DaGraça - Practical game AI programming: create game AI and implement cutting edge AI algorithms from scratch

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First published: June 2017

Production reference: 1280617

ISBN 978-1-78712-281-9

www.packtpub.com

Micael DaGraca is a game designer and an AR developer living in Porto, Portugal. He has worked for multiple game studios, contributing to the creation of different indie games and interactive apps.

Micael grew up playing video games, and that passion never went away. So, later on in his life, he decided to learn how to create games. Without any previous knowledge in coding or 3D animation, he slowly started to create simple games, learning each time more with those experiences. When the games started to work and the gameplay became enjoyable, he started to make plans to publish a game in collaboration with an old friend. Micael was responsible for the technical aspect of the game, making sure that the game worked as planned, while his friend created all the artwork for the game. Finally, the game was published, and it received some positive feedback from other indie game developers. Since the game generated some revenue, the dream of becoming a game designer turned into reality.

Today, Micael works for other studios, helping others to develop their game ideas, and has also integrated into a company that focuses on the creation of games and interactive apps for health and well-being purposes. Even though he doesn't have the time to keep working on personal projects, he has a few frozen game projects that are still under development with the help of his friend.

Davide Aversa completed his masters in robotics and artificial intelligence and his Ph.D. in computer science at La Sapienza University of Rome where he has been involved in research applied to pathfinding and decision making for digital games characters and computational creativity.

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Developing games is a passion for some, and I believe that this is because we are able to create a world that is completely imagined by us; this is like being a god, and the AI characters that we place there are the habitants of that world that we have just created. We are free to imagine how they will behave, we can create a society according to our imagination, we are able to create a sweet and kind character, but also we can create the most devilish character that ever existed--the possibilities are endless, and that is why we will always have new game ideas coming out. No matter what game genre we decide to develop, the world and their characters will be the essence of our vision; this is what will make our game unique, and ideally we should be able to create everything that we have in mind, just as we imagine. This book was conceived with that in mind, that all of us should be able to create the ideas that we have and that we shouldn't limit our imagination, so this book will cover the foundations of creating an artificial character, and after reading it, we should be able to explore all the topics that you have learned, creating AI characters that fit perfectly with what we have imagined.