Zombie Game – Tutorial Tasks

Introduction:

This is a brief overview of my results and conclusions from completing the weekly tasks of the Zombie Shooter Game tutorial from the Games and AI module at Coventry University.

Week 1:

The tasks in Week 1 assist in the setup of a Unity project & scene, explains some basic methods of managing 3D assets and provides a solution to a simple “Point & Click”-style AI agent movement using transform targetting, handled through a custom Unity script attached to the agent’s game object. Pathfinding of the AI agent is handled through Unity’s internal Navmesh system which bakes a map that the agents can use to navigate at runtime.

Week 2:

The tasks in week 2 assist in the implementation of a basic Finite State Machine AI model composed of three states, provides a solution to integrating existing 3D models and animations in the Unity engine through the Adobe Mixamo platform and assists in customizing the player and AI agent character in the Unity engine using the imported models and animations.

Week 3:

The tasks in week 3 expand the functionality of each individual AI agent state from the three previously implemented which also set up player & AI interactions, assists in setting up dynamic ragdoll behavior for 3D models with the Unity engine and provides basic instructions to texturing the environment using custom textures.

Week 4:

The tasks in week 4 extend the features of the game project by assisting in the development of a respawning methods which tracks the number of active AI agents and instantiates new ones to meet a specific count when destroyed under certain conditions using an existing transform in the scene and suggests further development ideas.

Conclusion:

Completing every weekly tasks in the tutorial provides me with a basic Finite State Machine AI model composed of three states which manages individual animations for the 3D model it is represented by. The FSM AI model uses Unity’s AI Navmesh system to handle a its pathfinding mechanism. The Navmesh system computes data associated to 3D terrain offline and produces a map which the agents can use to navigate that terrain at runtime.