Practical Game AI Programming. Unleash the power of Artificial Intelligence to your game

Micael DaGraça

The book starts with the basics examples of AI for different game genres and directly jumps into defining the probabilities and possibilities of the AI character to determine character movement. Next, you’ll learn how AI characters should behave within the environment created.Moving on, you’ll explore how to work with animations. You’ll also plan and create pruning strategies, and create Theta algorithms to find short and realistic looking game paths. Next, you’ll learn how the AI should behave when there is a lot of characters in the same scene.You'll explore which methods and algorithms, such as possibility maps, Forward Chaining Plan, Rete Algorithm, Pruning Strategies, Wall Distances, and Map Preprocess Implementation should be used on different occasions. You’ll discover how to overcome some limitations, and how to deliver a better experience to the player. By the end of the book, you think differently about AI.

Data Science Algorithms in a Week. Top 7 algorithms for scientific computing, data analysis, and machine learning - Second Edition

David Natingga

Machine learning applications are highly automated and self-modifying, and continue to improve over time with minimal human intervention, as they learn from the trained data. To address the complex nature of various real-world data problems, specialized machine learning algorithms have been developed. Through algorithmic and statistical analysis, these models can be leveraged to gain new knowledge from existing data as well.Data Science Algorithms in a Week addresses all problems related to accurate and efficient data classification and prediction. Over the course of seven days, you will be introduced to seven algorithms, along with exercises that will help you understand different aspects of machine learning. You will see how to pre-cluster your data to optimize and classify it for large datasets. This book also guides you in predicting data based on existing trends in your dataset. This book covers algorithms such as k-nearest neighbors, Naive Bayes, decision trees, random forest, k-means, regression, and time-series analysis.By the end of this book, you will understand how to choose machine learning algorithms for clustering, classification, and regression and know which is best suited for your problem

Getting Started with Nano Server. Automate multiple VMs and transform your datacenter

Charbel Nemnom

Nano Server allows developers and operations teams to work closely together and use containers that package applications so that the entire platform works as one. The aim of Nano Server is to help applications run the way they are intended to. It can be used to run and deploy infrastructures (acting as a compute host, storage host, container, or VM guest operating system) without consuming significant resources. Although Nano Server isn't intended to replace Server 2016 or 2012 R2, it will be an attractive choice for developers and IT teams.Want to improve your ability to deploy a new VM and install and deploy container apps within minutes? You have come to the right place! The objective of this book is to get you started with Nano Server successfully. The journey is quite exciting, since we are introducing you to a cutting-edge technology that will revolutionize today's datacenters. We'll cover everything from the basic to advanced topics. You'll discover a lot of added value from using Nano Server, such as hundreds of VM types on a single host through a small footprint, which could be a big plus for you and your company. After reading this book, you will have the necessary skills to start your journey effectively using Nano Server.

Kali Linux 2018: Windows Penetration Testing. Conduct network testing, surveillance, and pen testing on MS Windows using Kali Linux 2018 - Second Edition

Wolf Halton, Bo Weaver

Microsoft Windows is one of the two most common OSes, and managing its security has spawned the discipline of IT security. Kali Linux is the premier platform for testing and maintaining Windows security. Kali is built on the Debian distribution of Linux and shares the legendary stability of that OS. This lets you focus on using the network penetration, password cracking, and forensics tools, and not the OS.This book has the most advanced tools and techniques to reproduce the methods used by sophisticated hackers to make you an expert in Kali Linux penetration testing. You will start by learning about the various desktop environments that now come with Kali. The book covers network sniffers and analysis tools to uncover the Windows protocols in use on the network. You will see several tools designed to improve your average in password acquisition, from hash cracking, online attacks, offline attacks, and rainbow tables to social engineering. It also demonstrates several use cases for Kali Linux tools like Social Engineering Toolkit, and Metasploit, to exploit Windows vulnerabilities.Finally, you will learn how to gain full system-level access to your compromised system and then maintain that access. By the end of this book, you will be able to quickly pen test your system and network using easy-to-follow instructions and support images.

Learning Microsoft Cognitive Services. Use Cognitive Services APIs to add AI capabilities to your applications - Third Edition

Leif Larsen

Microsoft Cognitive Services is a set of APIs for integrating artificial intelligence in your applications to solve logical business problems. If you’re new to developing applications with AI, Learning Microsoft Cognitive Services will give you a comprehensive introduction to Microsoft’s AI stack and get you up-to-speed in no time.The book introduces you to 24 APIs, including Emotion, Language, Vision, Speech, Knowledge, and Search. Using Visual Studio, you can develop applications with enhanced capabilities for image processing, speech recognition, text processing, and much more. Moving forward, you will work with datasets that enable your applications to process various data in the form of image, video, or text.By the end of the book, you’ll be able to confidently explore Cognitive Services APIs for building intelligent applications that can be deployed for real-world business uses.

