Book Image

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine 5 - Third Edition

By : Marcos Romero, Brenden Sewell
5 (1)
Book Image

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine 5 - Third Edition

5 (1)
By: Marcos Romero, Brenden Sewell

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine's Blueprint visual scripting system enables designers to script their games and programmers to create base elements that can be extended by designers. With this book, you'll explore all the features of the Blueprint Editor, along with expert tips, shortcuts, and best practices. The book guides you through using variables, macros, and functions, and helps you learn about object-oriented programming (OOP). You'll discover the Gameplay Framework and advance to learning how Blueprint Communication allows one Blueprint to access information from another Blueprint. Later chapters focus on building a fully functional game step by step. You'll start with a basic first-person shooter (FPS) template, and each chapter will build on the prototype to create an increasingly complex and robust game experience. You'll then progress from creating basic shooting mechanics to more complex systems such as user interface elements and intelligent enemy behavior. The book demonstrates how to use arrays, maps, enums, and vector operations and introduces the elements needed for VR game development. In the final chapters, you’ll learn how to implement procedural generation and create a product configurator. By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to build a fully functional game and have the skills required to develop an entertaining experience for your audience.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
1
Part 1: Blueprint Fundamentals
6
Part 2: Developing a Game
11
Part 3: Enhancing the Game
16
Part 4: Advanced Blueprints
21
Part 5: Extra Tools

Making the AI chase the player

There is a component named PawnSensing that can be used to add vision and hearing to the enemy. We will use this component and expand our Behavior Tree to make the enemy pose some threat to the player.

Giving the enemy sight with PawnSensing

To grant the enemy the ability to detect the player, we need to add the PawnSensing component to BP_EnemyController and store the PlayerCharacter reference in BB_EnemyBlackboard when the enemy sees the player.

These are the steps to use the PawnSensing component:

  1. Open the BP_EnemyController Blueprint.
  2. Create a variable in the My Blueprint panel. In the Details panel, name the variable PlayerKeyName and change Variable Type to Name. Compile the Blueprint and set Default Value to PlayerCharacter.
  3. In the Components panel, click the Add button and search for pawn. Select the Pawn Sensing component:

Figure 9.44 – Adding the Pawn Sensing component

  1. In the...