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

Organizing the script with macros and functions

When we are creating Blueprint scripts, sometimes, a group of actions is used in more than one place in Blueprint. These actions can be converted into macros or functions, simplifying the initial script because this group of actions will be replaced by only one node. Also, if you need to change something in this group of actions, this change will only be implemented in the macro or function rather than having to search every location where this group of actions was used. This is a good programming practice to use as it simplifies code and debugging.

Creating macros

To create macros, use the My Blueprint panel and click the + button in the MACROS category. The following screenshot shows the My Blueprint panel with a macro named SetupNewWave:

Figure 2.14 – Creating a macro

When a macro is created, a new tab is opened in the same place as the Event Graph. This tab looks like the Event Graph but contains...