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Learning C++ by creating games with UE4

By : William Sherif
Book Image

Learning C++ by creating games with UE4

By: William Sherif

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Learning C++ by creating games with UE4
William Sherif
Feb, 2015 | 342 pages
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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Learning C++ by Creating Games with UE4
Learning C++ by Creating Games with UE4
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Coding with C++
Coding with C++
Setting up our project
Creating your first C++ program
What is building and compiling?
Summary
2
Variables and Memory
Variables and Memory
Variables
Summary
3
If, Else, and Switch
If, Else, and Switch
Branching
Controlling the flow of your program
Using logical operators
Our first example with Unreal Engine
Summary
4
Looping
Looping
The while loop
The do/while loop
The for loop
Looping with Unreal Engine
Summary
5
Functions and Macros
Functions and Macros
Functions
An example of a <cmath> library function – sqrt()
Writing our own functions
Functions with arguments
Functions that return values
Variables, revisited
Macros
Macros with arguments
Summary
6
Objects, Classes, and Inheritance
Objects, Classes, and Inheritance
struct objects
class versus struct
Getters and setters
Constructors and destructors
Class inheritance
Multiple inheritance
Putting your classes into headers
Summary
7
Dynamic Memory Allocation
Dynamic Memory Allocation
Dynamic memory allocation
Regular arrays
C++ style dynamic size arrays (new[] and delete[])
Dynamic C-style arrays
Summary
8
Actors and Pawns
Actors and Pawns
Actors versus pawns
Creating a world to put your actors in
The UE4 editor
Starting from scratch
Adding an actor to the scene
Creating a player entity
Writing C++ code that controls the game's character
Creating non-player character entities
Displaying a quote from each NPC dialog box
Summary
9
Templates and Commonly Used Containers
Templates and Commonly Used Containers
Debugging the output in UE4
UE4's TArray<T>
TSet<T>
TMap<T, S>
C++ STL versions of commonly used containers
Summary
10
Inventory System and Pickup Items
Inventory System and Pickup Items
Declaring the backpack
Base class PickupItem
Drawing the player inventory
Summary
11
Monsters
Monsters
Landscape
Monsters
Monster attacks on the player
Summary
12
Spell Book
Spell Book
The particle systems
Spell class actor
Attaching right mouse click to cast spell
Creating other spells
Summary
Index
Index

Base class PickupItem

We need to define how a pickup item looks in code. Each pickup item will derive from a common base class. Let's construct the base class for a PickupItem class now.

The PickupItem base class should inherit from the AActor class. Similar to how we created multiple NPC blueprints from the base NPC class, we can create multiple PickupItem blueprints from a single PickupItem base class, as shown in the following screenshot:

Once you have created the PickupItem class, open its code in Visual Studio.

The APickupItem class will need quite a few members, as follows:

  • An FString variable for the name of the item being picked up

  • An int32 variable for the quantity of the item being picked up

  • A USphereComponent variable for the sphere that you will collide with for the item to be picked up

  • A UStaticMeshComponent variable to hold the actual Mesh

  • A UTexture2D variable for the icon that represents the item

  • A pointer for the HUD (which we will initialize later)

This is how the code in PickupItem...

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