How to make AI?

Ive been directed to the forums for my question I had on unity answers, But here it is. How do I create an AI that runs around in a panicked fashion. I want them to just run around all panicked and I dont know how to start. Who ever helps I want to say thank you

 

In the absence of further details, I'd suggest you look at

1.) NavMeshes (for path finding)
2.) Random.InsideUnitSpere() (for assigning random points to move to)

References:
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/NavMesh.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Random.html
http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/live-training-archive/click-to-move

 

Right, well whether you need a NavMesh is utterly dependent on what sort of game you're making. I haven't had opportunity yet to use them myself, but I know they're great for certain game types.

Can you tell us more about your game? 2D or 3D? Turn-based or real time? Physics engine, or no? What's in the environment? Or post a screenshot, which is worth a thousand words.

Assuming the simplest case (your panicked agents are cubes running around in an infinite plane with no obstacles or chance of colliding with each other), then I would just pick a random direction, move that way for a short while, and then pick another random direction.

This reminds me of a game I wrote years ago, called Zombies! It was a turn-based strategy game, and the human units had three states: Clueless, Panicked, and Aware. The Panicked units would throw their hands up and run around at random — sometimes right into the hungry jaws of a zombie! You can just barely see one guy panicking on the left edge of the image below.

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I got it, I learned nav mesh and I used it to create it to where they run to their house, But to answer your questions JoeStrout, 3D real time without the physics environment.
Edit: Also I am trying to make it to where the AI will run around in a panicked fashion because there is an alien in my game

This is the screenshot of what I have

 

OK, in that case I'd go with something like @Munchy2007's suggestion, using Random.InsideUnitCircle to pick a random nearby point, use the navmesh to run to it, and then repeat.

 

Be careful not to recalculate paths a lot. It's like, the most expensive thing ever...

 

Expensive is relative, and may not necessarily be a problem. I wrote a multiplayer FPS that had AI controlled zombies following random paths on a navmesh and it ran on a PC without any problems with over 100 zombies in the level. (That was a stress test though, ordinarily it would have 10-20 zombies). They recalculated their paths randomly every 2-10 seconds.

As I recall when I set the zombies to spawn endlessly it crashed the game at around 500 of them.

 

It's not relative at all. As you said, they only updated once every 2-10 seconds. You're doing it right. Now, if you were a noob, you'd likely have that recalculate in Update() or something. How often you call something doesn't change the cost of the call. As I said... it's expensive... so don't use it a lot.

 

For some more advanced stuff check out the book 'game so by example' by m Buckland.