Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
ANT-Op
Sometimes for your games, you might want to create crowd AIs that act in a very
unique way, and instead of using an existing AI plugin, you might want to create a
crowd AI from scratch. This would be done in the case of an ANT-Op AI. As we men-
tioned before, ant behavior is a popular topic in AI research and computer science in
general. Initially, ants work independently and give off pheromones that are sensed
by other ants to communicate messages. For example, when ants start searching for
food, they give off pheromones as they search. When they find food, they give off
different pheromones as they bring it back to the colony, which directs the next ants
when searching for food. ANT-Op, by Gray Lake Studios, is available on Unity Asset
Store for $75, and it simulates this ant food search process. Unlike the other AI plu-
gins in this topic, Ant-Op isn't really designed to be brought into an existing game; it's
more of a technical demonstration that is a simulation you can use to see interesting
AI at work and hopefully use it to inspire complex AI designs for your games. To start
the demo, import ANT-Op and double-click on
Test Scene
to open it. The scene will
initially be blank, but if you start the demo, you can see the simulation start. In the
following screenshot, you can see ANT-Op in action:
You can see ANT-Op simulating an ant colony. The lines represent pheromones from
the ants.
The options on the right are different settings for the simulation. You can play by chan-
ging the values, and these can be saved to an XML file for later reloading. Running
the simulation provides a complex visualization, which you can see in the following
screenshot:
