Book Image

Unreal Engine Game Development Blueprints

By : Nicola Valcasara
Book Image

Unreal Engine Game Development Blueprints

By: Nicola Valcasara

Overview of this book

With the arrival of Unreal Engine 4, a new wonderful tool was born: Blueprint. This visual scripting tool allows even non-programmers to develop the logic for their games, allowing almost anyone to create entire games without the need to write a single line of code. The range of features you can access with Blueprint script is pretty extensive, making it one of the foremost choices for many game developers. Unreal Engine Game Development Blueprints helps you unleash the real power of Unreal by helping you to create engaging and spectacular games. It will explain all the aspects of developing a game, focusing on visual scripting, and giving you all the information you need to create your own games. We start with an introductory chapter to help you move fluidly inside the Blueprint user interface, recognize its different components, and understand any already written Blueprint script. Following this, you will learn how to modify generated Blueprint classes to produce a single player tic-tac-toe game and personalize it. Next, you will learn how to create simple user interfaces, and how to extend Blueprints through code. This will help you make an informed decision between choosing Blueprint or code. You will then see the real power of Unreal unleashed as you create a beautiful scene with moving, AI controlled objects, particles, and lights. Then, you will learn how to create AI using a behavior tree and a global level Blueprint, how to modify the camera, and how to shoot custom bullets. Finally, you will create a complex game using Blueprintable components complete with a menu, power-up, dangerous objects, and different weapons.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

What do we need?


Anyone knows how tic-tac-toe works: it is a 1vs1 game that is played in a 3 x 3 grid, where the goal is to create a sequence of three symbols of the same type in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row. The game is turn-based, where each player can place his symbol (typically O or X) anywhere in the grid.

This game has a huge history and many people have written books and programs talking about it. We will be a part of them, discovering how even the simplest game can be complicated when talking about computer games.

In order to create this game, we need the following:

  • A static camera that is always pointing to the grid

  • A 3 x 3 grid that is made by nine individual square Static Mesh

  • Two Symbols: O and X

  • A user interface showing which player can make his move and the state of the game

  • A game logic: a controller for the grid state and a turn handler