Book Image

Hands-On Artificial Intelligence with Unreal Engine

By : Francesco Sapio
5 (1)
Book Image

Hands-On Artificial Intelligence with Unreal Engine

5 (1)
By: Francesco Sapio

Overview of this book

Learning how to apply artificial intelligence ( AI ) is crucial and can take the fun factor to the next level, whether you're developing a traditional, educational, or any other kind of game. If you want to use AI to extend the life of your games and make them challenging and more interesting, this book is for you. The book starts by breaking down AI into simple concepts to get a fundamental understanding of it. Using a variety of examples, you will work through actual implementations designed to highlight key concepts and features related to game AI in UE4. You will learn to work through the built-in AI framework in order to build believable characters for every game genre (including RPG, Strategic, Platform, FPS, Simulation, Arcade, and Educational). You will learn to configure the Navigation, Environmental Querying, and Perception systems for your AI agents and couple these with Behavior Trees, all accompanied with practical examples. You will also explore how the engine handles dynamic crowds. In the concluding chapters, you will learn how to profile, visualize, and debug your AI systems to correct the AI logic and increase performance. By the end of the book, your AI knowledge of the built-in AI system in Unreal will be deep and comprehensive, allowing you to build powerful AI agents within your projects.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: The Unreal Framework
9
Section 2: Designing and Implementing Behavior Trees
13
Section 3: Debugging Methods
14
Debugging Methods for AI - Logging

Section 3: Debugging Methods

In this last section, we will explore Debugging Methods. In fact, this is a topic to not underestimate, since it is of vital importance for becoming a professional AI Game Developer. Being able to analyze, profile and visualize the AI you program it is key to achieve the intended behavior and hitting the right performance for your project.

The last chapter concludes with some suggestions on how to explore the concepts presented (and others) beyond this book and some thoughts regarding AI systems.

The following chapters will be covered in this section:

  • Chapter 11, Debugging Methods for AI - Logging
  • Chapter 12, Debugging Methods for AI - Navigation, EQS, and Profiling
  • Chapter 13, Debugging Methods for AI - The Gameplay Debugger
  • Chapter 14, Going Beyond