"AI Game Programming Wisdom Series" Questions

Question

I am wanting to buy the book "AI Game Programming Wisdom". But I can not find the book at any of the local store's. So I am not able to read the book and see if it is for me. I have been wanting to better understand A* Path Finding for awhile now. I read a few articles online such as http://www.policyalmanac.org/games/aStarTutorial.htm which give a good detail on how it work's. But none give any examples in code and explanation.

Although I am not a seasoned programmer (working for a company). I would consider my self to be a fairly advance programmer. I made a few tile based games and I have a great understanding of OOP, polymorphism, including Abstract classes and Interfaces. But my main concern isnt how advance the book is (although I feel in dept detail is always good). But more of the broad range of the book.

So my question is... is "AI Game Programming Wisdom" a good book for someone who is trying to do AI for any type of game inlcuding 2D games (flash games). Cause judging by the front cover, it looks as if the book is more centered on 3d games. But Like I said, I never touched the book so I wouldnt know what it is truely about.

If so then what series is the best to buy. Judging on amazon, some of the older series got better reviews then the new one.

if not, then can anyone recommend any good articles or books on AI, especially A* Path finding.

This question goes out to anyone who read the books or have any resources on A* Pathfinding. THanks!!!

Answer 1

The A* algorithms in "AI Game Programming Wisdom" focus on planning paths on a map, which happens to be in 2D (the pictures in the book have top-down views of the map), so it will probably be helpful to you.

Answer 2

Don't forget to checkout http://www.gamedev.net. A lot of good free stuff to read over. A* Pathfinding article

Answer 3

Just to add to the great resources already listed here, Keith Peters covers A* in AdvancED ActionScript 3.0 Animation in Chapter 4. You can check out the code from the downloads section of the book.

Answer 4

A* is a generic search algorithm. When used for pathfinding, the abstract states it searches through typically correspond to physical locations and the transitions between the states are the discrete movements that take you along your path. As such, the underlying algorithm is not specific to 2D or 3D - it's not even specific to pathfinding. You don't need a whole book for A*, but a good book will describe it well. An article such as the one at Gamedev.net posted by Allan is as good a starting point as any, although I advise reading more than one article on the subject so that you get a good grasp of the underlying abstractions rather than one person's chosen implementation.

"AI Game Programming Wisdom" is a good book for any game programmer, whether you present the game in 2D, 3D, text, over the web, etc. However be advised that it is a grab-bag of varying articles, some of which are different approaches to the same problem, rather than an educational or instructive text as such. From what I gather, without having read them but having spoken to the authors, books such as AI Techniques for Game Programming or Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI might be a better bet to start with.