Making the First Steps in the World of AI

From the bronze giant Talos, to Symbolic Systems and Neural Networks: how AI has been shaped and used in video games.

Welcome, reader, to the beginning of our journey in Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short. Have you ever wondered about how those hard-working peons in Warcraft explore complicated maps? Or, how those perky ghosts in Pac-Man can get you wherever you are? Or perhaps how your opponents in Final Fantasy optimize their attacks to slaughter your team?

Then you've come to the right place!

In this chapter, we will explore the prerequisites to becoming an AI game developer and how AI is used in the game development pipeline. Then, we will take a look at the history of AI in general and in video games, and learn how the conjunctive effort of many brilliant minds built AI as we know it today. Afterwards, we will discuss the AI Framework underneath the Unreal Engine, since this book will focus on Unreal.

Finally, we will plan our journey and get a general overview of the topics that the different chapters in this book deal with.