Practical GIS. Learn novice to advanced topics such as QGIS, Spatial data analysis, and more

Gábor Farkas

The most commonly used GIS tools automate tasks that were historically done manually—compiling new maps by overlaying one on top of the other or physically cutting maps into pieces representing specific study areas, changing their projection, and getting meaningful results from the various layers by applying mathematical functions and operations. This book is an easy-to-follow guide to use the most matured open source GIS tools for these tasks.We’ll start by setting up the environment for the tools we use in the book. Then you will learn how to work with QGIS in order to generate useful spatial data. You will get to know the basics of queries, data management, and geoprocessing.After that, you will start to practice your knowledge on real-world examples. We will solve various types of geospatial analyses with various methods. We will start with basic GIS problems by imitating the work of an enthusiastic real estate agent, and continue with more advanced, but typical tasks by solving a decision problem. Finally, you will find out how to publish your data (and results) on the web. We will publish our data with QGIS Server and GeoServer, and create a basic web map with the API of the lightweight Leaflet web mapping library.

Robot Operating System Cookbook. Over 70 recipes to help you master advanced ROS concepts

Kumar Bipin

This book will leverage the power of ROS with an introduction to its core and advanced concepts through exciting recipes. You will get acquainted with the use of different synchronous and asynchronous communication methods, including messages, services, and actions. You will learn how to use the various debugging and visualization tools used in development and how to interface sensors and actuators with the ROS framework.Firstly, you will get to grips with ROS simulation frameworks, such as Gazebo and RotorS for modeling and simulating any physical robot and virtual environment. You will also cover mobile robotics, micro-aerial vehicles, and robotic arms, which are the leading branches of robotic applications. Robot Operating System Cookbook will also guide you in the development of an autonomous navigation framework for both mobile robots and micro-aerial vehicles.Finally, you will explore ROS-Industrial, an open source project that extends the advanced capabilities of ROS software to manufacturing industries.

Hands-On Reactive Programming with Reactor. Build reactive and scalable microservices using the Reactor framework

Rahul Sharma

Reactor is an implementation of the Java 9 Reactive Streams specification, an API for asynchronous data processing. This specification is based on a reactive programming paradigm, enabling developers to build enterprise-grade, robust applications with reduced complexity and in less time. Hands-On Reactive Programming with Reactor shows you how Reactor works, as well as how to use it to develop reactive applications in Java.The book begins with the fundamentals of Reactor and the role it plays in building effective applications. You will learn how to build fully non-blocking applications and will later be guided by the Publisher and Subscriber APIs. You will gain an understanding how to use two reactive composable APIs, Flux and Mono, which are used extensively to implement Reactive Extensions. All of these components are combined using various operations to build a complete solution. In addition to this, you will get to grips with the Flow API and understand backpressure in order to control overruns. You will also study the use of Spring WebFlux, an extension of the Reactor framework for building microservices.By the end of the book, you will have gained enough confidence to build reactive and scalable microservices.

OpenDaylight Cookbook. Deploy and operate software-defined networking in your organization

Alexis de Talhouët, Mathieu Lemay, Mohamed Elserngawy, Jamie Goodyear, ...

OpenDaylight is an open source platform to program and build Software-Defined Networks (SDN). Its aim is to accelerate the adoption of SDN and NFV. With above 90 practical recipes, this book will help you to solve day-to-day problems and maintenance tasks surrounding OpenDaylight’s implementation.This book starts with the OpenDaylight fundamentals. In this book, you will gain a sound understanding of the methods and techniques when deploying OpenDaylight in production environment. Later on, you will learn to create a Service Chain using SFC. This book will address common problems and day-to-day maintenance tasks with OpenDaylight. We’ll also will teach you how to interact with OpenDaylight APIs and use the necessary tools to simulate networks. You will also explore how to create your own branded OpenDaylight along with authorising and authenticating users using OpenDaylight Identity Manager.By the end of this book, you will have the necessary skills to operate an OpenDaylight SDN environment.

Microservices Deployment Cookbook. Deploy and manage scalable microservices

Vikram Murugesan

This book will help any team or organization understand, deploy, and manage microservices at scale. It is driven by a sample application, helping you gradually build a complete microservice-based ecosystem. Rather than just focusing on writing a microservice, this book addresses various other microservice-related solutions: deployments, clustering, load balancing, logging, streaming, and monitoring.The initial chapters offer insights into how web and enterprise apps can be migrated to scalable microservices. Moving on, you’ll see how to Dockerize your application so that it is ready to be shipped and deployed. We will look at how to deploy microservices on Mesos and Marathon and will also deploy microservices on Kubernetes. Next, you will implement service discovery and load balancing for your microservices. We’ll also show you how to build asynchronous streaming systems using Kafka Streams and Apache Spark. Finally, we wind up by aggregating your logs in Kafka, creating your own metrics, and monitoring the metrics for the microservice.

