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  • Book Overview & Buying Unreal Engine 4 Scripting with C++ Cookbook
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Unreal Engine 4 Scripting with C++ Cookbook

Unreal Engine 4 Scripting with C++ Cookbook

By : Stephen Whittle, William Sherif
3.1 (7)
Buy this Book
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Unreal Engine 4 Scripting with C++ Cookbook

Unreal Engine 4 Scripting with C++ Cookbook

3.1 (7)
By: Stephen Whittle, William Sherif
Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) is a complete suite of game development tools made by game developers, for game developers. With more than 100 practical recipes, this book is a guide showcasing techniques to use the power of C++ scripting while developing games with UE4. It will start with adding and editing C++ classes from within the Unreal Editor. It will delve into one of Unreal's primary strengths, the ability for designers to customize programmer-developed actors and components. It will help you understand the benefits of when and how to use C++ as the scripting tool. With a blend of task-oriented recipes, this book will provide actionable information about scripting games with UE4, and manipulating the game and the development environment using C++. Towards the end of the book, you will be empowered to become a top-notch developer with Unreal Engine 4 using C++ as the scripting language.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
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Preface
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Preface
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What this book covers
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What you need for this book
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Who this book is for
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Sections
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Conventions
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Reader feedback
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Customer support
Lock Free Chapter
1
1. UE4 Development Tools
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1. UE4 Development Tools
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Introduction
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Installing Visual Studio
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Creating and building your first C++ project in Visual Studio
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Changing the code font and color in Visual Studio
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Extension – changing the color theme in Visual Studio
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Formatting your code (Autocomplete settings) in Visual Studio
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Shortcut keys in Visual Studio
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Extended mouse usage in Visual Studio
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UE4 – installation
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UE4 – first project
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UE4 – creating your first level
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UE4 – logging with UE_LOG
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UE4 – making an FString from FStrings and other variables
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Project management on GitHub – getting your Source Control
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Project management on GitHub – using the Issue Tracker
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Project management on VisualStudio.com – managing the tasks in your project
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Project management on VisualStudio.com – constructing user stories and tasks
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2. Creating Classes
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2. Creating Classes
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Introduction
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Making a UCLASS – deriving from UObject
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Creating a user-editable UPROPERTY
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Accessing a UPROPERTY from Blueprints
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Specifying a UCLASS as the type of a UPROPERTY
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Creating a Blueprint from your custom UCLASS
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Instantiating UObject-derived classes (ConstructObject < > and NewObject < >)
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Destroying UObject-derived classes
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Creating a USTRUCT
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Creating a UENUM( )
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Creating a UFUNCTION
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3. Memory Management and Smart Pointers
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3. Memory Management and Smart Pointers
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Introduction
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Unmanaged memory – using malloc( )/free( )
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Unmanaged memory – using new/delete
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Managed memory – using NewObject< > and ConstructObject< >
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Managed memory – deallocating memory
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Managed memory – smart pointers (TSharedPtr, TWeakPtr, TAutoPtr) to track an object
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Using TScopedPointer to track an object
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Unreal's garbage collection system and UPROPERTY( )
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Forcing garbage collection
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Breakpoints and stepping through code
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Finding bugs and using call stacks
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Using the Profiler to identify hot spots
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4. Actors and Components
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4. Actors and Components
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Introduction
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Creating a custom Actor in C++
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Instantiating an Actor using SpawnActor
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Destroying an Actor using Destroy and a Timer
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Destroying an Actor after a delay using SetLifeSpan
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Implementing the Actor functionality by composition
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Loading assets into components using FObjectFinder
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Implementing the Actor functionality by inheritance
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Attaching components to create a hierarchy
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Creating a custom Actor Component
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Creating a custom Scene Component
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Creating a custom Primitive Component
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Creating an InventoryComponent for an RPG
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Creating an OrbitingMovement Component
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Creating a building that spawns units
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5. Handling Events and Delegates
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5. Handling Events and Delegates
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Handling events implemented via virtual functions
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Creating a delegate that is bound to a UFUNCTION
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Unregistering a delegate
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Creating a delegate that takes input parameters
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Passing payload data with a delegate binding
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Creating a multicast delegate
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Creating a custom Event
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Creating a Time of Day handler
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Creating a respawning pickup for an First Person Shooter
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6. Input and Collision
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6. Input and Collision
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Introduction
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Axis Mappings – keyboard, mouse and gamepad directional input for an FPS character
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Axis Mappings – normalized input
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Action Mappings – one button responses for an FPS character
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Adding Axis and Action Mappings from C++
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Mouse UI input handling
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UMG keyboard UI shortcut keys
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Collision – letting objects pass through one another using Ignore
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Collision – picking up objects using Overlap
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Collision – preventing interpenetration using Block
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7. Communication between Classes and Interfaces
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7. Communication between Classes and Interfaces
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Introduction
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Creating a UInterface
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Implementing a UInterface on an object
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Checking if a class implements a UInterface
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Casting to a UInterface implemented in native code
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Calling native UInterface functions from C++
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Inheriting UInterface from one another
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Overriding UInterface functions in C++
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Exposing UInterface methods to Blueprint from a native base class
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Implementing UInterface functions in Blueprint
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Creating C++ UInterface function implementations that can be overridden in Blueprint
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Calling Blueprint-defined interface functions from C++
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Implementing a simple interaction system with UInterfaces
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8. Integrating C++ and the Unreal Editor
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8. Integrating C++ and the Unreal Editor
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Introduction
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Using a class or struct as a blueprint variable
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Creating classes or structs that can be subclassed in Blueprint
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Creating functions that can be called in Blueprint
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Creating events that can be implemented in Blueprint
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Exposing multi-cast delegates to Blueprint
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Creating C++ enums that can be used in Blueprint
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Editing class properties in different places in the editor
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Making properties accessible in the Blueprint editor graph
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Responding to property – changed events from the editor
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Implementing a native code Construction Script
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Creating a new editor module
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Creating new toolbar buttons
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Creating new menu entries
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Creating a new editor window
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Creating a new Asset type
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Creating custom context menu entries for Assets
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Creating new console commands
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Creating a new graph pin visualizer for Blueprint
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Inspecting types with custom Details panels
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9. User Interfaces – UI and UMG
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9. User Interfaces – UI and UMG
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Introduction
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Drawing using Canvas
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Adding Slate Widgets to the screen
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Creating screen size-aware scaling for the UI
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Displaying and hiding a sheet of UMG elements in-game
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Attaching function calls to Slate events
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Use Data Binding with Unreal Motion Graphics
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Controlling widget appearance with Styles
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Create a custom SWidget/UWidget
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10. AI for Controlling NPCs
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10. AI for Controlling NPCs
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Introduction
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Laying down a Navigation Mesh
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Following behavior
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Connecting a Behavior Tree to a Character
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Constructing Task nodes
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Using Decorators for conditions
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Using periodic services
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Using Composite nodes – Selectors, Sequences, and Simple Parallel
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AI for a Melee Attacker
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11. Custom Materials and Shaders
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11. Custom Materials and Shaders
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Introduction
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Modifying color using a basic Material
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Modifying position using a Material
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Shader code via Custom node
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The Material function
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Shader parameters and Material instances
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Glimmer
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Leaves and Wind
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Reflectance dependent on the viewing angle
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Randomness – Perlin noise
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Shading a Landscape
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12. Working with UE4 APIs
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12. Working with UE4 APIs
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Introduction
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Core/Logging API – Defining a custom log category
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Core/Logging API – FMessageLog to write messages to the Message Log
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Core/Math API – Rotation using FRotator
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Core/Math API – Rotation using FQuat
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Core/Math API – Rotation using FRotationMatrix to have one object face another
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Landscape API – Landscape generation with Perlin noise
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Foliage API – Adding trees procedurally to your level
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Landscape and Foliage API – Map generation using Landscape and Foliage APIs
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GameplayAbilities API – Triggering an actor's gameplay abilities with game controls
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GameplayAbilities API – Implementing stats with UAttributeSet
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GameplayAbilities API – Implementing buffs with GameplayEffect
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GameplayTags API – Attaching GameplayTags to an Actor
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GameplayTasks API – Making things happen with GameplayTasks
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HTTP API – Web request
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HTTP API – Progress bars
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Index
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Index

