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

Generating the Navigation Mesh

Generating a simple Navigation Mesh is pretty straightforward in Unreal. Let's look at how we can do it. From the Mode panel, in the Volume tab, you will be able to find the Nav Mesh Bounds Volume, as shown in the following screenshot:

Drag it into the world. You will notice that the volume is quite small in respect to the map. Everything inside that volume will be taken into consideration to generate a Nav Mesh. Of course, a Nav Mesh has many parameters, but for now let's keep thing simple.

If you press the P button on your keyboard, you will be able to see the Nav Mesh in the Viewport, as shown in the following screenshot:

As you can see, it is limited to the area that's contained in the volume of Nav Mesh Bounds Volume. Let's scale the Nav Mesh Bounds Volume to fit all the level we have. This is what your level should look...