Amazon Web Services Bootcamp. Develop a scalable, reliable, and highly available cloud environment with AWS

Sunil Gulabani

AWS is at the forefront of Cloud Computing today. Businesses are adopting AWS Cloud because of its reliability, versatility, and flexible design. The main focus of this book is teaching you how to build and manage highly reliable and scalable applications and services on AWS. It will provide you with all the necessary skills to design, deploy, and manage your applications and services on the AWS cloud platform. We’ll start by exploring Amazon S3, EC2, and so on to get you well-versed with core Amazon services. Moving on, we’ll teach you how to design and deploy highly scalable and optimized workloads. You’ll also discover easy-to-follow, hands-on steps, tips, and recommendations throughout the book and get to know essential security and troubleshooting concepts. By the end of the book, you’ll be able to create a highly secure, fault tolerant, and scalable environment for your applications to run on.

Getting Started with Tableau 2018.x. Get up and running with the new features of Tableau 2018 for impactful data visualization

Tristan Guillevin

Tableau is one of the leading business intelligence tools used worldwide, in organizations of every scale. In its latest release, Tableau 2018 promises richer and more useful features related to visual analytics, reporting, dashboarding, and a host of other data visualization aspects. Getting Started with Tableau 2018.x will get you up and running with these features.The book starts with all the new functionalities of the different Tableau 2018 versions, along with concrete examples of how to use them. However, if you're new to Tableau, don't worry! The rest of the book will guide you through each major aspect of Tableau with examples. You'll learn how to connect to data, build a data source, visualize your data, build a dashboard, and share it online. In the final chapters, you'll also learn advanced techniques such as creating a cross-database join, data blending, and more.By the end of the book, you will have a firm understanding of how to effectively use Tableau to create quick, cost-effective, and business-efficient business intelligence solutions.

Learning PostgreSQL 10. A beginner’s guide to building high-performance PostgreSQL database solutions - Second Edition

Salahaldin Juba, Andrey Volkov, Salahaldin Juba

PostgreSQL is one of the most popular open source databases in the world, supporting the most advanced features included in SQL standards. This book will familiarize you with the latest features released in PostgreSQL 10.We’ll start with a thorough introduction to PostgreSQL and the new features introduced in PostgreSQL 10. We’ll cover the Data Definition Language (DDL) with an emphasis on PostgreSQL, and the common DDL commands supported by ANSI SQL. You’ll learn to create tables, define integrity constraints, build indexes, and set up views and other schema objects. Moving on, we’ll cover the concepts of Data Manipulation Language (DML) and PostgreSQL server-side programming capabilities using PL/pgSQL. We’ll also explore the NoSQL capabilities of PostgreSQL and connect to your PostgreSQL database to manipulate data objects.By the end of this book, you’ll have a thorough understanding of the basics of PostgreSQL 10 and will have the necessary skills to build efficient database solutions.

Mastering Python for Networking and Security. Leverage Python scripts and libraries to overcome networking and security issues

José Manuel Ortega

It’s becoming more and more apparent that security is a critical aspect of IT infrastructure. A data breach is a major security incident, usually carried out by just hacking a simple network line. Increasing your network’s security helps step up your defenses against cyber attacks. Meanwhile, Python is being used for increasingly advanced tasks, with the latest update introducing many new packages. This book focuses on leveraging these updated packages to build a secure network with the help of Python scripting. This book covers topics from building a network to the different procedures you need to follow to secure it. You’ll first be introduced to different packages and libraries, before moving on to different ways to build a network with the help of Python scripting. Later, you will learn how to check a network’s vulnerability using Python security scripting, and understand how to check vulnerabilities in your network. As you progress through the chapters, you will also learn how to achieve endpoint protection by leveraging Python packages along with writing forensic scripts. By the end of this book, you will be able to get the most out of the Python language to build secure and robust networks that are resilient to attacks.

Akka Cookbook. Recipes for concurrent, fast, and reactive applications

Piyush Mishra, Vivek Mishra, Héctor Veiga Ortiz

Akka is an open source toolkit that simplifies the construction of distributed and concurrent applications on the JVM. This book will teach you how to develop reactive applications in Scala using the Akka framework.This book will show you how to build concurrent, scalable, and reactive applications in Akka. You will see how to create high performance applications, extend applications, build microservices with Lagom, and more.We will explore Akka's actor model and show you how to incorporate concurrency into your applications. The book puts a special emphasis on performance improvement and how to make an application available for users. We also make a special mention of message routing and construction.By the end of this book, you will be able to create a high-performing Scala application using the Akka framework.

MEAN Cookbook. The meanest set of MEAN stack solutions around

Nicholas McClay

The MEAN Stack is a framework for web application development using JavaScript-based technologies; MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node.js. If you want to expand your understanding of using JavaScript to produce a fully functional standalone web application, including the web server, user interface, and database, then this book can help guide you through that transition. This book begins by configuring the frontend of the MEAN stack web application using the Angular JavaScript framework. We then implement common user interface enhancements before moving on to configuring the server layer of our MEAN stack web application using Express for our backend APIs. You will learn to configure the database layer of your MEAN stack web application using MongoDB and the Mongoose framework, including modeling relationships between documents. You will explore advanced topics such as optimizing your web application using WebPack as well as the use of automated testing with the Mocha and Chai frameworks. By the end of the book, you should have acquired a level of proficiency that allows you to confidently build a full production-ready and scalable MEAN stack application.