Preface

When we think about artificial intelligence, a lot of topics may come to mind. From simple behaviors such as following or escaping from the player, through the classical Chess-rival AI, to state-of-the-art techniques in Machine Learning or procedural content generation.

Talking about Unity means talking about game development democratization. Thanks to its ease of use, fast-paced technological improvement, an ever-growing community of developers, and the new cloud services offered, Unity has become one of the most important game industry software.

With all that in mind, the main goal in writing this book is to offer you, the reader, both technical insight into Unity, following best practices and conventions, and theoretical knowledge that help you grasp artificial intelligence concepts and techniques, so you could get the best of both worlds for your own personal and professional development.

This cookbook will introduce you to the tools to build great AI; either for creating better enemies, polishing that final boss, or even building your own customized AI engine. It aims to be your one-stop reference for developing artificial intelligence techniques in Unity.

Welcome to an exciting journey that combines a variety of things that means a lot to me as a professional and human being; programming, game development, artificial intelligence, and sharing knowledge with other developers. I cannot stress how humbled and happy I am to be read by you right now, and grateful to the team at Packt for this formidable opportunity. I hope this material helps you not only take your Unity and artificial intelligence skills to new levels, but also deliver that feature that will engage players into your game.