Book Image

Mastering Game Development with Unreal Engine 4 - Second Edition

By : Matt Edmonds
Book Image

Mastering Game Development with Unreal Engine 4 - Second Edition

By: Matt Edmonds

Overview of this book

<p>To make a basic combat game from scratch, you will quickly override existing UE4 classes, and add and implement simple C++ functions while running and building them. These are all discussed as a short summary for new developers and as a quick refresher for experienced developers. Next, you will build a combat player character with expanded controls, create logic for a character, swap weapons, attack and move, bridge over scene changes and transitions, retain data between scenes, and manage the scene-change process. </p><p>You will then build an intelligent enemy AI and add physics based particles for weapon impacts. You will also get acquainted with cutting-edge features such as Volumetric Lightmaps for precomputed lighting, and Atmospheric and Volumetric Fog, to build advanced visuals in our ongoing GitHub project. </p><p>Moving on, you will explore the tools required to build an in-game cut-scene for a more professional gameplay experience and story direction. </p><p>Along the way, you will implement a solid game UI, including writing a full in-game load and save system that will enable players to resume their game from any point. You will also prepare, build, and work on VR and AR taking them from editor to real-world, building two new projects one in each of these brand new areas of UE4 and integrate classes from the main project into AR! </p><p>By the end of the book, you will have mastered all major UE features and will be able to bring self-imagined games to life through Unreal Engine 4.18+.</p>
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

To get the most out of this book

Fundamental comfort with using Unreal Engine 4 is an important starting point, but it's not mandatory. The objective of this book is to take those who work with the technology to a level where they are comfortable enough with all aspects to be a leader and driver of that technology on a project. While UE4 is a multi-platform set of technology, a Windows PC with Visual Studio is the primary development platform. MacBook Pro and XCode are also used frequently, and Android phones (including GearVR) and iOS devices are also represented.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packt.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packt.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

  1. Log in or register at www.packt.com.
  2. Select the SUPPORT tab.
  3. Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
  4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

  • WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
  • Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
  • 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Mastering-Game-Development-with-Unreal-Engine-4-Second-EditionIn case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Mount the downloaded WebStorm-10*.dmg disk image file as another disk in your system."

A block of code is set as follows:

/** Muzzle offset */
UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = Projectile)
class USceneComponent* MuzzleLocation;

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ mkdir css
$ cd css

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Select System info from the Administration panel."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.
Tips and tricks appear like this.