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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

C++ STL versions of commonly used containers

I want to cover the C++ STL versions of a couple of containers. STL is the standard template library, which is shipped with most C++ compilers. The reason why I want to cover these STL versions is that they behave somewhat differently than the UE4 versions of the same containers. In some ways, their behavior is very good, but game programmers often complain of STL having performance issues. In particular, I want to cover STL's set and map containers.

Note

If you like STL's interface but want better performance, there is a well-known reimplementation of the STL library by Electronic Arts called EASTL, which you can use. It provides the same functionality as STL but is implemented with better performance (basically by doing things such as eliminating bounds checking). It is available on GitHub at https://github.com/paulhodge/EASTL.

C++ STL set

A C++ set is a bunch of items that are unique and sorted. The good feature about the STL set is that it keeps...

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