TLDR: Behavior Designer Pro is available here.
Behavior Designer has consistently been one of the top assets on the Asset Store and we’re extremely thrilled to announce the successor to it, Behavior Designer Pro. Behavior Designer Pro is a complete rewrite of Behavior Designer taking our learnings from the more than 10 years that Behavior Designer has been on the Asset Store. There are too many changes to list everything here but the Pro version contains something for everyone. There are however two major features:
DOTS Backend
Behavior Designer Pro uses DOTS as its backend allowing you to have hundreds of thousands of behavior trees running at the same time. The performance is incredible. Of course individual results will depend on the behavior tree and target hardware, but with the original Behavior Designer you were lucky if you could get a couple of thousand trees running.
In addition to supporting DOTS, Behavior Designer Pro also supports the MonoBehaviour workflow that you are used to. You have the option of using a DOTS task or a MonoBehaviour task when you are creating your tree. If you use a MonoBehaviour-based task then the speed will not be as fast as a pure-DOTS based task but there is still some improvement compared to the original Behavior Designer.
With the DOTS backend you don’t necessarily need to know that you are even using DOTS if you are not creating your own tasks. Since DOTS are value type objects you cannot used the Shared Variable system or reference any object in the MonoBehaviour world, but you have full access to the DOTS Entity and World system.
We will have much more information on this feature before Behavior Designer Pro is released.
UIElements Interface
While this isn’t as popular as the DOTS backend it is still very important. The original Behavior Designer uses IMGUI which recomputes the UI elements every update. UIElements is persistent and only recomputes when there is a change. This makes the interface much more performant. You can have thousands of tasks within a single tree and the editor will run without any issues.
Other Features
Beyond the backend and UI changes Behavior Designer Pro also contains literally hundreds of changes and new features. Here are some of the top new features:
Save Load: save and load your behavior tree at the exact same spot.
Event Nodes: Allows other branches to run outside of the main branch. This can be used for things such as triggering a callback when a conditional abort occurs.
Generic Shared Variables: You can now create new SharedVariables with a simple generic type, such as SharedVariable<int>.
Task Delegates: Delegates can now be used for calling any method within your code base. You no longer need to create a specific task for that purpose or rely on slow reflection.
Node Groups: Groups have been added to the editor allowing for better organization.
Node Views: Easily customize the look of the node.
Improved Task Add Dialogue: The Task Add Dialogue has been improved to include categories. It is now the primary method of adding tasks.
New Shared Variable Scopes: Shared Variables can now exist within the graph, GameObject (new), Scene (new), or Project.
Subtree Overrides: External Behavior Trees have been renamed to Subtrees, and it has gotten easier to pass variables between trees.
Expanded Property Bindings: Property Bindings are no longer limited to just Components – they can be set on Scriptable Objects as well.
Runtime Subtree Replacement: In order to change which subtree the Behavior Tree Reference task referenced you had to completely restart the tree. Now you can simply call a method to do the replacement for you.
Improved Handling of Renamed Files: Behavior Designer Pro supports the MovedFrom attribute allowing you to easily refactor your class names.
Stacked Action/Conditional: By default new action and conditional tasks will be grouped with the Stacked Action or Stacked Conditional tasks. This does not apply to DOTS tasks.
Watched Variables: Watching a variable has been improved so you can now edit the value right within the node.
Burst Support: Behavior Designer Pro uses Burst to execute your behavior tree allowing for quick execution.
UI Controls: Opsive’s UI Control structure has been included in Behavior Designer Pro making it easy to support new object or attribute types.
Package-Based Workflow: Behavior Designer Pro has moved to the packages folder allowing for better organization.
Source Code Available: Behavior Designer Pro includes the behavior tree runtime by default, and you can now optionally get all of the source code by subscribing to our repository.
Pre-Release, Released
Behavior Designer Pro was first started development in 2019. Back then DOTS was called ECS and Unity was still making a lot of changes to how the system worked. Because we didn’t want to release an asset on an unstable codebase we didn’t really pick up development on the Pro version until after ECS (now DOTS) hit version 1.0. With all of that said, the Pro version has been a long time coming and we’re exited that you can get it… now!
Behavior Designer Pro is currently in a pre-release phase on the Opsive Store.
While Behavior Designer Pro is in a pre-release state the majority of new features have been completed as we work up our way to an official release. Before the official release we still need to complete:
- Documentation
- Samples
- Videos
- Installer
- Movement Pack
- Popular Integrations
Behavior Designer Pro requires Unity 2022.3.11 as the minimum with Entities 1.2.4. The ideal customer of the pre-release version of Behavior Designer Pro are existing Behavior Designer users who don’t want to wait for the new features. If you have an understanding in how to use Behavior Designer and don’t need any of the extra tasks then this pre-release is perfect for you. The Formations and Tactical Packs will be updated for Behavior Designer Pro after the Pro version has been released on the Asset Store.
The original version of Behavior Designer still has a strong use case even with the Pro version released so will not be immediately deprecated. It will also still receive updates but these updates will not contain any new features.
Due to the amount of time required we are not able to give any upgrade discounts on the pre-release version. In addition, if you purchase the pre-release on the Opsive Store we will not be able to transfer your purchase to the Asset Store.
There is not a strict timeline on when Behavior Designer Pro will be available on the Asset Store as we want to ensure it is an exceptionally quality release. With that said, it would not be too surprising if it is not available until early 2025.
After you have purchased the pre-release and would like access to a private pre-release forum you can send a message to support@opsive.com. We are extremely excited that we are getting close to release and are looking forward to the next generation of Behavior Designer!