[gameAI_news] Game AI Newsletter (09/2005)

[gameai_news at igda.org]

Hi everyone,

I guess you are all back from the summer holidays by now - so here we go with the new edition of the game AI newsletter! I've been pretty busy setting up a company in beautiful Prague (yes, on game AI of course :-)), and I apologize for being slightly slow in responding to e-mails for the last months.

GDC turned out to be a great event (even though the new location was far from perfect) with many AI sessions, including our session from the AI Interface Standards Committee. You can find a brief description of our session here:

ONLINE RESOURCE/REPORT:
 GDC 2005 Session Report: "AI Interface Standards: First Specifications"
 by Alexander Nareyek and Nathan Combs
 http://www.ai-center.com/extern/gameaisig/gdc-2005-roundtable.html

Perhaps much more interestingly, the yearly report of the committee has been published:

ONLINE RESOURCE/REPORT:
 The 2005 Report of the IGDA's Artificial Intelligence Interface Standards Committee
 Edited by Alexander Nareyek, Nathan Combs, Börje F. F. Karlsson, Syrus Mesdaghi and Ian Wilson
 http://www.igda.org/ai/report-2005/report-2005.html

As a teaser for next year, the committee will have the first version for pathfinding interface standards ready for next GDC!

A semi-game-AI-related forthcoming event:

EVENT
 The First International Workshop on Crowd Simulation (V-CROWDS ’05)
 November 24-25, 2005, EPFL, VRlab, Lausanne, Switzerland 
 http://vrlab.epfl.ch/v_crowds_05/

And lots of new resource links! Here is a brief GDC report from Steve Woodcock - with many comments on the conference's AI sessions:

ONLINE RESOURCE/REPORT:
 Random Thoughts About GDC 2005
 by Steven Woodcock
 http://www.gameai.com/cgdc05observations.woodcock.html
 ( and the Pics from the 8th Annual AI Programmer's Dinner:
 http://www.gameai.com/aidinner2005.html )

ONLINE RESOURCE/REPORT:
 GDC 2005 AI Roundtable / Moderator Report 
 by Neil Kirby
 http://www.gameai.com/cgdc05notes.kirby.html

ONLINE RESOURCE/ARTICLE:
 GDC 2005 Proceedings / Handling Complexity in the Halo 2 AI
 by Damian Isla
 http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2005/features/20050311/isla_01.shtml

Some great stuff from the First Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE):

ONLINE RESOURCE/ARTICLES:
 AIIDE / Invited Speaker Presentations
 http://www.aiide.org/aiide2005/talks/index.html

ONLINE RESOURCE/REPORT:
 Report on the AIIDE conference
 by Andrew Stern
 http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2005/06/05/gulp-of-gamer-aiide/
 and some more discussions:
 http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2005/06/07/thoughts-on-aiide/

And you surely didn't miss the release of Façade, did you? If so, here is a link to the page where you can download it and find lots of info on their AI approach:

ONLINE RESOURCE:
 Infos and download options for Façade
 http://www.interactivestory.net/

Damian Isla has started a new blog on game AI! Check it out:

ONLINE RESOURCE/BLOG:
 Game/AI
 http://www.ai-blog.net/

By the way, Craig Reynolds collects lots of resources and links at the following page:

ONLINE RESOURCE:
 Craig Reynolds's Game AI Links
 http://www.red3d.com/cwr/games/

Other things:

ONLINE RESOURCE/PROCEEDINGS:
 The proceedings of the IJCAI-05 Workshop on Reasoning, Representation, and Learning in Computer Games
 http://home.earthlink.net/~dwaha/research/meetings/ijcai05-rrlcgw/papers.html

BOOK:
 AI Application Programming, Second Edition
 by M. Tim Jones
 Charles River Media
 http://www.delmarlearning.com/browse_product_detail.aspx?catid=20763&isbn=1584504218

(Note that Charles River Media has been acquired by Thomson Delmar Learning)

So long for this issue - Enjoy the games of the forthcoming holiday season!

Best,
Alexander Nareyek <nareyek at digitaldramastudios.com>
Chair of the IGDA's AI SIG
http://www.igda.org/ai/


P.S.: 
Did I miss anything? If you want to add anything for the next newsletter, please let me know!

P.P.S:
By the way, just as a note - please don't ask about including "general AI" links in this newsletter. The field of AI is much too broad to cover, and there are other newsletters out there that target the general topic in a much better way. This newsletter is only for links/events/resources with a strong "game" emphasis.