Book Image

Unreal Engine 5 Game Development with C++ Scripting

By : ZHENYU GEORGE LI
Book Image

Unreal Engine 5 Game Development with C++ Scripting

By: ZHENYU GEORGE LI

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine is one of the most popular and accessible game engines in the industry, creating multiple job opportunities. Owing to C++ scripting's high performance, advanced algorithms, and engineering maintenance, it has become the industry standard for developing commercial games. However, C++ scripting can be overwhelming for anyone without a programming background. Unreal Engine 5 Game Development with C++ Scripting will help you master C++ and get a head start on your game development journey. You’ll start by creating an Unreal Engine C++ project from the shooter template and then move on to building the C++ project and the C++ code inside the Visual Studio editor. You’ll be introduced to the fundamental C++ syntax and essential object-oriented programming concepts. For a holistic understanding of game development, you’ll also uncover various aspects of the game, including character creation, player input and character control, gameplay, collision detection, UI, networking, and packaging a completed multiplayer game. By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to create professional, high-quality games using Unreal Engine 5 with C++, and will have built a solid foundation for more advanced C++ programming and game development technologies.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Getting Started with Unreal C++ Scripting
6
Part 2 – C++ Scripting for Unreal Engine
12
Part 3: Making a Complete Multiplayer Game

Controlling the player character to attack

When you created the Pangaea project, the engine automatically generated the PangaeaPlayerController class so that you had basic control over the player character. To understand how PangaeaPlayerController controls the player, let’s open the PangaeaPlayerController.cpp file in Visual Studio (VS) and look at the code.

First of all, the SetupInputComponent() function binds the OnSetDestinationPressed() and the OnSetDestinationReleased() event handler functions to the SetDestination action defined in the project’s input settings. These two event handler functions call the movement functions, StopMovement and SimpleMoveToLocation, to move the character toward the next new destination.

Can we add a new attack action to the system and hook it up to our own handler function? The answer is yes. Let’s start by defining the new attack action.

Adding the Attack action to the action map

In Unreal, PlayerController is defined...