In programming, doing is the most important step to mastery. Though it is good to find and read good introductory material (particularly to get an intro to the langauge).

Yes, you can !!! take a look at http://www.devmaster.net/ ... for AI, you have several article... Devmaster is the place to be... if you wish, you can found almost all the info/resource needed for create your own game ... and if you don't wish create a game engine, you have a huge list ( over 300 )... a lot of them are free...

Well, as far as I know Frogboy AKA Brad is married.   If you want to learn AI, why not?

Best regards,
Steven.

Best book resource to start learning about game AI programming is probably this book:

• Programming Game AI by Example by Mat Buckland

Very good book, really well explained.

For general AI (a more academical approach), the best book is the classic:

• Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig

This book can be hard to read as it is very formal.

And best forum and online resource for game AI is:

• http://aigamedev.com/

The forum is full of people from the industry and the insider material is awesome. Although I wouldn't pay for it until you have the basics under control. Gamedev.net is also a nice place for general game programming questions.

I hope it helps!

Then I would probably go with Mat Buckland book. It´s cheap, it requires little formal training, it´s very easy to read, it comes with a ton of examples, and it explains the most important algorithms and ideas right now in game AI (the only big one missing are Behavior Trees).

Behavior Trees are pretty well described in a lot of articles in aigamedev.net, as Champandard (owner of the site) loves that technique. They have been mostly used in FPS games (although I think Demigod used BTs or GOAP which is pretty similar, not 100% sure).

But for learning, and for doing something for Heroes 2, you can go happily with Finite State Machines first, and then try more complicated things if you feel like it.

Actually, this is the part I'm more interested in:   how to go about writing an API?   I'm about to take on a BIG task.  To the tune of writing something like OpenGL.  And I don't mean writing IN OpenGL--I mean writing OpenGL.  But I've always been more into developing the video card than I have writing the C libraries interfacing to the video card.  How do you go about collecting requirements definition from your (potential) customer base?   And then organizing/software engineering that into an implementation, with an under-the-hood data model and an interface to the input vectors the hardware is expecting?

Anyone know any good books/white papers on API library development?  Particularly, where you're interfacing with assembly code or hardware drivers.   thanks!

Here is a very deep site about AI

the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)

http://www.aaai.org

To find links about game AI you have to drill down a ways. But there is a load of info there.

There is an open online course in AI by Stanford University

https://www.ai-class.com/registration/