Unity 4.x Game AI Programming

Use your basic knowledge of Unity3D to add effective artificial intelligence to your games. This tutorial will take you through all the essentials, from flocking to pathfinding, from navigation graphs to behavior trees.

Overview

• A practical guide with step-by-step instructions and example projects to learn Unity3D scripting
• Learn pathfinding using A* algorithms as well as Unity3D pro features and navigation graphs.
• Implement finite state machines (FSMs), path following, and steering algorithms.

In Detail

This book fills the gap between artificial intelligence (AI) books designed to learn underlying AI algorithms and general Unity3D books written to cover basic scene setup and scripting in Unity3D. Game AI Scripting in Unity3D covers implementing AI techniques such as flocking, pathfinding, path following, and behavior trees in Unity3D with example projects.

Game AI Scripting in Unity3D will show you how to apply AI techniques to your Unity3D projects using C# as the scripting language. Unlike other AI books and Unity3D books, this book tries to focus more on the application of AI techniques in the Unity3D engine, with sample projects that demonstrate finite state machines (FSMs), pathfinding, steering, navigation graphs, and behavior trees techniques.

This book shows how to implement various AI techniques in Unity3D by implementing the algorithm from scratch using C#, applying Unity3D built-in features, or using available scripts and plugins from the Unity Asset Store. For example, we’ll be implementing our own A* algorithm to do pathfinding but will also explore the Unity3D navigation graphs feature. Then we’ll use the Behave plugin to construct behavior trees for intelligent AI character behaviors.

Game AI Scripting in Unity3d covers other AI techniques such as flocking behavior, building a sensory system for taking inputs from the environment and other AI agents, and so on. In the final chapter this book will show you how to build a racing game AI project using Unity3D and applying the techniques described in earlier chapters.

What you will learn from this book

• Building finite state machines (FSMs)
• Implementing a sensory system
• Applying flocking behavior for a crowd
• Executing your own A* pathfinding algorithm in Unity3D
• Applying random and probability techniques in a betting game
• Using the Unity3D pro feature, navigation graphs, for path finding
• Learning about behavior trees and the Behave plugin
• Implementing a racing game AI through the final chapter project

Approach

Step-by-step practical tutorial

Who this book is written for

Are you are a programmer with basic knowledge of Unity3D who would like to add AI features to your game? Are you looking for a reference on implementing AI in Unity3D with simple to follow instructions, and lots of sample code and projects? Then this book is for you. You should have some background in C# language as this book will use C# for scripting. However if you know any other language you should be able to follow this book fairly easily.