The Games AI Page: Discussions & Archived Threads

Discussions & Archived Threads

This page links to various interactive game AI-related discussions, both archived and ongoing. The archived threads are taken from Usenet's comp.ai.games and rec.games.programmer newsgroups. The ongoing discussions are mostly forums or mailing lists of various types, all of which I've found useful at one time or another. Each represents a wide-ranging and lively discussion that offered innovative new ideas on various facets of game AI; I highly recommend each--there are a lot of great ideas here.

The threads in particular represent what (I feel) is the 'Net at its best--live, interactive, round-robin intellectual debate between informed and interested individuals. Enjoy.

Game AI Mailing Lists: There's perhaps nothing quite so interactive and free-flowing as a good mailing list, and the subject of game AI is blessed with more than one that's worth the time. Some folks don't care for mailing lists since they can (if the list is particularly active) clog up one's inbox, but most good lists (which includes those below) offer the option of browsing the discussion online and/or only receiving weekly summarizing updates.

An excellent list that budding AI developers might find interesting is the NPC AI list. Devoted primarily to the discussion of building NPC AIs for role-playing games and the like, there's a lot of discussion developers of anything with RPG-like aspects should find interesting.

Gamasutra -- The venerable Gamasutra is an excellent place to read all kinds of articles on all aspects of game development, not just AI. There used to be forums there until late 2001 when they were all moved over to the IGDA site. Still worth a regular visit though.

AI-Junkie -- Mat Buckland has long been known in AI circles for his excellent tutorials. Mat has a great site of his own over at AI-Junkie where you can talk about the tutorials, other things folks might like to see write-ups on, and game AI in general. I expect this site may be a smidge or all more technical than those found on other sites, but we'll see. Definitely a good place to voice your opinions or ask about how something works!

As an aside, Mat had a great book on game AI come out towards the end of 2002 which is really quite good. Take a gander at AI Techniques for Game Programming over on the booklist and see if it looks like something you might want to add to your library.

Generation5 -- The somewhat scholarly Generation5 site has an excellent Discussions Forum for all things AI-related. The discussions tend to be a bit more technical and philosophical than those found on some of the other sites, and a perhaps broader variety of topics are more normally found on "pure Game AI" sites, but it's always interesting to read. Definitely a good place to voice your opinions or ask your questions...

The IGDA Game AI Special Interest Group -- The International Game Developers Association has set up a nice little discussion forum for anybody interested in the topic of Game AI. Moderated by myself, Eric Dybsand, and Alexander Nareyek, we try to explore some of the meatier issues of Game AI--what technical problems are developers having, do gamers really want good AI, etc. It's a fun site and a great resource for all kinds of game developer information. Well worth a visit.

GamdDev.Net's Game AI Discussion Forums -- If you can only afford to keep up with one site's discussion forums, this is the place. Interacting with your fellow game AI developers is a snap with at very slick GameDev site, clearly one of the better set of forums for the discussion of all things game-related. There is an AI forum, of course, well moderated by myself with the help of a couple of others and covering a wide variety of ever changing topics. A truly superb resource for anybody with a problem they need help with.

The Strategic Dispositions Thread -- Throughout the spring and early summer of 1995 an interesting thread was kicked off on the comp.ai.games newsgroup by Andrae Mays , who wanted to know how to write a better AI for strategic games. Some excellent ideas came out of this thread over the course of its run.

The Influence Mapping Thread -- Spinning out of and running in parallel with the Strategic Dispositions thread came yet another fascinating discussion, this one dealing with the problems involved in teaching the computer to recognize where enemy units were. Steve Hodsdon offered up a solution that he had read called Influence Mapping...

The Game Design Mailing List "Learning AI" Thread -- In June of 1997 Steve Schonberger kicked off a fairly interesting thread on the Game Design mailing list on the subject of adaptive AIs (inspired, I'm pleased to say, by the 1997 CGDC AI Roundtables).

The Extensible Game AI Thread -- Throughout December of 1996 a fast and furious debate was brewing regarding how one might develop a game with an AI that was modifiable or extensible by the players. Some excellent ideas were kicked around, and there was a a side discussion as to whether or not the work necessary to pull it off was worth the effort to implement in the first place. In light of the fact that several developers have now implemented games that permit you to modify their AIs in one way or another, it was a very timely discussion indeed.