Top Down Shooter AI Help

Questions & Answers
1

I’m relatively new to unity and I’m working on a top down shooter game, similar to games like Asteroids and Geometry Wars. When I looked for help with AI, the ONLY things I were able to find all said something similar to

“you want ai? make a series of waypoints and have the enemies move in a set path, duh!”

The problem is, I don’t want the enemies to move in a set path. I just want the enemies to follow the player around. (sort of like setting the player as THE waypoint that the enemy follows.) Can someone please help?

2

You may want to look into A* Pathfinding. I’ve personally never used it (I don’t build intense AI games), but thats whats always being passed around the unity community.

Check out their website:

http://www.arongranberg.com/unity/a-pathfinding/

3

Unity Pro 3.5 has navigaton agent control, if you dont have pro.
You have to use an algorithm, like A* Pathfinding.

4

If the only thing you want to achieve is that the enemies follow the player, than the easiest thing to do is just let the enemy fly towards the player.

May sounds simple, but thats exactly what you do:

enemy.transform.LookAt (player.transform.position);
enemy.transform.position += enemy.TransformDirection (Vector3.forward) * enemyMoveSpeed

This should work (not actually tested).

It rotates the enemy towards the player and pushes it forward in this direction. Be aware that you need more complex behaviour (like the mentioned A* algorithm) if you want the enemy to avoid obstacles.