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Hands-On Artificial Intelligence with Unreal Engine: Everything you want to know about Game AI using Blueprints or C++

Francesco Sapio

$19.99 per month

3 (4 Ratings)

Paperback Apr 2019 552 pages 1st Edition

Francesco Sapio

$19.99 per month

3 (4 Ratings)

Paperback Apr 2019 552 pages 1st Edition

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Key benefits

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

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.

Who is this book 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.

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

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Product Details

Publication date : Apr 25, 2019

Length: 552 pages

Edition : 1st

Language : English

ISBN-13 : 9781788835657

Vendor :

Epic Games

Category :

Game Development

Languages :

C++

Concepts :

Artificial Intelligence

Tools :

Unreal

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18 Chapters

Section 1: The Unreal Framework

Making the First Steps in the World of AI

Before starting...

Prerequisites

Installing and preparing the software

Becoming an AI Game Developer

A bit of history

Planning our journey

Summary

Behavior Trees and Blackboards

How Behavior Trees work

Blackboards and their integration with Behavior Trees

Creating our AI project

Starting Behavior Trees from AI Controllers

Summary

Navigation

What to expect from a Navigation System

Unreal Navigation System

Generating the Navigation Mesh

Setting parameters for the Nav Mesh

Modifying the Navigation Mesh

Overriding the Navigation System

Summary

Environment Querying System

Enabling the Environment Querying System

Understanding the Environment Querying System

Exploring the built-in nodes

Visualizing Environment Queries

Creating components for the Environment Querying System

Summary

Agent Awareness

Perception of AI in video games

Overview of the Sensing System

The AIPerceptionComponent

Different Teams

The AIStimuliSourceComponent

Hands-on with the perception system – Sight AI Controller

Summary

Extending Behavior Trees

A quick recap on Behavior Trees

Creating a Task

Creating a Decorator

Creating a Service

Creating a Composite Node

Creating new type of nodes or new types of Trees

Summary

Crowds

Crowds in games

Crowds in Unreal

Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles (RVO)

Detour Crowd

Summary

Section 2: Designing and Implementing Behavior Trees

Designing Behavior Trees - Part I

The Expected Behavior

Building the Nodes

AI Controller

Summary

Designing Behavior Trees - Part II

Setting up the environment for testing the Behavior Tree

Service – Update Chasing Behavior

Summary

Designing Behavior Trees - Part III

Building the Behavior Tree

Running the Behavior Tree

Bug Correction

Improving further (C++ only)

Summary

Section 3: Debugging Methods

Debugging Methods for AI - Logging

Basic Logging

Summary

Debugging Methods for AI - Navigation, EQS, and Profiling

Debugging behavior trees

Profiling and visualizing environmental queries

Testing and visualizing the navigation mesh

Profiling AI

Summary

Debugging Methods for AI - The Gameplay Debugger

The anatomy of the Gameplay Debugger

Extending the Gameplay Debugger

Summary

Going Beyond

Why is psychology an important consideration for AI?

What we haven't covered in this book

Some useful resources

AI and philosophy

Goodbye

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Customer reviews

Rating distribution

(4 Ratings)

5 star 25%

4 star 0%

3 star 25%

2 star 50%

1 star 0%

Miguel Mar 12, 2024

A book that covers all topics of AI in Unreal. Very useful, thank you!

Subscriber review

Rose Sep 26, 2024

This is a good introduction to Unreal Engine's AI framework that is still applicable and mostly up-to-date in version 5.4.4, even though it was written in UE4. I enjoyed the GameplayDebugger extension a lot, but the BehaviorTree design section was rather short and simple, was definitely hoping for more advanced behavior there.

Subscriber review

Amazon Customer Jul 01, 2020

'Hands-On' 'Everything you want to know about Game AI' talk about misleading phrases. This book has 14 chapters but only 3 of them actually walk you through building a behavior tree and its related components, even then the end result is a barebones 'chasing' AI algorithm that would come off as a completely unfinished mechanic in any game. The rest of the chapters just dump a bunch of information on you in regards to the different AI systems and features that Unreal offers but its all just theory because the author fails to offer examples as to how anyone would go about implementing any of it in their own game.Overall, despite being over 500 pages long this book offers almost nothing tangible for someone who is looking to implement useful AI functionality into their Unreal projects.

Amazon Verified review

jackfurneri1984 Mar 14, 2021

Sebbene di materiale scritto ce ne sia parecchio, ho trovato molti aspetti teorici che non trovano un risvolto pratico nell'utilizzo di Unreal.Ci sono solo 2/3 capitoli che mostrano un piccolo esempio ma molto basilare.Purtroppo ho dovuto richiedere il reso della merce dal momento che non ho trovato il prodotto utile per i miei fini lavorativi.

Amazon Verified review

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About the author

Francesco Sapio

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.

See other products by Francesco Sapio

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Hands-On Artificial Intelligence with Unreal Engine: Everything you want to know about Game AI using Blueprints or C++

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