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Learning C++ by creating games with UE4

By : William Sherif

3.2 (39)

Learning C++ by creating games with UE4

3.2 (39)

By: William Sherif

Overview of this book

If you are really passionate about games and have always wanted to write your own, this book is perfect for you. It will help you get started with programming in C++ and explore the immense functionalities of UE4.

Preface

Preface

What is a game engine anyway?

What will using UE4 cost me?

Why don't I just program my own engine and save the 5 percent?

A game's overview – the Play-Reward-Growth loop

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Coding with C++

1. Coding with C++

Setting up our project

Creating your first C++ program

What is building and compiling?

Summary

2. Variables and Memory

2. Variables and Memory

Variables

Summary

3. If, Else, and Switch

3. If, Else, and Switch

Branching

Controlling the flow of your program

Using logical operators

Our first example with Unreal Engine

Summary

4. Looping

4. Looping

The while loop

The do/while loop

The for loop

Looping with Unreal Engine

Summary

5. Functions and Macros

Functions

An example of a library function – sqrt()

Writing our own functions

Functions with arguments

Functions that return values

Variables, revisited

Macros

Macros with arguments

Summary

6. Objects, Classes, and Inheritance

6. Objects, Classes, and Inheritance

struct objects

class versus struct

Getters and setters

Constructors and destructors

Class inheritance

Multiple inheritance

Putting your classes into headers

Summary

7. Dynamic Memory Allocation

7. Dynamic Memory Allocation

Dynamic memory allocation

Regular arrays

C++ style dynamic size arrays (new[] and delete[])

Dynamic C-style arrays

Summary

8. Actors and Pawns

8. Actors and Pawns

Actors versus pawns

Creating a world to put your actors in

The UE4 editor

Starting from scratch

Adding an actor to the scene

Creating a player entity

Writing C++ code that controls the game's character

Creating non-player character entities

Displaying a quote from each NPC dialog box

Summary

9. Templates and Commonly Used Containers

9. Templates and Commonly Used Containers

Debugging the output in UE4

UE4's TArray

TSet

TMap

C++ STL versions of commonly used containers

Summary

10. Inventory System and Pickup Items

10. Inventory System and Pickup Items

Declaring the backpack

Base class PickupItem

Drawing the player inventory

Summary

11. Monsters

11. Monsters

Landscape

Monsters

Monster attacks on the player

Summary

12. Spell Book

12. Spell Book

The particle systems

Spell class actor

Attaching right mouse click to cast spell

Creating other spells

Summary

Index

Index

class versus struct

You might have seen a different way of declaring an object, using the class keyword, instead of struct, as shown in the following code:

class Player // we used class here instead of struct!
{
  string name;
  //
};

The class and struct keywords in C++ are almost identical. There is only one difference between class and struct, and it is that the data members inside a struct keyword will be declared public by default, while in a class keyword the data members inside the class will be declared private by default. (This is why I introduced objects using struct; I didn't want to put public inexplicably as the first line of class.)

In general, struct is preferred for simple types that don't use encapsulation, don't have many member functions, and must be backward compatible with C. Classes are used almost everywhere else.

From now on, let's use the class keyword instead of struct.

CONTINUE READING

83

Tech Concepts

36

Programming languages

73

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Learning C++ by creating games with UE4

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