Book Image

Unreal Engine Game Development Blueprints

By : Valcasara
Book Image

Unreal Engine Game Development Blueprints

By: Valcasara

Overview of this book

With the arrival of Unreal Engine 4, a new wonderful tool was born: Blueprint. This visual scripting tool allows even non-programmers to develop the logic for their games, allowing almost anyone to create entire games without the need to write a single line of code. The range of features you can access with Blueprint script is pretty extensive, making it one of the foremost choices for many game developers. Unreal Engine Game Development Blueprints helps you unleash the real power of Unreal by helping you to create engaging and spectacular games. It will explain all the aspects of developing a game, focusing on visual scripting, and giving you all the information you need to create your own games. We start with an introductory chapter to help you move fluidly inside the Blueprint user interface, recognize its different components, and understand any already written Blueprint script. Following this, you will learn how to modify generated Blueprint classes to produce a single player tic-tac-toe game and personalize it. Next, you will learn how to create simple user interfaces, and how to extend Blueprints through code. This will help you make an informed decision between choosing Blueprint or code. You will then see the real power of Unreal unleashed as you create a beautiful scene with moving, AI controlled objects, particles, and lights. Then, you will learn how to create AI using a behavior tree and a global level Blueprint, how to modify the camera, and how to shoot custom bullets. Finally, you will create a complex game using Blueprintable components complete with a menu, power-up, dangerous objects, and different weapons.
Table of Contents (9 chapters)

Chapter 3. C++ Code – PAC-MAN

In this chapter, you are going learn how to write a code in UE4. Blueprint, as we saw in the previous chapters, is a wonderful tool that allows you to manage almost everything that you need for your project. Almost, yes, as even the most complex and complete tools have their limits and, at the moment, writing a code remains the only way to produce games with 100% freedom for exactly what, where, and how you want it.

In this chapter, we will cover the following:

  • Creating a class
  • Compiling and debugging a code
  • Communicating between Blueprint and code
  • Discussing navigation Meshes
  • Discussing simple artificial intelligence
  • Discussing collision type and preset
  • Discussing player input

UE4 is different from its precursor UE3 that used its own scripting language (UnrealScript). UE4 allows you to write your code in native C++. This should be easy for those of you who already know this language and will make life easier for those of you who are starting to learn...