ABSTRACT
Influence maps (IMs) are a well-established technique that uses events and attributes of the game world’s data such as deaths, damage, and distance to nearby entities to populate a spatially queryable map. This can reduce the need for complex game state queries and replace them with aggregation and filtering operations on our maps. This chapter shows how IMs, while often used for AI, can be applied to game audio features. Several implementation methods are detailed, along with their advantages and disadvantages from the point of view of both memory and CPU requirements. Finally, we give a feature case study of how these maps were used as part of implementing context sensitive battle dialog in a 2D RTS game.
