Computer Book Reviews
AI Game Development by Alex J. Champandard
New Riders, October, 2003Trade Paperback, 721 pages
ISBN: 1592730043
Ordering information:
Amazon.com
AI Game Development provides a comprehensive look
at artificial intelligence inside computer games. This includes
the non-player characters, monsters and other synthetic
beings that make the games seem more realistic.
The book also offers insight, suggestions and techniques
about developing autonomous synthetic creatures for
games. Author Alex Champandard was a lead programmer
of FEAR, an open source AI game project, and
the founder of AI Depot, an online AI community.
Champandard focuses on a design concept called
nouvelle game AI which combines elements of
reaction architectures and learning algorithms. The
concept helps designers develop independent AI
agents that can act and react to a gaming environment
in their own way and learn to adapt to new environments.
Champandard expands on nouvelle game AI in the book
while also covering AI game concepts like obstacle
avoidance, combat settings, shooting, perceptrons, weapon
selection, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, emotions and
adaptive behaviors.
A companion website for the book includes source code, demos, exercises and tutorials. This is great book for those new to AI game development or for serious game developers looking to learn modern gaming skills or techniques. Some experience with C++ and a C++ compiler is needed for those who want to use the source code and demos.
PHP for the World Wide Web by Larry Ullman
Peachpit Press, January, 2004Trade Paperback, 450 pages
ISBN: 0321245652
Ordering information:
Amazon.com
PHP is a server-side scripting language written specifically
for creating dynamic webpages. The use of PHP has
soared over the past several years, because it is easy
to use, free and cross-platform.
This PHP programming guide combines screenshots
with instructive text and code to help web developers
quickly learn PHP concepts and skills.
PHP concepts covered include a broad range of topics:
basics, web applications, cookies, functions,
arrays, files and databases.
Larry Ullman is a top PHP programmer and the author of four books on PHP, MySQL and Web development. Ullman's instruction is clear and concise. With his advice and examples, web developers will have no trouble absorbing PHP concepts and using what they know in their own PHP code and applications. A companion website is also provided which contains the scripts from the book and a helpful online support forum. This book was written with the beginner or nonprogrammer in mind, so it works well for novice web developers who know some HTML, but would like to add more interactive features to their websites.
Wicked Cool Shell Scripts by Dave Taylor
No Starch Press, January, 2004Trade Paperback, 341 pages
ISBN: 1593270127
Ordering information:
Amazon.com
This book contains 101 customizable shell scripts, written in
Bourne Shell (sh), that can be
used with Linux, Mac OS X and Unix systems. Some of the
shell programs include a spell checker, disk backup utility,
weblog analysis tool, weather tracker, hangman and other games
and scripts for scraping information from websites for
information like movies times, weather or stock quotes. Author
Dave Taylor, who also wrote Teach Yourself UNIX in 24 Hours,
does a top-notch job of providing functional shell scripts, backed up
with easy-to-follow explanations and ideas for modifying the
scripts. This book will be useful for any professional administrator
or web developer. Geeks running a website for fun or a running
a home network as a hobby will enjoy the book as well.
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