ABSTRACT
Production systems have been around since the 1940s and are now applied in a wide array of applications and ongoing research. AAA games bring a unique set of challenges to production systems; they require that artificial intelligence systems be runtime efficient, deterministic, memory lean, and above all, implementable within the development cycle. Over the course of many of titles, production systems have developed along different lines. Terminology surrounding production systems can be confusing since it varies depending on the source of the material. The way rules are described is probably the biggest difference between the way these systems are implemented in games, compared to those used in research and other industries. Recording systems allow for rapid iteration on rules and for very quick authoring of rules. Nonrecorded authoring utilizes a custom editor—though the best systems seem to be the ones that read in text files and effectively compile them into rules.
