Book Image

Unity AI Game Programming - Second Edition

By : Raymundo Barrera, Aung Sithu Kyaw, Clifford Peters, Thet Naing Swe
Book Image

Unity AI Game Programming - Second Edition

By: Raymundo Barrera, Aung Sithu Kyaw, Clifford Peters, Thet Naing Swe

Overview of this book

<p>Unity 5 provides game and app developers with a variety of tools to implement artificial intelligence. Leveraging these tools via Unity’s API or built-in features allows limitless possibilities when it comes to creating your game’s worlds and characters. Whether you are developing traditional, serious, educational, or any other kind of game, understanding how to apply artificial intelligence can take the fun-factor to the next level!</p> <p>This book helps you break down artificial intelligence into simple concepts to give the reader a fundamental understanding of the topic to build upon. 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 5. Along the way, several tips and tricks are included to make the development of your own AI easier and more efficient.</p> <p>Starting from covering the basic essential concepts to form a base for the later chapters in the book, you will learn to distinguish the state machine pattern along with implementing your own. This will be followed by learning how to implement a basic sensory system for your AI agent and coupling it with a finite state machine (FSM). Next you will be taught how to use Unity’s built-in NavMesh feature and implement your own A* pathfinding system. Then you will learn how to implement simple flocks and crowd’s dynamics, the key AI concepts. Then moving on you will learn how a behavior tree works and its implementation. Next you will learn adding layer of realism by combining fuzzy logic concepts with state machines. Lastly, you learn applying all the concepts in the book by combining them in a simple tank game.</p>
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Unity AI Game Programming Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Understanding the concepts behind flocks and crowds


As with previous concepts, it's easiest to understand flocks and herds by relating them to the real-life behaviors they model. As simple as it sounds, these concepts describe a group of objects, or boids, as they are called in artificial intelligence lingo, moving together as a group. The flocking algorithm gets its name from the behavior birds exhibit in nature, where a group of birds follow one another toward a common destination, keeping a mostly fixed distance from each other. The emphasis here is on the group. We've explored how singular agents can move and make decisions on their own, but flocks are a relatively computationally efficient way of simulating large groups of agents moving in unison while modeling unique movement in each boid that doesn't rely on randomness or predefined paths.

We'll implement two variations of flocking in this chapter. The first one will be based on a sample flocking behavior found in a demo project called...