Game AI Pro 2

Chapter 22

Introduction to Search for Games

Nathan R. Sturtevant

22.1 Introduction

Search techniques are broadly used outside of video games, but search is not widely used in current video games, outside of its ubiquitous use in path planning. As a result, many books about artificial intelligence (AI) in games do not usually dedicate significant resources to describing general search techniques and their application. However, the use of search appears to be growing, and thus a section of this book is dedicated to search-specific techniques. The purpose of this chapter is to give some introduction and justification of why and when search will be a useful technique. As the importance and use of AI in games grows, particularly with the availability ...