Book Image

Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X

By : Muhammad A.Moniem
Book Image

Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X

By: Muhammad A.Moniem

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine 4 has garnered a lot of attention in the gaming world because of its new and improved graphics and rendering engine, the physics simulator, particle generator, and more. This book is the ideal guide to help you leverage all these features to create state-of-the-art games that capture the eye of your audience. Inside we’ll explain advanced shaders and effects techniques and how you can implement them in your games. You’ll create custom lighting effects, use the physics simulator to add that extra edge to your games, and create customized game environments that look visually stunning using the rendering technique. You’ll find out how to use the new rendering engine efficiently, add amazing post-processing effects, and use data tables to create data-driven gameplay that is engaging and exciting. By the end of this book, you will be able to create professional games with stunning graphics using Unreal Engine 4!

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Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X
Muhammad A.Moniem
Jun, 2016 | 384 pages
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Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X
Mastering Unreal Engine 4.X
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Preparing for a Big Project
Preparing for a Big Project
Overview of the game
Creating a C++ project
The project settings
The editor settings
Mapping the inputs
Migrating assets
Using MarketPlace assets
Retargeting animations
Summary
2
Setting Up Your Warrior
Setting Up Your Warrior
The code project
Creating the C++ class
Editing and adding code
The Gladiator header (.h) file
The Gladiator source (.cpp) file
Compiling the code
Animation assets
Building the blueprint
Adding the blueprint to the GameMode
Summary
3
Designing Your Playground
Designing Your Playground
The art of level design
Building lightmaps for a level
Player Start
The navigation mesh
Summary
4
The Road to Thinkable AI
The Road to Thinkable AI
The overall idea
The AI assets
The animation blueprint
Building the C++ logic
EnemyAIController
Enemy
Building the behavior tree
Creating the blueprint
Adding notifies
What else?
Summary
5
Adding Collectables
Adding Collectables
The idea behind collectables
The base class
The coin class
Making it collectable
Building the blueprint
Going forward
Summary
6
The Magic of Particles
The Magic of Particles
The particles editor
Toolbar
The viewport panel
The emitters panel
The details panel
Curve Editor
Spawning particles
Changing parameters at runtime
Summary
7
Enhancing the Visual Quality
Enhancing the Visual Quality
The lightmass
The Swarm Agent
The ambient occlusion
Lightmass settings
The post process project settings
Reflection Capture
The fog effects
Summary
8
Cinematics and In-Game Cutscenes
Cinematics and In-Game Cutscenes
Matinee actor (cinematic actor)
Bellz cinematic
The animated fog
Summary
9
Implementing the Game UI
Implementing the Game UI
UMG as Unreal's UI system
The game UI widget
UMG Designer
Constructing the UI
Adding animations to the UI
Connecting the UI with the game logic
What else?
Summary
10
Save the Game Progress
Save the Game Progress
Building the SaveGame class
Saving and loading game data in C++
The *.sav file
Saving and loading game data in blueprints
Summary
11
Controlling Gameplay via Data Tables
Controlling Gameplay via Data Tables
Data table sheets
Creating the data table asset
Creating a data structure
Blueprint data structure
C++ data structure
Reading from data tables
Summary
12
Ear Candy
Ear Candy
Importing audio files
Sound assets
Sound cue editor
Audio volumes
Playing sound effects
Summary
13
Profiling the Game Performance
Profiling the Game Performance
The blueprint debugger
The Collision Analyzer
The console
The FPS charts
The view modes and visualizers
The GPU visualizer
The Device Manager
Device Profiles
Summary
14
Packaging the Game
Packaging the Game
Preparing the project for building
Packaging settings
Maps & Modes settings
Description settings
Platform settings
Adding different screens
Packaging the game
Cooking the content
Project Launcher and DLCs
Packaging a release
Packaging a patch or DLC
Summary
Index
Index

The Swarm Agent

The process of building lightmaps is an automated one, which means there is no specific length of time that it will take. Based on your map or game and its complexity, building lightmaps could take too much time and performance from the machine.

But Unreal Engine is full of supporting tools that are built in such a way as to serve you by saving time and delivering the best content. There is a small C# tool that is connected to the Unreal editor, which plays the role of manager to handle the communications between the lightmass and the editor. That manager is called Swarm Agent.

Swarm Agent is autofired in order to perform its job and stay minimized (this means that you don't have to manually run it from somewhere); it was written to know the time that it has to start and finish its job and then shut down:

For more information about Swarm Agent, you can check the Unreal Engine 3 UDN documentation site, http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Swarm.html, as Swarm was not well covered within...

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