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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

Project management on GitHub – getting your Source Control

A very important thing to do for your project as you're developing it is to generate a timeline history as you're working. To do so, you need to back up your source code periodically. A great tool for doing so is Git. Git allows you to park changes (commits) into a repository online on a remote server so that your code's development history is documented and preserved on that remote server. If your local copy gets damaged somehow, you can always recover from the online backups. This timeline-history of your codebase's development is called Source Control.

Getting ready

There are a couple of free services that offer online source backups. Some of the free alternatives for storing your data include:

  • Visualstudio.com: limited/private sharing of your repository
  • github.com: unlimited public sharing of your repositories

Visualstudio.com is great for when you want some privacy for your project for free, while GitHub is great when you want to share your project with lots of users for free. Visualstudio.com also offers some very good workboarding and planning features, which we will use later in this text (GitHub also offers a competing Issue Tracker, which we'll discuss later on as well).

The website you choose depends mostly on how you plan on sharing your code. In this text, we will use GitHub for source code storage, since we need to share our code with a large number of users (you!)

How to do it...

  1. Sign up for a GitHub account at https://github.com. Sign into your GitHub account using the Team Explorer menu (View | Team Explorer).
  2. Once you have the Team Explorer open, you can sign into your GitHub account using the button that appears in the Team Explorer window.
  3. After you've signed in, you should gain the capability to Clone and Create repositories. These options will appear right underneath the GitHub menu in the Team Explorer.
  4. From here, we want to create our first repository. Hit the Create button, and name your repository in the window that comes up.

    Tip

    When creating your project, take care to select the VisualStudio option from the .gitignore options menu. This will cause Git to ignore the Visual Studio-specific files that you don't want included in your repository, such as the Build and Release directories.

  5. Now you have a repository! The repository is initialized on GitHub. We just have to put some code into it.
  6. Open up the Epic Games Launcher, and create a project to put into the repository.
  7. Open the C++ project in Visual Studio 2015, and right-click on Solution. Select Add Solution to Source Control from the context menu that appears. The dialog that appears will ask whether you want to use Git or TFVC.

    Tip

    If you use Git for your source control, then you can host on either github.com or Visualstudio.com.

  8. After you add Git Source Control to the project, take a look at Team Explorer again. From that window, you should enter a brief message, then click on the Commit button.

How it works...

Git repositories are important for backing up copies of your code and project files as your project evolves. There are many commands within Git to browse the project history (try the Git GUI tool), see what changes you've made since the last commit (git diff), or move backward and forward through the Git history (git checkout commit-hash-id).

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