Game AI Pro 2

Chapter 18

Context Steering

Behavior-Driven Steering at the Macro Scale

Andrew Fray

18.1 Introduction

Steering behaviors are extremely common in the games industry [Reynolds 87, Reynolds 99]. Their popularity is with good cause, promising a fast-to-implement core with emergent behavior from simple components.

However, steering behaviors are not suited for some types of game. When the player can pick out and watch individual entities, collision avoidance and consistent movement become very important. Achieving this can cause behavior components to balloon in size and become tightly coupled. Entity movement then becomes fragile and hard to tune.

In this chapter, we’ll outline how you can identify the games for which steering behaviors aren’t a ...