Building an RPG with Unreal 4.x

Building an RPG with Unreal 4.x

By : Steve Santello

Buy this Book

Building an RPG with Unreal 4.x

By: Steve Santello

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Now that Unreal Engine 4 has become one of the most cutting edge game engines in the world, developers are looking for the best ways of creating games of any genre in the engine. This book will lay out the foundation of creating a turn-based RPG in Unreal Engine 4.12. The book starts by walking you through creating a turn-based battle system that can hold commands for party members and enemies. You’ll get your hands dirty by creating NPCs such as shop owners, and important mechanics, that make up every RPG such as a currency system, inventory, dialogue, and character statistics. Although this book specifically focuses on the creation of a turn-based RPG, there are a variety of topics that can be utilized when creating many other types of genres. By the end of the book, you will be able to build upon core RPG framework elements to create your own game experience.

Building an RPG with Unreal 4.x

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Getting Started with RPG Design in Unreal

Tools for game design

The design and concept phase

Describing the game's features and mechanics

Tropes in existing role-playing games

RPG design overview

Choosing the right formula

Summary

Scripting and Data in Unreal

Downloading Unreal

Downloading Visual Studio

Setting up Visual Studio for Unreal

Setting up a new Unreal project

Creating a new C++ class

Blueprints

Using Data Tables to import spreadsheet data

Summary

Exploration and Combat

Creating the player pawn

Defining characters and enemies

Party members

Turn-based combat

Summary

Pause Menu Framework

UMG pause screen initial setup

UMG background color

UMG text

UMG buttons

The UMG inventory submenu

The UMG equipment submenu

Key binding

Button programming

Summary

Bridging Character Statistics

Getting character data

Getting player instances

Displaying stats

Summary

NPCs and Dialog

Creating the NPC Character Blueprint

Interacting with the NPC

Dialog box setup

Creating an NPC welcome box

Adding an NPC talk box

Summary

Gold, Items, and a Shop

Setting and getting gold instances

Item data

The shop screen framework

The item button framework

Linking the item data

Summary

Inventory Population and Item Use

Creating the FieldPlayer Booleans

Determining whether the inventory screen is on or off

Logical difference between the inventory and shop items

Finishing the inventory screen

Buying items

Using items

Summary

Equipment

The weapons Data Table

Setting the weapon and equipment screen variables

Creating the weapon button

Revisiting the equipment screen

Setting the equipment screen Text Blocks

Correcting the character stats when equipping

Summary

Leveling, Abilities, and Saving Progress

XP and leveling source code

Data Table starting values

Displaying levels and experience in the pause menu

Applying the correct damage in combat

Setting up the abilities array

Abilities logic

Saving and loading game progress

Summary

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Setting up the abilities array

In Chapter 3, Exploration and Combat, we created a character class info for learned abilities, which was done in FCharacterClassInfo.h, which is an array used to hold an array of abilities for each character that inherits a class. We need to extend this array so that it is adopted by any game character to hold abilities that they learn throughout the game. To do this, open GameCharacter.h by navigating to Source | RPG. In class RPG_API UGameCharacter : public UObject, add a public UPROPERTY to learned abilities and allow it to be editable anywhere:

UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = CharacterInfo)
  TArray<FString> LearnedAbilities;

Next, open GameCharacter.cpp located in the same folder, and set LearnedAbilities to be equal to LearnedAbilities from the class info that we created the variable in:

character->LearnedAbilities = character->ClassInfo->LearnedAbilities;

This will allow each instance of a party member to hold its own...

Building an RPG with Unreal 4.x

By : Steve Santello

Building an RPG with Unreal 4.x

By: Steve Santello

Overview of this book

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Building an RPG with Unreal 4.x

Setting up the abilities array