Cover selection sounds easy to implement, but in practice can be one of the most problematic features of modern AI. How can your AI find sensible hiding spots and make sure they remain good places to hide? In this tutorial, you'll find out about finding cover in general and how to make sure the code runs efficiently — including tactical pathfinding as a secret ingredient.

As the end of this console generation approaches, it is becoming increasingly important to wring every last bit of performance out of available hardware. This masterclass with resident experts Philip Dunstan (formerly EA) and Matthew Jack (ex-Crytek) lifts the lid on the processing hardware of the Xbox 360 and PS3 and discusses the specific performance challenges faced when targeting these machines.

Gone are the days of games with small level maps and a handful of NPCs. As games become more complex the requirements placed on the AI systems also grows significantly larger. Furthermore, AI techniques are increasingly being used in many other parts of the game engine, and the high levels of indirection that are common in AI code can be notoriously difficult to optimize.

Games such as SCRIBBLENAUTS are known for pushing the boundaries of natural language processing in games, but when it comes to natural language generations many role-playing games (RPG) still primarily rely on scripts and dialog trees. How can we use better AI techniques to improve the quality of NPC dialog when interacting with the player?

Generating music for AAA titles these days takes big budgets, and games with so-called "adaptive scores" require a large number of tracks to be authored — often in the dozens. What are good solutions for indie developers that can't afford to even hire musicians? Can procedural generation techniques help provide diverse and dynamic music based on little input from a composer?

Synchronizing characters over the network is a difficult challenge. For player avatars, it requires a very responsive approach that . However, this approach isn't very suited to non-player characters as it consumes unnecessary bandwidth and can result in low-quality animation. RESISTANCE 2 in particular uses a different approach to synchronize the AI decisions over a network.

The first generation of BT editors resembled built-in tree widgets with their attached property editors. Now much richer widgets are used in practice, making it easier for developers and designers to edit behavior trees.

Character animation has been around for almost a century, with applications ranging from short features to full films. Over the decades, animators have developed significant insights into the process... As an AI programmer, this can help you not only improve the quality of your NPCs behaviors and make your gameplay easier to understand too.

It's very common to look at animation from the character's requirements, but when you flip the problem around and see it from the perspective of the environment, things change completely. How do you make sure animations line up perfectly with the world? How do you handle transitions in a responsive yet smooth fashion? How do these environmental animations fit into a traditional animation graph?