An AI that can’t understand its game environment is pretty useless; but that’s what terrain reasoning is for! In most games, implementing terrain reasoning starts with annotations of the terrain, which can either be placed manually by designers or automatically generated by a pre-process in the tools pipeline.

Over the last month and a half, I’ve been working with some of our resident experts from the AiGameDev.com forums to create special reports on specific topics. Here’s the first part of a document on terrain reasoning, which covers the annotation process in particular. Now, I’ve been working in game AI for a while, but I have to admit I found many of the answers very insightful — and I even learned quite a few new things!

To give credit where it’s due, here are the four of our resident experts who contributed to this report (in order of alphabetical importance):

• Kevin Dill — Works as a Senior AI Programmer at Rockstar, having previously worked on Master of Orion 3, and Kohan 2.

• Sergio Garces — Is a Senior AI Programmer at Radical on Prototype. He previously worked the AI of Praetorians and Imperial Glory.

• William van der Sterren — As a consultant for CGF-AI, he assisted Guerrilla Games in creating the AI for Killzone and Shellshock Nam ’67.

• Paul Tozour — Is best known for creating the AI for Metroid Prime 2 & 3, as well as Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 currently on Project Offset at Intel.

You can download the whole thing here:

Terrain Analysis, Special Report — Part 1
Download PDF (1.5 Mb, 10 Pages)

We’re still in the process of formatting the rest of this document (it’s huge, there’s so much useful stuff in it!) as well as other topics for the upcoming launch of our very own membership site. Over the next few weeks, you’ll be getting more of a taste of this kind of content: down-to-earth, up-to-date and practical.

Stay tuned, and be sure to sign-up free as an insider for our upcoming AAA interviews!