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

Learning how to use Perlin noise

Perlin noise is an algorithm to define digital noise developed by Ken Perlin in 1983. It quickly became the de facto algorithm to generate natural-looking patterns in a considerable number of procedural content generation algorithms. For example, Perlin noise is used to create 3D landscapes, 2D textures, procedural animations, and much more.

Figure 10.3 – The difference between Perlin noise (left) and white noise (right)

But what makes Perlin noise different from other noises? The short answer is that it looks more natural. This answer, however, just changes the question into what does it mean to be more natural? Let's imagine standard non-Perlin noise, for instance, a sequence of random numbers between 0 and 1. The sequence may be something like 0, 0.9, 0.2, 0.3, 0.95, and so on.

As you can see, the numbers can jump up and down without any criteria. If these numbers represent the position of a character in the...