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)

Destructible meshes


A destructible mesh, as the name suggests and different from a simple destroy object node, is a mesh that can be divided into smaller pieces and each piece is treated by the engine on its own.

This new function, added on the new version of unreal engine, allows the developers to convert any simple mesh into a destructible one. An intuitive editor gives you a deep control over the destruction of the mesh, allowing you to choose the number of fractures, the resistance of the object, spread of the destruction, and so on.

To create a destructible mesh, select the desired mesh from the content browser (if you don't have one, create it using a BSP brush or choose one by navigating to StarterContent | Shapes), right-click on it, and select Create Destructible Mesh:

A new file is created in the same folder with the name NameMesh_DM. Double-click on that file to open the destructible mesh editor:

The editor is divided into the following sections:

  • Menu bar: This is the familiar menu...