Book Image

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine - Second Edition

By : Marcos Romero, Brenden Sewell
Book Image

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine - Second Edition

By: Marcos Romero, Brenden Sewell

Overview of this book

Blueprints is the visual scripting system in Unreal Engine that enables programmers to create baseline systems and can be extended by designers. This book helps you explore all the features of the Blueprint Editor and guides you through using Variables, Macros, and Functions. You’ll also learn about object-oriented programming (OOP) and discover the Gameplay Framework. In addition to this, you’ll learn how Blueprint Communication allows one Blueprint to access information from another Blueprint. Later chapters will focus on building a fully functional game using a step-by-step approach. You’ll start with a basic first-person shooter (FPS) template, and each chapter will build on the prototype to create an increasingly complex and robust game experience. You’ll then progress from creating basic shooting mechanics to more complex systems, such as user interface elements and intelligent enemy behavior. The skills you will develop using Blueprints can also be employed in other gaming genres. In the concluding chapters, the book demonstrates how to use arrays, maps, enums, and vector operations. Finally, you’ll learn how to build a basic VR game. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to build a fully functional game and will have the skills required to develop an entertaining experience for your audience.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Blueprint Fundamentals
6
Section 2: Developing a Game
11
Section 3: Enhancing the Game
16
Section 4: Advanced Blueprints

Summary

In this chapter, we learned how to use data structures to organize data in Blueprints. We learned how to store various elements in an array and how to retrieve any of those elements. We learned how to use other types of containers, such as sets and maps, to store data.

After that, we learned how to create and use enumerations, structures, and data tables, and we saw examples of how they can be related. It was presented to us as several flow control nodes, such as Switch, Gate, and ForEachLoop.

This chapter showed various Blueprint features that will help us to organize data so that it can be used effectively. The flow control nodes can simplify the Event Graph because, for each situation, there may be a more suitable node.

In the next chapter, we will learn about world and local coordinates, vector operations, and the use of traces to test collisions.

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