Book Image

Unity Artificial Intelligence Programming - Fifth Edition

By : Dr. Davide Aversa
Book Image

Unity Artificial Intelligence Programming - Fifth Edition

By: Dr. Davide Aversa

Overview of this book

Developing artificial intelligence (AI) for game characters in Unity has never been easier. Unity provides game and app developers with a variety of tools to implement AI, from basic techniques to cutting-edge machine learning-powered agents. Leveraging these tools via Unity's API or built-in features allows limitless possibilities when it comes to creating game worlds and characters. The updated fifth edition of Unity Artificial Intelligence Programming starts by breaking down AI into simple concepts. Using a variety of examples, the book then takes those concepts and walks you through actual implementations designed to highlight key concepts and features related to game AI in Unity. As you progress, you’ll learn how to implement a finite state machine (FSM) to determine how your AI behaves, apply probability and randomness to make games less predictable, and implement a basic sensory system. Later, you’ll understand how to set up a game map with a navigation mesh, incorporate movement through techniques such as A* pathfinding, and provide characters with decision-making abilities using behavior trees. By the end of this Unity book, you’ll have the skills you need to bring together all the concepts and practical lessons you’ve learned to build an impressive vehicle battle game.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Part 1:Basic AI
6
Part 2:Movement and Navigation
11
Part 3:Advanced AI

Summary

In this chapter, we learned how to generate and use NavMeshes to implement pathfinding for our games. First, we studied how to set up different navigation layers with varying costs for pathfinding. Then, using the destination property, we used the Nav Mesh Agent component to find the path and move toward the target. Next, we set up Off Mesh Links to connect the gaps between the NavMeshes using the autogeneration feature and a manual setup with the Off Mesh Link component.

With all this information, we can now easily create simple games with a reasonably complicated AI. For example, you can try to set the destination property of AI tanks to the player's tank's position and make them follow it. Then, using simple FSMs, they can start attacking the player once they reach a certain distance. FSMs have taken us far, but they have their limits. In the next chapter, we will learn about Behavior Trees and how we can use them to make AI decisions in even the most complex...