Blackboards

Blackboards video tutorial

A Blackboard is a data structure which allows you to share data between different components of your AI without having direct dependencies between them. A blackboard is a Dictionary like data structure which allows you to add data by defining it as a set of key value pairs.

Let's say you want to know what is the safest location to go to, you can define a safe location key in the blackboard and store the Vector3 of the location in it. Our implementation of blackboards is more strongly typed than a Dictionary<string,object> and you should define all keys with the data type of their values before being able to set/get them.

Getting Started

To define a blackboard you first need to create a blackboard definition. To do that right click in your project and click on Create>NoOpArmy>Wise Feline>BlackBoard Definition. Then you need to assign that definition to a BlackBoard component. Then you can set or get the value of the keys you defined in the definition.

You have multiple methods in the BlackBoard component like GetFloat(key), SetFloat(), GetVector3(key) and SetVector3(key,value). You have these pairs for all data types and you can set and get the values in your code as you need.

How can I use this?

Your AI can use this in considerations and actions and other parts of your game. Let's say you have an action like, GoToLocation, you can take a blackboard key which you know contains a Vector3.

A small tutorial

• Create a definition and call it b.
• Add a float key called speed.
• Create a new script called TestBlackBoard and attach it with a BlackBoard component to a GameObject.
• Set the definition in the blackboard to the one you made above.
• Open the TestBlackBoard script you made and add some code like this.

public class TestBlackBoard : MonoBehaviour
{
	private BlackBoard board;

	void Start()
	{
		board = GetComponent<BlackBoard>();
		board.SetFloat("speed", 3);
		var speed = board.GetFloat("speed");
		print(speed);
	}
}

The code should print 3.