteligence" by Rich