Book Image

Unreal Engine Game Development Blueprints

By : Nicola Valcasara
Book Image

Unreal Engine Game Development Blueprints

By: Nicola 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 (14 chapters)

Landscapes


The main element of an open world is actually its landscape. UE4 offers a wonderful system that enables you to create any kind of terrain for your world (mountains, valleys, sloped grounds, caves, and holes for lakes or rivers) and easily modify both its shape and its appearance by using a range of tools.

The landscape tools are accessible by the Modes panel by clicking on its icon (it has an image of a mountain):

It is divided into three main modes:

  • Manage: Enables you to create new Landscapes and modify Landscapes components. This is also where you work with Landscape Gizmos (a tool that allows you to manipulate volumes of layer data of your landscape to easily replicate or export).

  • Sculpt: The main mode of the Landscape editor. It enables you to modify the shape of the Landscape by selecting and using specific tools.

  • Paint: Enables you to modify the appearance of parts of your Landscape by painting textures on it, based on the layers defined in the Landscape's material.

Although...