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)

Setting up the rules

Our "game" is quite simple. While the actual game logic, such as health, damage, and win conditions, are left completely up to you, our example focuses on setting you up to implement your own tank-defense game.

When deciding on what kind of logic and behavior you'll need from your agent, it's important to have the rules of the game fleshed out beyond a simple idea. Of course, as you implement different features, those rules can change, but having a set of concepts nailed down early on will help you pick the best tools for the job.

It's a bit of a twist on the traditional tower-defense genre. You don't build towers to stop an oncoming enemy; you rather use your abilities to help your tank get through a gauntlet of towers. As your tank traverses the maze, towers along the path will attempt to destroy your tank by shooting explosive...