UE4 – logging with UE_LOG

Logging is extremely important for outputting internal game data. Using log tools lets you print information into a handy little Output Log window in the UE4 editor.

Getting ready

When coding, we may sometimes want to send some debug information out to the UE log window. This is possible using the UE_LOG macro. Log messages are an extremely important and convenient way to keep track of information in your program as you are developing it.

How to do it...

  1. In your code, enter a line of code using the form:
    UE_LOG(LogTemp, Warning, TEXT("Some warning message") );
  2. Turn on the Output Log inside the UE4 editor to see your log messages printed in that window as your program is running.
    How to do it...

How it works...

The UE_LOG macro accepts a minimum of three parameters:

  • The Log category (we used LogTemp here to denote a log message in a temporary log)
  • The Log level (we used a warning here to denote a log message printed in yellow warning text)
  • A string for the actual text of the log message itself

Do not forget the TEXT() macro around your log message text! It promotes the enclosed text to Unicode (it prepends an L) when the compiler is set to run with Unicode on.

UE_LOG also accepts a variable number of arguments, just like printf() from the C programming language.

int intVar = 5;
float floatVar = 3.7f;
FString fstringVar = "an fstring variable";
UE_LOG(LogTemp, Warning, TEXT("Text, %d %f %s"), intVar, floatVar, *fstringVar );

There will be an asterisk * just before FString variables when using UE_LOG to dereference the FString to a regular C-style TCHAR pointer.

Tip

TCHAR is usually defined as a variable type where, if Unicode is being used in the compile, the TCHAR resolves to wchar_t. If Unicode is off (compiler switch _UNICODE not defined), then TCHAR resolves to simply char.

Don't forget to clear your log messages after you no longer need them from the source!

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