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"must succeed with no problems" project, all bets are off -- hire an experienced consultant so you have someone to blame

I'm hoping that Electronic Arts's transition from boutique software house to publishing juggernaut leaves room for -- well -- other boutique software houses. Many here must recall the early days of EA. They published titles that their small teams were passionate about; and while I've enjoyed many of EA's recent, grander offerings, they appeal to me in a much different way.

For the time being, the advent of a middleware industry is making it easier -- not harder -- for smaller studios to produce good-looking titles with depth. Consider that there are many audio libraries, 3D engines, and AI middleware libraries which are quite reasonably priced. Smaller studios seem to go strange and wonderful directions with these; (if you haven't already, try some of the Indie Game Jam titles, which make use of a simple, standardized physics engine).

I labor under the impression that the gaming public has a desire for boutique products; if I'm wrong, I don't mind taking my licks and moving to something more productive.

• http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/
• http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/4929/ astar.html
• http://www.gameai.com/pathfinding.html

Some companies provide loaner equipment to universities. It would be interesting to find something that is of interest/use on your campus and then get some hardware to play with. Videoconferencing equipment (end point stations and MCUs) might be a good start.

SIP and VOIP. This is something that is cool, fun and fairly accessible to folks with a decent network connection. And, if you have the energy, the administration on your campus might be interested to hear that it could save them money.

Games. Games are an interesting and fun topic. With a bit of thought, a talk could be constructed that mixed fun with learning (grin).

Internet2 Days. Advanced Networking. If you are at a school that is involved in Internet2, there are resources that are available.

Microsoft Resrach Group. Evil blah blah yes, whatever. Say what you will, but they are still smart people. Your login indicates that you might be interested in HCI, so Dumais's site might be a good start. Other companies are also listed in various places.

GRID. buzz buzz buzz. You say that no marketing hype is allowed. Well, for all the buzz about GRIDs, the folks that can give you the skinny are prob to be found here. Depending on your location, asking one of them might just get a visit.

As you are at a university (and I am assuming you are in the U.S.), you might find that someone from the NSF would be able to give you some interesting insights into what they consider to be important, interesting and fundable. Again, not sure how successful you would be at getting anyone to visit, but it is a a starter for ideas.

Lastly, many of the folks that you might want to have present will be busy. It might be worth considering an interactive presentation over video. Sounds cheezy, but many folks are used to this type of presentation.

For those readers who haven't before encountered state machines:

Los Alamos National Lab has some good info (overview mostly)
Lecture notes from MIT
An interesting research project from The Beast
Some info on how FSMs are used for AI in computer games

This is a good overview, but Gamasutra tends to have the meaty tech.

Who knew pathfinding was such a drag?

I just found an interesting web site which is dedicated to the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in games. Check it out.

should be how do some games studios succeed.

Consider how hard it is to build a game.

Firstly you must come up with the concept. It must be sufficently original and innovative that your not dismissed as a clone but not so innovative or original that nobody is sure whether they'll enjoy it or not. Then you've got to build proof of a concept for stage two...

Begging for help. You must convince other people your game (which currently consists of a design plan) will be seriously sweet, will sell like hotcakes and will have manageable costs (people with money usually like money and if they give it away, they want to see it come back).

Thirdly you must find developers, artists, programmers, etc who are willing to work on your game for the money you can offer (which will probably be meager unless your idea is one of those mythical "guaranteed sell-outs") and who are capable of doing the job. Consider how high some of the studios have set the bar and that's a hell of a job.

Forthly you have go though the development phase without having your game managled by the development phase. As well as the regular dilbertisms you've also got to avoid many truisms unique to game development and avoid having your product adjusted for political reasons (censorship, sensitivity to minorities, new management doesn't like old management's projects on the priniciple, funding runs out and nobody wants to give you more) etc.

Finally you have the game and it's all that you hoped for, your set right? Well no. Marketting has to spread across the world and convince geeks with money that they want to shell out for your game. If you lucky the marketting department will put out a somewhat accurate image of your game, game reviewers will be having a good day and enjoy it when it reaches their magazine/web site and people will have the spare cash to buy the game.

Then you can still get screwed should say your game not appeal to enough people, be overshadowed by another game of similar type (let's face it, if you release a first person shooter in the same season ID does, your going down) or by a totally different type (if everyone's buying the latest FPS by ID they're going to be playing it instead of your neat, low violence RPG).

So really, even if you have the idea of the century and you get support from other people the chances of you finishing up with a decent quality game with good marketting and high enough sales to generate a notable profit (to be distributed among all investing parties) is pretty damn slim.

Quite frankly it's a miracle any studio stays in business for more than one production run. It is most definitely no business for the faint of heart, the dispassionate or those who need a realiable income.

Check out The Game AI page for lots of good sources of information. The series "Game Programming Gems" have some really good articles, they recently spun off an AI-specific "AI Programming Gems" which I haven't seen yet.

Seems to me that there would be a niche for a company to invest heavily in developing a flexible AI framework to be used in multiple games.

several independent developers have tried that - and the game ai page has links to pretty much all game ai sdks attempted thus far.

the problem is that while high-level ai can be pretty general, the low-level ai (pathfinding, collision detection, world physics) is completely tied to the internal representations of the world inside the game engine. it's a similar problem that you have in physics sdks.

also, given the game development characteristics (18-month dev cycles, ai being one of the last steps in development because it requires a working game engine), it's rare for studios to design a game in such a way that a general solution like an ai sdk could be just 'plugged in' that late in the development cycle. unless the workings of the sdk are well understood, it's easier to just build your own (especially if you're not doing anything complex).

on the other hand, if a company with a hit game licenses their ai engine to others, that would be a big step in the right direction - the same way that id and epic licensed their graphics engines after the success of quake and unreal. and sure, many studios will write their own anyway, but those who don't want to rewrite a* for the nth time could instead concentrate on writing high-level behaviors. :)

Game trees are really useful only for chess-like games where there is no hidden information. For something like Starcraft, you need several levels:

Individual units need movement, this involves pathfinding and the ability to see the enemy. The "star" of pathfinding is called A*, you should be able to find it on the web.

Strategic AI is harder, some components:
Deciding what units to build.
Some games, such as AOE hardcode these (you can edit the files). Smarter ones would see what units you are using and build the units which defeat them. (Most RTS games are rock-paper-scissors in the end).

Deciding what to do with them.
Again using AOE, there are editable files filled with things like how quickly to explore, how violent to be, etc. This is the really hard part.

The web page:
Game AI Page
is an excellent source, and a book on programming RTS games was reviewed here a little while ago.