Book Image

Unity 2017 Game AI Programming - Third Edition - Third Edition

Book Image

Unity 2017 Game AI Programming - Third Edition - Third Edition

Overview of this book

Unity 2017 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. This third edition with Unity will help you break down Artificial Intelligence into simple concepts to give you 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. Further on you will learn to distinguish the state machine pattern and implement one of your own. This is 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'll learn how to use Unity's built-in NavMesh feature and implement your own A* pathfinding system. You will then learn how to implement simple flocks and crowd's dynamics, key AI concepts. Moving on, you will learn how to implement a behavior tree through a game-focused example. Lastly, you'll combine fuzzy logic concepts with state machines and apply all the concepts in the book to build a simple tank game.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Testing the results

Hit play in the Unity editor and move the player tank near the wandering AI NPC by clicking on the ground to direct the tank to move to the clicked location. You should see the Enemy touch detected message in the console log window whenever our AI character gets close to our player tank:

Our NPC and tank in action

The previous screenshot shows an AI agent with touch and perspective senses looking for another aspect. Move the player tank in front of the NPC, and you'll get the Enemy detected message. If you go to the editor view while running the game, you should see the debug lines being rendered. This is because of the OnDrawGizmos method implemented in the perspective Sense class.