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)

The game


For this chapter, we are going to extend the flying template of UE4. The final result will be a beat-the-time game where the player will fly around the level, trying to collect as many collectables as possible before the time ends. There will be a menu with buttons, particle system for the player and collectables, and a user interface that shows the score. We will also implement a power bar that increases when a collectable is collected and decreases when the player uses its boost.

Without further ado, let's open the launcher and create a new project, starting from the flying Blueprint template. Call it UFO_Run and, as usual, leave the other settings as the default:

What you will see once it opens is a stylized city, a nice sky and a pawn character that is ready to be used. The gameplay of the template allows you to fly around with your ship, move using the arrow keys, and accelerate/decelerate using spacebar or other keys (you can check the key binding of the level by navigating...