Hands-On Artificial Intelligence with Unreal Engine

Learn to build intelligent and responsive Non-Player Characters for your games with Unreal Engine Game AI.

Key Features

• Understand the built-in AI systems in Unreal Engine for building intelligent games
• Leverage the power of Unreal Engine 4 programming to create game AI that focuses on motion, animation, and tactics
• Learn to profile, visualize, and debug your Game AI for checking logic and optimizing performance

Book Description

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.

What you will learn

• Get an in-depth knowledge about all the AI Systems within Unreal Engine
• Create complex AIs, understanding the art of designing and developing Behavior Tree
• Learn how to perform Environmental Queries (EQS)
• Master the Navigation, Perception, and Crowd Systems
• Profile and Visualize the AI Systems with powerful debugging tools
• Extend every AI and Debug system with custom nodes and functions

Who this book is for

Hands-On Artificial Intelligence with Unreal Engine is for you if you are a game developer with a bit experience in Unreal Engine, and now want to understand and implement believable game AI within Unreal Engine. The book will be both in Blueprint and C++, allowing people from every background to enjoy the book. Whether you're looking to build your first game or expand your knowledge to the edge as a Game AI Programmer, you will find plenty of exciting information and examples of game AI in terms of concepts and implementation, including how to extend some of these systems.

Table of Contents

1. Moving the first steps in the AI world?
2. Behavior trees and Blackboards
3. Navigation
4. Environment Query System
5. Agent Awareness
6. Extending Behavior Trees
7. Crowds
8. Designing Behavior Trees - Part I
9. Designing Behavior Trees - Part II
10. Designing Behavior Trees - Part III
11. Debugging methods for AI - Logging
12. Debugging methods for AI - Navigation, EQS and Profiling
13. Debugging methods for AI - The Gameplay Debugger
14. Going Beyond

Francesco Sapio received his Master of Science in Engineering in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics degree from Sapienza University, Rome, Italy, a couple of semesters in advance, graduating with summa cum laude; he is currently a researcher at the same university. He is an Unreal and Unity 3D expert, skilled game designer, and an experienced user of major graphics programs. He helped the development of many games (both educational and commercial). He is also an active writer on the topic of game development. Finally, Francesco loves math, philosophy, logic, and puzzle solving, but most of all, creating video gamesthanks to his passion for game designing and programming.