Book Image

Hands-On Deep Learning for Games

By : Micheal Lanham
Book Image

Hands-On Deep Learning for Games

By: Micheal Lanham

Overview of this book

The number of applications of deep learning and neural networks has multiplied in the last couple of years. Neural nets has enabled significant breakthroughs in everything from computer vision, voice generation, voice recognition and self-driving cars. Game development is also a key area where these techniques are being applied. This book will give an in depth view of the potential of deep learning and neural networks in game development. We will take a look at the foundations of multi-layer perceptron’s to using convolutional and recurrent networks. In applications from GANs that create music or textures to self-driving cars and chatbots. Then we introduce deep reinforcement learning through the multi-armed bandit problem and other OpenAI Gym environments. As we progress through the book we will gain insights about DRL techniques such as Motivated Reinforcement Learning with Curiosity and Curriculum Learning. We also take a closer look at deep reinforcement learning and in particular the Unity ML-Agents toolkit. By the end of the book, we will look at how to apply DRL and the ML-Agents toolkit to enhance, test and automate your games or simulations. Finally, we will cover your possible next steps and possible areas for future learning.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: The Basics
6
Section 2: Deep Reinforcement Learning
14
Section 3: Building Games

Overriding the Unity input system

One of Unity's most compelling features is its ability to be cross-platform across any system, and with that comes several helpful layers of abstraction that we can use to inject our code into. However, the game in question needs to be following the Unity best practices in order to make this injection easy. That isn't to say that we couldn't do it by overriding the game's input system; it just wouldn't be as easy.

Before we get into describing how the injection works, let's take a step back and look at the best practices for using the Unity input system. Over the years, the Unity input system has evolved from a simple query that the device uses for inputs to the more cross-platform system that it uses now. However, many developers, including Unity itself, still use input methods that query a particular key code...