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Building vehicles AI and combat between two large opposing forces are two of the biggest challenges in game AI. This interview with John Gibson will focus on the challenges of bringing a multitude of AI soliders to life in RED ORCHESTRA 2, a WW2 shooter known for realistic combat. Discover how a behavior tree was used to coordinate the crew of a tank, and implement its tactical behavior. Learn how the AI sends wave after wave of soldiers at you and how your bot comrades help in stopping them.

This interview features Alexis Kennedy from Failbetter games and we talk about ECHO BAZAAR, an award winning game featuring procedural story generation. Find out how the underlying engine manages large quantities of text (more than the bible!) and uses storylet patterns to create a dynamic choose-your-own-adventure story.

In this broadcast you will learn about the ground-breaking features that won Resistance 3 our own editor's pick award of "2011 Best AI in AAA Game". Together with Insomniacs' Jason Franklin and Adam Noonchester, you will hear about enemy coordination in the high level AI director-style logic, iteration with the level designers, the variation in enemy behaviors, and the jobboard tool that helped combine this all together.

Chasing and evading are some of the most commonly used behaviors, with applications ranging from sports to combat games. In this tutorial, you'll learn different ways to build chase and evade behaviors, starting with a simple behavior and incrementally adding reasoning and decision-making features to the AI. At each step you'll see how simple changes can result in dramatic changes to the gameplay!

In this masterclass with Will Wilson, Senior Programmer at Crytek, you'll learn about automatic distributed testing and how it can help AAA titles withstand large development teams without collapsing under the weight of bugs! In particular, you'll hear about a system that was pioneered on CRYSIS 2 to help test the AI, gameplay and animation after every check in. You'll also hear Will share how this system is currently being used at Crytek on other projects, with 100s of consoles validating every move the team makes.

This tutorial, given as a presentation at #AltDevConf 2012, provides the most comprehensive overview of the implementation of behavior trees to date. Since their incremental evolution into the games industry ~8 years ago, a lot has changed and there are clear trends in their uses and applications in commercial games. You'll learn the key principles behind first- and second-generation behavior trees as they are currently used in games — and what challenges and opportunities this presents for your game's AI and scripting system.

In this interview with Jesse Cluff, Senior AI Programmer at Relic Entertainment, you'll find out about the AI in the recent AAA-hit SPACE MARINE. In particular, you'll hear about the underlying behavior trees that power the enemies, and how they were coordinated into squads. Jesse will also share details about the tactical reasoning and cover pre-calculations.

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.

SECTION 8: PREJUDICE is an exciting and fast-pace FPS, with a strategic twist given the history of TimeGate Studios. The bots in the game are some of the most adaptive and challenging shipped in a game this year! In this interview with Denis Papp (CTO), you'll find out everything about the AI in the game, from their low-level utility-based behaviors to the high-level strategy.