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

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Let's start creating the PlayerTankController class by setting up the Start function and the Update function in the PlayerTankController.cs file."

A block of code is set as follows:

public class PlayerTankController : MonoBehaviour { 
    public GameObject Bullet; 
    public GameObject Turret; 
    public GameObject bulletSpawnPoint;

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

// ... 
    private AudioSource m_ExplosionAudio  
    private ParticleSystem m_ExplosionParticles 
    private float m_CurrentHealth; 
    private bool m_Dead; 
    public float CurrentHealth { get; } 
    // ...

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

git clone --branch release_19 https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ml-agents.git

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: "If you play the scene and click on the Pull Lever button, you should see the final result."

Tips or important notes

Appear like this.