Book Image

Unreal Engine 4 Game Development Quick Start Guide

By : Rachel Cordone
Book Image

Unreal Engine 4 Game Development Quick Start Guide

By: Rachel Cordone

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine is a popular game engine used by developers for building high-end 2D and 3D games. This book is a practical guide designed to help you get started with Unreal Engine 4 and confidently develop interactive games. You’ll begin with a quick introduction to the Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) ecosystem. Next, you’ll learn how to create Blueprints and C++ code to define your game's functionality. As you progress, you’ll cover the core systems of UE4 such as Unreal Motion Graphics (UMG), Animation Blueprints, and behaviour trees to further build on your game development knowledge. The concluding chapters will then help you learn how to use replication to create multiplayer games. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed with UE4 and have developed the skills you need to use the framework for developing and deploying robust and intuitive games.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Replication

Replication is the process by which games transmit data over the network to keep clients in sync with the server. For the Unreal Engine, we can see that a lot of the work is already done for us. The player location, movement, and jumping is replicated in the third-person template we've been using. However, anything we add to our project must be replicated properly to prevent bugs like this from occurring.

Not everything needs to be replicated, though. The server doesn't care if you're in your game's settings menu adjusting the resolution or key binds, and the other clients certainly don't need to know. Knowing what to replicate is actually more important than knowing how to replicate, since you run the risk of lag and other network problems if you overshare, so to speak.

There are also ways to fake things to further improve performance. Take...