Understanding AI and pathfinding

AI is, as you might have guessed, artificial intelligence. In the broadest sense this is anything an inanimate object might do to appear to be making decisions. You are probably most familiar with this concept from video games. When a character, not controlled by the player, selects a weapon to use and a target to use it on, this is AI.

In its most complex form, AI attempts to mimic full human intelligence. However, there is still far too much happening incredibly fast for this to truly succeed. Video games do not need to reach nearly this far. We are primarily concerned with making our characters appear intelligent, but still conquerable by our players. Usually, this means not allowing characters to act on more information than a real player might have. Adjusting how much information characters have and can act on is a good way to adjust the level of difficulty in a game.

Pathfinding is a subset of AI. We use it all the time, though you have probably never...