Quote Originally Posted by Lifepower View Post
AI has been previously a very popular topic and in certain occasions there was even a degree that you can obtain in institutions. However, it didn't live up to the expectations and later was renamed to "Intelligent Systems" and now is an area of science that has limited applications, being more like a meta-science itself.
I think the problem that the concept over-hypes itself already in the name. But I consider "AI" and "game AI" to be very different.

I wrote two whole chapters about game AI in "Tricks of the Mac Game Programming Gurus" in 1995, probably one of the longer texts about the subject at the time. But I didn't call it "game AI" because "AI" was such a hyped concept, I called it "behavior" and "environment". But it was about the usual stuff, basic behaviors (hunter, evader, patrol), path finding, FSMs, game state analysis...

Today I am teaching graphics and game programming, I have similar material in my textbooks, but now I call it "game AI" and I actually consider the concept a nice contrast to AI. Game AI is well known to be limited, so we don't expect wonders, which is a good thing.

My favorite game AI techniques are flocking and influence maps. They can really produce interesting and convincing behaviors. But do spice it up with some randomness.