Be sure to check out the latest active contest for more information, and instructions to join!
Background
This was the third AI Article Writing Contest (August 16th to November 4th). It took a bit of effort to organise people interested, but proved worthwhile in the end. This was the most successful contest to date, with some tremendous submissions.
Grand Prize
The big prize for the best article was a copy of Mat "fup" Buckland's book, AI Techniques for Game Programming (Amazon US, Amazon UK), based on his popular tutorials (Stimulate).
"AI is hot in the world of game technology. AI Techniques for Game Programming teaches you how to apply evolutionary programming techniques to your own code in a practical way. This book presents AI techniques in an easily understood, informal style making them available to beginning, as well as more advanced, programmers. You will master the complex AI concepts by programming practical, fun projects using the techniques in this book. AI Techniques for Game Programming guides anyone with high-school level math skills step-by-step through the equations. The material is presented in three sections (Windows programming, Genetic Algorithms, Neural Networks) and includes sample projects to walk you through real-world applications."
Take our word for it, this is a book that should be on your shelf!
Results
The voting took place by the other contestants, each voting for their three other favourite articles. 4 points were attributed to the first, 2 to the second and 1 to the third. The entry with most points won.
- Rule-Based Systems and Identification Trees - by James Freeman-Hargis(18 points)
- Beginners Guide to Pathfinding Algorithms - by "Senior Diablo"(12 points)
- Collective Intelligence in Social Insects - by "David Gordon"(12 points)
The other entries were also of very good standard, and also had their fair share of the votes (alphabetical order).
- Creating Self-Aware Intelligence - by Clint O'Dell
- Creation of a Simple Sonorant Detector - by "Smoke Mirrors"
- Decision Trees and Evolutionary Programming - by Kirk Delisle
- IBM's Robocode: A Platform for Learning AI - by Nick Loadholtes
- Self-Organising Maps For Colour Recognition - by Max Dennis Luesebrink
I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to write such great articles, for participating at all, and for wanting to contribute their knowledge back to the community.
Participate Too!
If you think you've got what it takes to do what these guys did, then find out about the latest contest now!
Alex J. Champandard