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)

Using the Reynolds algorithm

Without further ado, let's dive into the Reynolds flocking algorithm. There are two main scripts for our flocking implementation: Boid.cs and FlockController.cs. The sample code for this chapter provides a scene with all the necessary setup for testing. You'll also notice a third script named TargetMovement.cs, which we use to move a target that our flock will follow around the scene.

For our boid, we can use a simple cube as a prefab. Of course, feel free to replace the cube with any art you want. Let's add the Boid.cs script to our boid prefab. The code looks like this:

using UnityEngine;

public class Boid : MonoBehaviour
{
[SerializeField]
private FlockController flockController;

//The modified direction for the boid.
private Vector3 targetDirection;
//The Boid's current direction.
private Vector3 direction...