Developing Games in Java™

Chapter 13. Artificial Intelligence

KEY TOPICS

• AI Basics

• Take Away Those Godlike Powers!

• State Machines and Reacting

• Probability Machines

• Making Decisions

• Patterns

• Object Spawning

• Putting It All Together

• Evolution

• Other Game AI Ideas

• Summary

One of the first games I ever tried to make was a Pac-Man clone. It had 16 colors, was written in BASIC, ran on a 486, and flickered—a lot.

But the point is, my first attempt at making the ghosts move was a little bit off the mark. Whenever a ghost would have to decide which way to go, it would always move in the direction of the player. This essentially made “super-ghosts” that were so good at tracking Pac-Man down that he rarely had time to eat a power dot. But if he was lucky enough get to a power dot in time, all the ...