Possibility maps

Now let's take a deeper look at the possibility maps that we encountered in the examples in the first chapter, from the chess machine to the Metal Gear Solid video game. As we can see, it's a technique that is still being used today, and it is almost impossible to create a game AI without it.

As the name suggests, possibility maps allow the programmer to define the possibilities available to the player or the AI character within the game. Everything that is possible inside the game needs to be planned and coded, but what happens when you allow the character to do a lot of things–can they do them all at the same time? If played during different stages of the game, can they react in the same way at all of the stages? To allow, and restrain, the possible actions, we also need to think about the possible scenarios that can occur in the game, and when you put all of that together it's called a possibility map.