What program if any do you use to plan what your AI does and how it functions?
I mean something similar as MySQL Workbench for databases, but in this case for AI.
I usually use Diagrams.net on google drive. How complex do you want the AI to be?
I don’t know, there aren’t many tutorials which are short and to the point that help with the basics and even less so with more complicated stuff.
@MrGoatsy
Diagrams.net is a really good resource, as was mentioned, as well as something like Figma, MS Paint, or MS Word(SmartArt), which can really get the job done. Other than that, it really just boils down to how you yourself process the logic of the AI and its gates, what triggers which responses. Personally, for just organization, I usually stick to pencil and paper, it just helps my thoughts flow a bit more.
Other than that, Unreals behavior trees are pretty nice, if you keep all the nodes organized. Here’s a link if you want to check it out: Behavior Trees in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.0 Documentation
I hope this can help you!
-Zen
I know about behaviour trees but I would more so like to know how to best plan how yours or in this case mine should look.
For simple or intermediate complexity AI it is probably the best way to think about them in terms of conditions. Try to figure out what you want your AI to do(ex. patrol, investigate, attack, alarm other NPCs around him), then figure out the conditions of each action and when they change. So the character might patrol-then if he hears/sees something he goes to investigate-if he doesn’t find anything, he goes back to patrolling-if he does, he starts attacking- if the player starts running away, he alarms NPCs close by, otherwise he attacks.
Can you share a screenshot of what your behaviour tree looks like?
I don’t have any on hand right now, but I quickly googled and these 2 look okay, one is more basic, but shows the general idea of Behavior Trees. https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/Images/InteractiveExperiences/ArtificialIntelligence/BehaviorTrees/BehaviorTreeQuickStart/BTQS_Step3_11.png
https://i.imgur.com/ucbS20M.jpeg
Behavior Trees are executed from left to right, so you can put more important tasks to the left side, so the sequence can go over them first. You have few concepts to learn there(decorators, services, blackboards, sequences,…), but after few tutorials you should be able to create logic for a character on your own.
i think any mind-mapper software is fine.
i use one called scapple because it is one-time purchase, cheap, and offline. But anything where you can connect some nodes and add text should be sufficient.
If you are starting from square one my personal recommendation is dont use blackboard yet. It brings in a lot of new concepts and terminology and you have to jump through more hoops to handle communications. In other words, it’s not exactly beginner friendly.
It is easier to get a basic AI setup with a simple state pattern in blueprints. You can actually do quite a bit that way. The result is that you dont need to learn any new language and you can handle communications between classes in the typical familiar way.
If you don’t know what a state pattern is and how to implement it in blueprints, try searching youtube there is a few great tutorials.
As for the planning, i just try to identify the states and then know when one transitions to another. Just describe it out in plain language and then translating to code isn’t too hard.