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)

Physics constraint


A physics constraint is a joint that allows you to connect two Actors or component together and also apply limits or forces on them.

UE4 has a very flexible and data-driven constraint system that allows you to make many different types of joints simply by changing some options. With these components, you are able to create many different objects such as swinging balls, wheels, and gears mechanisms, or simply keep a physics body in a general area.

You can create a Physics Constraint within the scene using Physics Constraint Actor from the Modes panel, or using Physics Constraint Component within a Blueprint class. They are basically the same object with the same properties. The Actor has three prefab settings (ball and socket, hinge, prismatic), but they are only a preset of common usage of the constraint—nothing that can't be reproduced in the Blueprint class:

Let's take a look at the properties of this component:

  • Component Name 1 and Component Name 2: These are the two Actor...