Unreal Engine 4 AI Programming Essentials: Create responsive and intelligent game AI using Blueprints in Unreal Engine 4

Newton Feng

€29.99

2.6 (12 Ratings)

Paperback Mar 2016 188 pages 1st Edition

Newton Feng

€29.99

2.6 (12 Ratings)

Paperback Mar 2016 188 pages 1st Edition

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Key benefits

Understand and apply your Game AI better through various projects such as adding randomness and probability, and introducing movement
Configure and debug Game AI logic using multiple methodologies
Bridge the gap between your knowledge and Game AI in Unreal Engine 4

Description

Unreal Engine is a powerful game development engine that provides rich functionalities to create 2D and 3D games. Developers have the opportunity to build cross-platform mobile and desktop games from scratch. This book will show you how to apply artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to your Unreal project using blueprints as your scripting language. You will start with an introduction to AI, and learn how it is applied to gaming. Then you'll jump right in and create a simple AI bot and apply basic behaviors to allow it to move randomly. As you progress, you'll find out how to implement randomness and probability traits. Using NavMesh, you will impart navigation components such as character movement, MoveTo nodes, settings, and world objects, and implement Behavior Trees. At the end of the book, you will troubleshoot any issues that might crop up while building the game.

Who is this book for?

This book is for programmers and artists who want to expand their knowledge of game AI in relation to Unreal Engine 4. You are recommended to have some experience of exploring Unreal Engine 4 prior to this book because we jump straight into game AI.

What you will learn

? Understand the fundamental components of game AI within Unreal Engine 4
? Skillfully introduce game AI within Unreal Engine 4
? Configure, customize, and assign navigation and AI components to your pawn
? Create, debug, and analyze game AI behavior
? Design responsive game AI using the Behavior Tree methodology
? Create smart objects designed to interact with AI
? Utilize advanced AI features within your project to maximize the user experience

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Frequently bought together

Unreal Engine Game Development Blueprints

€41.99

3D Game Design with Unreal Engine 4 and Blender

€35.99

€29.99

Total € 107.97

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Amazon verified reviews

Christopher Oct 01, 2022

Very outdated, lessons and examples do not apply to late UE4 or UE5. Spent the best of 2-3 hours figuring out what NOT to do. The UE5 resources from Epic Games are much more helpful when it comes to AI design workflow.

Amazon Verified review

cookie Feb 16, 2021

Saw some upset comment, thus understand their feelings. I decided to give a read given that I realize my BP was rusty understanding level, the author did display some good technique like for instance using the the FIND with the Give Access Node and Cast <3personChar>. I find this bewildering as there is no explanation but after spending 8hours of researching, begin to understand the logic behind it. It basically just to compare the CharArrray Get access variable to the Possess Pawn Cast <3PersonChar> and provide access to the waypoint actors for the "Approved" pawn.Another given example was class = class. If I was a beginner i probably wun understand this either. It basically to boolean if the class IS equal to the matched class actor.Hope that this will not discourage the author as it covers the basics of AI in technical way, and I appreciate the techniques they shared. Hopefully they can come up another Book on AI with better explanation.

Chris Mar 28, 2018

After reading the author's offer to personally explain anything readers are having problems with, I almost skipped leaving this negative review. But then I noticed the only other five star review was from "Hugo", who apparently ONLY ever reviews books published by Packt. That sure seems like a phony review. And that REALLY irritates me. And since this book irritates me too, here you go.I have some experience with scripting using Blueprints in Unreal already, so I'm not an absolute beginner. I seem to fall right about where the authors expected me to as a reader of their book, in terms of UE4 knowledge.Even so, the language throughout the book is unclear, vague and confusing. Just one of many, many examples: at one point in the first chapter they use "enemy" to describe the player (from the enemy AI's point of view). Or this, also from the first chapter: "Machine learning is a branch all its own.", which followed an introduction of branches in state tree/FSM logic. These aren't insurmountable problems - they just make reading and understanding the fairly technical material so much harder than it needs to be because you're constantly backing up to try and parse what you just read. Reading this, it felt like every single paragraph contained something that's ambiguous, misleading, or otherwise clunky.Then, as others have said, the instructions are mostly lists of things to do without any deep explanation anyway.Maybe when this book was first written it filled a gap in the available documentation, but at this point you're better off checking out the tutorials at Epic than buying this book. Those resources aren't perfect, but at least they're free.

Javier San Juan Cervera Mar 25, 2018

I was looking for a good book on Unreal Engine AI so my students could use as a reference, but after reading this one, I ended up incredibly disappointed. Many parts completely lack an explanation, and the step-by-step instructions are not clear enough most of the time, and worst yet, sometimes they entirely skip some key steps!Doesn't this publisher have reviewers to do some sort of quality assurance before publishing this?Seriously, don't buy this.

Rob Targosz Feb 25, 2018

As with many PAKT published books, this one is almost unusable as a guide for learning new techniques. I've been consistently disappointed with this publisher and try to avoid them whenever possible. In my opinion, they tend to publish almost anything technical without any effort to perform editing to make it usable. The author has clearly rushed through the instructions, only uses Blueprints (no C++ code) and is nearly impossible to follow. "Drag from the TRUE node to create a SET node", for example is nearly meaningless. Which SET node? There are many of them, and it often takes 4-5 tries to 'guess' the right one. The author rarely takes time to explain WHY things are done the way they are described, just, 'now it is working!' Yet the final result from chapter 2 (for example) gets stuck if a left turn is required instead of a right turn. Sorry, returning for a refund.

Unreal Engine 4 AI Programming Essentials: Create responsive and intelligent game AI using Blueprints in Unreal Engine 4

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