Guides
Eight families of page, one per part of the product: build a decision, give it data, work the editor, watch it run, and ship it.
On this page
Each guide page opens with the game problem it solves, shows the feature working, then gives you the exact rule. Opening the editor for the first time? Learn is the smaller place to start, and it ends with something moving on screen.
The eight families, in order
Section titled “The eight families, in order”- Behavior trees. One page per node: choosing between alternatives, working through steps, repeating, giving up, interrupting a running branch, reusing one.
- State machines. Named modes with one live at a time, the rules for leaving each one, and a tree hosted inside a state.
- Blackboard. A graph’s own memory, so the node that senses something and the node that acts on it never have to know about each other.
- Bindings. Point a node at a method, property, field, or event you already wrote. Arguments and results included.
- Editor. The canvas, the palette, the rail, search, validation, and the rename-safe refactoring that keeps a project honest.
- Debugging. Live colors on one attached agent. Pause and step belong to that agent alone, and a fault reads differently from a failure.
- Runtime. Putting a finished graph in your game, on a component or in an ECS World, with the measured performance figures.
- Graph files. What a
.bqbehaviorfile stores, what Unity prepares from it, and what to do when one refuses to import.
Pick the page you need
Section titled “Pick the page you need”| What you want to do | Page |
|---|---|
| Try alternatives until one works | Choose |
| Run steps in a fixed order | In order |
| Take a running branch away when something more urgent happens | Interrupt |
| Pick between weighted alternatives | Roll the dice |
| Give an actor named modes with rules for leaving them | States and lifecycle |
| Decide when a mode ends | Transitions |
| Share a value between two nodes | Variables and types |
| Change a value while the game runs | Live editing |
| Call a method you already wrote | Method |
| Wait for a C# event before continuing | Condition and event |
| Read a component field every tick without writing glue | Property and field |
| Find a node in a graph that has grown | Search and validation |
| Rename game code without breaking every graph | Reference Scan |
| See why an agent did that | Live colors |
| Stop one agent mid-decision and step it | Pause, step, breakpoints |
| Run a graph on a GameObject | GameObject agents |
| Run a graph on hundreds of entities | Entity agents |
| Keep game effects in your game | Adapters and services |
| Get a graph into a player build | Addressables and builds |
| Read or migrate a graph file | Format and migrations |
Two shortcuts past the guides
Section titled “Two shortcuts past the guides”- The exact rule for one control, with its fields and its result contract, is in the node reference.
- A symptom you cannot place yet belongs in troubleshooting, which is arranged by where you are standing rather than by subsystem.
The sample games show all of it working together. Borrow one decision pattern without adopting a sample’s whole architecture: that is what the common behaviors pages are for.