Version Comparison
Choose a version
Both Behavior Designer and Behavior Designer Pro are supported behavior-tree implementations from Opsive. The original Behavior Designer was released in 2014 and provides the established GameObject workflow. Behavior Designer Pro applies the lessons from that product to a newer DOTS, UI Toolkit, Burst, and job-system architecture.
Behavior Designer Pro requires the Unity Entities packages, but you do not need prior DOTS experience to create GameObject behavior trees. Its authoring workflow remains familiar while adding new editor, runtime, and performance capabilities.
Choose Behavior Designer Pro for a new project or when you want its Pro-only features. Choose the original Behavior Designer when maintaining an existing project that already depends on its trees, tasks, or supported platforms.
Behavior trees are not automatically convertible between the two products because their serialized structures and runtime implementations differ. Custom tasks must also be updated for the target product, so make this choice before building a large tree library. A mature project can install both products side by side and migrate one tree at a time; see Updating and Migration.
Compare requirements and architecture
| Behavior Designer | Behavior Designer Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Supported Unity Versions | 2021.3 and newer | 2022.3.11 and newer |
| Runtime Backend | Standard C# | DOTS |
| Editor Backend | IMGUI | UIElements |
| Platform Restrictions | None | WebGL not supported due to Burst |
| Code Optimizations | No heap allocations after initialization | No heap allocations after initialization plus Burst and job system support |
| Development Status | Maintenance Updates | Continuous Development |
Compare features
At the feature level both Behavior Designer and Behavior Designer Pro are behavior tree implementations. With that said, Behavior Designer Pro has many advantages over Behavior Designer:
Legend: ✅ Included · ❌ Not included
| Behavior Designer | Behavior Designer Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Atlas-assisted authoring | ❌ | ✅ |
| Conditional Aborts | ✅ | ✅ |
| Conditional Abort Callbacks | ❌ | ✅ |
| Error Window | ✅ | ✅ |
| Event Branches | ❌ | ✅ |
| Extensible Node Inspector | ❌ | ✅ |
| Extensible Task Inspector | ✅ | ✅ |
| GameObject & Scene Shared Variables | ❌ | ✅ |
| Generic Shared Variables | ❌ | ✅ |
| Graph & Global Shared Variables | ✅ | ✅ |
| Node Groups | ❌ | ✅ |
| Package-Based Workflow | ❌ | ✅ |
| Property Mappings | ✅ | ✅ |
| Runtime Tree Replacement | ✅ | ✅ |
| Save/Load | ❌ | ✅ |
| Shared Variable Change Callback | ❌ | ✅ |
| Source Repository Available | ❌ | ✅ |
| Subtree Overrides | ✅ | ✅ |
| Task Delegates | ❌ | ✅ |
| Visual Debugging | ✅ | ✅ |
| Watched Variables | ✅ | ✅ |
Classic Behavior Designer supports runtime replacement through ExternalBehavior and named variable overrides on BehaviorReference. Pro provides these capabilities through its own Subtree APIs; the two products’ serialized assets and APIs remain different.
Start a new project
Behavior Designer Pro is the recommended package if you are just starting your project or are not that far along. Even though it uses DOTS the workflow is similar for authoring your behavior tree and the GameObject-based tasks have a similar setup as the original Behavior Designer tasks. There is an upgrade discount between Behavior Designer and Behavior Designer Pro.
For an established project, coexistence is the lower-risk route: keep original Behavior Designer trees running while rebuilding and validating selected behaviors in Pro. The packages use separate GUIDs, namespaces, editor data, and runtime data. Follow Updating and Migration for the staged workflow and Custom Task Migration for project-owned Task code.